Teaching Chinese at Home

[daisyt]

relaxedmom:

Thanks, Tamarind, for your tips too.


Unfortunately, my DS is not into songs, but I will try out comics for him. will grab a handful and see if he likes them. I'm also going to browse through Dangdang to see if there are any suitable books.

I tried asking DS to read to me some chinese passages from newspapers and story books for me last few nights (after reading daisyt's tips). He found it such a pain...sigh...end up I've to read some of them to him. I guess the beginning is always tough.....gosh, I must learn to preserve

Hi relaxedmom, seems that he encountered many difficult words ..
This is what we would do for Chinese newspaper articles. Cut out the passage, paste on a jotter book. After reading through once, highlight the difficult words, write down at the next page of the jotter book beside the article. Find the meanings, write down the meanings and 造句。Then read through the passage again. Follow by his review orally and then written.

Yes, need to hang on, its tough. I have gone through this when dd in P5. In P6, the teachers were doing this too, for English and Chinese, although not very frequent. The teachers also get them to write journals (similar to diary) daily, its not compulsory but I enouraged dd to write daily and passed to her teachers weekly. Maybe you can get your ds to do that too and pass up to you.

[relaxedmom]

wah, that is a super good tip, daisyt! :idea:


So far, after reading those articles, we just throw it aside... :oops: I will definitely adopt your method. Although it's more tedious, I think it will yield more effective results. Good, will try it out this evening Thanks again!

[Brenda10]

Have just met up with the CL teacher this morning and was happy to hear her say that dd has tremendous improvement compare with last two years (Under her coaching on P3).

She was impressed by some of the 词汇 that dd used in 理解问答 which are not taught in their level. We are happy as the efforts pay off.
:lol:

[daisyt]

Brenda10:

Have just met up with the CL teacher this morning and was happy to hear her say that dd has tremendous improvement compare with last two years (Under her coaching on P3).

She was impressed by some of the 词汇 that dd used in 理解问答 which are not taught in their level. We are happy as the efforts pay off.
:lol:

Congrat!!! Jia you!!! :celebrate:

[pummanuel]

tamarind:

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.

It's true that due to the cultural revolution, there were not many interesting works by Chinese mainland authors for many years. Hence, my mother introduced to us post 五四运动 works (ie works written in 白话) by authors such as 鲁迅and巴金. For pre teens doing HCL, I will recommend their short stories compilation, as it's not too lengthy and the language is manageable. Most importantly, the stories depicted allow our young children to appreciate the easy lives we lead now.

More light hearted options would be the Taiwanese/HK works by authors such as 黄春明，亦舒，倪匡and金庸. My personal favourites were the translated works of Japanese detective novelists 赤川次郎. I always think detective fiction is a great way to motivate teenagers to read. All these are available in simplified Chinese at dangdang.

I'm sorry for sidetracking as the discussion in this thread is more on engaging interest in Chinese for preschoolers and primary school students.

tamarind:

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

My brothers were crazy about martial arts novels and Japanese manga. I remember they would scrimp and save to buy 天才小钓手，七龙珠，灌篮高手，妙手小厨师(not very sure if I got the last one right).

[pummanuel]

tamarind:

Dear all,

I would like to share some parts of the excellent book 好妈妈胜过好老师 about how to motivate a child to read Chinese books. Check out my blog :

http://tamarindvillage.blogspot.com/2010/05/how-to-motivate-child-to-read-chinese.html

I bought both 好妈妈胜过好老师 and 好爸爸胜过好老师 as there was a promotion for the bundle then.

Like what Tamarind wrote in her blog, the former is simply superb and I spent my Chinese New Year week finishing the whole book. It shed light on the problems I had with my daughter when I taught her to read P&J. My favourite phrase from the book is “教育全在细节中，每个看似微小的“好”、“坏”细节，对孩子的影响都可能是巨大的\". The author also mentioned that all children have the natural tendency to strive for the better, \"如果一些孩子表现出对学习没有上进心，这不是天性中缺少，而是在后天成长中慢慢丢失了。\" From her book, I learnt that if my daughter showed a lack of interest in her learning, more often than not, the problem lies not with her aptitude or attitude but the delivery of my teaching methods or my attitude as I can be quite impatient. I will highly recommend it to mothers who like to teach their children but face problems in the course of teaching. Now if I lose my patience, my girl will remind me 好妈妈怎么说.

However, I was not as impressed with 好爸爸. Perhaps fathers will feel differently but when I compared it to 好妈妈, I find it more trivial and not as organised.

[janet88]

My kids both watch Mandarin programmes…of late we have been watching quite a bit of Taiwanese dramas thanks to yours truly here crazy over Jerry Yan and Ethan Ruan.

There were quite a bit of 成语 used in the shows. I am getting my son to memorize proverbs, 开头 and 结尾 to insert in his compo. Hopefully his Chinese and Eng will improve.

[Brenda10]

janet_lee88:

My kids both watch Mandarin programmes...of late we have been watching quite a bit of Taiwanese dramas thanks to yours truly here crazy over Jerry Yan and Ethan Ruan.

There were quite a bit of 成语 used in the shows. I am getting my son to memorize proverbs, 开头 and 结尾 to insert in his compo. Hopefully his Chinese and Eng will improve.

Hi Janet

I also make use of the school holiday to coach dd on Compo as well. For Chinese Comp, tell DD to plan not exceed 5 minutes each for 开头 and 结尾. Then spend more time and details with appropriate成语, 谚语and 词汇for the 中间 几段。We also work on 会话 aim to score better in this portion. Hope our efforts pay off.

[tamarind]

pummanuel:

tamarind:

Dear all,

I would like to share some parts of the excellent book 好妈妈胜过好老师 about how to motivate a child to read Chinese books. Check out my blog :

http://tamarindvillage.blogspot.com/2010/05/how-to-motivate-child-to-read-chinese.html

I bought both 好妈妈胜过好老师 and 好爸爸胜过好老师 as there was a promotion for the bundle then.

Like what Tamarind wrote in her blog, the former is simply superb and I spent my Chinese New Year week finishing the whole book. It shed light on the problems I had with my daughter when I taught her to read P&J. My favourite phrase from the book is “教育全在细节中，每个看似微小的“好”、“坏”细节，对孩子的影响都可能是巨大的\". The author also mentioned that all children have the natural tendency to strive for the better, \"如果一些孩子表现出对学习没有上进心，这不是天性中缺少，而是在后天成长中慢慢丢失了。\" From her book, I learnt that if my daughter showed a lack of interest in her learning, more often than not, the problem lies not with her aptitude or attitude but the delivery of my teaching methods or my attitude as I can be quite impatient. I will highly recommend it to mothers who like to teach their children but face problems in the course of teaching. Now if I lose my patience, my girl will remind me 好妈妈怎么说.

However, I was not as impressed with 好爸爸. Perhaps fathers will feel differently but when I compared it to 好妈妈, I find it more trivial and not as organised.

Hi pummanuel,
I am happy to see you here

I agree that the sentences you quoted from 好妈妈胜过好老师 are all excellent advise to every parent.

By reading the book, I also realized that many kids in China are no different from kids in Singapore. There is a section in which a girl mentioned that she never has to help out with housework, and her mommy also never does housework, because they have a maid at home. This is so similar to many households in Singapore. Not to mention the fact that China parents are equally kiasu too.

Parents in China also have the same problems as us, they also have to send their kids to enrichment centers to write good compositions. The author's advise is to read as many books as possible, I think this means reading at least 2 to 3 Chinese story books a week. Then the child will naturally be able to write well.

Another excellent advise is this :

小学，甚至初中，没有真正的学业落后，也不存在绝对的成绩优秀，一切都是可逆转的。

I hope all parents will read this and do not be discouraged if your child is not doing well in Chinese now, this can be reversed.

[tamarind]

pummanuel:

tamarind:

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.

It's true that due to the cultural revolution, there were not many interesting works by Chinese mainland authors for many years. Hence, my mother introduced to us post 五四运动 works (ie works written in 白话) by authors such as 鲁迅and巴金. For pre teens doing HCL, I will recommend their short stories compilation, as it's not too lengthy and the language is manageable. Most importantly, the stories depicted allow our young children to appreciate the easy lives we lead now.

More light hearted options would be the Taiwanese/HK works by authors such as 黄春明，亦舒，倪匡and金庸. My personal favourites were the translated works of Japanese detective novelists 赤川次郎. I always think detective fiction is a great way to motivate teenagers to read. All these are available in simplified Chinese at dangdang.

I'm sorry for sidetracking as the discussion in this thread is more on engaging interest in Chinese for preschoolers and primary school students.

tamarind:

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

My brothers were crazy about martial arts novels and Japanese manga. I remember they would scrimp and save to buy 天才小钓手，七龙珠，灌篮高手，妙手小厨师(not very sure if I got the last one right).

Thanks for the titles suitable for boys. I remember some of them though I didn't read them, I only like girlish books I will definitely introduce them to my son.

In China, the best students already finished reading all the 金庸 novels by 10 years old. It seems unimaginable to parents here. But I have heard of a child in Singapore who read Lord of Rings at 9 years old. If that child has put in the same amount of effort in Chinese, he would be able to read 金庸 novels. (There were some debates about whether 金庸 novels are suitable for kids below 12, I hope that we don't debate about it here).