So after my post WAAAAY back in September, we did not touch on actual zhuyin for the rest of the year.
Me bad.
Now, I’m forming a class with some of the parents I know and picking up zhuyin again. Teaching zhuyin from a once or twice a week point of view is so different from teaching your own kids where you have the option of learning it day to day, even if you don’t actually do it.
I wanted to do a series on zhuyin, from background to point of view of teacher, to the curriculum I’m designing. So that you don’t have to necessarily take a class if you have the time to do it with the kids. I know there is already a LOT of information out there so in a way, why one more? Probably because the Montessori way of approaching phonics is so different from the other textbooks I see. And this is part of the reconciling process I’m going through right now. It’s a work in progress. I will know more as our classes progress.
From a teacher’s perspective, how I would teach zhuyin is highly dependent on age of student, their English level, their Chinese character knowledge and their zhuyin background. What crosses my mind when I hear parents’ stories on the zhuyin their kids know is that there is 4 areas in learning zhuyin.
- learning to recognize the characters and associate a specific sound to it
- learning to blend
- learning to read
- learning to spell
I’m planning this as a master post with a TOC to other posts. In the meantime, check out the original post. On re-read it feels so much wordier than what I’ve been telling other people. The original post has background on zhuyin itself, how it changes pronunciations so I won’t go into it here. I”ll come back and update this master post as I write new ones.
- Original Post on How We’re Teaching Zhuyin (but ended up not!)
- Zhuyin vs Pinyin Reference Chart
- Preparation for Zhuyin (Learning to recognize Characters and associated sounds)
- Zhuyin Curriculum / Textbooks
