Mandarin A-level help

One of the subjects i am studying is A-level Mandarin and i am finding it really hard, I currently have a grade D in it.
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

Reply 1

BankaiGintoki

21

Original post by Ripley_Kaegonni

One of the subjects i am studying is A-level Mandarin and i am finding it really hard, I currently have a grade D in it.
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

kijeta

11

Which literature are you studying? (afaik, only Edexcel offers Chinese AL, at least that's the one I did in 2023.)

For me, I studied all books, but I wrote about "A pidgeon named Feng" and "Memories of Old Beijing".

Reply 3

John Ballot

3

I may be able to help.

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

kijeta

11

Original post by John Ballot

I may be able to help.
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!

You only have enough time to listen to the passage up to 6 times.

Mandarin A-level help

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