Sunday, November 11, 2012

The best bilingual book series, with bilingual CD

I just added 8 bilingual books (each book contains a bilingual CD) onto my website. And I am happy to recommend these books to you.

Each bilingual book and bilingual CD set features an excellent selection of 6-10 lovely and fun children's stories perfect for babies and young children, like Who Is Really the Good Child, The Race between the Tortoise and a Rabbit, The Golden Moon, Weight Lifting, The Impolite Piglet, The Little Cat on the Handkerchief, The Willow and the Jujube, A Fox and the Goat, The Red House that Moved Away, The Song of the Toad, The Octopus Magician, and etc.

The English part is excellent as well, since it is edited by a native English-speaker. The accompanying appealing and colorful cartoons help engage young children and compliment the text.

In the CD, the stories are read in Chinese by famous Chinese children's program hosts, and thenthey are read again in English by Charlotte Maclnnis, who is from the US. The stories are accompanied by music and songs.

Children can enjoy reading the books, and listening to the CDs at home, in the car, or via a portable CD player, making them a wonderful tool to learn Chinese language and Chinese culture. So far this series of bilingual books with bilingual CDs is the best one I have for my bookstore so far. The quality is excellent! I bought a whole set for my daughter DD.

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Chinese for Children: How to count 1-5 in Chinese?

Welcome to watch our first episode of Chinese for Children! Today’s topic is on how to count number from 1 to 5 in Chinese.

I guarantee you and your family will remember the Chinese pronunciations of numbers from 1 to 5 after watching this video, since there are lots of repetitions of the words. Plus, it features a lovely Chinese children’s song and an amusing Chinese nursery rhythm to help you relate the words with the context.

This home-made video was produced by Dickson family. I was the producer, host and the editor, DD was the co-host, daddy was the photographer and baby A was the guest appearance (Unfortunately, baby B was snoozing at the time of shooting, so she missed such a good opportunity of to be viewed on the Internet).

 

To prepare for the shooting, DD practiced singing the Chinese nursery rhythm with me. With a motivation to see herself on the TV(we watched the footage on TV at home), DD was eager to learn. Since she had a pretty good foundation of Chinese language, she could sing it independently after several practices. The same with the Chinese children’s song, it was fairly easy for her to get all the words right while following the tune. This confirms with my thinking about the benefits of song and nursery rhythms to language learning: songs and nursery rhythms are playful and are easy to remember.

They also help your baby build phonological awareness and sensitivity—the ability to hear the breakdown of sounds within words and to diagnose rhythms and patterns of languages. As she grows, learning the rhymes himself will help him expand vocabulary, learn number skills and get confidence to express himself through speech (see How to help babies acquire languages? (Method 2)).

I hope you enjoy our first family production! You are more than welcome to drop down any kind of comments, suggestions or ideas.



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E-reading pen: an interactive tool to learn Chinese

After talking with that local mom of a two-year-old, I decided to add more Chinese/bilingual books with CD/VCD/DVD into the bilingual bookstore (see Chinese/Bilingual books with CD/VCD/DVD will be added), so that children and parents can listen to the story narrated in clear Chinese via CDs, or watch the videos, which is often accompanied with animated cartoons, via TV or computer.

One day, when I searched online for Chinese/bilingual books with CD/VCD/DVD, I run into a video showing a Chinese little boy using a specially designed electronic pointer pen to touch pages in a colorful children’s picture book.

When the electronic pointer pen touches the pages, either images or texts, the coresponding Chinese words, phrases, paragraphs, or dialogues are read loudly by the pen in clear mandarin. Sometimes, a song with lovely music comes out of the pen when the pen touches an image. It's a digit product that combines functions of touch-reading, translation, playing-over and game.

The electronic pointer pen, referred as “E-reading pen”, looks similar to a LEAPFROG’s TAG Reader, which is a pen-shaped book reader onto which audio from specific books can be downloaded. The difference, intead of reading English, E-pen reads Chinese when scanned across compatible paper books.


Using the latest recognition technology to recognize words, E-reading pen is an easy and handy tool for children and parents who want to learn Chinese as a second language, or anyone who wants to improve his vocabulary or read more than text books in Chinese and/or English. Users can use E-reading pen independently to learn Chinese pronunciation and intonations, recognize individual characters and later develop a sense of full reading.

They can take the pen and books anywhere with them and learn on the go. E-reading pen offers an alternative to either traditional audiobooks (e.g. CD, VCD, DVD, MP3 and etc) or live person reading aloud. It helps children learn Chinese on an interactive level, making for a more interesting and enjoyable learning experience.

After reviewing so many benefits of the electronic pointer pen, I decided to add E-reading pen and its compatible books into the bookstore, as a complimentary to traditional audiobooks (e.g. CD, VCD, DVD, MP3 and etc) and traditional paper books. There are more than ten companies in China manufacturing E-reading pens and compatible books with various brands and slightly different names, such as Easy-Read Pen or E-Teacher Talking Pen.

In spite of the variance in the designing and outlook, these E-reading pens have similar functions using similar technologies. A Canadian company Bilingual Me, Inc. aslo developed its own product line: LOYO Pen and its compatible bilingual audiobooks, dedicated to helping native English speakers to learn Mandarin Chinese and to talk in Mandarin Chinese.

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