Teaching Chinese at Home

[toddles]

hee hee, jedamum our posts crossed. my sentiments exactly.

[hquek]

toddles:

I find that I always get a bit lost in the kids chinese section in the library.

Same sentiments - that's why I rather buy at times. Will just browse for fun and see what interesting bookcovers I can find - have never tried hunting down a particular chinese book before.

[mummy of 2]

hquek:

toddles:

I find that I always get a bit lost in the kids chinese section in the library.

Same sentiments - that's why I rather buy at times. Will just browse for fun and see what interesting bookcovers I can find - have never tried hunting down a particular chinese book before.

Indeed it's hard to navigate the Chinese section. It doesn't help that a lot of the books have such thin spines that you can't see the titles by just looking at the shelf. Till now I have not figured out how the books are classified :roll:

[dokomo]

Couldn't resist and just bought this from dangdang. Suitable for 0 to 3 yo.


摇头童子（0-3岁适用，风靡韩国的家教第一方案，全20册）

http://product.dangdang.com/product.aspx?product_id=20710144&ref=order-2-A

The review not bad. Best part is discounted dangdang price at RMB$66, but from now till 18 hours later, only at RMB$49.50.

限时抢　抢购价：￥49.50，还剩 18小时40分8秒 结束

[tamarind]

relaxedmom:

Tamarind, I agree with you absolutely. My DS reads a lot of English story books from very young, that's why his grasp of vocab and grammar is strong. And he has no problem with English at all. However, for Chinese, I made the mistake of not starting him young and also not being diligent enough in pushing him to read more in Chinese. Now that he is in primary 5, he already detest Chinese. He finds it a struggle. he just got back his chinese results...almost failed his higher chinese. sigh...now I have to think of how to motivate him and improve his chinese :? any tips out there??? I have already tried making him read chinese story books every night (at least a bit each night) and let him watch the 7pm channel 8 show. But so far no improvement.....Help! :?:

Hi relaxedmom,
daisyt has given great advice.

Just to share my personal experience. My parents never read Chinese books to when I was young. In primary school, I was able to do very well in Chinese, and my PSLE results were good enough to get me into RGS.

My secret ? When in primary school I was super crazy about Japanese manga translated into Chinese. My first love was 蓝宝石王子 by the grand master 手冢治虫. I read tons of 哆啦A梦 (Doraemon) books and 少女漫画. I went hungry and saved my daily allowance just to buy these books.

I know many parents frown on 漫画, saying that it is not 文学. But the fact is that 文学 is boring. The sad truth is that because of the cultural revolution in China, there are few good novels written by Chinese authors.

What we need are Chinese books that kids don't want to put down when they start reading. Good 漫画 has wonderful illustrations that will help a child to understand the story. I actually didn't know how to read half the words in the 漫画 when I was in primary school, but I loved the drawings so I was very motivated to read. I learned all my Chinese from these books in primary school.

There are lots of fascinating Japanese manga in Chinese that will captivate kids. There are tons of them, and parents must be filter carefully. Go for the old classics like 手冢治虫. I practically grew up reading Japanese 漫画.

My favourites are all suitable for girls only. I am starting to do some research on 漫画 suitable for boys.

The Doraemon books are of course all time favourites for both boys and girls :
http://product.dangdang.com/product.aspx?product_id=9275455

My girl loves Doraemon books !

I just found this and it looks good too. I will be ordering this book :
http://product.dangdang.com/product.aspx?product_id=20771320

I will also be getting this series of books for my boy.
铁臂阿童木（手塚治虫 漫画） (The original Astro boy !)
http://product.dangdang.com/product.aspx?product_id=20180775&ref=search-1-A


One more suggestion is to ask the child to read out loud everyday. I ask my girl to read about 1000 words out loud to me from her favourite Chinese story books everyday. I help her if there are any words that she does not know how to read. I find this method very effective. Now at P1, she is now able to read chapter books in Chinese.

[tamarind]

hquek:

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,
I find it very tiring to read to my kids. I ask them to read to me. When my girl reads out loud to me, I will not stop to explain unless she asks me. If I can think of an English word that can explain the Chinese word very well, I will just use it to explain. If she does not ask me, I assume that she understands. I don't expect her to know every word, the most important thing is that she enjoys reading the story. When a child reads regularly, she will come across the same words again and she will be able to figure out what it means. This was my personal experience when I was in primary school.

My girl tells me that she loves the Chinese books that she is reading. The most important thing is to find wonderful books that will fascinate a child. This is the best way to motivate a child.

If your DS1 ask you, then you should explain to him. I will suggest that you get books with lots of illustrations to help him understand the story better. There are many Chinese picture books that have challenging words.

[tamarind]

hquek:

toddles:

I find that I always get a bit lost in the kids chinese section in the library.

Same sentiments - that's why I rather buy at times. Will just browse for fun and see what interesting bookcovers I can find - have never tried hunting down a particular chinese book before.

I did not go to the library for a long time, because it is difficult to find the books that I want, and even if I found it, it could be in very bad condition.

This is the same for both English and Chinese books.

Now thanks to dangdang.com, I found many good Chinese story books. All I have to do is to search this page :

http://book.dangdang.com/children/children.aspx

I look for those best selling books. Then I read the customer reviews. If there are many good reviews for a book, then it must be good. I found lots of wonderful Chinese books this way.

[SoWoW]

Tamarind,


how much is this book?

\"My girl loves these books !
I just found this and it looks good too. I will be ordering this book :
http://product.dangdang.com/product.aspx?product_id=20771320 \"


NOt sure if you can help to get it for me too.

Thanks

[tamarind]

SoWoW,

The price is about SGD 11+ including shipping. The way to calculate is to take 50% of the original book price(shipping) + the discounted book price. The prices are in RMB.

I am not able to order for forumers here, cannot find the time.

[SoWoW]

tamarind:

SoWoW,

The price is about SGD 11+ including shipping. The way to calculate is to take 50% of the original book price(shipping) + the discounted book price. The prices are in RMB.

I am not able to order for forumers here, cannot find the time.

ok, ok thanks. Thanks for sharing also too...