Home » Supplement » Education
Learning Mandarin has had many benefits
Print Edition
I come from Ukraine and I have lived in Shanghai since I was two years old. I seemed to attract a lot of attention. With people queuing to take photos with me, I felt like a movie star! I used to get a lot of treats. The one I remember best was a hard-boiled egg from a couple of friendly grandmas picnicking in Fuxing Park.
My parents sent me to bilingual kindergarten and later to bilingual school. We had two teachers in the classroom, one Chinese-speaking and one English-speaking. That, and playing with my Chinese friends really helped me speak. But characters were completely different. I could never memorize them. Then my mother showed me the most complex Chinese character, the noodles biang biang mian. It’s made up of 58 strokes, but when I tried writing it, it didn’t seem so difficult. I figured out that to memorize the characters I had to do a lot more writing. Learning Chinese has tons of benefits. My sister and I sometimes switch to Chinese to share our secrets when we are in Ukraine. My parents often ask my help because they can never pronounce the tones right. And books translated to Chinese are much cheaper!
(Dara Lesniak is a Grade 6 student at SUIS Pudong.)
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
