Annotated Bibliography #1

http://www.chinese-tools.com/

Summary

This website shows things about modern and traditional China, travel, study, news, business, Chinese learning materials, tools and resources, forum and language exchange club.

When I taught Chinese in the States, I asked my students to explore and use this website a lot. Usually, when I first start to introduce Chinese language to beginners, I introduce my name first. And then ask students to go to "Chinese name" to search how to write their names in Chinese characters. It shows lots of Englsh names in Chinese characters, also other countries' names. But usually, even if students see how their names translated into Chinese charachters on the webpage, they still don't know how to pronounce and write it, Chinese characters looks complecated to them. I will still have to teach them to write their Chinese names stroke by stroke and correct their pronounciation. I can just always teach them their Chinese names on white board, but it is fun to find their names in the computer lab by themselves, and they can also find their parents and sibling's names if they know the technology resouce.

In nowadays, even Chinee people don't write with their hands a lot, but type on computers instead. So I ask my American students to practice typing in Chinese characters on this website. But we also practice writing Chinese characters with hands a lot. I encourage my students to learn more by themselves on the website, it has many lessons  which students could listen to them on line to learn. They can als know a lot of culture stuff through this website.

Reflection

I think this website is a really good resouce for American students to learn Chinese. It includes many important aspects about Chinese language and culture. Students are always excited that they could go to computer lab to learn. But there are also some shortages that the website or say technology can not meet our need. 1. For learning Chinese language, writing Chinese characters is one of the most important skills, students love technology, but the softwares we have today are still not enough to show students how to write evry single character yet, they still have to follow some traditional ways to learn, like practicing writing with their hands a lot. 2. There is no website could meet everyone's need, when we learn some Chinese culture content, the students must explore on many websites, search on google, especially for some certain topics. Technology changed students' ways of learning, however sometimes it shows it is still not enough, so we need technology to be more developed, more humane and highlier targeted. And we always need to use technology flexibly.