HSK5 is AVAILABLE on Chinese New Year

Mandarin 普通话
21

Wooooooo HSK 5+. Very happy!

I think I gave some suggestions in the other threads but I add some here:

  1. agree with Kelly’s suggestion on translation. I have started trying to translate things in my head recently and I had no idea how hard it was or how much of a different skill/different part of your brain it takes!!
  2. Menus for typical restaurants
  3. Chinese zodiac
  4. star signs / blood type
  5. business negotiation vocab
  6. Chinese temples/gods - for example I had a recent lesson about 月老 and thought it was really cool.
  7. Word guessing game (like articulate) - small game to try to describe words on a list without saying the word
  8. Dinosaurs
  9. Space (meteors, planets, rockets)
  10. Using iPhone in Chinese. I know you guys said before it is on the earlier levels but I feel like since I started using my phone in Chinese there is a lot of words I’ve learnt. Even 拷貝，貼上， 剪下， 搜尋. Just my suggestion!

Personally I am not interested in handwriting, but I understand others are, so if that was a class I would just skip it.

4 Likes
22

thanks thanks. All ideas are put on the list. Will see how our PDF creator work on it

23

sound pretty cool. I wonder what if somebody doesn’t have two laptop or cameras. I wonder the technical prepare will be the obstacle for people to book this kind of class

2 Likes
24

Yes, of course. Only a reminder, if you use one laptop and don’t use the in-built camera, but use an extra better camera. You could switch easily and quickly the cameras with Alt+N and use both cameras. Then you can show how you write and switch back to face quickly.

1 Like
25

What about using the whiteboard in Zoom to hand write on there?

1 Like
26

I’ve had similar @Sonja-Mandarin-HSK_3 and @Kelly-Mandarin-HSK_3 but the teacher put a blank screen up and gave me control of the cursor in paint mode so she could see my stroke order. It wasn’t meant to be practicing nice handwriting, rather the strokes, but it was a good experience. I’d had a number of classes with that element now, but only when I was the only student. When it has come to handwriting, I’ve written the characters on paper, taken a photograph then uploaded it into the Zoom chat during the class. That works when it is just about how the characters look.

2 Likes
27

I’ve done this. It works well, although would maybe work better with an ipad and pen rather than with a computer mouse. My hand/eye coordination needs some work!

2 Likes
28

Love your suggestions @Chloe-Mandarin-HSK_5 ! I’d second any topic around food. I’d go a step further and look at recipes. It would be so cool to be able to follow the Chinese versions of recipes rather than translated “Westernised” versions. I’m a bit biased because I love to cook, so this would be a topic I’d really engage with and try hard to talk about in a free talk class.

I also second your suggestion about using the phone in Chinese. (Well done for switching!! I have the keyboard, but don’t have the nerve to fully switch… yet!)

3 Likes
29

Thanks, @Sonja-Mandarin-HSK_3 Sonja, the Alt-N fastkey is handy to know. I could probably put my music stand beside my laptop and clip the portable webcam to that.

@Andreas_Admin_Flexi @Vicki-Mandarin-HSK_2 My uni lecturer used Jamboard for our writing tutorials, but it was as Vicki described for learning stroke order. Each student in the Zoom tutorial had their own cursor to practise writing the character or move characters around (grammar and sentence structure exercises), but using the mouse for writing was pretty clumsy. I bought a mouse pen, but it wasn’t much of an improvement. Zoom whiteboard could be an alternative to Jamboard, but I’d really prefer to use a pen on paper to practise good hand-writing. I feel like the aesthetics of Chinese hand-writing and how the radicals inter-relate is a topic all on its own.

More ideas for HSK5+:

  • All the radicals
  • The most common 150 measure words
  • Politics & governance
  • Tea culture (actual tea making and drinking session)
  • Legal system and legal history
  • Art and art history
  • Out and about walking tour (teacher uses their mobile phone)
  • Endemic species
  • Geology
  • Western classical music (to learn composers’ names, music terminology etc.) in Chinese
  • Chinese modern classical music
  • Study a whole book together

Kelly

2 Likes
30

sound great and interesting. * Out and about the walking tour (teacher uses their mobile phone)-> I don’t quite get it. Can you explain further?
thank you

31

@Rosie-Cao The “out and about walking tour” idea I’m thinking of is having the teacher and student still using Zoom, while the teacher is the “tele-tour guide” walking around an interesting place in the teacher’s city or town. These could be very popular lessons! Maybe it’s visiting an art gallery, or checking out some street foods, or visiting the supermarket, or even visiting the doctor (with permission). Similar to a Facebook, Instagram or Youtube livestream, except it’s a private paid tour.

There is an Instagram channel I really like, called jennyfunchinese, like this. She might be having a haircut, visiting an artisan’s shop, or visiting a restaurant to talk about certain foods, etc. They’re always funny. The problem is, I don’t know how to pause the reels, so I have to watch them over and over and over again.

Kelly

32

Another vote for HSK 5+ here. Some great topics already suggested. Here are my two pennies

– Love the idea about more advanced Chinese Menu’s

– Love the idea even more about Recipes. This could be really very fun for any budding cooks out there.

– Word Guessing Game sounds great. Any word related games could be really fun lessons

– Using technology in Chinese is another great idea. How to use your laptop or phone in Chinese.

– Politics is another good one I think advanced students like to try and get stuck into. Keywords and phrases that can be taught.

My personal suggestions also

– I think when students become more advanced we love to use idioms so more lessons related to Chengyu that are commonly used by natives

– New Slang. Another thing we love to use is slang, why not creat some lessons based around words from blogs like this we’ve done (New Chinese Slang, Phrases & Words // New for 2022)

– Making someone laugh in another language is one of the most satisfying things we can do. What about some lessons based around stand-up comedy. We could study some sketches and pick up key words and puns?

– Writing a CV, Email or Cover Letter for formal situations

– Discover Famous Chinese People - a lesson around Chinese superstars we may not know about and why they are so famous

– Famous Chinese Social Media stars - same as above

– Certain sports in Chinese. I love football but know very little football grammar. Maybe lessons on certain sports and their vocab, useful words and phrases

– Cover a famous novel or a book. Study certain passages and their grammar structures, phrases and words.

– The same can also be done for films or TV shows. Pick a popular one, take out extracts and learn about them in greater depth.

Just typing as I think, hope some of those are useful :slight_smile:

Definite vote for HSK5+ from me though.

5 Likes