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How to Help Students Review Chinese Words

During the process teacher teaches students how to learn Mandarin, students often ask for helping them to review the words learned in the text. To solve this problem, two approaches are provided in this lesson to make sure you can handle it smoothly.

The first one introduced is leading reading. Teacher firstly reads the words one by one in order. Every time when teacher finishes reading the word, students should follow the teacher to read the word. This is a helpful method for students to learn to speak Chinese because they can imitate the teacher. Teacher can move on to the next one if the students read correctly. If not, in order to help them to learn Mandarin better, teaches should take the responsibility to rectify the pronunciation to make sure they read them in the right way.

The second beneficial strategy is to teach by checking and correcting. You can also go over the words in order, but it is different from the former one. To help students to learn Mandarin in China, teacher should demand students read firstly and independently. All the teacher need to do is to correct the mistakes. If the students read them wrongly, you should correct them immediately. But when they read in the right way, teacher can’t just pass it on. On the contrary, teacher should either repeat it again to students or praise them loudly. For students who learn Chinese in China, necessary encouragement is the most effective way to keep their enthusiasm to keep learning.

There is no doubt that this method will push much pressure to overseas students because it is hardly for them to read correctly. Therefore, to keep their passion to study Chinese, this method should be used so frequently. When it needs to stimulate the students or to let them know how much they can be improved, the strategy can be put into use. Whatever method is applied to, two important things should be remembered by teachers: correcting and asking questions about the words. To help students who learn Chinese language in China to know better the words’ meaning, questions are essential. As long as students understand the meaning and usage of the words, it would be easier when it comes to the following lessons or the chatting. If the students who study in China can just read them correctly, but fail to understand how to use them, it would be meaningless to learn Chinese.

Besides, only by this way can you know whether they really grasp them. If you ask students whether they understand or not, most of them would respond positively. There might be two possibilities for students learn Chinese in China, one is that students think they understand but actually not, the other one is that they would be embarrassed if they response negatively. Means of asking questions are different because of the various kinds of words, but two fundamental principles should be obeyed when questioning.

First of all, you shouldn’t raise a question arbitrarily, but to build relation with the meaning and usage of words in the text. For the reason of rich Chinese culture, most Chinese characters are really polysemous. But there is just only one meaning and usage, so what you ask should be that you learned in the context. For instance, the word “习惯” in the context “我有一个不好的习惯——喜欢睡懒觉” is functioned as a noun meaning “habit”. Therefore, when you ask question, you can’t ask “你在中国的时候,习惯那里的生活吗? ” because it is verb with a different meaning. On the contrary, you should ask question like “你觉得哪些习惯是好习惯?哪些是不好的习惯?”.

The second principle is that do not ask too difficult questions for students learning Mandarin Chinese. It should be the same degree of difficulty as that of in the text. The reason is that you can know about whether students have understood the meanings and the usage or not. For instance, the word “适应” in the context “我刚到北京,还不适应这里的生活” is functioned as a verb. Therefore, the proper questions students learn Mandarin in China should be as follows: “你刚上大学的时候,适应这里的生活吗?”, “有没有不适应的地方?”, etc.

Actually, it is not difficult for teachers to follow the two principles as long as you read the text rapidly before you ask questions. The textbooks for students who learn at Chinese school in China are very short, teacher can be aware of what kind of questions should be raised after going over the texts. It is easy but important for teachers to obey the principles mentioned above when teaching Chinese.

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