Martial Homework!

Last week on Journey of Martial Apprenticeship, we tasked the apprentices to write in Chinese the 24 movements of the Eagle Claw style of martial arts they are learning from Master Zhuo (see previous post).

This week, our interns went to visit the apprentices at school to find out how they were doing with this task. Most of the Chinese students understood the steps Master Zhuo had written for them and were able to replicate them with minimal difficulty. The non-Chinese students definitely faced difficulties understanding the words and copying them down again. However, they were very adamant about learning the steps they had performed in class with Master Zhuo and devised several innovative ways to go about it.

Most of them enlisted the help of their Chinese friends to translate the words for them. They would also watch their Chinese friends write the Chinese characters and mimic their words, stroke for stroke. One of our apprentices, Maziah even decided to find out how the strokes in Chinese characters were written and managed to pen down the 24 steps all on her own.

When asked about their overall experience with the task, the apprentices expressed an appreciation of the need to understand each others language and culture. This journey of martial apprenticeship allows them to build stronger friendships through the sharing of culture and values. One of our apprentices, Idil, conveyed to us that he learnt a lot about Chinese culture and values from the way Master Zhou emphasised discipline and resilience as he taught them Eagle Claw.

We will be pick the 3 best worksheets with the best handwriting and they will all get a small reward from the project team!