Teaching Chinese at Home

[ADave]

tamarind, yeah its something like that…recognizing chinese characters. i tried a trial class in tien hsia…and i think my son dun like it. plus the teacher like couldnt be bother to engage him just cuz he doesnt respond to her. i think they are relieve that i didnt sign up! hahaha

[tamarind]

ADave:

tamarind, yeah its something like that..recognizing chinese characters. i tried a trial class in tien hsia..and i think my son dun like it. plus the teacher like couldnt be bother to engage him just cuz he doesnt respond to her. i think they are relieve that i didnt sign up! hahaha

Personally I feel that Berries is better than Tien Hsia. Both my kids were at Berries from 4 years old to 6 years old. Though now I regretted sending them there, not because they are not good, but because I \"suffered\" so much, sacrificing my weekends bringing them to classes. If only I have found the excellent Si Wu Kuai Du series of books earlier. But then for parents who are not strong in Chinese, or are too busy to teach at home, a good Chinese enrichment class is still the best alternative.

[ADave]

i totally agreed with you. I called Berries Orchard (bukit batok is fully booked!) and slot in a trial class this friday. I spoke to the centre staff and am really impressed with her. so patience explaining to me and a joy to talk to! I hope all the teachers there are like her. and i really really hope this time, my son will like it so that we can sign up the class for him.


i am not giving up, trying my very best to let him pick up the interest but if he is adamant abt not wanting to learn chinese, i guess it is to Plan B. And bye bye nan hua primary

[Brenda10]

Hi there, some interesting thing to share:


This morning having breakfast with dd and she told me her classmate wanted to quit as a head prefect. In view of her good leadership dd and others asked her to 三思.

I’m quite happy that dd know how to use this word and she told me during the show whenever 丞相 wanted to do something drastically and the rest of the 大臣would 异口同声 said 请丞相三思.

[pummanuel]

tamarind:

pummanuel,
Thanks for recommending 阿凡提. I will definitely order it

You're welcome, Tamarind. I hope your children will like it. Till today, all my siblings remember reading 阿凡提's books and watching 阿凡提's movies on TV.

[ksme]

Brenda10:

Hi there, some interesting thing to share:


This morning having breakfast with dd and she told me her classmate wanted to quit as a head prefect. In view of her good leadership dd and others asked her to 三思.

I’m quite happy that dd know how to use this word and she told me during the show whenever 丞相 wanted to do something drastically and the rest of the 大臣would 异口同声 said 请丞相三思.

Happy for you that your daughter is indeed picking up new vocab. btw, does your daughter attend any Chinese tuition or creative writing class?

[Brenda10]

ksme:

Happy for you that your daughter is indeed picking up new vocab. btw, does your daughter attend any Chinese tuition or creative writing class?

Thank you

We don't have Chinese tution in view of dd was doing quite well in her Paper 2.

As for compo, she went to RC once a week plus also written one at home which I will edit for her.

[pummanuel]

tamarind:

Personally I think that these books are of a higher standard compared to Berries' materials.

Yes, I agree with Tamarind that 《四五快读》 is better than Berries' materials. I bought 《四五快读》early 2010 when Tamarind first recommended it. I like the books but as I had several commitments then, I thought of outsourcing my daughter's Chinese for a year.

I went to Molin, Tien Hsia and Berries. Berries offers the best materials among the 3 centres but none of them was comparable to《四五快读》.

《四五快读》builds up the child's vocabulary better as it has 宝宝读词语 where the child gets exposed to a list of words, enabling the child to increase his vocabulary as the Chinese language is mainly about knowing 字 and then mix and match 字 to form 词语. In addition, 宝宝读句子 and 宝宝读短短文get the child to phrase 字 and 词语 learnt into sentences, allowing the child to grasp Chinese sentence structure, paving the way for reading books. This will be of great help in P1 when children are expected to sort out jumbled sentences. My nephew has great problems with this section, not to mention comprehension and composition.

Berries do have such objectives in its materials but the content is insufficient.

[toddles]

I’ve read the 30 pages, bought the daiso ziplocks for the flashcards…


now only to cut them up and get OFF my BUTT to start the 15 min a day sessions!! gosh I’m so inertia-ed. Part of my laziness stems from the fact that dd just entered N1 and I’m wondering whether she’ll be confused with the teaching in N1 (only 1 hr a day so sure no enough in the long run) if I also zhan3 kai1 my 《四五快读》xing2 dong4. Maybe I’ll talk to the lao shi when i get a chance.

[foreverj]

ok, just ordered my 四五快读。see all the mummies so "on" here, made me decided i shld just get started on it since dd left two years b4 p1. thanks all!