Mandarin Scholarship Taiwan » learn Mandarin

Resources for Beginners Test Of Proficiency-Huayu

kang-wei — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 02:20:13 +0000

Mandarin Scholarship students who have taken the Test Of Proficiency-Huayu (TOP) would know that resources are very limited.

For the Beginner level, introduced in 2007, there is only one Mock Test booklet (2007) and a list of 800 words for beginners (2008, PDF 280kb).

In Taipei, the Mock Test booklet can be purchased at Lucky Bookstore(師大書苑).

A very good friend of mine, has used the beginners word list to write three short paragraphs similar to TOP for Beginners Reading Comprehension Part 3. If you want the answers leave a comment!

Here is the first one:

1. 今天我去___1___，看見一隻的大象，它的鼻子很___2___，眼睛又大又亮。當我摸著它___3___皮膚時，它安靜地看著我，真是可愛的___4___。

１．(A) 動物園 (B) 海邊 (C) 電影院 (D) 博物館

２．(A) 扁 (B) 圓 (C) 短 (D) 長

３．(A) 白色 (B) 黑色 (C) 灰色 (D) 棕色

４．(A) 植物 (B) 寵物 (C) 動物 (D) 玩具

The one above and two others can be downloaded here: TOP_for_Beginners_Part3 [PDF 107kb)

For more information about TOP: Test Of Proficiency-Huayu registration period starts today

Web based handwriting recognition tool at NICKU.com

kang-wei — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 16:33:10 +0000

Nciku is basically an online Chinese-English dictionary and is a great tool for Mandarin scholarship students. I had a look at it a while ago and came to the conclusion that it was a social networking dictionary. You can sign up and interact with others in the nciku community, as you look up new vocabulary. It didn’t appeal to me, as I thought the concept was odd and had been happily using mdbg.net.

That said, the Handwrite Characters function, or handwriting recognition tool, is brilliant! Pinyin.info recently highlighted this feature which I have used several times.

What is the handwriting recognition tool? The handwriting tool allows you to find characters by drawing them. Simply write the character, with your mouse, in the box and select the desired one from the list that appears.

If you’ve ever tried to translate a character, you will know that if you don’t know the radical it can take a very long time to work out. This tool makes short work of that problem.

How does it work?

The tool searches our character database based on the appearance of what you draw, the stroke order you use, and other factors. Even if you are unsure how exactly to write a character, the character you are looking for will most likely be included in results for you to recognize and choose from.

Does stroke order matter?
Stroke order does not matter. We will find your character even if you don’t write it perfectly.

http://www.nciku.com/

The handwriting recognition tool has been around for many years. My Chinese teacher introduced me to it a few months ago. It was part of his Chinese language Windows OS or MS word suite. Unfortunately, I run an English language version of XP and that tool is not included.

This tool/software can also be put on a PDA. A mobile handwriting recognition tool! Just the thing for long bus journeys.

NTNU Mandarin Training Center

kang-wei — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 02:54:21 +0000

國立臺灣師範大學 National Taiwan Normal University, Shi-Da, founded the Mandarin Training Center in 1956 for the study of Mandarin Chinese by foreign students.

The Mandarin Training Center represents one of the world’s oldest and most distinguished programs for language study, attracting more than a thousand students from over sixty countries to Taiwan each year and making the Shi-Da area of Taipei one of the city’s most cosmopolitan.

[Wiki: National Taiwan Normal University]

Blogger BrettEverett has written about his experiences at NTNU’s Mandarin Training Center. It gives a great insight into what Mandarin scholarship students can expect in the way of administration and teaching methodology. It’s very important for Mandarin scholarship students to know what they want before they commit to a university. Once the scholarship is linked to that university you have to wait two semesters before you can change.

NTNU’s Mandarin Training Center hasn’t lived up to what I expected it to be. We have currently have 8 students (the max), at one point had 10 students in our class, and all of their literature says that 5-6 students is average size for the intensive classes. The difference between their regular and intensive classes are two students and one extra hour of class a day. That is, there are 10 students in a normal class and they only meet for 2 hours a day instead of 3.

I’m also disappointed in MTC’s teaching methodology. It’s focused mostly on writing. We also have to do a lot of homework outside of class. My issue with that is that writing is my weakest area. I haven’t written characters for three years now. I always use computers to do my homework, and as such have practically forgotten how to write. My classmates are 2 americans, a Chinese-Indonesian guy, 2 Japanese guys, a Japanese girl and a 16 year old Mongolian girl. I joke that the Japanese girl is a walking character dictionary. She always knows how to write whatever character we are studying.

I don’t care much for writing characters. It wastes a lot of time and I’m poor at it. I don’t have years in which to dedicate myself to writing a single character hundreds of times until it is correct. I want to work on speaking and recognizing characters. To me, being able to communicate with other people in Chinese is why I’m here. Squiggly lines don’t interest me. If it isn’t clear, I’m very unhappy with my current school situation. Of our tests and everything else we do, 20% is speaking, 20% is reading recognition and the last 60% is writing.

This is opposite of what I want for myself and is making me less and less happy as time goes on. I keep scoring poorly on the tests because I write the characters wrong. Its frustrating always asking the teacher for more time while my Japanese classmates have finished their tests and are napping while waiting for us to finish. Even though I have a scholarship from NTNU, I can’t see myself staying there in the future if the situation doesn’t improve.

National Taiwan University Mandarin Training Center

I personally equate prestigious universities/programs with inflexibility and encourage scholarship students to really do their research before they commit. I will be posting as many different experiences from different universities as I can find.

Related story:

Studying Mandarin at Shi-Da

Taiwan donates scholarships to Dominican Republic

kang-wei — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 06:01:49 +0000

Dominican Republic is one of the 23 nations, including the Vatican City, that maintain diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

Taiwanese Ambassador to the DR, Isaac Tsai, will donate US$1 million to the Ministry of Higher Education (SEESCYT) on behalf of his country. The funds will be used to help Dominican university students. The Taiwanese Embassy announced that this is the ninth set of funds awarded as part of their Mandarin Language and International Scholarship Fund Program.

According to the SEESCYT, the fund will provide Dominican students with the opportunity to study Internet technology, medicine, bio-chemistry, economics, foreign trade, banking and markets and rights and integrated communication at universities abroad. The funds will also be used to employ two Taiwanese teachers to teach languages at the UASD University and at the Foreign Relations Ministry’s School of Diplomacy.

Daily Dominican Republic News on July 23, 2008

Dominican Republic has maintained diplomatic relations with Taiwan for 63 years.

Rotary International Youth Program limits interaction with Taiwanese

kang-wei — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 08:23:51 +0000

Read an interesting article today in the China Post’s Foreign Community section. The piece was titled High school students leave Taiwan satisfied. It focused on two students, one from Demark (16) and one from France (19), who spent a year in Taipei’s public school system as part of the Rotary International Youth Program.

The Rotary International Youth Program allows thousands of teenagers worldwide to attend a year long exchange program in the country of their choice.

Mads Meoller, the Danish student, made some interesting comments regarding the,

written agreement between the exchange students and the organizers of the program that discouraged them from learning about Taiwanese politics, and matters concerning the weaker or stronger sex, which limited their interaction with their Taiwanese counterparts. “It was a fight to learn about culture,” he observed.

I can understand discouraging learning about politics in China for example, as it may get you in trouble, but in a free society like Taiwan it seems overly paternal. Would an exchange student going to Australia be obliged to follow similar guidelines?

And this, “discouraged…from learning about…matters concerning the weaker or stronger sex”. What does this mean exactly? Male exchange students can not have female friends and female exchange students can not have male friends? That’s what it sounds like.

The net result for our Danish friend, “It was a fight to learn about culture,”.

Having participated in four different exchange programs, I feel that my exposure to different political systems and building friendships with both sexes made the experiences life changing. Of course just attending the institutions was valuable but having restrictions like these does seem to be a contradiction in terms.

Note: The article has not yet been put on the China Post’s website.

Quote from the article, thanks for being honest Patty:

“I was worried at first!” said Patty, 16, who recalled her yearlong experience with foreign students at her senior high school in downtown Taipei. She believed that all foreign teenagers liked smoking or hanging out in bars, the opposite of how “normal” Taiwanese students behave. Patty was in for a pleasant surprise when Aude Gery joined her class in August 2007.

Studying Mandarin at Shida

kang-wei — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 04:48:16 +0000

Blogger Shu Flies is a Mandarin scholarship student at the National Taiwan Normal University’s (Shida) Mandarin Training Center. Located in Taipei, Shida is the place were most foreigners end up learning Mandarin.

Shu Flies has written about her experience at Shida. She alludes to bureaucratic delays for visas, stresses student responsibility for a rewarding learning experience and much more….

I’m back on the island from my three-week sojourn back to California (it would have been two weeks, but the visa office had other ideas. Thanks visa office!), and I’m taking advantage of my jet lag to type up a review of my time at Shida’s Mandarin Training Center.

I have no idea how systematized the teaching methodology is at the MTC, but I’ve heard from many other MTC veterans that your experience there depends in large part on the teacher you get. There are the good, the okay and the just plain awful: I heard horror stories about teachers showing up half an hour late, teachers not showing up, teachers showing up for one week then announcing they are off for a two-week vacation, teachers using class time to tell personal anecdotes that are both too-much-information and not related to the course material, etc…..

Learn Mandarin: Bopomofo Quizlet & flashcards

kang-wei — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 03:53:54 +0000

Mandarin scholarship students in Taiwan generally need to learn Bopomofo (ㄅㄆㄇㄈ), the standard phonetic system used in Taiwan to teach Mandarin. It is also known as Zhuyin fuhao, jhuyin, Bopomo, Mandarin Phonetic Symbols and MPS! Confusing no?

I was browsing shuflies.blogspot.com, and came across a great online Bopomofo resource.

It has been setup on a Quiz based web application called Quizlet. Its stated mission:

“…to make learning vocabulary not a chore.”

The Bopomofo Quizlet has a few games which match English letters to the Bopomofo/Zhuyin symbols. It also has free Bopomofo flashcards.

There’s no audio but if you’d like to listen to Bopomofo/Zhuyin audio files visit this blog.

If you’re looking for Bopomofo learning software have a look at this post:

Learn Zhuyin fuhao/BoPoMoFo software

Online role playing game for learning Mandarin Chinese

kang-wei — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 07:20:42 +0000

Mandarin scholarship students who enjoy multiplayer online role playing games may be interested in Zon. I think this kind of language immersion tool is great for students who are not in Mandarin speaking environments.

The information below is from massively.com:

A team of developers supported by Michigan State University and the Office of the Chinese Language Council International have spent the past few years piecing together Zon — a browser-based virtual world wherein users can learn the Mandarin Chinese language. The game is currently in its open beta phase; you can sign up to play right now.

Users create an avatar and then find themselves in a representation of Beijing International Airport. From there, they may interact with NPCs and other world objects to learn more about Chinese language and culture, as well as communicate with other players to practice their language skills. As they progress through the system, they move up in rank from Tourist to Resident, and finally to Citizen — at which point they may create their own content for the world.

Beginning Chinese language with traditional characters

kang-wei — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 07:47:50 +0000

Mandarin scholarship students preparing to come to Taiwan may find the online Beginning Chinese Language course, from the University of California, useful because it uses traditional characters.

The emphasis in this class is on building up vocabulary and sentence patterns in communicative contexts, and building a solid foundation in pronunciation. Students will expand their ability to carry out simple conversations in Chinese on a limited range of topics.

Reading and writing (using traditional or complex characters) will be developed in conjunction with speaking and listening skills. Students will be expected to speak, read, and write all new words that appear in vocabulary lists in the main textbook unless otherwise noted by the instructor.

Scholarships for Countries with diplomatic relations with Taiwan

kang-wei — Wed, 21 May 2008 02:06:54 +0000

If you want to learn Chinese and you are from any of the nations listed below there are many scholarship options available to you.

The map below really brings home what diplomatic isolation means… Taiwan currently has 23 “friends”. One of them, the Pacific nation of Tuvalu, has a population of around 12,000. Not that size matters of course.

Africa (4 states)

Burkina Faso* (1994)
Gambia* (1995)
São Tomé and Príncipe* (1997)
Swaziland* (1968.)

Europe (1 state)

Vatican City * (1942)

Oceania (6 states)

Kiribati (2003)
Marshall Islands* (1998.)
Nauru (1980–2002, 2005)
Palau* (1999)
Solomon Islands* (1983)
Tuvalu (1979)

Americas (12 states)

Belize* (1989)
Dominican Republic* (1957)
El Salvador* (1961)
Guatemala* (1960)
Haiti *(1956)
Honduras* (1965)
Nicaragua* (1990)
Panama* (1954)
Paraguay* (1957)
Saint Kitts and Nevis* (1983)
Saint Lucia (1984–1997, 2007)
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (1981)

Dates indicate establishment or duration of relations; * indicates an embassy in Taipei

(Source: Wiki)

See here for more Mandarin scholarship information.