Uninspired by standardized textbooks for learning Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese), a group of art students created a series of interactive and graphic learning materials, which has won them second prize in a national design competition.
Eight third-year students at Fu-Hsin Trade and Arts School in New Taipei City compiled a set of learning materials to expound the Hoklo language with comic illustrations, while collecting linguistic data and conducting sociolinguistic interviews on their own initiative, they said.
The students — Lu Pei-ying (呂佩穎), Lin Chia-ching (林佳妗), Huang Yin-lin (黃尹琳), Pan Hsuan-chen (潘宣辰), Hsieh Yu-yan (謝瑜晏), Yan Yu-wen (顏郁文), Tsai Mang-fan (蔡孟璠) and Wu Ting-yu (吳庭瑜) — founded a studio dedicated to “our language,” they said.
Photo: Weng Yu-huang, Taipei Times
The learning set features a 4m scroll depicting a linguistic panorama of Taiwan, in which national architectural highlights and miniatures reflecting the Taiwanese lifestyle are illustrated with colloquial Hoklo expressions to prompt learning efficiency with visualized narratives, they said.
Lu said that she started planning the project a year ago, with the initiative originating from a disproportionately small amount of room allotted to Hoklo textbooks compared with the learning materials for English and Japanese, which usually take up a whole shelf in bookstores.
The vernacular language textbooks the team members used during primary school were insipid and formulaic, making them determined to come up with an interesting set of learning materials that could accommodate all age groups, Lu said.
The team designed a collection of vocabulary cards according to five lexical categories — words, loan words, phrases, idioms and unusual expressions — with each category consisting of 32 illustrated cards, they said.
There is a pop-up book introducing traditional holidays and festivals in Hoklo, including the Lunar New Year, the Lantern Festival and celebration of the goddess Matsu’s birthday, they said.
A foldable book illustrates Hoklo expressions such as khantshiu (牽手), meaning wife, making them easily understandable to the Mandarin-speaking public, they said.
A set of 12 Hoklo publications is designed to introduce the 24 divisions of the solar year in the traditional lunar calendar and corresponding Taiwanese folk customs, they said.
The learning set also comes with a variety of stationery, including stickers, fans, assignment books, erasers, stamps and postcards, they said.
The design was awarded second prize in this year’s national design competition for vocational high-school students, they said.
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