Teaching Chinese at Home

[tamarind]

HaleyCopterz:

Hi Tamarind,


I am a school teacher with a primary school going child. I notice that
you give very good advice to help parents with chinese. I would like to
find out more from you myself as I do not know much about chinese.
I put my daughter for one to one tuition for chinese but so far,
she is quite resistent. She can do well enough (80 plus) but she struggles
with her composition. Besides reading books, which I think is too late for
me to get her to do, what else do you advocate :?

Hi Haley,
The only way to improve her Chinese is by reading as many story books as possible. There is no other way. Since your daughter is only in primary school, it is definitely not too late to do so. You must be prepared to put in a lot of hard work. Look for books that she likes. Sit with her and ask her to read out loud to you, she should read more than 1000 words everyday. You will need to read the books ahead of her, check the dictionary and note down the hanyu pinyin yourself. Do not make her check the dictionary and write down new words, this is sure to make her hate Chinese. When there are words that she cannot read, just tell her how to read and move on quickly. The aim is to let her enjoy the stories and develop a love for Chinese. If a child does not love Chinese, she will never get near perfect scores in Chinese, especially in upper primary.

As for tuition, if it is only once or twice a week, it is not going to be effective. A child in primary school who does not have a strong foundation in Chinese, will have to spend at least 2 hours everyday reading Chinese books out loud and also writing compositions, otherwise there is not much hope of getting the best results. You should try to ask her to write a few sentences of what she has done everyday.

Please read my blog for more information.
http://tamarindvillage.blogspot.com/2010/09/how-to-raise-bilingual-child.html

[tamarind]

lizuan76:

Hi,


Currently i am reading 好妈妈胜过好老师, is a good book. In my opinion, i think it is worth buying to keep.

Yes it is definitely worth keeping !

[lizuan76]

Toddles,


Jiao you.

Tamarind, thanks for recommend us the book.

Anybody read this book before?上班族妈妈的教子宝典(心得篇)

http://product.dangdang.com/product.aspx?product_id=20913792

[toddles]

tamarind:

Hi Haley,
The only way to improve her Chinese is by reading as many story books as possible. There is no other way. Since your daughter is only in primary school, it is definitely not too late to do so. You must be prepared to put in a lot of hard work. Look for books that she likes. Sit with her and ask her to read out loud to you, she should read more than 1000 words everyday. You will need to read the books ahead of her, check the dictionary and note down the hanyu pinyin yourself. Do not make her check the dictionary and write down new words, this is sure to make her hate Chinese. When there are words that she cannot read, just tell her how to read and move on quickly. The aim is to let her enjoy the stories and develop a love for Chinese. If a child does not love Chinese, she will never get near perfect scores in Chinese, especially in upper primary.

Hi Tamarind,

I read in 好妈妈胜过好老师 and a number of your posts that we should not kill their love of reading by constant dictionary checking.

However, I recall in my own growing up days, for english books at least (cos I was never really exposed at a young age to a lot of chinese fiction), my mum used to get me to check the dictionary for words that were unfamiliar, same goes when I read newspapers.

I actually found that quite fun, and looked forward to the 'discovery'. it was like a treasure hunt game, almost.

however, I guess if every other word has to be checked then it impedes and stilts the flow and joy of reading altogether. But perhaps there is a time and place for the dictionary, for select words, not more than 1 or 2 in every reading session. guess that also trains a measure of independence, to know that if parents are not there, the dictionary is great source of knowing a foreign word immediately.

for mandarin books, this probably only works after a certain age,when a certain literacy is attained, since checking the chinese dictionary is definitely not as easy as checking an english one.

any views welcome!

[ttlkbs]

fr experiences (i hv 3 kids with at least 4yrs gap btw each of them), start young is the most important factor. when they were young, they’d juz accept whatever u teach. if ur kids r in childcare centre, try to speak to them only Chinese at home coz they usually speak English in childcare centre. When my 3 yrs old boy speaks to me in English, i’d reply him in Chinese or repeat his questions in Chinese. The effect is tremendous. now he speaks to the maid in english but chinese to dad n me.

[Brenda10]

ttlkbs:

fr experiences (i hv 3 kids with at least 4yrs gap btw each of them), start young is the most important factor. when they were young, they'd juz accept whatever u teach. if ur kids r in childcare centre, try to speak to them only Chinese at home coz they usually speak English in childcare centre. When my 3 yrs old boy speaks to me in English, i'd reply him in Chinese or repeat his questions in Chinese. The effect is tremendous. now he speaks to the maid in english but chinese to dad n me.

Yes. I agree. Since last year we only communicate with dd in Chinese and this save our headache of preparing Oral or Listening Compreh Test.
This morning she just learn a new cheng yu 望尘莫及 that describe her standard now is still very far away from one of her classmate's CL compo. Her classmate 不费吹灰之力 can write a CL compo. slightly more than 4 pages (Approx. 1000+ words) within 50 minutes with good quality of words/phrases. Therefore we still have a long way to learn from her.

[hquek]

toddles:

I read in 好妈妈胜过好老师 and a number of your posts that we should not kill their love of reading by constant dictionary checking.

However, I recall in my own growing up days, for english books at least (cos I was never really exposed at a young age to a lot of chinese fiction), my mum used to get me to check the dictionary for words that were unfamiliar, same goes when I read newspapers.

I actually found that quite fun, and looked forward to the 'discovery'. it was like a treasure hunt game, almost.

however, I guess if every other word has to be checked then it impedes and stilts the flow and joy of reading altogether. But perhaps there is a time and place for the dictionary, for select words, not more than 1 or 2 in every reading session. guess that also trains a measure of independence, to know that if parents are not there, the dictionary is great source of knowing a foreign word immediately.

for mandarin books, this probably only works after a certain age,when a certain literacy is attained, since checking the chinese dictionary is definitely not as easy as checking an english one.

any views welcome!

Talk about checking dictionary. What I try to do is to take out the books I'll be reading to them, read in advance and those words I don't know, I'll check up and put the pinyin against the word so I don't stop halfway. It's irritating (to me) to have to break halfway and their attention might have flown to some other place. This only possible I guess is becos the books I'm reading to them are fairly simple (lotsa pictures type).

[ttlkbs]

Brenda10:

ttlkbs:

fr experiences (i hv 3 kids with at least 4yrs gap btw each of them), start young is the most important factor. when they were young, they'd juz accept whatever u teach. if ur kids r in childcare centre, try to speak to them only Chinese at home coz they usually speak English in childcare centre. When my 3 yrs old boy speaks to me in English, i'd reply him in Chinese or repeat his questions in Chinese. The effect is tremendous. now he speaks to the maid in english but chinese to dad n me.

Yes. I agree. Since last year we only communicate with dd in Chinese and this save our headache of preparing Oral or Listening Compreh Test.
This morning she just learn a new cheng yu 望尘莫及 that describe her standard now is still very far away from one of her classmate's CL compo. Her classmate 不费吹灰之力 can write a CL compo. slightly more than 4 pages (Approx. 1000+ words) within 50 minutes with good quality of words/phrases. Therefore we still have a long way to learn from her.

汉语拼英 is a good help for students nowadays. Build up a good foundation in this area before they go pri sch. MMy 3 yrs old boy is now trying to pick up this fr his 哥哥姐姐. You'll be amazing to know that they can actually absorb much more than u can imagine. Of course his 哥哥 always protest that he's the guinea pig & no wonder his 弟弟妹妹's chinese is better than him coz mummy learnt fr past experiences!

[Trapwithin]

toddles:

Trapwithin:

[quote=\"toddles\"]You can consider buying through sprees... that's what I did, and with shipping it only cost me $32.30.


of course, the waiting time will be longer than just cash and carry.

Pardon my ignorance. What is Sprees?

I've PM-ed you. :)[/quote]Thanks

[Trapwithin]

tamarind:

lizuan76:

Hi,


Currently i am reading 好妈妈胜过好老师, is a good book. In my opinion, i think it is worth buying to keep.

Yes it is definitely worth keeping !

Yea excellent book.

Can't remember the last Chinese Book that I read apart from all the Jing Yong books. Take me a while .. but definitely worthwhile to buy and keep