The Most Effective Way To Learn Mandarin Chinese Is Totally Communicative Approach

By Author: Benjaman Hviid
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The reason is because people find more business opportunity in China recent years with china immerged into the international globalization. But learning Mandarin is not easy work. How to learn Mandarin effectively is challenge for most mandarin chinese learners.

In Hong Kong some professors claim that learning chiinese grammar is the key for successful learning mandarin in Hong Kong. Indeed, many language school in Hong Kong emphasize the teaching of grammar in their mandarin class in Hong Kong. But is that really effective way to learn mandarin chinese in Hong Kong.

I recommend a totally communicative teaching and learning approach for mandarin chinese learning. My exprience shows that this is up to now the most effective way to learn Mandarin Chinese lessons. One learns to speak a language by speaking it. You must practically speak mandarin chinese in real situations so that you know how to respond to a question or how to initiate a dialogue in mandarin chinese.

For example, if I will teach a Mandarin course in Hong Kong on the topic of making telephone calls, I will design s communcaitve ...
... dialogue as follows: "You are in a market shopping for a pair of trousers and shoes. You are not sure about the size. Ask for help and try them on. Discuss the prices with the owner". The teacher will then practice speaking mandarin chinese on this topic with the students. By this way, the student will command how to speak mandarin chinese in this situations. This is an efffective mandarin chinese class in Hong Kong.

Other similar class design may be as follows: When you are learning how to speak on jobs in Mandarin Chinese, you can design communicative topics as "work in pairs and ask each other where you work, what kind of jobs you do and write down the details".

In a mandarin class in Hong Kong learning family members, the communicative activity may be "talking with your classmates about your family members, who they are, what their names are and what jobs they do".

Having said the importance of communicative approach, mandarin grammar should not be ignored either. For example: the following grammar must be taught so that students can understand it and use it in their communication.

1) The conjunction "búguò 不过" is used at the beginning of the second clause to indicate a transition. It indicates the second clause doesn't follow the meaning of the preceding clause, but there is some change into the opposite direction. The degree of transition "búguò 不过" indicates is lower than that "dànshi 但是" or " kěshi 可是" does and is often used in oral Chinese.

2) Mandarin has a way of softening requests or suggestions by adding the final particle "ba 吧". Using the final particle "ba 吧" is equivalent to using a question tag (aren't you?) or making a suggestion in the form of "let's (do something)" - "let's go to the movies." The final particle "ba 吧" is always used at the" end of a sentence.
3) The noun "shíhou 时候" indicates a certain point or a period of time. It forms "shénme shíhou 什么时候" with the interrogative pronoun "shénme 什么" and is used to unique time.

4)"nà jiù zhème dìng le 那就这么定了" is an idiom. You can apply it to your mandarin class in Hong Kong to test whether it works for you.