On the evening of April 22, the Mandarin training activity for normal students sponsored by the academic research department of the Student Union of the Department of Artificial Intelligence Education was successfully held in Classroom 7001 of the multiple use building in south lake campus. The activity invited Yang Jiyao, the identified blogger of the oral guidance team in CCNU, intended to teach normal students to distinguish and correct Mandarin vowels, achieve accurate pronunciation and beautiful enunciation, improve normal students' oral ability, impart knowledge with their words, educate people with their voice, and help normal students master new teaching skills.
As the activity started, Yang showed a video of “mouth exercise” and led students to warm up. The students followed the video to learn mouth movements such as "pouting, grinning, skimming, stretching, bouncing, pushing, turning, biting and opening", and practiced their lips, tongues and cheeks, so that they could better devote themselves to the next study.
After finishing the warm-up, Yang led students to do formal training. She first asked students two questions, “What are Mandarin vowels?” “Which are Mandarin vowels?” and answered them. Then, she explained the classification and correction of Mandarin vowels in detail. By means combining education with fun such as reading tongue twisters and reading works, Yang activated the class atmosphere, increased students’ sense of participation, mobilized students’ enthusiasm, and helped students distinguish and recognize Mandarin vowels from the classification of four ways of breath and the structural classification. At the same time, she carried out practical exercises to let students practice reciting repeatedly and feel the different pronunciation parts and manners of pronunciations of different vowels.
At the end of the activity, students read the given content aloud one by one to show learning outcomes of this activity and Yang commented on them one by one focusing on their learning situation. The training helped normal students learn the definition and classification of Mandarin vowels and distinguish and correct Mandarin vowels. It made normal students skillfully distinguish the front and back nasal sounds, judge pronunciation parts, achieve accurate and clear pronunciation. Quan Jiaxin, one of students engaged in this training, also indicated that she had mastered new pronunciation skills and further improved her Mandarin level through this study. When reaching this stage, the training activity ended successfully.
Source: the Department of Artificial Intelligence Education of CCNU
Author: Liu Yue Chen Yiran
Translator: Li Huige
Date: May 5, 2022
