Trying to Get to the Next Step
May 28, 2015 23:28:02 GMT 9
Post by Serina P on May 28, 2015 23:28:02 GMT 9
Ok, so my girl can read and write in Mandarin, but she loves to write and is frustrated that she can speak and understand more than she can write because she can't recognize all the words she sees in the language (no alphabet, so no decoding; only memorization). We have so many things to do, so much homework, and so many demands on our time that we cannot carve out at least 1 hour per day just on mechanical and rote copying out of characters, integral to the traditional method where muscle memory is obtained together with stroke order and the character's visual and phonetic elements. Plus, it reduces everyone we know to tears, this way. 
So I am going to build visual memory instead of muscle memory. I am going to split stroke order memorization from the character construction because right now, character retention is more important. If my daughter can reproduce the character from visual memory, even if she messes up stroke order, I hope half the battle is won already. (At this point, I can hear my primary school Mandarin teacher scream because stroke order is so SO important in the traditional method for writing. I am probably missing something here, but I hope that can be handled later on if it arises.)
I am going to use all the walls in high passage areas in my house with the assumption that visual bombardment will get those characters into the head, so that my girl can gain more confidence in writing and in reading because the character will be somewhere in her visual memory bank. So for the next two weeks, we will have emotion walls - happy, sad, angry, contemplative, reactive... On each wall, my girl decides on differing levels of the emotion eg. happy wall: pleased, quietly satisfied, grinning from happiness...all the way to "cartwheeling around in joy" / angry wall: displeased, upset, frustrated...all the way to "so angry I want to punch someone (!)". The characters are written big enough that they can be seen from across the room. Each time she enters a room, or exits it, the walls will be "in her face" and I hope that after the first few times of active reading, subconscious retention will kick in.
We shall see if this helps. I am keeping all fingers, toes, eyes etc crossed.
Of course, I thank my husband for allowing me to pepper entire walls through the house with my handwriting, and for understanding that we shall not entertain at home for potentially quite some time. The poor, poor man (hehe).
Thanks, Adam, for your inspirational quotes, the Captive Reading/Exposure posts, the Creative Thinking post, Tatyana for your Holes in the Bucket post, Reina for your beautifully written post in the recent challenge on setting priorities, and this lady on a Facebook group who is using Flashcards for her family's Mandarin Learning. You all made me rethink ingrained assumptions / traditions / practicality with regard to Mandarin.
So...see you! The first picture is part of the angry wall. The second, my girl's reaction after Day 1.
So I am going to build visual memory instead of muscle memory. I am going to split stroke order memorization from the character construction because right now, character retention is more important. If my daughter can reproduce the character from visual memory, even if she messes up stroke order, I hope half the battle is won already. (At this point, I can hear my primary school Mandarin teacher scream because stroke order is so SO important in the traditional method for writing. I am probably missing something here, but I hope that can be handled later on if it arises.)
I am going to use all the walls in high passage areas in my house with the assumption that visual bombardment will get those characters into the head, so that my girl can gain more confidence in writing and in reading because the character will be somewhere in her visual memory bank. So for the next two weeks, we will have emotion walls - happy, sad, angry, contemplative, reactive... On each wall, my girl decides on differing levels of the emotion eg. happy wall: pleased, quietly satisfied, grinning from happiness...all the way to "cartwheeling around in joy" / angry wall: displeased, upset, frustrated...all the way to "so angry I want to punch someone (!)". The characters are written big enough that they can be seen from across the room. Each time she enters a room, or exits it, the walls will be "in her face" and I hope that after the first few times of active reading, subconscious retention will kick in.
We shall see if this helps. I am keeping all fingers, toes, eyes etc crossed.
Of course, I thank my husband for allowing me to pepper entire walls through the house with my handwriting, and for understanding that we shall not entertain at home for potentially quite some time. The poor, poor man (hehe).
Thanks, Adam, for your inspirational quotes, the Captive Reading/Exposure posts, the Creative Thinking post, Tatyana for your Holes in the Bucket post, Reina for your beautifully written post in the recent challenge on setting priorities, and this lady on a Facebook group who is using Flashcards for her family's Mandarin Learning. You all made me rethink ingrained assumptions / traditions / practicality with regard to Mandarin.
So...see you! The first picture is part of the angry wall. The second, my girl's reaction after Day 1.
Not a stupid idea at all! We did something like that when we were tackling the base words. Our challenge now is to move from basic writing to writing with more sophistication like how she is writing in English (her Mandarin level = 2nd grade while English and French levels = 6th grade). The idea here is to be able to let her remember the characters that make up the words that can display a range of intensity within any context. Afraid our art skills are not good enough to make out a disgruntled cat from a hissing-in-anger cat to a spittingly furious cat. Or to draw dark clouds when we want to say that it is raining dogs and cats (pun intended), or to be able to write that the clouds were rolling in, rather than to just say the sky grew dark. 
, it is only day 5. I am sure you will see the results soon enough. Enjoy the theater and dance performances! 
