Review of Play & Learn Chinese with Mei Mei 1

Review of Play & Learn Chinese with Mei Mei 1, produced by Mei Mei Hu.  North Providence, Rhode Island: Mei Mei & Me, 2006.  41 minutes


For parents like me who don't buy into the showy vacuity of "educational" network shows like Dora the Explorer and Ni Hao, Kai-Lan, Mei Mei Hu's old fashioned calmness and authenticity will come as a breath of fresh air.  The first DVD of eight (so far) in her Play & Learn series is low-tech, slow, and didactic by current videographic standards but is thoughtfully organized and extremely effective an as educational tool.  


Mei Mei Hu understands children.  Youngsters who are young enough or sheltered enough not to have been too frequently exposed to the hysterical pace of twenty-first century children's programming will recognize Mei Mei--who reminds me in some ways of the immortal Fred Rogers--as a gifted, caring, and intelligent teacher who respects them as equally smart, capable, well-intentioned human beings.  Toddlers and preschoolers will enjoy learning real Chinese phrases and vocabulary from Mei Mei and will soon be singing along with the simple, catchy, traditional tunes that she introduces.


The program is divided into eight short segments, each of which contains just the right proportion of repetition and novelty to hold children's attention while ensuring that they remember what they have learned.  The choice of vocabulary also lends itself to reinforcement by parents and teachers in everyday home and classroom situations.  Topics covered include Numbers, Parts of the Body, Actions, Greetings, Family, Names, and Ages.


Most of the program segments follow a fairly predictable sequence in which Mei Mei presents new vocabulary twice, very clearly and slowly; the English translation appears on the screen the first time.  One or two children, who do not seem to be native speakers of Chinese but who do pronounce the words clearly and correctly, then recite or demonstrate the same words and phrases a couple of times.  In later segments, the children perform dialogues that would be easy to reproduce in a kindergarten or Saturday-school setting.  Parts IV (Games) and IX (Songs) introduce a wonderful variety of memorable tunes, along with games and drills to help parents and teachers teach and reinforce them.


If your children are learning Chinese, this is a fundamental program to include in your home or school DVD library.  Recommended for ages 1 to 6.

Review of LET'S WRITE CHINESE WITH MEI MEI

Let's Write Chinese with Mei Mei, Books 1 & 2, by Mei Mei Hu.  Providence, Rhode Island: Mei Mei and Me, 2007.  $12.95 (2-book set)  ISBN 1-4243-1539-5.


The Foreign Service Institute lists Chinese as a Category 3 language--a language that's exceptionally difficult for English-speaking adults to learn, requiring twice as much study time as, say, Georgian, Turkish, or Vietnamese.  I assume that this classification is based on the complexity of the Chinese writing system, since the spoken language is not particularly difficult.  People like me who are trying to learn and thousands of Chinese characters and find ways of teaching them to our young children can use all the help we can get.

Mei Mei Hu's two-book set of Chinese-character writing workbooks features 176 single characters (Book I) and 176 two-character compound words and phrases (Book II) with four words or phrases per page and six large spaces in which to practice writing each character.  The number of words introduced in each book would be ideal to cover in a year-long Saturday-school course or a semester-long Chinese immersion course.  Children familiar with Mei Mei's "Play & Learn" DVD series will be happy to see many words whose meanings they already know.

These large-format books are easy for young children to handle, and the characters are carefully arranged so as to make them as easy to remember as possible.  The simplest and most common characters are taught first, and more difficult characters and compounds words and phrases are introduced gradually.  The first character of each compound in Book II is a character previously introduced in Book I, and most of the compounds are arranged in groups of four words or phrases with the same initial character, helping to reinforce characters already learned and set a foundation for further vocabulary development.

Mei Mei Hu's books are an essential tool in any child's Chinese-language education, especially considering that there are so few other character-writing workbooks available for English-speaking children; I have seen none of comparable intuitiveness and simplicity.  Recommended for ages 5 and up.