Mandarin Lessons

This past week I got to assist in language learning sessions for TOTAL-It-Up*. This is a recruiting seminar that Wycliffe puts on a few times a year. I went to one over 9 years ago and it was a great learning experience. It also was one of the events that put me on the course to eventually becoming a missionary with Wycliffe. Since I know some of the faculty I was asked to help out a few times during the week.

Getting us started with our first lesson.

One of the ways I helped out was by coaching and facilitating some language learning sessions. Felicia, a Mandarin speaker, came for 3 one-hour sessions. During these sessions the students were not allowed to repeat any of the words we learned. We just listened.

Felicia

Did you know???

When first learning a new language it is better to listen for a while before you try to pronounce any of the new words. This helps you to become a bit more comfortable with the language before adding the pressure of actually articulating potentially difficult words.

We learned a bunch of nouns (like apple, orange, garlic, onion and banana). In order to learn these words, when Felicia said these items in Mandarin we pointed to them. We also learned some verbs (like point, pick up, stand, walk, sit, draw…). When Felicia said any of these actions we would physically do them.

Did you know???

This type of language learning is called TPR (Total Physical Response). By physically pointing to the item, or physically doing the action that was stated one can learn a language better. The physical action helps make the connection in your brain between the word that was said and what it means, without having to translate the word from Mandarin to English before knowing what to do.

By the end of the third session Felicia could give each of us a string of commands, combining everything that we had learned over the three sessions. Everyone in the group could respond almost perfectly. It was amazing to see how much we could learn in three hours, over the course of three days.

Our final project was that Felicia would tell us to pick up a certain color and draw a particular body part. By the end we had quite an interesting looking fellow whom we named Xiao Ming.

Oh, we forgot to learn the word for torso – so we had to draw an apple for his torso. Thankfully we had learned that word.

*TOTAL-It-Up