|
|
|
|
| Greece (see also Ancient/Greece) |
|
|
HomeShop at BookSurgeHistoryEuropeGreece (see also Ancient/Greece)Learn Chinese Through Song!: The Popular Chinese Nursery Rhyme (Baby's First Words in Chinese): Two Tigers (Mandarin Chinese and English Edition) |
|
|  |
| Customer Reviews: | | Average Customer Review: ( 5 customer reviews )
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 9 found the following review helpful:
 This is a GREAT book to learn to write and SING a famous nursery rhyme in Chinese! Dec 23, 2009
By D. Fowler
"Dragonfly77"
In an attempt to increase literacy, the Chinese government decided to "include some simplified characters" into the written language. These simplified characters, used in now what is called simplified Chinese, have been adopted by the United Nations. In this charming book, the reader gets a chance to look at both in a fun, unique manner that ends up teaching you the Chinese nursery rhyme, "Liang Zhi Laohu" or Two Tigers. This song is sung to the tune "Brother John." In the introduction we learn about Pinyan and the Chinese character stroke sequence.
For each word in this song we are shown how to write the word in traditional and classic Chinese. There are amazing little hints to make the character easier to draw. For example, the word "two" uses a bean sprout and asks you to "use your imagination while watching the progression from this picture into two Chinese characters." On the author's site, I easily downloaded a Chinese character practice sheet in a PDF file. This makes it unnecessary to purchase specialized paper to work with. Each of the first fourteen pages is very thorough describing and illustrating how to write these characters, and the fourteenth also discusses the tones.
There are thirty-six reproducible flash cards, or if you please, you can cut them from the book. After the written there is the actual "story" about the two tigers in both simplified and traditional Chinese. Now, for the fun part . . . on the back cover of the book are the music and words to this adorable song. I downloaded the files to listen to the tones. There are a full sixty-four files for you to listen to. If you have a classroom of young children, you can easily teach them how to sing this song. If you go to Google and type in "A Chinese Song - Two Tigers" you should find some children singing. I just smiled and smiled when I saw one classroom of children jumping, singing and having a wonderful time with the end result of their work. How in depth you want to go with this book is up to you. This is a GREAT book to learn to write and SING a famous nursery rhyme in Chinese!
This book courtesy of the author in exchange for an honest review.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
 Nice picture... shame about the content Nov 22, 2011
By pwshk
Very disappointed with my purchase. They have managed to take a fantastic Chinese kid's song and turn it into an uninspiring non-starter. The best thing about the book is the picture on the cover.
As a student of Mandarin (living in China) I have a fair idea of what works and what doesn't. On the cover of this book they suggest that this might be suitable for "(Baby's First Words in Chinese)". I have a 26 month old (not a baby anymore) and this fails the test with him. BTW: he goes to bilingual playgroup and has a Mandarin vocab of about 30 words that he's picked up in about 8 weeks.
The author even confuse the issue by including Traditional and Simplified characters side-by-side. Weird.
I could tell you what my wife thought of it - a native English speaker who taught English to non-Natives at a HK University until becoming a mother - but I must get back to searching for better Mandarin materials for my son!
3 of 5 found the following review helpful:
Delightful Book Aug 21, 2010
By Bonnie Brody
"Book Lover and Knitter"
Learn Chinese Through Song!: The Popular Chinese Nursery Rhyme (Baby's First Words in Chinese): Two Tigers, written by Sam Song, is a delightful children's book. It includes audio files to download as well as Chinese character practice sheets on the official website. The book explains, in different chapters, the difference between simplified and traditional Chinese, Chinese pronunciation, and the Chinese character stroke sequence. There are pages included for parents to help children. These include self-help flash cards, two tigers rhyme with pictures, and a practice match game.
This is a perfect first book for toddlers and young children who want to learn Chinese.
4 of 7 found the following review helpful:
Another Hugely Successful Introduction to Chinese from Sam Song! Dec 22, 2009
By Grady Harp
Sam Song has been writing books introducing the Chinese language to Westerners for some time now, books that combine the visuals of how to build Chinese characters to using those characters to learn to speak Chinese. Now he comes across with a new book that is directed to children and parents alike, a book using an old tried and true technique of using that most basic of facile methods - teaching a child a nursery song - to learn a new language!
Song uses a famous Chinese nursery rhyme, 'Two Tigers', to lead the reader through the use of learning the characters, moving from phrase to phrase with added skills, and converting those skills to sentence formation is a manner that makes the reader not only able to sing the song but to also grasp its meaning. He combines color photographs and drawings and then creates flash cards that are quite useful in learning by repetition. Yes, there are quizzes along the way to offer reassurance to the student that progress is being made, and the author even offers computer addresses where the reader can listen to the song being sung by children - an idea that really works in helping to learn pronunciation of the new 'vocabulary'.
Besides being a very educational tool, this little book is a valuable insight into the cultural idiosyncrasies that the language of characters represents. It is sophisticated, but it is also a lot of fun! Grady Harp, December 09
2 of 4 found the following review helpful:
Great Educational Tool Apr 10, 2010
By Candid Reader
Author Sam Song has come up with another brilliant educational book to introduce Chinese language to the international community. With the significance of China increasing in the global economic and political arena it is important for the rest of the world to start understanding the chinese culture. What better way can there be apart from nursery rhyme. This is the key educational instrument for this book, and it is accompanied by Sam Song's website, which has lots of free download. I am sure the young generations of the West would find this book a new instrument to connect with the mysterious East.
|
| | |
|
|
|
|
|
