Comments on: Entrance Tests Are Not My Friends

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 15:34:14 +0000

The first solution would cut new enrollments down to almost nothing.

The second and third solutions don’t work because the parents aren’t that naive.

By: Adam

Adam — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 23:42:52 +0000

Solutions that may satisfy: Why not charge for entrance exams? This would perhaps weed out the really weak right away. Why not accept students to a “remedial” intermediate class? Why not simply rename your “first grade” to something nonsensical yet ego-stroking like “gold star” students?

By: Advice for a newbie | Doubting to shuo: Chinese, Investing, EFL and Being a Geek in Taiwan

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 20:04:38 +0000

[...] this past week, I’ve been on summer break, minus a few entrance tests and other odds and ends to do in the office. Something odd happened while I was giving [...]

By: Maoman

Maoman — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 02:03:26 +0000

Mark, I have the same situation occurring in my school. In addition to parents hoping to leapfrog up a level (or two) because of misguided “face” issues, I get parents who want junior to study with his older brother, or have scheduling difficulties: “Junior has piano lessons on Wednesdays/Saturdays so the beginner class isn’t really convenient. Can we put him in the intermediate class on Monday?Thursday instead?” I always say it’s fine, but how does Junior deal with failure and low self-esteem? Because he will definitely experience both if I put him in the class they want. If parents insist, I’ll put Junior in the class they want for a trial month. If his scores/classroom performance aren’t good enough, he goes into the beginner class. They usually agree, and the kid goes through a month of struggling, nagging by the parents, poor self-esteem, and finally gets put into the programme he belongs, having acquired a real passion for learning English. Not. ~sigh~

By: Ian

Ian — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 16:21:44 +0000

I have a Chinese learner’s book in French which has at the start combinations of every two tones together which I worked on repeating and found very helpful. Once I started doing sentences though I found it wasn’t that easy to keep the tones right. Currently, I just repeat sentences over and over, at first slowly and then faster until it sounds natural and my brain remembers those combinations of tones I figure. It’s a work in progess.

By: Mark

Mark — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 09:56:48 +0000

v,
I don’t mean I have trouble with tones. I just mean I can’t sing… in any language.

John,
Me, too!

By: John

John — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 15:13:52 +0000

I used a similar method. I’m putting it up on my website soon.

By: v

Fri, 28 Jul 2006 19:58:22 +0000

It was really hard for me to learn the tones. I finally came upon a method that works very well for me: I paid a lot of attention to the ‘tune’ of tone pairs (I disregard the neutral tone, although I think I may use it subconsciously after hearing Mandarin for so long, since ‘87). So the first tone first tone combo has the same ‘tune’ no matter what the intials or finals are that make it up: same with first tone second tone, first tone third tone and on down the line. There are 15 tonal pairs in all:1/1,1/2,1/3,1/4,2/1,2/2,2/3,2/4,3/1,3/2,3/4,4/1,4/2,4/3,4/4. I highly recommend this way of learning the tones to ‘tone deaf’ people. First you should be able to recognize the pairs when a native speaker produces them in isolation, then you should try to imitate in an exaggerated way at first. Has anyone tried this method? I only started learning Mandarin when I first went to Taiwan- except for 2 weeks at a language school, i taught myself through listening, grammar books, conversation, and bilingual friends.

By: Ian

Ian — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 15:05:06 +0000

I can sing on key, but you still wouldn’t want to get stuck with me in a KTV booth

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 14:53:07 +0000

Interesting. I studied Mandarin for nearly a year for two hours a day and I still can’t sing at all. Maybe a tough case like me needs to study a really tonal language like Cantonese.