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edX Basic Mandarin Level 2- Lesson1

Shelley

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This week I started the second level in the edX Basic Mandarin course. Once again I am pleasantly surprise at the learning materials provided with this free course.

This term a "Vocabulary Book" has been added which consists of audio files for each of the new words in the lesson with the meaning, pinyin, and characters (simplified and traditional)

There are videos for the vocabulary where Estella explains some etymology about each of the characters and goes through the pronunciation very thoroughly. Estella is very good at ensuring that you learn your tones correctly. As I have said before she is a stickler for correct tones. This is good for me as I lack any kind of structured speaking lessons and this helps me pin down my pronunciation and tones.

This week's lesson takes us to Old Street 老街 where we explored a shop that sold some very interesting but expensive crafts and found out the that famous delicacies on the street are plum juice and iron eggs.

There were 4 grammar points

1) ....xian.....zai..... 。。。。先。。。。。再。。。 construction which is ...first ...and then...

2) ..V+bu qi / V+de qi 。。。。V+ 不起 / 得起 construction which is can't afford / can afford

3) sui ran...dan shi/ke shi 虽然。。。但是/ 可是 construction which is even though/although.../...but....

4) if....then... 如果。。。。就 construction which is if...then...

These are all useful grammar constructions.

An explanation of relative clauses completes the grammar for week one.

There is another addition to the course this term and that is a group activity that counts towards your final mark. This is done using Prollster, this is new to me so I followed the clear instructions and easily registered and created an account. Every week there is question asked in Prollster that you have to respond to in chinese, pinyin or characters are acceptable. This week the question was "What two things would you take with you on a desert island?"

I replied I would like to take my chinese dictionary and my music. I used characters and earned 3 points out of a possible 6, if you get a reply or comment to your post you can earn the other 3 points, so we will see what happens.

I took the quiz which follows the same format as last term and I got 100% which I was very pleased with.

Interesting I encountered the use of 起 in both its variant forms which we discussed here http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/50715-difference-between-2-similar-characters/ and if I hadn't asked the question before the course, I would have been confused.

I posted a quick note about it on the course discussion board and a couple of other students were grateful for the explanation, so thanks again Chinese Forums.

I am now going to start lesson 2. I will post a summary in about a week when I have finished it.

If anybody wants to join this course its not too late yet, have a look here https://www.edx.org/course/basic-mandarin-chinese-level-2-mandarinx-mx102x

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ocrtech

This is a really nice summary of the lesson!  I especially like the short but succinct grammar lessons in the course.

 

As a side note, you don't need to wait for a reply to your Prollster post to get the additional 3 points.  Replying to any other post, including your original one, will get you those three additional points.  I believe the intent is to try and get some conversations going between students.

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Shelley

I am glad you liked my summary. Thanks for the tip about Prollster, from this I gather you are taking the course?

 

Personally I really like this course and am enjoying it a lot.

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ocrtech

I also like the course.  I wish she had more dialog material to reinforce the grammar points but think, overall, its been well put together.  I also wish she had more lessons available.  It only took me about a week to finish the entire course - with the exception of the final. 

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Shelley

I am making myself do a lesson a week, well maybe 5 days to make sure I am not just rushing through it and thoroughly understand the grammar and tones as these are 2 of my weak points.

 

Are you aware of the app for android and iOS for learning tones and pinyin, its quite good.

 

How have you done? I guess you have done well if it was easy enough for you to breeze though already :)

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ocrtech

That was my plan as well and then I just kept going :)  

 

I already knew all of the vocabulary that was in the course so that part was easy for me.  I had previously absorbed some of the grammar, through listening to audio, without ever actually seeing the formal rules. That is the part that I really enjoyed focusing on in the course.

 

Tones will always be my struggle.  Even when I am really focusing on hearing them, they often escape me :(.

 

The thing I struggled the most with was her dialog.  To me,, she seems to speak really fast.  I had to replay the dialogs a number of times to figure out what she was saying.  Even though I knew all the vocab, my brain just couldn't put it together that quickly. 

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