Zhuyin Bopomofo

Bopomofo / Zhuyin - Exhibition display Video

 (Media Design school- 2020 Capstone Project)

Learning to pronounce Mandarin with Zhuyin.

My initial idea for this project topic was to let foreigner learn Bopomofo (Mandarin Phonetic Symbols/Zhuyin), as my background, I am a Taiwanese who born in New Zealand, and live in New Zealand till 7 years old, and went back to Taiwan studying Mandarin till I was 21 years old and then came back to New Zealand again. Hence, I had the opportunity to study in New Zealand's kindergarten and elementary school, to learn New Zealand local English when I was little.

The people we knew around in New Zealand they have similar experiences as my family. Lots of Kiwi Taiwanese, Kiwi Malaysians, and Kiwi-Asian were born and they are of similar ages as me. Those kids would have two languages that can speak as their parents are from Taiwan and Malaysia etc. The situation I had known about was normally they will just learn some Chinese classes here because their parents want them to keep their mother language as well. So they will send the kids to learn Mandarin.

However, I have noticed that in New Zealand, those Asian teachers only teach these Asian Kiwis ping-yin to learn how to pronounce Chinese words. But they didn't use Bopomofo (Mandarin Phonetic Symbols/Zhuyin) to teach those kids from the basic stage. They said pin-yin is probably a faster way for English speakers to learn. However, use pin-yin to learn how to pronounce Mandarin/Chinese is not a better way to learn how to pronounce the correct sound and tone to speak Mandarin/Chinese. My idea is to create a new learning material for teens to learn Mandarin, possibly more fun and easier material for learning.

I want to use homophonic memory to help people who are interested in Mandarin and want to learn it from basic to advance. Including Zhuyin (Bopomofo) and Mandarin. Basically, I will be focusing on basic Zhuyin (Bopomofo) and basic Mandarin learning on my project.

My idea was to create some simple motion graphic videos to help users to learn the pronunciation of Mandarin and a nice learning material for the user to practice and reading and writing it from their phone or IPad.

My Project topic is ‘ Learning to pronounce Mandarin with Zhuyin’. I've done more researches and I decided to put my creative learning material on popular social media, which is Instagram and Discord platform, because as these two applications are the most people using one and also it really suits to my target audience to use them for learning as well, handier and easier to get in touch with. By creating this creative material from my ideas, I've been brainstorming a lot and finally created this material out and it is a material that helps the users to practice Zhuyin (Bopomofo), and easier to memorise it, as it is a homophonic memory method. I hope people who use my creative material can actually gain something and be interested in Mandarin/Chinese.

Instagram Page :

https://www.instagram.com/zhuyin.bopomofo/

37  Zhuyin(Bopomofo) chatacters