Step 1: Inspire - ignite curiosity & a sense of "I got this"

(With lesson outline)

In last week’s post, I introduced seven areas I pre-teach to new learners before starting any course or programme. They were:

1. Characters 🀄️

2. Digital Dictionaries 📓

3. Stroke Order 🖌

4. Radicals 口

5. Pinyin 🗣

6. Tones & Numbers 1️⃣

7. 听写 📝

This month, I set myself an objective to compile the lesson plans for this entire ab initio series, and this is Step 1 of 7.

For me, it’s important that new learners have three things in their first ever Mandarin lesson:

1. A feeling of curiosity, excitement, wonder about the language

2. A feeling of realistic optimism: e.g. “I can do this”

3. A feeling of achievement and accomplishment

Now that’s a lot of feelings!

The first lesson is always about the way it feels:

Excitement, wonder, curiosity, accomplishment, success, inspiration…

I want new learners to feel all of these things.

"Believe you can and you're halfway there."

So in this very first lesson I make it really easy: the only measure of success is that they just try. That’s all I assess on - did they make an attempt to join in, read the characters, and memorise them with me?

When a learner knows how they’ll be judged, they will inevitably focus on doing that.

If I tell them that what I all I will check with them at the end is whether they can attempt to read the characters - no matter if the tones are off - they are much more likely to give it a shot. And they usually succeed.

Here’s my lesson plan outline for the first ever session I would do with a brand new ab initio learner:

1. First have a small discussion about Mandarin.

   1. A good question starter is: What words do you think of when you think of learning Mandarin?

   2. Usually, the word ‘hard’ will come up.

   3. So right away, I like sharing some interesting things about Mandarin that actually make it a lot more straightforward than other languages. E.g. I share that there are no changing verb conjugations like in Arabic. That there are no masculine feminine changes. And that learning characters is a bit like a puzzle - it helps you understand the language more deeply.

2. Select 5-6 “easy” characters to help your students memorise.

   1. My selection for the first ever lesson is always: 你 好 我 叫 你 呢 再 见.

   2. Note that I’ve tested out teaching 很高兴，认识，etc. first, but I found that the ‘xing’ and the ‘ren’ sound was always just too much for the first ever lesson. Especially when English isn’t the first language either (I teach mostly Arabic first language speakers).

3. Explain what the goal is: to learn to read a short dialogue:

   1. 你好！/ 你好！/ 我叫… / 你呢 / 我叫… / 再见 / 再见

   2. I usually discuss this dialogue a bit before telling them what it means:

      1. I ask: what could this text be (a dialogue, a paragraph etc.)? Are there any characters that look the same, why is that? Sometimes learners may even guess the meanings, and that it’s a ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’.

4. Assure learners they won’t be judged on their tones or pronunciation. Assure them the only measurement of success will be that they join in, and they attempt to read the characters, and that they can read the short dialogue without help.

5. Begin drilling with the flashcards - I add these flashcards to slides. I usually do 你好 on one flashcard/slide, 我叫…， 你呢，and 再见 on individual slides, and then once they’ve memorised these couplets, I split the characters and we drill individual characters too.

6. This flashcard progression continue for about 10-15 minutes. I go back and do tricky ones over and over again until they’ve memorised them. Encouragement, enthusiasm, high 5’s and keeping the pace moving quite quickly is the way to make this super fun.

7. Finally, by the end of drilling the characters and words, they should be able to attempt reading the dialogue without any support. And they should feel great about it!

In this lesson I never try to start teaching pinyin in depth, or any other thing apart from just being able to attempt reading these 6 characters.

It’s very important to me that new learners come away with a positive experience and a mindset of “wow - I can do this”. It’s also important that they can use some language right away after their first lesson.

Some follow up work after this might be for them to continue memorising the flashcards every now and then before the next lesson. I also sometimes make little quizzes with the characters to see if they can still remember the meanings.

In the next post I’ll be digging into how to teach students Step 2 of 7 - digital dictionaries. :)