Post for Oct. 26th

We did not have the class today, but I have few questions after reading the article. Waltz mentioned CCR approach of teaching reading. At the beginning, I assumed that the method has been used for our Latino course, which Dr. Patrick taught some key words he would use for readings such as "Ursa" and we, students would be able to recognize the words later in the reading. However, Waltz later stated, " with the cold character reading (CCR) method, students do not see Chinese characters util the moment they are reading them in a long, connected, repetitive text" (97). Does it mean that students will not see any new characters before reading? I was quite confused while I was reading this part. In the last journal, I mentioned that I was able to read most part of the reading before Dr. patrick translated it, and it seemed that I was able to read easily without any efforts. I am wondering if the method we used for the last class is CCR.

Waltz proposed to teach both simplified and traditional characters, at least, she proposed to show students both of them. However, the problem is, while writing, students will not tell the differences between them and it might turn out that they write both simplified and traditional characters in one sentence. How could we deal with it? Or should we tell students which one is simplified or traditional during teaching? Will that be too much for students?

One interesting point Waltz stated was footnotes. I remembered that when I learned Chinese, I tended to read Pinyin instead of Chinese characters as well. However, she stated that the difference is that western people tend to read alphabets forever, so students need to build habits to write footnotes at the very beginning. I think that there could be another way to do it. For example, at my first grade, our readings always have Pinyin with characters. At the second and third grades, pinyin only shows up while some new characters appears in the article. If we have trouble on reading, we need to use dictionary. Do you think it is a good idea to teach our students to use dictionary? We do not have to let them read the explanation, instead, just finding out the sound.  

LLED 7504 Oct. 12th

On Wednesday class, I feel the context is more comprehensive than the context from the previous classes. Even though we learned two pars this week, I feel that I am able to read most of the contexts before Dr. Patrick translated the meaning. I have learned German for one year and half. I realized that when I read the Latino, I prefer to translate them either in English or German in my mind, instead of Chinese. I guess that it is because Chinese is a complete different language system comparing these three languages, and it is hard to find the similarities. I believe that more languages people learn, faster they would learn. Students from diverse background with other native languages, they might learn in different pace because the relations between their native languages and the target language.

Another interesting point Dr. Patrick mentioned in the class is the grammar in TPRS. I feel that most of us have misunderstandings about learning grammars in TPRS. I did not think that TPRS learn any specific grammars after I read the textbook. However, Dr. Patrick mentioned that for higher level courses, teachers will be able to have one grammar class once one or two months. I am looking forward to listening more about different teaching paces for different levels of students in TPRS.