Thursday, October 11, 2007

Gemma's Journal #15

October 11, 2007




Gemma's Journal #15



Teaching Week One


Finally, back in Taipei! Unfortunately my last Mahjong buddies all left me for mainland China, however, I now have a whole new group of Canadians who are more than a little keen to learn and enjoy the fantastic game which is Mahjong!



So, now that my journal has taken you through the trials and tribulations of me, as a beginner, learning Mahjong, now you get to hear my experience of teaching it to other beginners. Maybe I can even convince them to write some words on what they thought of the game, and perhaps even an evaluation of my teaching methods!



I suppose the aim of my next entries is to give an example of teaching Mahjong to encourage you all to go and recruit some more players. I'm not sure how good my teaching will be, so advice will be welcome along the way! I do hope that this will be a contribution of sorts to the community and if nothing else at least we will have three more players!



My students are a mixed bunch. One has actually played a little Mahjong before with me, one has played some computer Mahjong and the other is a complete beginner. Two do not speak Chinese and one is learning. So I'm expecting that they'll advancing at different rates and this is my main concern at the beginning; to make sure none of them are left behind, yet balancing that out with steady progress.



Lesson One is pretty much decided I suppose. We basically just played with the tiles for half an hour. I gave each of them a suit and got them to find 1 through 9 of that suit to get them used to the tiles and what they looked like. I think it's easy for people who've been playing for a while that it does take a bit of time to get used to the patterns. For example, the one of bamboos is always an issue and even the eight of bamboos was making my students squint at the tiles!



Then we looked at the honor tiles. I tried not to fuss them too much with what each one exactly meant at that point as the non-Chinese speaking were having enough trouble with the numbers on the grands (wans). (I was using a Chinese set with no arabic numbers. I do in fact have a set from the UK with the Arabic numbers written in the corner. That would have been a life-saver this week!)



After that, we looked at what made a basic hand. This seemed to not be too much trouble although I'm not sure I was doing a good job of explaining!



Then, we set up the table and played! We played a first few rounds with our hands open so that we could talk about what we were doing, then when they were confident we played out hands closed. I think overall it went well. All three seemed to have no real problems with the basic progression of play. I think the biggest problem that was encountered was most definitely lack of English on some of the tiles. However, that could have easily been overcome with a different set.



We started talking about hands but, as I didn't want to overload them with information, I avoided it and have saved it all for next week. I mostly wanted everyone comfortable with the feel of Mahjong and accustom people to the tiles.


I can predict there are going to be a lot more problems in the making!


Anyway, have any of you taught Mahjong? Any advice for me? Let me know your thoughts!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I tried giving a sort of beginner lesson to a lady who seemed enthusiastic about learning. I used mahjong cards rather than tiles, because that was what I had. Unfortunately, the indices on the cards were all in Chinese, causing her no end of trouble.

We played a practice game in which the goal was to be the first to make a well-formed hand (yaku not necessary). I lost due to chombo (too many cards in my hand at one point).

This particular form of chombo seems rather easy to get yourself into when playing with cards. But I will not play with tiles, the reason being that I see the people I am trying to introduce the game to at social dances. (Think of the noise tiles would make!)

Anonymous said...

Oh. And as for telling the tiles apart, I sometimes have a hard time myself telling them apart on the computer. I am getting better at telling them apart, but it is still easy to make careless mistakes about the tiles when reading your hand.

I would think that the character suit would be the easiest for your students, as the characters all look different, but configurations of bamboos and dots sort of look alike.

Well, sometimes I get the characters for 2 and 3 mixed up if I don't take enough time to look.

Anonymous said...

Yaku. You will want a list of yaku. You can get a sort of rulesheet for reach mahjong at Mahjong Danmark. This sheet is not for people who have never seen the game, because it omits a lot of essential information, but I believe that it could be a lifesaver for your students, Gemma. And as bonuses, the sheets have scoring tables and also charts of the Chinese characters on mahjong tiles.
Note:The Danes play kuitan nashi, and the sheet reflects this.

Gemma said...

Thanks for that! Yeah most of the first hour or so was spent with people squinting at the tiles!

It's been great fun though. To see the game from a total beginners point of view again has really shown me how far I've come in the past year or so. It's been really interesting.

Thanks for your support!

Anonymous said...

On this page, you can find a game called "Catching the Tortoise" that you might want to use to help drill your students on recognizing mahjong tiles.

Gemma said...

I used to play these games on my computer when I was a kid. Perhaps that's why I didn't find it too hard to get used to Mahjong tiles. It's another great idea! Thanks. I've left them with a Mahjong set and instructions as homework for next week! =p

I think I'm starting to like this teacher thing already!