The best way to practice a certain language is to put the learners into the real language environment. Some foreign students have asked that how to realize when they learn Chinese in China. Frankly speaking, it is difficult to realize it completely, but we can make up some language environment for learners to do role play.
The first referential language context set for role playing can be “shopping”, which is easy to carry out inChinese language school. Two students act as salesclerks and the others would be the customers. After setting this situation, the students should regard themselves as customers to buy one or two goods to practice their oral Chinese.
The students who act as customers can ask the price for buying the goods as well as change and return goods by clarifying the reasons. When we practice it in Mandarin learning courses, the students who act as the salesmen should take the responsibility of introducing the goods, including the categories, price, types, sizes, etc.
To create a flexible situation for students to learn Mandarin, we can change it into a free market. Students are supposed to practice their spoken language by bargaining. As a help, teacher can tell students some skills of bargaining. For example, the buyer can compare the same goods in price or point out the shortcomings. On the contrary, the sellers boast the goods are unique in quality or the price is cheap.
This method is very applicative because those foreigners who come to study in China need to learn some language for shopping and bargaining during their daily life. In the same sense, if they get sick, they need to learn to describe their state of the illness. In order to teach them the communicative sentences when going to hospital, we can do role play “seeing a doctor”.
If the number of students is enough when you go to Chinese school to study Chinese, we can ask students to act as registrar, medical, surgeon, nurse, laboratory technician and pharmacist. The left should play the role of patients to seek medical advice.
As the point of this game is to be familiar with the expressions to make a diagnosis and give treatment to cold or other illness, we can carry out it after students learning the following expressions in Mandarin language courses in China: “怎么了”, “你哪儿不舒服”, “痛了多久了”, “请张开嘴”, “深呼吸”, “请咳一声”, “我给你量体温”, “量血压”, “发烧了”, “受了凉”, “伤风了”, “泻肚子”, “头疼”, “咳嗽”, “嗓子疼”, “没有胃口”, “全身发冷”, “呕吐”, “中暑”, “不要担心”, “开处方”, “中药”, “西药”, “打针”, etc.
Another helpful method often used when you go to language school to study Mandarin is “making a call”, which is easy to perform and also beneficial for daily expressions practicing. Two students are gathered as a group to practice by making a call. For example, student one calls another to his home to join the party.
During this process, some relevant should be clarified like reason, time, address, route and so on. Then the student should transmit the right information to the other, the rest can be done in the same manner.
Last but not least, “farewell” is a good topic to practice. As most learners come to learn Chinese languagefrom different countries, they should use Chinese language to say goodbye if there is someone would go back to his own country. So, one or two students act the ones who will back and the other are coming to see them off.
During the process, everyone should do or say something to each other. Maybe someone asks them to help do something. Maybe somebody helps call the taxi or carry luggage. In the conversations, they should say something just like in the real life about farewell. Of course, teacher can teach Mandarin language by introducing the Chinese way of saying goodbye and make a comparison.
After putting it into use, learners can be efficient in Chinese learning and acquire Chinese languageeasier. It is very effective to practice like this in language class.