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Recommended Chinese TV Shows
Primary Mandarin (click here for options on Netflix)
Secondary Mandarin
《快乐汉语》Happy Chinese
This video series covers language content typically seen in curriculums and textbooks in schools, which provides students with opportunities to practice their listening in a quasi-authentic setting. Click here to access a playlist.
Chinese Character Writing Demonstrations
Go onto our YouTube channel to show students demonstrations of how to write Chinese characters in the writing grid (田字格) correctly, so you do not have to put your back to them when demonstrating on the board!
The method we have found that works best in getting students to write neatly and not rush their work is to get them to watch this video about 拔苗助长 first and ask them how the message in the video applies to Chinese writing and their study of Chinese in general. Following this, we have students follow the steps 1-5 below whenever they write new characters in their books, as demonstrated in the video here:
1) Write the English meaning at the top of the page just once.
2) Write the Chinese character in the writing grid
3) Write the pinyin for the character in the box below.
4) Repeat until the teacher says stop.
5) While students are doing the writing, it is advised to play relaxing Chinese music. This video of music works well, but be sure to freeze the screen or turn your screen off so it does not distract your students!
Click here to access the full playlist, which will be updated over time.
The Story of Chinese Characters
This video series visually explains the history of Chinese characters in a fun way. Click here to access the full list.
Peppa Pig
Even if a portion of the language is beyond your Scheme of Learning, all episodes are topic based and you can easily find material which is linked to the content of what students are studying - with it being so visual, it is much easier to for students to understand than one might expect! Don't forget you can adjust the playback speed in the video settings to slow down their speech - we recommend adjusting it to 0.75 as shown below:
Click here to access the full list of Peppa Pig episodes in Chinese.
Sesame Street Mandarin
This is great for engaging primary school students and their class teacher due to Sesame Street's popularity lasting for decades. The content is topic based so it can link to your Scheme of Learning and there are great authentic videos for the topics at the end to test pupils' listening skills.
Click here to access the full list of Sesame Street Mandarin episodes.
BBC Real Chinese 《日常中文》
Though a little outdated, this series gives a fantastic account of how Chinese people go about their daily lives along with teaching a number of language items in a simple and easy to understand way. Click here to access the full series playlist.
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