Chinese Weather Forecast
This endeavor was called the Chinese Weather Forecast Project. In this project, we had to pick one American and one Chinese city to report the weather forecast on in Chinese. This meant researching the forecasts of the cities, writing a short script to go along with the forecast, and recording the forecast. The products made in this endeavor were a table with the forecasts of both cities, a short script, and the video we made of the forecast. This project was completed by myself over five days with each day designated for research, making the table, script writing, practice, and recording. We started off this project by researching the top ten cities in both America and China for suggestions on our cities. As well with research we asked questions like “Do I have any personal connections with this city?” and “Is it my dream to travel to this place?” in order to hone in the city we wanted to choose. The next step was to research picture that went along with the weather in order to display during our forecast. Nest, we had to research what outdoor activities are popular for both of the cities at the time our forecast is going to be centered. Ex. IF I was to do Dayton, Ohio, a popular outdoor activity is to go biking on the bike paths, or go to one of the Five Rivers Metro Parks to hike, fish, and just have fun. Once we finished the research component, we turned to making the table of the forecast of the two cities weather. This table would include the high and low temperature, the weather for that day, the time of sun rise and sun set, and the activities most suitable to do on that day. This then lead to the script writing, which was peer and teacher edited. After the script was final, we memorized and recorded the live forecast, making sure to upload to YouTube for best viewing by our teacher. One of the major challenges I had in this learning process was the fact that I have been very ill lately which has caused me to only be able to do half days at school in even the best of circumstances. It made it very difficult to understand where my peers were and how I could “speed up” the process to catch up. Because of my illness most of my days during this project I was at home unable to do any work. To overcome this challenge, once I was able to start half days again I started by talking to my peers to get a full understanding and refer to the handout for guidance. These tools were very helpful in this process over wise I wouldn’t have been able to get done what I needed to get done in the timeframe needed.
My first artifact is the script itself. This fits into the story of this learning process because it really shows how much I was able to do while trying to catch up with my peers. As well, it fits into the story of this learning process because this script was what I used to briefly look and memorize from in order to make my weather forecast. In this project because I had been absent for so long, I had a lot of new terms I learned that were very important elements to making an effective script. These terms like 度，degree (as in temperature) ， made it so my script was able to flow better in grammar and in Chinese. Other temperature terms such as 最高 (high), and 最低 (low) made it so I could describe the temperature in a way that made sense to talk about. Like today’s high is _____ with a low of _____ degrees. As well, I learned about 日出 (sun rise), and日落 (sun set). This made it so the viewers could understand what I was talking about when I said a time.。Adding, I learned lot of terms for activities like 跟的朋友游戏外 (play outside with your friends), 游泳 (go swimming), 水上乐园 (water park), and 做拼图室内 (doing puzzles indoors).
My second artifact is the weather forecast video. This fits into the story of this learning process because it shows how I practiced the Chinese in order to improve my speaking skills, and to be able to speak fluently to describe the weather and other things in the forecast. The classroom content I learned that is visible in the weather forecast video is first the ability to improve my speaking skills and confidence in my abilities. This skill will help me in the future as I continue Chinese with spontaneous speaking skills. As well, this video helped me in learning Chinese through a real forecast not just an example out of a textbook. It showed me how to come up with a good forecast that is understandable and fluent in Chinese.
The biggest things I took away from this project was in fact the speaking practice. Since I was absent so frequently it has not helped my speaking skills and getting comfortable with speaking about weather. This project helped that by making it a real example and not just one made up in my head. Another big thing I learned was being able to describe new activities and not just the basic singing, and dancing. I learned about new water activities in Chinese like swimming, and going to a waterpark as well as more relaxing activities like puzzles. I think I grew the most in this project in persistence of learning the materials even when I was almost two weeks behind my peer’s content wise. I believe this is what I grew the most in because I had to put in twice the effort in the project as my peer’s did from being behind and having a short timeline. This will help me in the future as I try to pursue Chinese in the future because it shows my dedication to this class and this language as I commit to learn it. As well, it will help in my work ethic as I strive for things to be done in the best of their ability.
