I learned that pronunciation and stroke order is extremely important in Mandarin. If you miss articulate a tone then the word would take on a different meaning. If you missed a stroke the character would be changed to a different character, which has a different word, which has a different meaning. I know pronunciation and stroke order is extremely important to Chinese languages. I also found pinyin dialect hard, because it is challenging to remember the different sounds that goes with each letter.
Monthly Archives: March 2016
My Mandarin Calendar
A small project we did was to create a calendar in Mandarin. We wrote in characters and pinyin how we thought a Mandarin Calendar would be depicted. I enjoyed this project because we got to practice writing a lot of characters. It was challenging to remember all the various characters and correct ways to write them. This project was beneficial because I mastered lots of new characters and their meaning!
I’m sorry that the picture is backwards.
Chinese New Year!
This year we had a Chinese new year celebration, and as a part of the Mandarin class we had an opportunity to perform. Every grade had a piece to showcase on stage during the gathering. We learned exciting four character sentences and attempted to teach them to the audience, our performance turned out very well. In addition, we surprised the audience by using the Chinese art form, calligraphy, to write out the characters of our sentences on a special sheet of rice paper imported from China. In the end it was very enjoyable to go up and share my knowledge.
That’s us performing!
My Music Piece
Writing a composition is really great, because it allows you to express your personality through music. It’s hard sometimes to find the right notes, and tunes in your mind and then to be able to put it onto sheet music. In other words it’s challenging to find the right melodic tune to express what you are trying to say. On the flip side I find it rewarding when the piece is finished and other people seem to enjoy listening to my music. I also really enjoy listening to other people’s music and seeing how much potential their pieces have. I like listening to my classmates music and then comparing them to mine to see what I can add. I think that it is very exhilarating and rewarding experience and hope I can keep creating music throughout my life.
Shark Tank Simulation
These are the final graphs of the two simulations I did today in science. We started out with three different species which are Shark, Minnow, and Seaweed. In each round the different species would try to survive. The way they remain alive is by eating, or in the Seaweeds case just by surviving. The Minnows have to each eat one seaweed plant to live for two months, and they can eat more to extend their population. The Shark has to eat two Minnows to survive, and two extra to extend their population.
The first time we tried the simulation it was not successful ( see the first graph). I think the experiment failed because we didn’t have concise strategy. The second time ( see the second graph) was a huge success. Our strategy was to have sacrifices in the population for the Shark to survive. And for the Minnows, the Seaweed was rationed just enough so that the Seaweed population would survive the two months. By comparing the graphs you can see that the second strategy worked better.