Textbooks

At Cantonese 4 Every 1 (Can4every1), unlike most language tuition providers, textbooks used in my beginners’ and intermediate classes are not those available at high street book stores. Instead, Can4Every1 students learn with my self-authored texts.

 

Why write your own textbooks if you can get language books from a book store?

I have yet to come across a Cantonese Chinese textbook in the book store which is truly learner-centred and is effective as well as efficient in equipping one to use the language in a real-life situation. More often than not, language books or phrase books available in book stores are thematic-based, and without giving learners chances to learn about and practise using basic sentence building blocks (sentence patterns, for example), learners relying on these books often struggle to construct their own sentences or questions. At best, these learners may be good at reproducing individual words or short phrases. However, they are less able to string these words and phrases together into meaningful and understandable sentences. These learners quite often feel frustrated as they find expressing their own ideas and thoughts in Cantonese Chinese difficult and their speech could be content-less and limited.

 

The Textbooks

I have been writing and constantly revising my self-written Cantonese Chinese textbooks for over 10 years. These books have been based on years of my teaching experience – both teaching languages and other subjects – as well as existing literatures, research findings on Cantonese language for example. Contents in the books are presented with refer to key cognitive psychology principles relating to learning and memory, and the whole curriculum characterise itself as holistic and learner-centred. They are peppered with a lot of exercises of various kinds targeting to train up individual language skills.

They are being constantly re-edited and refreshed as informed by feedbacks from my students, advances in this field of knowledge and my observations on the way my students interacting with the texts.

 

The teacher also matters

I would like to liken textbooks or curriculum of a language course to the skeleton of a body; vocabularies to the flesh and muscles. The language tutor, through teaching, blows life into this inanimate body and makes it alive.

Both qualities of the teacher and the textbooks matter in bringing out the best learning potential of the student. Imagine – you are given a professional camera, though you have no prior knowledge in handling such piece of fine instrument. Excellent photographs are unlikely to be produced.

Don’t forget to look at the teacher’s profile.

Samples of these textbooks (Cantonese – Beginners’ level)

Chapter 1 – Sample

Chapter 5 – sample

Chapter 8 – sample

* Copyright reserved.

 

Want to see more?

You may arrange a free-trial session with me and sample rest of the textbook collection.

 

Polite notice

My textbook collection is exclusively for my students and is NOT up for sale. Thank you very much for your interest. Please note, my textbooks are my intellectual property and copyright protected. Violation can result in litigations.