Category: Dai

China Trip

This spring break, I went to China with Jen, Phil, and Xin. Overall, the China trip was a life changing experience for me. Not only was I able to practice my Mandarin, but I got a deeper understanding for Chinese culture. There were two main highlights of the trip for me. One of them was climbing The Great Wall. Climbing The Great Wall wasn’t only interesting from a tourist perspective because of how well known it was, but it was amazing to hear all of the stories that were told about how the wall was used centuries ago. It was as though walking on it was walking on a piece of history. It was also inspiring writing my name on the board, because it was cool knowing that my name would be there if I ever decided to come back. Another highlight of mine was dancing with the locals. It was interesting to see what they do at night in comparison to what we do, even though it’s pretty similar. Actually being able to interact with locals was one of the times in which I felt most culturally enriched. During the trip, I also tried bargaining for the first time. I learned that bargaining is very hard, and that if I go back again, I will be more prepared. The trip as a whole taught me an endless amount of new vocabulary, and it also taught me that I have a lot more work to do on my Mandarin. Overall, the trip was life changing, and if I ever go again, it surely won’t be the same.

My 七夕节 video

In Mandarin, we were each asked to make a video about the ancient legends of different Chinese holidays. Mabel, Io, Olivia B. and I did 七夕节. It is also known as Chinese valentines day. It is the love story of Zhinu and Niulang. Some of the other holidays that other groups did were 端午节,春节 and 中秋节。This unit, we have been learning about different Chinese holidays, and we have also been building on our unit on time from fifth grade. I have really enjoyed this unit because it is really interesting to look at Chinese holidays in comparison to American ones, and it is also really fun to learn about all of the legions. It was also really fun to learn about time since I use time words all the time, so it is very helpful for me when I want to speak Mandarin. Here is the Quizlet set that we have been studying for this unit: https://quizlet.com/32336948/flash-cards/

Password to video: niulang

Mandarin 3rd Quarter

In Mandarin this quarter, we have done a lot of different learning activities. We each drew an alien and described it, and then everyone listening to your description has to draw the alien you described. We also each chose a person to describe, and everyone listening had do guess who we were describing. Here is my quizlet set. Some of the last sentences are the sentences that I used to describe my alien and my person:

We also learned Tai-Ji. We spent a month learning it, and then we even preformed it during the chinese new year festival! The festival was very fun. I got to try a lot of different foods and watch different people preforming different things:
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What I’ve Learned In Mandarin This Quarter

In this post, I am going to show you what I have learned in Mandarin this quarter. This will include links to Quizlet, Youtube and some pictures of sentences/phrases I have written in Mandarin.

Here is the link to a set on Quizlet. The first link is to a set that has a lot of countries and how to say them in Chinese. The second link is my personal set that shows what I’ve learned through the course of the quarter. You can do Flashcards, Learn, Speller, Test, Scatter or Space Race to study.

Here are two pictures of some of the work I’ve been doing over the quarter. IMG_2241 IMG_2236

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is a link to a youtube video on a channel called Growing Up With Chinese. It shows you how to say different phrases in Chinese.

Chinese Rhyme

Here’s a rhyme that we learned in Mandarin. It takes a little bit of time to learn, but after you learn it, it’s not so hard. The writing in English is called the pinyin, and the rest are called characters. The characters are numbers, and the numbers are part of the rhyme.

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Chinese New Year Video

Here’s a really interesting video about Chinese New Year. It shows a lot of cool traditions, and other facts about Chinese New Year. When I watched this video, there were so many interesting facts, particularly about culture.

Quizlet

In Mandarin, we use Quizlet to help us learn characters and pin yin. Below, you can try some of the games and flashcards in one of the Quizlet sets. 

Pictographic Character Project

unnamedA couple of days ago, we were asked to make a poster centered on one character. You would have to write about why you chose the character, and you had to write the character and what it means. I chose to make my poster about the character tián. Tián means farmland. I chose to draw tián because I think that the character itself looks a lot like a farmland. It is more interesting to compare tián to what it means because it already looks like what it means.