Read and Write Chinese

[Anonymous]

http://www.mtec123.com/default.htm

This is another website that young children can use to help learn spoken Mandarin. The site has several links where students can cycle through pictures which are accompanied by an audio of a man saying the picture in Mandarin. There are also other links where students can create sentences using Chinese characters and also clicking the characters so that they can also hear how it is spoken. I think that students will initially find the games fun where they must correctly identify the picture after the item is spoken to them. The graphics are not the best and the links take a while to load. I think this would be a great starting website for young children and students who have no Mandarin background.

[Rob_Hugo@PortNW]

http://www.learnchineseez.com

This website offers free Cantonese and Mandarin lessons. One can learn to read and write basic Chinese, as well as speak the language. They offer vocabulary lessons, tutorials on traditional and simplified Chinese, pronunciation guides, Chinese proverbs and slang (which was pretty entertaining when I tried them out on my husband), and videos. There is even a section on Chinese tattoos! It is a no-nonsense website that does not look extremely polished, but it is very useful and delivers what it promises. It is easy to navigate and I found it to be helpful for what I was looking for.

In one of my lessons for the Curriculum Project, I thought it would be fun to introduce the culture by teaching the kids something about the language. For example, for Korea, Japan, and China, I could teach them how to say hello and thank you in each language. My class and I could listen to the pronunciation and repeat after it. My favorite part of the website (and what I was initially looking for) is the how to write Chinese characters step-by-step. I want to teach my class how to write the numbers 1-10 in Chinese and it shows us exactly how to do so in animated form. I thought it would be fun to practice with my class in pencil and then imitate the style of Chinese calligraphy by writing the numbers with a thin paint brush and black watercolor.

This is such a useful website! I'm glad I found it. I can even use it in my personal life to learn Chinese so I can talk to my mother-in-law! (But I probably won't.)

[Anonymous]

I found this website interesting. My daughter began using this website before I was aware of it. She learned how to say a words and learn a couple of characters. She became interested in this website because her best friend is Japanese and goes to Japanese school and so my daughter wanted learn something that she can share with her.

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