The San Francisco Unified School District asked the MIPC to create an advertisement for recruiting teachers to the Mandarin Immersion program. Check out the result (click on the image for more information):
Mandarin Immersion Parents Council
Information for parents of kids in Mandarin immersion education
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How to use a Chinese dictionary, especially if you don’t speak Chinese
A presentation by the Mandarin Immersion Parents Council and parents with children in the Mandarin immersion programs at Starr King and Jose Ortega Elementary Schools, San Francisco
Cheng & Tsui’s Chinese Character Dictionary is the dictionary that the SFUSD Mandarin immersion coordinator suggests parents use to help their children with homework. We were able to purchase copies for all incoming Kindergarten families. If you didn’t get one, ask your child’s teacher.
Looking Up Words
The easiest way is to do it by sound. The dictionary is organized alphabetically by the spelling of each Chinese work using the pinyin romanization system. The one downside to this is that our students don’t learn to read and write pinyin until beginning in second grade, so your child may not know the pinyin. For many words, it’s pretty easy to guess. Laoshi (老师 teacher) is something the kids learn right away, and if you turn to page 216, you’ll find the word lao the 3rd entry down from the top.
The characters are listed individually, but most Chinese words consist of two or more characters together (pingguo 苹果, apple.) For many words, if you look up the first character, you’ll find the full word listed under the entry. If not, you may need to look up the second character as well.
But pinyin doesn’t always match English pronunciation. Xin (新, new) isn’t obvious. Zhuozi (桌子, table) is hard both because of the ZH spelling and trying to decide if it’s OU or UO.Counting Strokes
If you can’t find the word by pinyin you’ll have to do it the hard way – by counting strokes. This is where all the hard work your child is doing learning to write characters using the correct stroke order will come in handy. On page 9 of your dictionary you’ll find the Stroke Index. This is a listing of all the words in the dictionary, by the number of strokes they contain. (The list is further subdivided into types of strokes used, but it’s daunting for non-Chinese speakers so we won’t get into that.) So 一 (yi, one) is the first. The last is 罐 (guan, pitcher) with 23 strokes. But even in Hong Kong kids don’t learn it until 6th grade, and by then they can look up their own words. Say you’re confronted with this character:
First, ask your child to count how many strokes it has. They should say 16. Don’t try to count them yourself, as some pieces of a character that look like they should be two strokes actually count as one, and some things that seem like they should be just one stroke are in fact two. Turn to the stroke index and look for the numbers in the columns that show stroke count. You’ll find the list for words with 16 strokes on page 18. Then you just have to go down the list of characters until you find the one that matches the one you’re looking for. Hint: A magnifying glass is not a bad thing to have for this. In our case, it’s the sixth word on the list. Now you go to page 48, where you’ll find it at the top of the page, along with the enlightening news that it’s pronounced cheng and means orange.
Quiz
Here are some words to test yourself on:
(see below for the answers)
If All Else Fails
Finally, remember that if you can’t figure out what a word means, you can always ask the teacher or other parents. Please use either your child’s classroom email list, or if you’re really stumped, the school or even Mandarin lists. We’ve had parents take pictures of a word and then upload it to the list sites to ask for help. Be creative. And if all else fails, your child can find out what the word means the next day when they go to school.
Older Dictionaries
One last note: Some older dictionaries aren’t indexed by pinyin or stroke count, but by radicals first and then stroke count. This requires being able to first identify the radical, or classifier, of the character. You then look that radical up, which gives you a list of all the words that contain it, in order of how many strokes they use. You go down that list until you find the character you want and then go to the page it’s on. Thankfully, these dictionaries are becoming less common and our students aren’t using them.
Answers
- This has 12 strokes. Look on page 16 of the dictionary in the Stroke Index and it’s on the second page of 16-stroke words, number 13 from the top. Turn to page 274 and it’s at the top: pao, to run.
- This has 3 strokes and is in the 3rd column on page 9. That sends you to page 380, where you find out it means wan, 10,000.
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No pain, no gain: Mastering a skill makes us stressed in the moment, happy long term
(From San Francisco State University) No pain, no gain applies to happiness, too, according to new research published online this week in the Journal of Happiness Studies. People who work hard at improving a skill or ability, such as mastering a math problem or learning to drive, may experience stress in the moment, but experience greater happiness on a daily basis and longer term, the study suggests.
“No pain, no gain is the rule when it comes to gaining happiness from increasing our competence at something,” said Ryan Howell, assistant professor of psychology at San Francisco State University. “People often give up their goals because they are stressful, but we found that there is benefit at the end of the day from learning to do something well. And what’s striking is that you don’t have to reach your goal to see the benefits to your happiness and well-being.”
Contrary to previous research, the study found that people who engage in behaviors that increase competency, for example at work, school or the gym, experience decreased happiness in the moment, lower levels of enjoyment and higher levels of momentary stress. Despite the negative effects felt on an hourly basis, participants reported that these same activities made them feel happy and satisfied when they looked back on their day as a whole. This surprising find suggests that in the process of becoming proficient at something, individuals may need to endure temporary stress to reap the happiness benefits associated with increased competency.
The study examined whether people who spend time on activities that fulfill certain psychological needs, believed to be necessary for growth and well-being, experience greater happiness. In addition to the need to be competent, the study focused on the need to feel connected to others and to be autonomous or self-directed, and it examined how fulfilling these three needs affects a person’s happiness moment by moment within a day.
For two days, participants reported how they spent each hour, the enjoyment and stress experienced in that hour, and whether the activity met their need for competency, connectedness to others or autonomy. A second group of participants completed a similar survey, but reported on the day as a whole.
While behaviors that increase competency were associated with decreased happiness in the moment, people who spent time on activities that met the need for autonomy or feeling connected to others experienced increased happiness both an hourly and daily basis. The greatest increase in momentary happiness was experienced by participants who engaged in something that met their need for autonomy – any behavior that a person feels they have chosen, rather than ought to do, and that helps them further their interests and goals.
The authors suggest that shifting the balance of needs met in a day could help people find ways to cope with short term stress in the workplace.
“Our results suggest that you can decrease the momentary stress associated with improving your skill or ability by ensuring you are also meeting the need for autonomy and connectedness, for example performing the activity alongside other people or making sure it is something you have chosen to do and is true to who you are,” Howell said.
Relating these momentary gains in happiness to people’s long term life satisfaction, the study found that those who are already satisfied with their life in the long term stand to gain most from the momentary happiness that is derived from feeling connected to others and a sense of autonomy.
“Like a wine connoisseur whose experience means they can appreciate a fine wine more than a novice, people who are already satisfied with their life may have learned how to glean the satisfaction of these needs from their daily activities,” Howell said.
###“Momentary Happiness: The Role of Psychological Need Satisfaction” was published online Oct. 28, 2009 in the Journal of Happiness Studies. Co-authors include David Chenot of CSU, Fullerton, Graham Hill, former graduate student at San Francisco State University and Colleen Howell of University of California, Riverside
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On October 18, the Los Angeles Times ran a story about the disagreement over whether educators should use traditional or simplified characters when teaching Chinese in American schools. The answer varies even within the San Francisco Unified School District; Jose Ortega and Starr King use simplified characters while Alice Fong Yu, West Portal, and the CIS De Avila use traditional.
Schools a battleground over dueling Chinese scripts
Decisions over teaching the simplified characters used in mainland China versus the traditional ones used in Taiwan stir passions among parents over politics and cultural pride
By Raja Abdulrahim
Los Angeles Times, October 18, 2009
For nine years, Sutoyo Lim’s son studied Chinese with private tutors and at language schools. He learned to write in “simplified script,” characters with thinly spread strokes commonly used in mainland China.
But that all changed when Lim’s 15-year-old son began taking Chinese classes at Arcadia High School this year. He was given two months to make the transition from “simplified” to the more intricate “traditional” script used in Taiwan.
Once the grace period is over, homework and exam answers written in simplified script will be disqualified — regardless of accuracy. “To me, it does not seem right,” Lim said. “I’m not happy with being forced to choose the language that’s going to be obsolete.”
Click here to read the whole article.
Kristine Shen, left, and Jasmine Wu study at the Westside Chinese School. Backers of simplified script say it will be more practical for children to know, while supporters of the traditional form cherish it as an ancient tradition. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times) -
The next meeting of the Mandarin Immersion Parents Council will be on Monday, Nov. 2nd at Starr King from 5:30 – 7:30pm.
We’ll cover:- How to Use A Chinese Dictionary (please bring the one your child’s teacher should have given you)
- Chinese 101 – A quick, parent-led romp through the basics of Chinese grammar and the ways in which is is different from English
- Time for questions about the programs, the future and whatever other concerns you may have
We’ll be offering child care on a sliding-scale basis and a snack for the kids. Please email if you’re coming. If you’re bringing kids, tell us how many so we can arrange for enough child care. We look forward to seeing you there.
Starr King is at 1215 Carolina St, San Francisco, CA 94107 on Potrero Hill.
The meeting will be held in the auditorium/lunchroom on the play yard, which is behind the school. -
From The New York Times
By Kirk Semple
He grew up playing in the narrow, crowded streets of Manhattan’s Chinatown. He has lived and worked there for all his 61 years. But as Wee Wong walks the neighborhood these days, he cannot understand half the Chinese conversations he hears.
Paul Lee, a longtime resident of Chinatown, near his home on Mott Street. He said that Cantonese “may be a dying language.”Cantonese, a dialect from southern China that has dominated the Chinatowns of North America for decades, is being rapidly swept aside by Mandarin, the national language of China and the lingua franca of most of the latest Chinese immigrants
read more at:
www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/nyregion/22chinese.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=cantonese&st=cse
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San Francisco public schools “New Rule” #3…
“Our children need to speak the language or languages of the 21st Century”
So says Margaret Peterson as she and Beth Weise talk about multilingual education in this KALW public service announcement…
Learn more about how you can support San Francisco’s future at yoursfpublicschools.org.
Mandarin Immersion Parents Council 