Muzzy -- languge for kids

[kudra]

Anybody have any experience with the progarm Muzzy from the BBC?

It looks like they just released a Mandarin course.

I just wasn't impressed with the demos for http://www.betterchinese.com/ although it seemed better than most other stuff I've seen for kids.

Is there a version/something approaching the quality of Sesame Street in Chinese? I don't mean the Big Bird in China video.

Comments?

Thanks.

[AppleJacks]

My daughter's teacher uses books from Better Chinese. They seem quite good, depending on the level. I've seen the ones for Pre-K and Kindergarten, and my 1st grader loves to look at them, so I encourage it. Also, they come in both Simplified and Traditional.

Muzzy is new to me, so I'm interested too, although they say the Mandarin version is new. What age group are you interested in targeting?

[kudra]

What age group are you interested in targeting?

1-7yr.

However except for when a kid is sick, they usually don't watch video/dvds. We don't actually have a TV.

Given that as a constraint, I am interested in getting ideas from Muzzy or betterchinese for teaching the kids myself.

I watched the 1st lesson (我愛我的家) of betterchinese (free demo on the web), and it just seems bizzare. Also, I don't think that kids need to be seeing characters so much starting out. All these books seem to be based on having the kids learn characters. I just want some verbal word games to play with them.

I might try the books without the dvd.

Granted my experience as an adult learner doesn't have much to do with 1-7 yr old learning, but my intro chinese program was built around the Huang and Stimson spoken chinese /written chinese 2 track system, the point of which was that adult native English speakers can absorb spoken/aural vocab about 3 times faster than written vocab.

I was talking about this just this evening with someone with some experience teaching, and some experience with Japanese. They suggested a kids Chinese course built loosely on the Japanese model, where at first the kids learn new words with the phonetic systems, hirigana or katakana, and then only gradually transition to characters. For the chinese version, the kids would learn pinyin instead of hiragana, and gradually transition to characters.

This is related to the thread by "self-taught-mba" where I expressed skeptism about optimality of using Chinese methods to teach Americans given the fact that the US govt, specifically the intelligence and defense dept have more experience teaching adult native English speakers Chinese than Chinese Universities.

http://www.chinese-forums.com/showpost.php?p=53459&postcount=33

Since you AppleJacks are also from Chicago, let me point you at this story.

http://www.nsba.org/site/doc_sbn_issue.asp?TRACKID=&VID=55&CID=682&DID=37191

Notice this paragraph about the program in the Chicago Public Schools

Much of this expansion was made possible by an annual donation of 3,000 Mandarin textbooks from the Chinese Ministry of Education. That agency has identified the Chicago school district as having the best Chinese language program in the United States.

Now I know this is going to sound like tin foil hat paranoia, but given all the talk about how there are obvious national security reasons for wanting to ramp up Chinese instruction in schools in the US, how is it that the public school system with the largest Chinese program is using learning materials provided by the "target" country's Ministry of Education? Just a thought.

[Celso Pin]

We have books (and studies) from the XV century, written by priests (of course!), detailing the mechanism of how to use the language as a domination instrument... Portuguese did... spanyards did... british did...

Who is the next?

[AppleJacks]

Kudra, I'm not sure of your competency level with Mandarin at this point...I'm a newbie (about a year and a half of self-study). My 6-year old is going to CCEA Chinese Language school (Skokie), since I'm not advanced enough to teach her in home. I think it's great, except for the 3 hour chunk of time it takes up on my Saturday. It is based on the Taiwan-style of teaching, and starts the kids out with bopomofo phonetic system (I had learned pinyin prior). I am already noticing that in the 1st grade class (they have tots, beginner, then 1st grade etc.) that the emphasis is moving away from phonetics and towards the characters (traditional) themselves.

Anyway, I know this doesn't help you with Muzzy. Hopefully someone here will actually post something helpful

[kudra]

a muzzy review from a satisfied customer

http://www.haidongji.com/2005/11/22/muzzy-is-great/

also see his comments

[Language Guy]

I've seen the French Muzzy, and from what I remember, it was very good.

What I liked is that there are a lot of visuals in terms of both orthography and morphology(although Mandarin doesn't have much).

I'd love to take a look at the Mandarin Muzzy.

[chinchinil]

I realize this is an old thread but I'm now considering the same class at the CCEA in Skokie and wanted to see how your child liked the class from 2 years ago...? Is s/he still in the class? Did s/he learn much?

Would you recommend it? While the class costs are reasonable, the time committment (4 hrs on Sat) is huge.

Any feedback/insight/opinion on this program would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Susan

[asialinks]

my daughter seem to love the Muzzy french. not tried the chinese version. She does love Culture Cubs, a Chinese English bilingual DVD. The DVD call "Culture Cubs - Hand in Hand let's learn Mandarin" produced in HK, sold by some main chinese children bookshops in UK and US. Contain basic mandarin but very effective for young kids to pick up as the DVD show real examples in their teaching!

[annalee]

I also love the Culture Cubs DVDs. They have good music and my kids actually want to watch them and they do learn the vocabulary and say it out loud with the characters. I just saw that it's listed on Amazon.com. I got it through their website which is culturecubs.com.

[meowypurr]

I had German Muzzy when I was little, around 8 or 9, and I LOVED it. I watched it over and over and over again, just like I was supposed to xD We even got Muzzy II. I think it definitely helped, as my German tutor from back then said I had a good accent (although that may have just been because I was so young).