mandarinedge.com

Mandarin classes set for 2010
Despite initial rejection of the idea, district now moving ahead, thanks to strong support in city

Christina Myers
Burnaby Now

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Some of Burnaby's youngest students will have the chance to learn the world's most widely spoken language come fall 2010.

District assistant superintendent Gina Niccoli-Moen presented board members with an update on a proposed Mandarin language program this week - which would run in kindergarten to Grade 3 classes - noting that it would be one of very few such programs anywhere in the country.

International Herald Tribune
Massachusetts company specializes in Mandarin textbooks
By Robert Weisman
The Boston Globe
Tuesday, November 25, 2008

BOSTON: China is solidifying its role as a leader in the 21st century global economy. Career-minded college students in the United States are taking note. And that has created another opportunity for the publisher, entrepreneur and deal maker Nader Darehshori.

As China rises, demand grows for Mandarin language skills
By Tini Tran
The Associated Press
Monday, March 24, 2008

TAIPEI: When Marvin Ho co-founded a Chinese language school in Taiwan in 1957, his only students were a handful of Western missionaries.

Five decades later, it's a different story. Ho's classrooms are packed with scores of people clamoring to learn what they believe is the next global language: Mandarin Chinese.

If you have caught the Olympics opening ceremony, you would have seen the Chinese characters formed by the moving blocks display. The word displayed was 和 which is pronounced as he2 (second tone).

This character is actually composed of two characters, on the left is 禾 which means grain, and on the right 口 which means mouth. Both characters taken all together forms the 和 character.

We can say that harmony 和 results when everybody has enough (禾 grain) to eat (口 mouth).

Tea is a common drink throughout the world. It is thought that drinking tea originated from the China. There are a whole lot of tea categories. In China tea are classified like black, green, red and white tea. In addition there is the Pu Erh (普洱) tea. Tea classifications based on the processing that they have gone through,i.e. fermentation, semi-fermentation, etc. Pu Erh is unique due the action of the microbes that enriches the tea, and make it very healthy. Like wine, it ages well and older Pu Erh is well regarded and more expensive.

Text adventure games, also called Interactive Fiction, precede the current batch of visual and reflex-based games. It was invented in the mid 1970s when graphical computing power is not commonly available. It reached its zenith, in the eighties, the “Zork” trilogy and anthology probably sold over millions of copies.

NIAO3 鸟 BIRD

GUI1 龟 TORTOISE

We have developed a Mandarin Learning System that is facilitated by a Flashcard system. The Flashcard system uses the space-repetition method separated into 4 revision categories. The system also has a dictionary search and recall function that can also be used to create the individual flashcard.