Chinese Pinyin is the first thing you should to learn when you want to study Chinese. Because it decides how the Chinese language pronounces, it becomes such an important Mandarin learning courses in China. A competition for writing Pinyin is a practical and efficient practicing way in Chinese language school. By this way, the students’ ability of making differences and writing Pinyin correctly will be great improved.
The students can be divided into two groups, every team can chooses a member to dictate Pinyin, the one who writes correctly can stay and go on, if not, change another one of that group. In the end, the team has the most backups will win. During the process you learn Mandarin, Pinyin is relatively boring. But this way will attract students’ attention and interest. What’s more, the teacher can reads twice when dictation.
Filling blanks by listening Pinyin is a little more interesting way to learn Pinyin. A form can be made to teach Mandarin language. The form can goes like this way: write “an”, “ao”, “ang”, “en”, “eng”, “ie”, “ei”, “ou”, “uo”, “in”, “ing”, “iang” in horizontal and “b”, “p”, “d”, “t”, “g”, “k”, “m”, “n”, “l”, “ch”, “sh”, “zh”, “j”, “r” in vertical. Then the teacher start to say: “bānɡ”, “bié”, “pǎo”, “pènɡ”, “dàn”, “duō”, “ténɡ”, “tínɡ”, “ɡěi”, “ɡuò”, “kěn”, “kǒu”, “mènɡ”, “mínɡ”, “niè”, “nèi”, “línɡ”, “liǎnɡ”, “chāo”, “chóu”, “shānɡ”, “shènɡ”, “zhēn”, “zhè”, “jiǎnɡ”, “rénɡ”. When the teacher speak each Pinyin, the students should find the corresponding tone marks and mark them on the blaks.
This practice is aimed to practice students’ ability to distinguish the tone correctly. So the teacher can repeat them twice or even three times to make sure students can do it rightly. When you learn Chinese in China, teacher will help you to give a self-evaluation to find out your weak points.
To improve students ability of associating and to stimulate their thinking, we can do practice by the way of doing a game. Making word chains is a common method when people study in China. It is also a proper way for practicing Pinyin by expanding the connection.
After the first student writes down the first Pinyin of a certain words on the blackboard, the second one develops it. For example, student A write: “qián mén”(前门), and student B should begin with “mén”, let’s say “mén kǒu”(门口), and then continue like this: kóu shuǐ(口水)shuí ɡuǒ（水果）ɡuǒ rán（果然）rán hòu（然后）hòu miɑn（后面）miàn bāo（面包）bāo chē（包车）chē zhàn（车站）zhàn shì（战士）shì chǎnɡ（市场）…… As a very interesting way to learn Chinese language, it is very beneficial to stimulate students’ thoughts.
We can also take the way of spelling to do training. When students are divided into two groups, the teacher start with speaking a disyllable like “战争”. Then the student should read the Pinyin letter by letter like “z-h-a-n, z-h-e-n-g”. It is common to train this way when you attend to the school to study in China. For this way, teacher should prepare enough words and keep the pace. The teacher should make some comments and correct the mistakes if necessary.
Another way of dictation can goes like this: the teacher writes down the Pinyin of a disyllable that the students never learned on the cards. Student A choose one card and speak it out and student B write it down correctly. It is also efficient to learn Chinese in Yunnan like this because students get used to teacher’s pronunciation. Now the students read and record it by themselves, teacher can check their skills of mastering Pinyin.
Mistakes are commonly seen for Chinese language learners, so it is a good idea to correct them by themselves. The teacher can give some wrong Pinyin to students and let them correct independently. When you study Mandarin in China, it is helpful for students to master the rules of Chinese Pinyin.
All above are some beneficial techniques for students to learn Chinese. Teachers and students can choose appropriate ways to do training according to their conditions and interest.