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VminusEplusFis2

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Everything posted by VminusEplusFis2

  1. We went straight from MM5+select topics in Singapore 5 to Jacobs, and it has been a very smooth transition.
  2. Thank you, @mathmarm, that was very comprehensive. And thank you, @daijobu. ETA: To clarify, I wasn't suggesting Feynman's lectures were an introduction to the subject, and I only brought them up because they contain an example of "miles an hour" used by a great scientist in a physics lecture. I had personally studied physics in a different language and only started reading excerpts from Feynman when trying to acquire some fluency in speaking about physics in English.
  3. @EKS, I apologize if I made you feel piled-on. I'm very interested in language and I also learned to talk about physics in English partially by reading Feynman, so that's why I kept posting about this issue. Given that I'm not a native English speaker, I appreciate hearing people's opinions on how to talk about science. If you ever felt like coming back to this subject and explaining why using "miles per hour" is so important in scientific contexts, I will be very curious to read your explanation. And if not, that's fine, too! I will stop pestering you about it now. 🙂
  4. Hmm, so I understand that you believe it, but I'm not sure why. If everyone understands that those two expressions mean the same thing, why does it matter which one you use? Not only that, but both have been used by native speakers of English for a long time, so it's not a matter of one of them being somehow incorrect. Is there an official body that determines what sort of language is appropriate to use in all scientific contexts, during conferences, during physics lectures? And if so, on what grounds? Isn't the most important thing effective communication, and is the effectiveness of communication somehow affected by using "an hour"? Feynman lecturing about physics at a university seems like a sufficiently scientific context, by the way, and he didn't seem to care about using "miles an hour", since he used this expression himself, presumably because it means the exact same thing as "miles per hour" and there was no way his students would misunderstand him. I'll be honest, nitpicking about this seems like unnecessary rigidity to me, but I'm genuinely curious if there is a good argument for being this strict about this issue. In the context of a language program, it is definitely appropriate to use "miles an hour" because it's an accurate representation of how the English language works, and it's important for students to learn about it.
  5. Hmm, I find the strong feelings about "miles an hour" and "miles per hour" very interesting. I was certainly taught both, and I use them interchangeably. I believe "an hour", "a day", etc., is the traditional way of expressing rates in English, which is why it appears in sayings: "an apple a day keeps the doctor a way." I suppose language has evolved towards preferring "per"? Is the concern that it will confuse children? My kids, who are little, understand both without an issue. Feynman uses "miles an hour" in his lectures. Would the ladies who feel strongly about only using "miles per hour" not ever use Feynman? Or is this only a concern when teaching little children for fear they might be confused that there are two ways of expressing the same thing?
  6. Very similar both online and IRL, but I can also definitely see the bolded below, which I guess is a common thread for parents, and especially homeschooling parents, who choose to be diplomatic for the sake of their kids' social life:
  7. That sounds like a fun idea! I have seen a game or two that have timed questions and are somewhat fun (because something fun happens after a question is answered correctly) but they don't allow the player to solve the problems on the screen, so pen and paper would still be required for the actual work. Pretty sure those wouldn't be great for your purposes either, though. (I am actually a bit surprised there aren't better options out there!)
  8. I haven't found anything that I like more than pen & paper, but I'll link a few sites I've seen just in case they are useful to someone. One option for drilling is Khan Academy. (You don't need an account - you can just save the links and open them whenever the child needs to practice.) So, for long division or multiplication with decimals, you could use: https://www.khanacademy.org/math/cc-sixth-grade-math/cc-6th-arithmetic-operations/cc-6th-dividing-decimals/e/dividing_decimals_3 or https://www.khanacademy.org/math/cc-sixth-grade-math/cc-6th-arithmetic-operations/cc-6th-dividing-decimals/e/dividing_decimals or https://www.khanacademy.org/math/algebra-basics/basic-alg-foundations/alg-basics-operations-with-decimals/e/multiplying_decimals_1 There are more similar quizzes there. If you press the pen icon at the bottom, the whole screen turns into drawing pad, so the child could solve these on, say, a tablet using a stylus. For mental calculations with decimals, here's one option: https://www.thatquiz.org/tq-3/?-j12c-l1i-mpnv600-p0 This one is not for decimals, but it's for long division with two-digit divisors, which might be useful if the child already understands the "decimal" part but needs some practice figuring out how to divide with 2-digit divisors: http://www.thegreatmartinicompany.com/longarithmetic/longdivision.html
  9. That's really nice! Most of the reading DS does in Chinese is the same way, actually: he reads out loud to me, and I make sure he gets the pronunciation and meaning right. One mom I know of did this daily, 20 mins everyday, for 2 years before she decided her daughter was ready to read independently. (Her little girl was very young, though, and they were learning Chinese.) Anyway, it is OK if it takes time, especially if everyone is enjoying the process. One idea that I've seen parents of bilingual kids swear by is listening to audiobooks, perhaps starting with foreign translations of books the children already know well in English. Personally, I do a lot of read-alouds, which your family might enjoy, too. You could start either with very simple books or ones that are translations of books the children already know. What is really nice about doing read-alouds in a foreign language is that you could introduce your children to some really great literature this way, and many authors that are not that popular here in the US. We've been covering a lot of European and Asian children's book authors this way, ones that I would have probably never discovered if we only read in English. There might be some nice bilingual Russian/English kids' groups on facebook, full of ideas for fun books for all levels/ages and also ideas for how and where to best order them. Just beware: if you join those groups, your place might soon start getting buried in beautiful Russian books for your girls while your wallet gets lighter. 🙂
  10. @EKS, thank you for sharing your experience with reading music. I had no idea this could happen! I'm curious, if you closed your eyes and imagined reading an English text on a page in front of you, would you imagine the direction of the text correctly? As in, English is written from left to right, so if you could imagine on which side the text starts, then you'd know that's left. (I'm guessing there is a reason that wouldn't work either?)
  11. Oh gosh, Prodigy. My child played it for a while, and I remember absolutely hating how some of their tutorials explained things. They made literally zero sense to me. It's a great game for review, though. Really motivating if the child gets into it. DS isn't particularly driven to do math problems in his free time, especially if they require writing, but at some point Prodigy had him voluntarily doing multiple very long calculations in his notebook several nights a week, all in his free time. I was amazed. Come to think of it, I need to talk to him to figure out why he stopped playing.
  12. I've recently come across some videos by a guy who learned Polish to a great degree of fluency by very carefully reading and listening to all of the parts of Harry Potter in Polish. (So, not Russian, but a language with similarly complex grammar with its 7 cases, genders, verb aspects, etc.) He acquired the grammar more or less "naturally" through massive exposure to the verb and noun endings. I've also heard of Polish heritage speakers, whose parents used OPOL, but who didn't start using cases properly and consistently until they started reading a great deal in the language. Based on those cases, I do hope my own kids' grammar will improve "naturally" as their exposure (mainly through reading but also through cartoons and audiobooks) to all of the word endings increases. When they are older (later elementary or middle school), I will definitely teach them grammar formally, but I'm hoping most of the work will have been done by then and that we will be starting from a place of a very good natural feel for the language. (We shall see how it goes.) I personally like the idea of books for the purpose of increasing exposure for heritage speakers. (So, for kids who are already conversational and whose comprehension is good enough to handle reading.) This is because, in general, reading is much faster than speaking. Reading a book will expose my kid to many more words per minute than conversation or most other media. I've seen proponents of the comprehensible input method say it takes about 70 exposures to a word in different context for the student to really internalize it. 70 might not be the correct number, but, anyway, the idea is that of providing more exposure to the same word in various contexts. For highly inflected languages, we will ideally want exposures to those words in all of their forms. Not really helpful to you, OP, I know, since you're in a different situation. Just musing.
  13. I'm guessing it's these guys, which is, I believe, how native speakers study cases: https://kartaslov.ru/просклонять-существительное/лингвистика Именительный Кто? Что? Родительный Кого? Чего? Дательный Кому? Чему? Винительный (неод.) Кого? Что? Творительный Кем? Чем? Предложный О ком? О чём? Other than that, maybe you could just go down a list like this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_grammar#Nouns to cover the most important use cases for each of the cases?
  14. Yes, they can learn like this. 🙂 I told my kids about simplified and traditional characters, and they haven't been confused. I know a lot of families who learn both simultaneously and it's fine. We use Little Fox in simplified, but when I print out the show transcripts for my older son to read, I do convert them to traditional. The easiest way to get started with doing that is to use a browser add-on that does a pretty good job with conversion like the one I mentioned in a post above. Once you install it, you can just right-click on the page with the transcript and convert!
  15. They have a Learning Guide on their website. It might be helpful to parents who are just getting started with the language. Here's how I use LF with my little kid, who is just beginning to learn. I let him pick which show in Level 1 he wants to watch. (The single stories are great to start with, followed by the Big Green Forest.) We watch an episode and I pause to explain whenever I think they are using language that my son doesn't understand. After the episode, I let him do the quiz, which is a great way of reviewing the material. Sometimes my son asks to watch the episode again, this time without me interrupting. I let him. We go on like this for 20-30 minutes or however long he wants to go. The same words and phrases repeat over and over throughout the shows in Level 1, so there's a lot of built in repetition. But you can use it any way you want, really. You can turn LF into a much more traditional curriculum and make use of the vocabulary lists and PDFs. You can focus on just reading or just listening, if that's where your kid needs the most practice. If I were starting from scratch as a parent not knowing any Chinese, I'd probably read up on Chinese first before using LF with my child (e.g., I'd watch the Fluent Forever pronunciation videos, read about Mandarin phonology, basics of grammar, etc.)
  16. Yes, resources are much more common and cheaper in simplified, although there are ways to get very good and affordable resources in traditional, too. If you remain committed to it, you will eventually likely learn both, so it won't matter. I do believe from hearing many friends' experiences that you are right in guessing that learning simplified for people who can read traditional is much easier than going the other way round. I have also heard from people who can read both that they prefer to read traditional because the characters contain more information, so they allow their brain to disambiguate faster. Simplified is faster to handwrite, but these days most people type, so that is not of much significance. I do love traditional characters and know that if my children ever want to study in a Chinese-speaking country, it will be Taiwan. I can't imagine us starting with simplified, but I believe you will be fine either way and I do admit it will be much cheaper and probably easisr to get materials in simplified.
  17. I love everything about @Renai's detailed and helpful post, but wanted to offer some encouragement for trying to start without a tutor, especially if the tutor option is not affordable. We started learning without a tutor and I was able to teach my son how to pronounce things properly. He never had to re-learn anything, and - in fact - I ended up pulling him out of CSL classes at our local Chinese school because he was one of the the very few kids there with decent pronunciation, even though he was also the only one who started learning at home with a non-Mandarin speaking parent, without the assistance of a native speaker. To this day we laugh that one of the things he learned from that class is to speak Mandarin with an American accent. (If you know some Chinese, it's actually really hard to "turn off the tones" completely and switch to speaking without them.) Like with any other language, before you jump in, it's a good idea to study the sound system, read detailed descriptions of how the sounds are produced in the mouth, listen to recordings, study with minimal pairs. If the parent is motivated and has limited financial resources, I believe they can do an excellent job learning and teaching these things. 加油!
  18. Honestly, I don't think so. I think Amy Chua was able to get away with pushing her girls so much without breaking them because she had a very deep, very good relationship with them. She is an incredibly intelligent and empathetic woman. To the outside world it just seems like pushing, and it's hard to tell what it feels like or looks like on the inside, but the relationship between the parent and the children is what is most important, and I believe that part was rock solid for the Tiger mom and her cubs. (And before anyone yells at me, I personally choose to parent and educate my kids very differently, with my DS doing many fewer hours of structured academics than most of his peers around us.)
  19. Is this a Saturday school that meets once a week? If so, not knowing anything about the particular one in your area, I'd go with a tutor. Teaching methods at Saturday schools are hit or miss, and when hiring a tutor, you have much more control. Also, in the school, would your child be in a classroom primarily/only with other CSL students? That would mean he is unlikely to get much peer interaction in Chinese, and will also be getting less individual attention than in 1-on-1 classes.
  20. Getting a tutor can be a wonderful option, especially if you aren't planning on learning the language yourself. That being said, given that you're interested in studying with your son, I don't think a tutor is necessary at the beginning. The tones aren't that hard to learn when it comes to beginners' material (single words, simple sentences.) Personally, I only started hiring tutors (on sites like iTalki) once my child was somewhat conversational. I suppose whether or not you'll need a tutor will depend on whether or not you like to or have experience learning foreign languages independently. I see no harm in just jumping in and trying it out. You can always get a tutor later.
  21. I think it might be worth it for you to give it a shot for half a year to see how it goes? Little Fox + Pleco (and maybe Chinese Grammar Wiki) is all you need to get started. 🙂 You're starting early, and if you stick with it for 10 years, your son will absolutely become proficient/fluent. 🙂 I began teaching my older boy 3 years ago. We spent 30-60 minutes on 5 or 6 days a week. I often doubt my ability to pull it off, to tell you the truth. He's now at the level of reading the equivalents of Frog and Toad (or a touch more difficult) in Mandarin. I cannot imagine reading Frog and Toad after 3 years of learning/teaching French, Italian or German. It's not that I regret the choice, but I often do think about the trade-offs. Also, I don't see our study of Chinese is terribly practical. I might be wrong, but if I wanted a practical language, I would probably pick, IDK, German? I do see it as great intellectual exercise. It's both very punishing and very rewarding.
  22. We are in a similar situation. My children and I are bilingual in English and another language, and I am learning Chinese at the same time as I teach it to my kids. I love children's books, so I have spent way too much money on importing children's literature from Taiwan, but, luckily, there are some amazing free resources, too. I highly recommend starting young kids on Little Fox Chinese. The website is completely free. It contains five levels of cartoons designed to teach the language, with accompanying PDFs for reading, tests, MP3s, etc. Pleco is a fantastic dictionary, as is mdbg.net. New Tong Wen Tang is a great browser plug-in for conversion between traditional and simplified characters. Conversation practice classes with tutors on iTalki can be very affordable: starting at around $10 per hour. Now, becoming proficient in Chinese will, on average, take a native English speaker 3 to 4 times more time than accomplishing the same level of proficiency in French. I had friends in college who excelled in their CFL classes, and who even won scholarships to study in China for a summer, but who still couldn't pick up a Chinese novel to read for fun. For that reason, some of them regretted not having picked Spanish or French instead.
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