How do you encourage your kids to speak Mandarin regularly?
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Sorry if this is a weak example from today’s news as it actually applies to all families of all races across Singapore. But well, since this applies to Mandarin specifically…
Personally, I never spoke to my kids in Mandarin when they were growing up as my mother tongue is really bad. Efforts to encourage both my kids were futile as they couldn’t care less about culture, heritage, future career advantage, stuff like that.
“As times change, MOE should adapt its curriculum and teaching methods, (Minister Ong) said”. So it’s taken decades to realise that now? My son, who took Chinese B and scored a U (ungraded) lamented how there was no real emphasis on how to string characters into a proper sentence, what these individual characters even meant or represented, or how to even conduct a basic conversation.
He only began learning rudimentary spoken Mandarin when he entered the workforce (better late than never, for sure!). I think the teaching shift should start at the oral level first, instead of mastering idioms to pen powerful compositions. But what do I know… Still, I can relate to my kids’ struggles in conversing in Mandarin (and in the correct tone) as I scored a D7 myself more than 20yrs ago.
I’m likely at fault, but I never pressured them to do well in it either as an exam subject. I could always have created opportunities at home by asking them, “what did you learn in class today?” but I never did that as well.
Besides tuition, how do parents nowadays try to incorporate Chinese into their kids’ lives actively? Especially if you were weak in the language yourself?
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Besides tuition, how do parents nowadays try to incorporate Chinese into their kids’ lives actively? Especially if you were weak in the language yourself?
My son (now Sec 3) has a millennial tutor, but he’s more of a friend/mentor, so these sessions are enjoyable. In the past, we had asked our tutor to take my son and his friends on outings, like to the Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall.
Apart from that, I had hired my friend’s daughter (early 20s) for a small fee, to have conversations and play games with my son.
But ultimately I think if we don’t speak the language in our daily life, it’s quite hard to improve!
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