Teaching Chinese at Home
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Hi Tamarind,
I have a query here and would appreciate your advice.
DS1 doesn’t fancy chinese and will never pick up a chinese book on his own. To get him to read, I have to do the reading. Now my problem is that there are some verses/cheng yu that he doesn’t seem to know. So he’ll keep interrupting me to tell me I don’t know.
Half the time, I am not sure if he really doesn’t know, or if he just wants to needle me. But I’m giving him benefit of the doubt.
Should I break the story telling to explain? And is it alright to explain in English if it makes the explanation clearer and easier to understand?
Or should I make markings and come back to it later?
Thanks very much in advance! -
Hi, hquek and Tamarind,
sori, please allow me to jump in. I am very eager to share my experience
I found the online 成语故事大全 is quite good. both my kids like it. you can 百度一下:
http://www.tudou.com/playlist/id/7543615/
http://www.baidu.com/s?wd=%B3%C9%D3%EF%B9%CA%CA%C2%B4%F3%C8%AB&oq=%B3%C9%D3%EF&rsp=7&f=3
\"... Should I break the story telling to explain? And is it alright to explain in English if it makes the explanation clearer and easier to understand?
Or should I make markings and come back to it later? ....\"
I have tried all these before, all work well for my kids.
and one more thing, as chinese character is 象形字, e.g, if he knows 木 (wood or tree), i will teach him 林(trees), then 森 (forest). he said that's fun and asked me for some more characters...
but the challenge is not every chinese charecter can be explained in this way.....
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thanks hyperkiasu!
It’s not so much of word recognition, rather he’s not sure what a certain term refers to eg 硬嘴 or maybe some other chinese idiom.
When I’m telling the story, it gets quite disruptive when he keep saying I dunno what this means. Am wondering if I should break the story so that he knows what this term means? or just keep going?
And DH complains that I explain in english. it’s not quite right I know but then if I explain in chinese, my chinese being so so, I end up with one big story and sometimes DS1 gets more confused.
But now from time to time, I’ll read half way and make him continue on a bit. Then at least I’ll know if he’s looking at the words or dazing off.
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daisyt:
Hi daisytrelaxedmom, at this stage P5, there are still ways to improve, although not much time left to handle PSLE. But these methods can be quite boring and need determination. This coming June holidays is the best time to start, try to make it one article on alternate days.
1) Try to pick articles from newspaper or 少年文摘, read aloud, write out the difficult words, find the meaning of the difficult words and 造句
http://www.shnwzb.com/
2) Have a discussion with him on this article. Ask about his feelings on the topics, the characters ... Then get him to write down his 读后感。 Start with about 80 words first, then slowly increase to 100, 200.
3）Go through his 读后感, correct his mistakes and make him copy out the corrected version.
4) Watch Chinese news. Then you can pick a particular news and explain in details to him in Mandarin. Most of the time, they only catch and understand 40% when watching news, hence we need to explain more to them.
5) I remember there is this book for P5 and P6, on 好词 (something like that). Memorise these 词.
6) Go visit places of more Chinese culture and you can start explaining to him in Mandarin or pick on something to discuss. Eg. Haw Par Villa, there are two Chinese museums in Chinatown there.
Chinese story books is fine if you pick those stories not too lengthy or else the kids tend to get tired. I still prefer newspaper and 少年文摘.
There is a website recommended by a parent in another thread, its quite good. Take a look and you can find useful resources there.
http://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11094
Hope the above helps. My child did not attend any Chinese tuition or enrichment class before and she did well in PSLE HCL and now still doing fine in Sec.
Thank you for your valuable post. :goodpost:
My DD is in P5 this year, she is not taking HCL due to few marks shorter to the requirement we did not appeal for her last year. I like your point 3 and think this would be the best way to train for a good compo and attempt to 理解问答. DD has started watching Chinese News (because of Thailand) and read some simple events in Wanbao etc. I hope that she will able to obtain a good grade for CL in next year PSLE. -
hquek:
hi hquek, I personally do not like the idea of explain in English BUT this is the kind of practise and teaching in dd's sec school now. I guess this is more towards bilingual approach. :roll:....
And DH complains that I explain in english. it's not quite right I know but then if I explain in chinese, my chinese being so so, I end up with one big story and sometimes DS1 gets more confused.
The Chinese teacher even encourage them to write down the meaning of difficult Chinese words in any form (English, drawings, symbols etc.) As long as these \"forms\" can make themselves understand, its fine. -
hquek:
Hi Hquek,thanks hyperkiasu!
It's not so much of word recognition, rather he's not sure what a certain term refers to eg 硬嘴 or maybe some other chinese idiom.
When I'm telling the story, it gets quite disruptive when he keep saying I dunno what this means. Am wondering if I should break the story so that he knows what this term means? or just keep going?
And DH complains that I explain in english. it's not quite right I know but then if I explain in chinese, my chinese being so so, I end up with one big story and sometimes DS1 gets more confused.
But now from time to time, I'll read half way and make him continue on a bit. Then at least I'll know if he's looking at the words or dazing off.
according to ur profile, ur DS born in 06 is in Nursery, right?
when my DS was in Nursery, he was only interested in 孙悟空. I borrowed a lot of english and chinese books, but he was just interested in the colorful pictures only.... he was not yet ready for readings.....so at that time, my hubby and myself just told the story, we dun read. actually i found it quite boring if i read chinese story word by word to him. thus we have to read stories ourselves before storytelling. (strangely, we dont feel bored if we read english story word by word to him)
as he grows older he picks up reading habits quite naturally. Now he is in P1, he sometimes borrows chinese story book from school library by himself but he needs us to read to him if there are no pinyin. we only explain key words to help him understand the story. thus disruption can be minimized....and i think at the early stage, it is more important to sustain his interest in reading chinese books thus i allow him to skip some words.... -
Brenda10:
hi Brenda10, I don't recommend wanbao. Better read zaobao or the da mu zhi and douhao. You can find them online too.
Hi daisyt
Thank you for your valuable post. :goodpost:
My DD is in P5 this year, she is not taking HCL due to few marks shorter to the requirement we did not appeal for her last year. I like your point 3 and think this would be the best way to train for a good compo and attempt to 理解问答. DD has started watching Chinese News (because of Thailand) and read some simple events in Wanbao etc. I hope that she will able to obtain a good grade for CL in next year PSLE.
http://www.zaobao.com/
http://youth.zaobao.com/friday/tu.html
http://www.zbcomma.sg/
I guess there is no easy way at upper Primary stage. Initially, its difficult when trying to implement some of these to my dd when she was at P5. That's why I say, determination on both parents and children. On one hand, we must work on to cultivate their interest, on the other hand, must work on practically to handle PSLE too.
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daisyt, thanks so much for sharing such comprehensive tips with me! Agree wtih Brenda10 that yours is an excellent post!
I will definitely try out all your methods! yes, I think it will take more than just determination. A lot of times, he grumbles and complains when i remind him to speak in chinese, read chinese books etc...it gets very tiring sometimes. Can you imagine? I have to remind him up to 10 times a day that he should be speaking to me in chinese....it's so frustrating and tiring. If I ignore him when he speaks in English, he will just not talk to me...sigh...I feel like I've aged so much simply because of my nagging....
I am trying to buy some more chinese story books to entice him to read...he doesn't like all those story books with stories on animals etc....sometimes it's true. I looked at the English books he read (like 39 clues, Anthony Horowitz) and these books have such rich and interesting story lines...but when you look at the chinese books...most are not so interesting simply because he doesn't have the capacity to read more difficult chinese story books...so the simple plot put him off....
But I shall not give up and will try! Pray hard that I shall continue to be determined too
Thanks again, Daisyt! :lol: -
Hi relaxedmom, I fully understand what you are going through. At least now, I see my dd's interest towards Chinese increase year by year. Nowadays, sometimes she even would naturally want to speak Mandarin with me but its a strict NO because she has enough speaking Mandarin with her classmates in school.
Another suggestion, you can come out with \"Speak Mandarin Day\". Pick a day and start once a week. Then increase to twice a week and then 3 times a week. So at least in a week, there are near equal number of days to speak English and Mandarin. And see if he can stand one whole day don't talk to you? Hahaha .... -
Hi Daisyt, yup, I did that! I set aside \"speak chinese time', or 'speak chinese day'...and it didn't work. so I decided that everyday should be a \"speak chinese day\"....since honestly, there is really such limited tme for us to communicate - after his school and supp class and doing homework...and all that...hardly have time to talk to him...except for issuing instructions at times like 'go brush your teeth\"...\" go eat your dinner\"...sigh!
and I'm quite sure my son will NOT miss not speaking to me for a day...so sad hor....
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