Mandarin A-level help
I did Mandarin for scenes as well and got a grade 7 so i thought that i could handle it but i am currently struggling with it a lot.
I have to write essays on a book and a film, do speaking and reading and listening.
I struggle the most with the speaking, listening and the writing and i need some tips on how i could improve on them. For the listening and writing i struggle with writing the characters and grammar structures for writing. With speaking is similar but i cant really form sentences on the spot and i often cant remember important terminology or cant under stand what the teacher is saying fully.
I know its a lot of problems but i dont really see how i can solve it with just revision since i have revised plenty for a lot of these aspects and i just need some help and tips to allow me to get better.
Any help is greatly appreciated, thank you
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Reply 1
I did Mandarin for scenes as well and got a grade 7 so i thought that i could handle it but i am currently struggling with it a lot.
I have to write essays on a book and a film, do speaking and reading and listening.
I struggle the most with the speaking, listening and the writing and i need some tips on how i could improve on them. For the listening and writing i struggle with writing the characters and grammar structures for writing. With speaking is similar but i cant really form sentences on the spot and i often cant remember important terminology or cant under stand what the teacher is saying fully.
I know its a lot of problems but i dont really see how i can solve it with just revision since i have revised plenty for a lot of these aspects and i just need some help and tips to allow me to get better.
Any help is greatly appreciated, thank you
When you learn a language, live with it. Use it actively every day. Associate the terminology you learn with an image in your mind
For example, if you learnt the colour ‘red’ in mandarin, speak it whenever you see something red.
Being able to speak, and come up with sentences, comes with lots of practice speaking your thoughts.
Reply 2
For me, I studied all books, but I wrote about "A pidgeon named Feng" and "Memories of Old Beijing".
Reply 3
Personally, listening (alongside reading) is the easiest thing to handle among all the sections. You are expected to get full marks for paper 1. The questions are truly straightforward, and you are allowed to relisten the passage for unlimited times. If you struggle in listening, it is not advisable to aim for a high score.
Writing is a challenge to tackle. Fortunately, you only have to revise for 2 materials (a book and a movie). Other materials can simply be ignored. For each material you have chosen, I strongly advise you to do the following steps:
•
Write a document of each event and its implications, including the showcase of a character's personality, a theme it depicts, a type of emotion, etc. This allows you to have a collection of events, that you can always select conveniently during the exam.
•
Write another document to generate outlines for all possible essay questions you can think of, based on the first document. For example, "how does the writer depict AAA's personality?", "how does the writer depict the theme of sadness?", etc. I did this last year, and I can tell you I predicted all 2 essays. It is actually pretty easy to predict them - the questions are not too general and not too specific.
Now for the speaking part. Note that there are 2 sections:
•
You will be given a random question, that includes EVERYTHING about China and its recent development. Once you pick the question, you will prepare for 5 minutes and have to present the topic for a long duration, in the form of a conversation with the examiner. This implies that you have to be familiar with all the themes and their subthemes and their subthemes. Write a document including even the narrowest subthemes you can think of, and write an outline for each one. When I prepared for the exam, I even listed out data and specific policies about each topic, which I presented to the examiner accurately. Be careful that you have to end EACH response with a sentence of "conversation".
•
The second part is the independent research. It is exactly like the first part, except that you can prepare more comprehensively since you know the topic. When you prepare, you can actually predict the entire conversation, since the examiner will generally ask you questions about things written in the Independent Research Project form. So, you should write a lot of "prompts" in the form, so you can accurately guide the entire conversation.
Hope this helps!
Reply 4
Personally, listening (alongside reading) is the easiest thing to handle among all the sections. You are expected to get full marks for paper 1. The questions are truly straightforward, and you are allowed to relisten the passage for unlimited times. If you struggle in listening, it is not advisable to aim for a high score.
Writing is a challenge to tackle. Fortunately, you only have to revise for 2 materials (a book and a movie). Other materials can simply be ignored. For each material you have chosen, I strongly advise you to do the following steps:
•
Write a document of each event and its implications, including the showcase of a character's personality, a theme it depicts, a type of emotion, etc. This allows you to have a collection of events, that you can always select conveniently during the exam.
•
Write another document to generate outlines for all possible essay questions you can think of, based on the first document. For example, "how does the writer depict AAA's personality?", "how does the writer depict the theme of sadness?", etc. I did this last year, and I can tell you I predicted all 2 essays. It is actually pretty easy to predict them - the questions are not too general and not too specific.
Now for the speaking part. Note that there are 2 sections:
•
You will be given a random question, that includes EVERYTHING about China and its recent development. Once you pick the question, you will prepare for 5 minutes and have to present the topic for a long duration, in the form of a conversation with the examiner. This implies that you have to be familiar with all the themes and their subthemes and their subthemes. Write a document including even the narrowest subthemes you can think of, and write an outline for each one. When I prepared for the exam, I even listed out data and specific policies about each topic, which I presented to the examiner accurately. Be careful that you have to end EACH response with a sentence of "conversation".
•
The second part is the independent research. It is exactly like the first part, except that you can prepare more comprehensively since you know the topic. When you prepare, you can actually predict the entire conversation, since the examiner will generally ask you questions about things written in the Independent Research Project form. So, you should write a lot of "prompts" in the form, so you can accurately guide the entire conversation.
Hope this helps!
Reply 5
Personally, listening (alongside reading) is the easiest thing to handle among all the sections. You are expected to get full marks for paper 1. The questions are truly straightforward, and you are allowed to relisten the passage for unlimited times. If you struggle in listening, it is not advisable to aim for a high score.
Writing is a challenge to tackle. Fortunately, you only have to revise for 2 materials (a book and a movie). Other materials can simply be ignored. For each material you have chosen, I strongly advise you to do the following steps:
•
Write a document of each event and its implications, including the showcase of a character's personality, a theme it depicts, a type of emotion, etc. This allows you to have a collection of events, that you can always select conveniently during the exam.
•
Write another document to generate outlines for all possible essay questions you can think of, based on the first document. For example, "how does the writer depict AAA's personality?", "how does the writer depict the theme of sadness?", etc. I did this last year, and I can tell you I predicted all 2 essays. It is actually pretty easy to predict them - the questions are not too general and not too specific.
Now for the speaking part. Note that there are 2 sections:
•
You will be given a random question, that includes EVERYTHING about China and its recent development. Once you pick the question, you will prepare for 5 minutes and have to present the topic for a long duration, in the form of a conversation with the examiner. This implies that you have to be familiar with all the themes and their subthemes and their subthemes. Write a document including even the narrowest subthemes you can think of, and write an outline for each one. When I prepared for the exam, I even listed out data and specific policies about each topic, which I presented to the examiner accurately. Be careful that you have to end EACH response with a sentence of "conversation".
•
The second part is the independent research. It is exactly like the first part, except that you can prepare more comprehensively since you know the topic. When you prepare, you can actually predict the entire conversation, since the examiner will generally ask you questions about things written in the Independent Research Project form. So, you should write a lot of "prompts" in the form, so you can accurately guide the entire conversation.
Hope this helps!
I wanna ask a quick question, as you said I need to end each response with a conversation, do I need to do a conversation in the middle of the long speech that I am doing in paper3
Reply 6
Reply 7
You won't need to use communication during the 1-2 minute introduction. However, I strongly recommend using it for the questions that follow. You can also steer the conversation by prompting the examiner with something like, "我還進行了一些關於_____的研究，您有興趣聽聽嗎？" Most examiners will likely say yes to that.
Reply 8
Reply 9
Thank you for your response and help, and I actually wanna ask if I need to ask a question during the paper3 task1 part1, which the examiner will give me 5 minute preparation time and ask me two questions, and I need to answer, do I need to actively ask question to the examiner during that time? Or the examiner will ask me question after the my response ? I’m sorry that I weirdly worded the previous question which make you misunderstood my meanings
Reply 10
Reply 11
Thank you very much , you really helped me out.
Reply 12
If you need any help in your a levels, feel free to reach out too ^^
Reply 13
Sorry to bother again, when I search for the mark scheme, I saw student usually add some numerical data to support his view, do they really do the research or do they just make it up? And will speaking out the research help to increase the grades?
Reply 14
Memorizing and incorporating numerical data is definitely a big advantage. Be sure to include it in your independent research project!
p.s. when I did my exam, I conducted quite some research on the subthemes and was able to use numerical data in the first section too – and it made a noticeable impact on my score
Reply 15
p.s. when I did my exam, I conducted quite some research on the subthemes and was able to use numerical data in the first section too – and it made a noticeable impact on my score
Sadly I already submitted the independent research, and only mention a handful of data, can I still mention the data with reference in the speech without being in the irp?
Reply 16
Yes, definitely! You should have only submitted the IRP form, which includes brief statements about your research. Make sure to expand on those points instead of simply repeating what's on the form.
Reply 17
Ok, thank you very much for helping me out every time
Reply 18
you got this!
Reply 19
you got this!
Sorry to bother again. I just wanna ask will I get penalise for overwriting my answer in listening, reading and do I need to write word for word in the translation section. Thank you!
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