Characteristics of Mandarin Chinese: teaching Spanish<

Characteristics of Mandarin Chinese: teaching Spanish

To write, they use logographic characters: each symbol represents a word or a morpheme. For example, "hello" is written as 你好.

Chinese is a tonal language: intonation changes the meaning of words.

The grammar is simple; verbs are not conjugated, and there are no different verb tenses. Chinese has no grammatical gender and uses markers instead of word changes for plurality.

As for pronunciation, Chinese has fewer sounds than Spanish.

Strategies for the classroom:

I believe that to communicate well with a Chinese student, it’s important to:

Use the language progressively.

Speak slowly and clearly.

Repeat often, but spaced out.

Use visual aids, such as vocabulary flashcards.

Use technological resources with images.

Focus on phonetics and give it significant importance. Practice the sounds "r" and "rr."

Recommend YouTube channels and platforms like Khan Academy, which have educational videos in Spanish with subtitles in Chinese.

Hopefully, this way, Spanish won’t “sound like Chinese” to them. ????