Acquiring a certain language is a long process. During the process when foreign learners come to learn Chinese in China, they find the Chinese language interesting but difficult to learn. They will forget soon what they have learned. In order to solve this problem, teachers should make efforts to test the learning result before starting new teaching content, thus helping them consolidate the learned language knowledge.
Most learners frequently feel bored in language learning. When learning Mandarin Chinese, the strokes of Chinese characters are a difficult point. Therefore, if teachers can apply the numerical calculation to Chinese language learning properly, it might have a better result. At the same time, students can devote themselves to Chinese learning enjoyably.
Accordingly, we can hold the competition of counting the strokes of characters in class. After teaching the new words, teachers can write two groups of the same characters on the left and right of the blackboard and then divide students into two teams. For the convenience to teach Mandarin Chinese in this way, one leader will be chosen from each team.
The group leaders choose two members as a unit for competition. One student writes the characters and another takes the responsibility of counting the strokes of characters and writing them down until all characters are written and counted. Then, the team leaders should do the summarizing. For example, the character “挂” has nine strokes and “输” has thirteen. It is effective for students to study Chinese characters in this way.
Increasing students’ interest to learn Mandarin in China is important in Chinese teaching. Connecting the fragments into a whole sentence is an effective way to greatly improve their interest to learn Chinese. First of all, teachers write down three groups of phrases or clauses on the papers and put them into three different boxes. Then students choose one piece from the boxes respectively and read out the sentences combined with the phrases.
Here is an example to explain to learn the Chinese language with this game. After teaching the grammar points like “来/去……做什么”, “用……做什么”, “在……做什么” and “给……做什么”, teachers can write three phrases on the papers and put into boxes. One group is the names of the students, the second group is the phrases of “在 + 地方名词” structure and the last group is the phrases of “做什么” structure.
After the students pick three pieces of notes from the three boxes respectively, they should connect them into a complete sentence and then read out. After reading the sentences, the other students may be attracted to learning to speak Chinese because some of the sentences may cause much laughter. The sentences may be “他在自行车上游泳”, “我们在学校上课” and “他在床上洗澡” and so on.
The most important factor to learn Mandarin Chinese better is that students are willing to open their mouths to speak. The way of bragging may be beneficial to encourage students to talk. After teaching new grammar points, teachers can ask two students to do the bragging game to see who brags the best with fewer mistakes. When one of them fails to continue, another student will be chosen to take their place.
This game is very proper to hold in Chinese language school after learning the comparative sentence. In the bragging game, students should use phrases commonly seen in comparative sentences like “比、没有、不如、跟……一样、与……相比……”. The sentences may be “我比你帅”, “你没有我高” and “你的朋友不如我多”. But the sentence “你相比我,差多了” is incorrect.
This method of practicing the Chinese language can be used widely for different grammar points in Mandarin learning courses. The complements of the state can be practiced in this way. For example, students can brag like “我说得比你流利” and “你汉字写得太难看了”.
The three methods introduced above are all helpful to check the learning result and consolidate the contents and grammar points that have been learned. Teachers can choose to use them according to the actual situation.