Category: Mandarin

Official China Trip Reflection

My favorite part of the China trip was visiting the Great Wall. The wall is very long and windy, and the surrounding scenery looks impressive alongside it. I learned that the great wall of China is half of the length of the equator. I tried the toboggan on the way down. I learned that the toboggan wasn’t as crazy and downhill as I expected. I experienced walking on the wall for a tiny amount. I learned that it is very fatiguing and hard to walk on because of the unevenness of the terrain and the bricks. American Chinese food is so much worse than authentic Chinese food, which in my opinion tasted delicious.

Mandarin Chinese New Year Project 2017 Post

This is one of the things that I did in Mandarin class to celebrate the Chinese new year. It was on the bulletin board in the lobby for a short period of time. I worked on it with Elijah. The fish and the Chinese phrase is a pun. It is saying along the lines of: there will be plentiful of good luck in the new year, but instead of using the right character for the sentence, the sentence uses a homophone of sorts, which is pronounced the same and means fish. So it kind of means bring a lot of good luck and fish in the new year. The color of the paper and fish is red because red is the color of luck and warding away evil in the Chinese culture.

This is another one of the things that I did in Mandarin class to celebrate the Chinese new year. It is personal for me.

character means good fortune

Mandarin Video

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_xha4fiui3xUmJRVHhZLVB2XzQ

This is a mandarin assignment that I finished recently. It is a video telling the story of the Chinese dragon boat festival. I play the water dragon in the movie. In a few weeks I will be verbally assessed on my lines. I learned a lot of new vocabulary from this project because of how detailed our lines are. I also learned about the story of the festival itself. The movie itself is very humorous while still retaining it’s educational purposes. Enjoy.

Mandarin Letter

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你好

 

我叫艾子豪。我今年十二岁。我在 JJJL6 的班。我上六年级。你是美国人， 我也是美国人。我在 JJJL6 的班。我是美国人。我的家有四个人，爸爸，妈妈，妹妹。我有三沙鼠。我是小红学校的一个学生。我会说英文和一点儿中文。你喜欢吃汉堡包和比萨， 还有宫保鸡丁和意大利面。我也喜欢吃汉堡包和比萨，还有宫保鸡丁和意大利面。我的家有四个人， 我的爸爸，我的妈妈，我的妹妹，和我。我在Lynne的班。我说英语。我会用筷子。我最喜欢的是橙色和蓝色。我最喜欢滑雪。你最喜欢什么运动? 你最喜欢什么颜色？我是小红学校的一个学生。我属羊。我的朋友是 Wyatt, Harvey, Eli, Sam, Marlowe, Elijah Zach 和 Hudson。他们喜欢汉堡。他们打蓝球。我喜欢培根和寿司。我有一个狗。

再见和身体健康

My Haiku

 

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In Mandarin we wrote a Chinese haiku.  Well, it is actually a 五七五诗, which means five seven five poem in English. The reason it is called that is because one the first line, there is five syllables, on the second, seven, and on the third, five again. A five seven five poem is different from a haiku because a haiku is about expressing the beauty of nature, while a 五七五诗 can be about whatever you want. Here is my 五七五诗.

我会用筷子。

我的筷子是火马。

我爱是筷子。

Translated to English, it is this.

 

I can use chopsticks.

My chopsticks are fire horse.

I love my chopsticks.

 

You might be saying to yourself, “but Oliver, I counted all of the syllables in your English haiku, and it does not follow the rules of five seven five.” Well, you are wrong. That was just a translation of my 五七五诗. I don’t know if you noticed, but in the Chinese version of the poem, there is five characters on the first line, seven on the second, and five again on the third. This is because every single character in Chinese is one syllable.

You also might be wondering, “wait, what? Your chopsticks are fire horse? What the heck does that even mean?” Well, poetry is all up to interpretation, and there are no rules. I like how the characters sound in mandarin, and I think that a sense of randomness is refreshing. If you disagree, well, it is not your poem. It is mine, and it is lovely. I hope you enjoyed it.

Mandarin 3rd Quarter Post

This is my quizlet set. You have probably seen this in previous Mandarin posts, but it has  changed a lot since last time. It contains sentences and phrases from units that we have been studying such as, colors, sports, body parts, and fruits and vegetables. I have learned a lot about sentence structure, too. Which will be good for 7th grade because in 7th grade you write huge paragraphs and you learn all about sentence structure. I feel like this quarter has been my most productive Mandarin quarter yet. So take a look.

 

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In this photo we are performing tai chi at the PAC. We worked very hard on it. We have been learning the Yang Basic 8 Step. Xin also put some groovy music in the background for dramatic effect. It was really hard to get the timing right in our practices. In the actual performance we sped up a lot but then we made up for it by going super slow in the end, since we want it to be in sync with the music.

 

We did another project where everyone in the class wrote descriptions of a random alien and then drew it. Then one by one, people would come up to front of the classroom and read the descriptions of their alien. Everybody else would draw what they heard without the aid of the person’s alien on a post-it. In the end when everyone has gone we put the post-its to their respective alien drawing. Then the person took their own drawing and chose a winner of who got closest to the original drawing.

That is what we have been doing in the 3rd quarter.

Mandarin 1st Quarter

This is one of my mandarin sets that I have been studying this quarter. It is called 哪国人. That literally means which country person in English. As you may have guessed, this quizlet set is about countries. It is also about languages and nationalities. It contains the correct characters that will teach you how to say things like, where are you from or, do you speak Spanish or, My mom is from france.

 

 

 

I chose the country Scotland for me to use for various activities in class. This is how you write Scotland in Mandarin.

 

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Here is the card that I made for a Mandarin writing assessment.

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This is my quizlet set that I will be using throughout the year. It has all of the new words that I learn.

We have also been following this really helpful youtube series called Growing up with chinese. Here it is.

Pictographic Character Project

FullSizeRenderMy pictographic character is called lâo. It means the word old. It depicts an old man on a walking stick. I chose this character because I think we should respect our elders and their many many, many years of wisdom.