It is normal that the beginners who learn Chinese in China may feel it is difficult to learn Chinese language. To make it easier, the best approach is to put it into the practical situations and learn in a relatively real language environment. We will introduce some methods in the next.
The postal service is closely related to the foreigners during the process they study in China. Therefore, we can set some relevant questions about the postal service for learners to practice their language skills. It also helpful for them to master the relevant knowledge about the postal service in China as well as train their ability of solving problems by communicating with others.
Firstly, the teacher gives each student one paper note, in which some questions are written for them to study Chinese by finding the answers by themselves. The questions can be the following: “寄往国外与寄往国内的信封在规格上有什么不同？”, “一封重20克的信，航空寄往美国应贴多少邮票？” and “对于没贴邮票或没贴足邮票的邮件，邮局怎样处理？” and so on.
When receive the notes with questions, students are supposed to get the clear answer by doing research or asking by themselves. Then a game about postal service will be played in the class. To learn Mandarin better, one student acts as the worker in the post office, the others go to ask questions to the worker according to the questions in their hands which are disordered. If the student fails to answer the questions, the others can give a hint or correction or supplement.
Many foreigners like to travel in China when they learn Chinese language in China. In the class, according to their traveling experience, we can ask one student to act as a guide to lead the group to travel. The guide should introduce some places of interest. The others who act as tourists can ask various questions to the guide.
For this game, it better be prepared in advance. It will be better if the learners can provide some pictures. To make it easier to learn to speak Chinese, the scenic spots should be chosen by themselves and the guide should be someone ever been there. Or the guide can introduce the famous scenic spots and typical national customs.
Another thing that foreigners are frequently related is taking bus during the process of learning Mandarin Chinese. This game is beneficial for learners to practice the commonly used expressions when taking bus. Firstly, we assume that it happens in a certain bus. Two students played as the ticket sellers and the others are passengers. The bus line and main stops should be written down on the blackboard.
When this game begins, the ticket sellers are responsible for speaking out the names of the stops, selling tickets and telling them the disciplines. And the passengers buying the tickets and asking questions about the places to change another bus. In Chinese school in China, teacher may ask you to tell some interesting things among the passengers like giving a seat or quarreling. Of course, the passengers can request the ticket sellers to remind them of the arriving stops.
To make it more interesting to learn Chinese language, teachers in qualified Mandarin program may ask you to remember the lyrics after listen a song. But the song usually the one easy to understand and has a slow rhythm. All of the students record the lyrics together. The recording way is to select one or two students with higher level of Chinese language skills and can write relatively faster.
The selected student should take the responsibility to control the recorder. After hearing one sentence, students should speak out the sentence. Of course, it may happen that students learn Mandarin in China fails to follow the lyrics. For the sentences that students can’t follow, they can be played over and over again until they understand. If necessary, the teacher should point it out.
All in all, the purpose of this essay is to provide several helpful methods to learn Chinese language by following the principle of putting it into the real language context and environment.