Week 6 (Saturday Class) Learning Grammar

Now that we now all the key words that are associated with going to school, we started to look at the grammar in our lesson. We learnt how to expand our sentence in the following example:

帽子 (màozi) - a hat (a noun)

我戴帽子 (Wǒ dài màozi) - I wear a hat (stating a fact)

我要戴帽子 (Wǒ yào dài màozi) - I want to wear a hat (express desire to wear a hat)

我在戴帽子 (Wǒ zài dài màozi) - I am wearing a hat (in progress)

我戴上帽子去上学 (Wǒ dài shàng màozi qù shàngxué) - I put on my hat and go to school (action completed and is usually follow by another action to complete the sentence.

Notice each of the sentence look similar but they have completely different meaning. More information on page 4 in text book.

We also learn to use question, here is an example:

你看見我的書包了嗎?
 Nǐ kànjiàn wǒde  shūbāo le ma? (Have you seen my school bag?)

The answer is usually 我看見你的書包了 or 我没有看見你的書包. 了(le) is usually added to the end of sentence meaning the action is over.

There are a couple of tasks for the children this week, a word search as well as writing task on page 5 of the work book.

Chinese idiom of the week is 守株待兔 (Shŏu zhū dài tù) Trust to chance and luck in one's actions; hope for gains without pains. Here is how the story goes:

There was a farmer in the Song Kingdom in ancient China. He worked in his field day after day. In good harvest years, he could only have enough food to eat and enough clothing to wear. If the field failed to produce enough crops, he had to go hungry. This farmer wanted to improve his life. But he was too lazy and too cowardly. He always dreamed of having unexpected fortune.

A miracle took place at last. One day, when he worked in the field, some people were hunting nearby. They shouted loudly one after another. Some little animals were running desperately. Suddenly, a hare dashed itself headlong against the stump of a dead tree in his field and died. That day, he had a good meal.

From that day on, he no longer worked in his field. From morning till night, he stayed by that miraculous stump, waiting for another hare. Will the miracle happen again?
People often use the set phrase “staying by a stump waiting for more hares to come and dash themselves against it" to refer to persons dreaming to reap without sowing.

Week 5 (Saturday Class) Going to School 我去上学 (Wǒ qù shàngxué) Cont.

Hello! Another busy week for our students in Saturday class. We practiced the passage on page 3 this week. You can read along here.

They are now able to read it out even without the pinyin, I'm so proud of them! This week we learnt the different between 穿 (wear, dressed in), 戴 (to put on), and 拿 (to take). Feel free to quiz them and see if they could all appropriately use the term! We had a lot of fun practicing in class. You can also practice the characters with them with the study set.

This week's homework - Please have a go on the writing on page 5 of work book and matching the picture with appropriate words on page 6. I know we are still a few books short and they will arrive next week so please bear with us. 

Our Chinese idiom of the week is Blind man and the Elephant 盲人摸象 (máng rén mō xiàng). Here is the story:

Once upon a time, there lived six blind men in a village. One day the villagers told them, "Hey, there is an elephant in the village today." They had no idea what an elephant is. They decided, "Even though we would not be able to see it, let us go and feel it anyway." All of them went where the elephant was. Everyone of them touched the elephant.

  

"Hey, the elephant is a pillar," said the first man who touched his leg. 

"Oh, no! it is like a rope," said the second man who touched the tail. 

"Oh, no! it is like a thick branch of a tree," said the third man who touched the trunk of the elephant. 

"It is like a big hand fan" said the fourth man who touched the ear of the elephant. 

"It is like a big bed," said the fifth man who touched the belly of the elephant. 

"It is like a carrot," Said the sixth man who touched the tusk of the elephant. 

They began to argue about the elephant and everyone of them insisted that he was right. It looked like they were getting agitated. A wise man was passing by and he saw this. He stopped and asked them, "What is the matter?" They said, "We cannot agree to what the elephant is like." Each one of them told what he thought the elephant was like. The wise man calmly explained to them, "All of you are right. The reason every one of you is telling it differently because each one of you touched the different part of the elephant. So, actually the elephant has all those features what you all said."

Have a good week ahead!

Week 4 (Saturday Class) Going to School 我去上学 (Wǒ qù shàngxué)

After the hustle and bustle of Chinese New Year fun in the last two week, we finally open our text book and explore new lessons. Today's class we talked about what to bring or wear going to school. The key words are 穿 Chuān (wear, dressed in), 戴 Dài (wear, put on), 拿 Ná (take), and what they can be used with. We had fun playing word matching and word search, I was really quite impressed how quickly the children manage to recognise the words.

As well as learning about everyday items such as hat, school bag, shoes and socks (page 2 in text book), we also practice reading the passage on page 3 as well as learning about the 4 tones in Chinese Pinyin.

You can find the flashcard for Lesson 1 HERE.
The word search games worksheet is HERE

We also revisited numbers this week as some of our new students have not been introduced to it. 

1 一 yī
2 二 èr
3 三 sān
4 四 sì
5 五 wǔ
6 六 liù
7 七 qī
8 八 bā
9 九 jiǔ
10 十 shí

You can read along counting to 10 here 

This week we have also started our story segment. I have introduced a Chinese idiom 成語 (Chengyu) stories series. Chéngyǔ (Traditional Chinese: 成語; Simplified Chinese: 成语, literally "to become (part of) the language") or Four-character idioms are widely used in Classical Chinese, a literary form used in the Chinese written language from antiquity until 1919, and are still commonly used in Vernacular writing today.The first story today is 

半途而废 (bàn tú ér fèi) meaning do things by halves, give up halfway. Here is how the story goes:

During the Warring States Period (475-221BC), there was a man called Yue Yangzi in State Yue. Yue Yangzi felt that he should go out and visit scholars to enrich his knowledge. So he set off.  A year later, he came back home suddenly."Why have you returned?" asked his wife in surprise, "You've only spent one year studying with scholars.""I come back because I missed you very much."
Without saying anything, his wife took a pair of scissors and went to the loom at which she had worked. Pointing at the half done brocade, she proclaimed : "This brocade is woven from the finest silk. I wove one strand after another to produce the brocade. Now if I cut it, all my previous work will be wasted. It's the same with your studies. You can acquire knowledge only through diligence. Now, you've stopped halfway. Isn't it the same as cutting the brocade on the loom?"　　 
Yue Yangzi was moved by what she said. He again left home to visit scholars. Several years later he became a learned man.

Have a lovely weekend!