Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Learning Chinese Mandarin using television or online videos

 As you know, we are a homeschooling family who decided to learn Chinese Mandarin as our second language.  It's been an interesting experience and though we have been doing this for some time, it feels like we have barely scratched the surface of this amazingly musical language.  I spend hours researching different resources and techniques to stimulate further learner or just to add variety and interest.
There are a few websites we visit to watch various cartoons in Chinese Mandarin.  I enjoy these especially because they are familiar to us and so does not feel so "foreign".  These programs could keep you busy for the whole year, because there are so many episodes to watch.  My children have also started learning Chinese characters and though the characters appear very quickly on the screen, they like to test their knowledge of what they are learning all the time.

Dora the Explorer
Bob the Builder
Adventures of Little Carp
Handy Manny
Berenstein Bears
Spongebob Squarepants

We also make use of Chinese TV which has so many channels, where both you and your children can choose programs from news, to documentaries or cartoons if you look around (you will obviously need to screen them just like you do at home.)  I have found the site quite difficult to navigate around but I often ask Google to translate the page for me, as I don't want to be heading off to any strange sites or advertisements.

Remember that Barnie or any of these characters are not able to teach you Chinese Mandarin but are rather a way to supplement the method you use, when learning the language.

If you are learning Chinese Mandarin as a second language, whether you homeschool or not - why not share what websites you have found to learn the language or that have made lessons really fun.

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Linking up with Raising HomemakersLiving Well Wednesdays

4 comments:

  1. Thanks so much! I have been wanting to teach my kids Chinese for awhile. I will definitely visit these sites. Be blessed! :) Lauren, lholmes79.wordpress.com

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    Replies
    1. Have a look at memrise.com which is also a brilliant site! Well worth it, I really cannot believe how much progress my children have made on this

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  2. Chinese courses have been blooming internationally since two thousand at every level of education. Still, in most of the Western universities, the study of the Chinese language is only a part of Chinese Studies or sinology, instead of an independent discipline. Thanks for sharing.
    Regards,
    Learn Chinese

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  3. Very nice information shared by you. I was just searching this type of information and luckily I got it from your blog. I like your blog also. Keep it up.
    Study Chinese | Learn Chinese online

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