文化

Better Days – A Film Class Journey 5

After four class periods of preparation and lots of background research, finally, today we began watching the film. After 15 minutes of Free Voluntary Reading, I began doing "Picture Talks" with students.  These pictures are screenshots of the important scenes from the film. First, I pointed out the location, time and the setting.  The infamous annual college entrance exam (gaokao) in China, which takes place on June 7th, June 8th and June 9th.  Anyone dreams to go to a college will only have one opportunity each year to give it a shot.  Typically, two kinds of students who take gaokao...

Continue Reading →

Better Days – A Film Journey4

In the previous three posts, I journaled the preparations for this film class.  Yesterday, we had our fourth class.  Students were asked to do background research on the film director, Zeng, Guoxiang, the male lead, Jackson Yee, and the female lead, Zhong, Dongyu. After the free voluntary reading, we dived into soliciting background information. Here are what students shared. The inquiry process took up the most part of the class.  After that, we played a Blooket game which I designed ahead of time, based on the research I did on these three people.  Blooket provides different game modes.  We played...

Continue Reading →

 

In my previous posts, I shared that we were going to begin a film unit for my I3 and I4 combination class.  Here is what happened in yesterday’s class.

We began our class with 15 minutes of Free Voluntary Reading.

Then we launched into a few rounds of Quizlet Live game.  Here is a sample of the Quizlet list I generated for them.

Quizlet shuffles teams randomly.  I encourage students to find their team quickly and work through the problems together.  It is a fast-moving game, students don’t dwell on the loss or win as they are asked to dive into the next round immediately.

Then, I pulled a few videos from Youtube and asked students to apply the film terminologies to analyze the video with me. Li Ziqi is one of our favorite channels for movie talks, clip chats, and or cultural insights.  Each film is so beautifully done.  Sometimes, students are so engrossed in the film and they forget to shout out the film terminologies.  I always prefer to create an opportunity for students to enjoy the aesthetic beauty of culture while they work on their linguistic features.

For homework, I asked students to do background research on Better Days’ film director, Zeng, Guoxiang, the male lead, Yiyang, Qianxi, and the female lead, Zhou, Dongyu.

I’ll let you know what they have found out.

By Haiyun

 

Better Days – A Film Class Journey 1

Hi everyone, I sincerely hope you have had a wonderful and relaxing winter break to recuperate.  My winter break was filled with painting walls, cleaning windows, and mopping floors as we were preparing to get our house on the market.  Luckily, our hard work was paid off, we accepted an offer after two days. Before that, I have never touched a paintbrush.  In order to get the job done, not only I dispensed the belief of not knowing how, I dived in from the head to the toes, but also turned it into a shared experience for the whole family. ...

Continue Reading →

Meet the Zodiac Family Plus More

  Today, I'm going to share a quick tip on how I preteach zodiac animals waaaaaay before the Chinese Spring Festival.  By the time we reach the point for the Legend of Chinese Zodiac, students are familiar with most of the animals already.  Sounds amazing, right?! How?  You might ask! Well, simple!  When I co-create stories with students in class, after the first month, I switch my main characters in the story from human to animal. In this photo, you will meet Panda King, Tuzi Phil, Xiaozhu Wilber, Houzi Suzie, Houzi Joey, and Longxia Sophie. If you are thinking about...

Continue Reading →

Up the Culture Game: Teaching Holiday Celebration Through Content-based Activities!

By Pu-mei Leng Spring Festival and Lantern Festival are coming up fast!  Read the following post to learn how Leng laoshi teaches Lantern Festival in her Chinese class! The riddle activity for the Chinese Lantern Festival was created for the topic of Celebration of Festivals. All of my festivals were first taught on the calendar talk, very basic vocabulary and one or more important features on a specific festival, like everyone did, for example, Chinese in the north eat dumplings in the New Year. As their level advances, more details are added to the celebration of the festivals. This will...

Continue Reading →

#6 “Rrrrr” 和 “2”

作者:潮雨 记得几年前春运的时候,在国内有一句流行语,那就是“人太多,没办法”。这次我带了一行22人回国,老是担心到处都会是人山人海,一不小心把谁给丢了。所以,我们就给每一个人一个数字。每天在出发前,上车后,景点里或者活动中都要数数。方便又快速。 不过,随行的人中有一位50多岁的家长,一句中文都不会讲。 那天我们在分数字的时候,他来的最晚,所以他就是第“二十二”了。可是,他试了多次,都没办法发出这个“e”音,特别是“èrshíèr”在一起。所以,我就对他说,“中国人也叫二十二,‘二二’,听起来有一点像Rrrrrr, 你就说‘RR”吧。” 他一听就高兴地试了试, “Rrrrrrrrr, Rrrrrrrr”!可是,他一开口,就把我们是东北人的导游笑得半死。 “卢老师,这说法听起来特‘2’!”本来没有多想的我,被May这么一提醒,也笑疼了肚子。这也真的让我想起了一些在中文里关于数字的表达。 比方说,在May的老家,当他们说一个人特 “2”的时候,就是说这人有点没脑子。 在国内我常常听到的是说一个人“250”,那就是说一个人很傻,常常做傻事,不但智商低,人也很鲁莽愚蠢。还有一个数字“38”也是骂人骂得很惨的。中国不是有一个“38”妇女节吗?好多时候,“38”是对女性的一个贬义词。不过,到了后来,当大家骂一个人“38”,就是说这个人天天婆婆妈妈的,快把人给烦死了。 近几年来,随着网络的发展,在中国用数字来注册域名很流行,用数字来表达就更丰富了。 这里我就给大家随便举几个例子: 1314                一生一世 12825              你爱不爱我 04551              你是我唯一 098                  你走吧 902                  就你二 0837                你别生气 0748                你去死吧 天!好的,坏的,应有皆有!看来,上一个国内的网站要小心了! [audio m4a="https://ignitechinese.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Ignite-mix-6.m4a"][/audio]

Continue Reading →