Our book can certainly help students who don’t have a teacher with them, but if you’re actually teaching, the book can be a wonderful addition to your teaching tools. We know Mah Jongg has a steep learning curve, and as a teacher you want to provide many different ways for students to become comfortable with the material. All students can cut out the paper tile set at the back of the book for their at home practice, or they can print out the pdf from this website on slightly heavier stock paper. You’ll have to decide if you want them to rely on our Card and all the exercises related to it in the book, or forego our Card and the exercises answers in the book and go straight to the NMJL Card, with the updated answers found on our website. Below we outline a couple approaches we thought of that might appeal to you. You’ll decide which way you want to try.
We see two main ways to use the book if your students all have a copy of it. Both approaches allow teachers to use the book as an adjunct to your teaching the tiles, interpreting the hands and forming a plan and the steps of the game. But here the similarities end. You have to decide if you want to rely on the book and our card as the first step in learning the game.
The first way is to completely rely on all aspects of the book if your students all have a copy of the book,. You can teach the way you usually do, and the book will provide additional visual and text support. The book’s clear visuals makes some of the somewhat murky and confusing aspects of the game easier to understand. In other words, the book will expand on what you say in class. This approach will involve using our Card in the book, much the way you would use a soon-to-be outdated NMJL Card if you were teaching a class late in the year or in the first few months of the new calendar year before April. You can use all the exercises in the book without having to make any changes. Students might even play a few rounds of the game with our Card. Then you can switch over and use the NMJL card. Answers to the quizzes and exercises for the Card are found on our website.
Or you can use the book to allow them to become familiar with the goals of the game, the tiles and the way the game is played, but disregard our Card. The exercises can still be done as we have updated answers on the website.
And there are probably lots of different ways to proceed. What’s important is that you and your students feel comfortable.
Enjoy!!
Please tell your students there’s a typo on p 114, a remnant of an early version of the book which assigned seat (compass) positions in the same way everywhere else in the world has them, but not American Mah Jongg tournaments. The word South should be removed.
…or something like this: