2012.1213
Chinese CUBES Awarded Germany iF Communication Design Award
The number of people learning Chinese Mandarin had rapidly increased through the years. In order to solve the problems most of the foreigners encountered when learning Mandarin, the president of Locus Publishing Company Hao Ming Yi cooperated with NTNU to invent and manufacture the Chinese CUBES learning material. The Chinese CUBES awarded the 2013 iF Communication Design Award.
The basic concept of the Chinese CUBES was based on the Rubik’s cube. Combined the cube with the computer technology to develop this brand new teaching and learning material. With the cube feature of Chinese character, the Chinese CUBES made it a lot easier for foreigners to learn Chinese through games.
Hao Ming Yi was the founder of the Locus Publishing Company. He had more than 30 years of publishing experiences and was the world famous Mandarin publisher. Hao Ming Yi established the Chinese CUBES in 2009. He promoted the digital products that combined culture exchange, education, and entertainment. The concept of Chinese CUBES was from Hao Ming Yi’s own idea. He invited Professor Tsai Ya Hsun from NTNU Department of Applied Chinese Languages and Literature, Professor Liu Hsiun from Beijing Language and Culture University, and Teaching Inspector Bai Yueh Sang from France Mandarin Teaching Institutes to be the editing adviser. From selecting the characters to the teaching content design, it combined the brilliant advices from the Mandarin teaching experts around the world. Besides, the language functions Chinese CUBES listed were corresponded with the concept required of CEFR A1. It was perfectly suitable for the beginning Mandarin learners.
NTNU Department of Applied Chinese Languages and Literature provided much professional knowledge and a lot of assistances in this research. For the language functions of the 200 words and the content of the lessons, Professor Tsai Ya Hsun provided many advices and counseling. As the editor of the Chinese CUBES, she pointed out the differences between the general Mandarin teaching materials and Chinese CUBES. She mentioned that most of the teaching materials focused on the vocabulary and sentence pattern. However, the shape, sound, and meaning of Chinese character were more important. Therefore, President Hao combined the advices from the scholars and started from the basic “character”. You might think 200 words were not enough. However, it included the basic communication, daily usage, education, culture, and entertainment. Learned the 200 words on Chinese CUBES, it could be developed into 64000 sentences. Chinese CUBES made learning Chinese different.