Learning words by morphologic analysis

Details
Written by Marija Nikolajeva
Parent Category: Chinese
Category: Chinese 16-19
Created: 05 December 2012

Aim (in terms of subject matter): learn names of jobs.

Aim (in terms of thinking): learn to associate ideas implied by characters.

Task description: a quick task for relaxation: guess jobs on the basis of meanings of the characters which they consist of. For example:

 工程师gōngchéngshī

 工 gōng – work

 程chéng – plan 

 师 shī – master

 工人 gōngrén

 工 gōng – work

 人 rén – person  

 

 推销员tuīxiāoyuán

 推 tuī – push

 销 xiāo – sell

 员yuán – employee

Procedures: the students read the characters and guessed the jobs by shouting their ideas. It would be better to do it in groups, not with the whole class together. The teacher added synonyms, described the jobs so that the students could guess. This task was done with 13-year-olds and with 18-year-olds, the younger students had more difficulties, probably because their general knowledge is smaller.   

Overall reflectionof the task: It is an achievement if 13-year-olds to learn the jobs. For 18-year-olds it is a good idea to extend the task and ask them to work with the separate characters (eg, find out in which words these characters are used and make riddles for classmates).

The 1st step of the thinking framework: students have to connect ideas suggested by characters in order to guess jobs.  

Comments  

# Alexander Sokol 2013-01-02 16:05
Marija, thanks for sharing. I think it'd be easier for the readers if you were a little more explicit about the procedures here. For example, if we take one of the jobs you referred to, what are possible difficulties for the students? How can we increase / decrease the level of difficulty (an important aspect of Step 1 of the Thinking Task Framework)? If the task is challenging and the students can't guess, ie they need to do some thinking, what's a possible strategy for them to follow? How can the students be assisted in developing this strategy?
Looking forward to your response.
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