L197 Beginners' Chinese Module Team, The OpenUniversity Learning Chinese Characters – with ink, keyboard and mobile Apps Department of Languages The Open University

L197 Beginners' Chinese Module Team, The OpenUniversity What do you know about Chinese? Dialects Tonal language Characters (non-alphabet) Simplified vs. complex/traditional form Little correlation between sounds (pinyin) and the writing system

L197 Beginners' Chinese Module Team, The OpenUniversity Mandarin vs Cantonese

L197 Beginners' Chinese Module Team, The OpenUniversity Tones

L197 Beginners' Chinese Module Team, The OpenUniversity Characters 50,000 characters approximate, of which roughly 2000 are used for everyday purposes. The earliest written records can be traced back to 3500 years ago. (oracle bones) About 400 – 500 in GCSE No space between words WearetalkingabouttheChineseculture Square in shape: evolving from pictographs resembling the objects they represent.

L197 Beginners' Chinese Module Team, The OpenUniversity

Calligraphy – a form of art.

L197 Beginners' Chinese Module Team, The OpenUniversity Comparison of simplified and complex characters

L197 Beginners' Chinese Module Team, The OpenUniversity Pinyin There are various systems for transcribing Chinese sounds into the Roman alphabet. Pinyin was adopted as the official system in the People’s Republic of China in 1958, and has since become the standard and most- used form of transcription in schools, the media and elsewhere. Pinyin is used in the teaching of pronunciation.

L197 Beginners' Chinese Module Team, The OpenUniversity Characters as building blocks

L197 Beginners' Chinese Module Team, The OpenUniversity Guess what the following words mean Electric brain Electric viewing Floor blanket Iron pancake Machine person Big school Dragon prawn

L197 Beginners' Chinese Module Team, The OpenUniversity Using Apps on smartphones to learn Chinese

L197 Beginners' Chinese Module Team, The OpenUniversity Chinese Characters First Steps High level of interactivity - audio, visual, writing, pinyin, English in one interactive medium (CD player, textbook, notebook, dictionary in one) User can set the level of difficulty Entertaining with game-like features

L197 Beginners' Chinese Module Team, The OpenUniversity 20 lessons and each lesson with 4 sections: writing, listening test, reading test and word search

L197 Beginners' Chinese Module Team, The OpenUniversity Typing Chinese characters using pinyin input Install Chinese font No need to have special key board

L197 Beginners' Chinese Module Team, The OpenUniversity Thank you!