Chinese is Easy to Learn

By Zhou Laoshi@Stuyvesant

By Zhou Laoshi

Learning Chinese:

周老师

Easy as a piece of cake or

Hard as nails


Stuyvesant High School• Stuyvesant High School is one of

nine specialized high schools in New York City, United States.

• Stuy. has contributed to the education of several Nobel laureates and other accomplished alumni.

• Stuy. has had 2nd highest number of National Merit Scholarship semi-finalists.


Students Body• Around 800 out of 28,000

are annually accepted at Stuyvesant.

• For the 2013 academic year, the student body was 72.31% Asian and 21.44% Caucasian, 1.03% African American and 2.34% Hispanic.


Non-heritage Speakers are not at disadvantage.

• Reason 1: Many students speak Cantonese or Min Nan Dialect, which makes learning Pinyin challenging.

• Reason 2: Non-heritage speakers are often motivated to learn writing characters.


Guess how many characters my beginner students can learn to write in

the first class?

• 2, 5, 10, or more?


In my class, the answer is…

20


Instead of teaching them writing characters, I teach them

drawing characters


Chinese Characters are Living Symbols


A Story In My Class


Pinyin is even easier to learn, but powerful to use.

• Most of the pronunciation in Pinyin is similar to English, like: b, p, m, f, d, t, n, g, k, h.

• Within one month, mostly of my class (first year to learn Chinese) can read most of the Pinyin clearly.


I show them mouth shape, as well as tongue position.


Do not start with bo po mo fo


As they learn more…The world gets more interesting:– Food– Culture– People– Countries– Career


More Choices for Food• You can order a wider range of Chinese food in

Chinese restaurants in Chinatown and around world.


Explore a Culture of thousands of years

Martial Art Acupuncture Calligraphy

Chinese is Easy to Learn

Education