Julia’s Chinese Lessons-- From Ni Hao to Zai Jian

by Chris Bishop

First year Julia Z. has started Anderson’s first ever student-run Chinese class (co-sponsored by AMSA and GCBA) with hopes of sharing some of the language and culture of her home country with other Anderson students. The class has been quite popular, since many students will be studying abroad in China next fall, and the importance of Chinese as a business language continues to increase. The class has met once a week since April 8, and this week’s class, accompanied by Chinese food, will be the last. Chinese food is an integral part of any Chinese class, since behind all of the serious motivations for learning Chinese always lies the desire to be able to read the menu in Chinese restaurants.

Although menu fluency cannot be achieved in just 6 classes, students have certainly come a long way. The class has covered pinyin and basic pronunciation, numbers, ordering food at a restaurant, and taking a taxi. Students have also learned how to count forwards and backwards. More astute students can now count to 100 million in Chinese. Wow!

In contrast to dull textbooks that start with sentences such as “This is a book,” Julia’s class involved conversations between Zhang Zi Yi and Yao Ming. She also taught several historical Chinese stories including the story about the love story with the snake and the other love story with the butterfly. It turns out that there was a lot of animal love in ancient China. There were also a few karaoke songs and guests speakers relating their personal China anecdotes to spice up the class.

Special thanks go to Julia Laoshi (teacher) for volunteering her time to prepare and teach the lessons each week. Hopefully someone from the class of 2010 will step up and continue the tradition next year.

See photos here