Teaching Chinese at Home

[ksme]

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.

Thanks Brenda for sharing. Wow, your dd very hardworking to be still willing to write 1 compo at home. I am sure she will do well at her PSLE with her attitude. :ugogirl:

Ds also attends CL creative writing class. My ds will be frustrated if I ask him to write another compo at home. sigh.

[Callie Tan]

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.

My girl is in Tien Hsia since K2. she as jst started P1 enrichment so am monitoring the progress...they accomplished quite a lot during the 2 hours with 11 kids so am not too sure how the teacher coped.

I am good in Chinese and used to be a tutor during my PreU and NUS days but its a no-no when comes to coaching my own girl becos we will end up fighting!!!

[Brenda10]

ksme:

Thanks Brenda for sharing. Wow, your dd very hardworking to be still willing to write 1 compo at home. I am sure she will do well at her PSLE with her attitude. :ugogirl:


Ds also attends CL creative writing class. My ds will be frustrated if I ask him to write another compo at home. sigh.

Thank you.

Perhaps her CL teacher told them to score a high A or A* for CL usually the CL compo is the critical factor. Is not easy to write a quality compo. by just memoeize 开头, 结尾 and some good cheng yu. I can only said we just do our best and the outcome is beyond our control. However, this will benefit her in the long run.

[tamarind]

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.

pummanuel,
Yes I agree that the content is insufficient, may be this is because Berries' teachers think that most Singaporean kids grow up in English speaking families, so they will not be able to cope with higher standards. But I firmly believe that if we have the right resources and start from a very young age, it is possible to teach our kids to be as good in Chinese as kids in China.

[tamarind]

ksme:

Ds also attends CL creative writing class. My ds will be frustrated if I ask him to write another compo at home. sigh.

For kids who do not like to write Chinese compo, I suggest letting them use hanyu pinyin to type out the compo in the computer, something like this :
http://www.chinese-tools.com/tools/ime.html

This tool makes it very easy to type Chinese, and kids may be more motivated to write. This will further enhance recognition of words, because kids must select the correct word from the list. The most important thing about Chinese creative writing, is knowing what to write, and how to write good sentences. When completed, we can ask kids to copy out his composition from the computer, so he can practice writing the words.

[ksme]

tamarind:

ksme:

Ds also attends CL creative writing class. My ds will be frustrated if I ask him to write another compo at home. sigh.

For kids who do not like to write Chinese compo, I suggest letting them use hanyu pinyin to type out the compo in the computer, something like this :
http://www.chinese-tools.com/tools/ime.html

This tool makes it very easy to type Chinese, and kids may be more motivated to write. This will further enhance recognition of words, because kids must select the correct word from the list. The most important thing about Chinese creative writing, is knowing what to write, and how to write good sentences. When completed, we can ask kids to copy out his composition from the computer, so he can practice writing the words.

Thanks Tamarind for your suggestion. Btw, Dangdang having spring holiday sale now. I am sure you already know, but just in case.

[sean wife]

Hi Tamarind,


No doubt si wu kwai du are good resources, but they are mainly used for teaching word recognition and reading right? For enrichment such as Berries, they will also incorporate other aspects of learning Chinese such as correct stroke formation, word writing and hanyu pinyin etc…so can self-teaching using the series completely replace some form of Chinese enrichment? My kids are in N2 class with very good Yang Lao Shi at the BB branch and it has been fun for them so far. At the same time, they are at Book 4 of the series. To do away with Berries completely, do you have other recommended teaching resources to achieve the same level of overall competency as Berries?

Thanks!

[tamarind]

ksme:

Thanks Tamarind for your suggestion. Btw, Dangdang having spring holiday sale now. I am sure you already know, but just in case.

Thanks for letting me know. I am placing orders now

[tamarind]

sean wife:

Hi Tamarind,


No doubt si wu kwai du are good resources, but they are mainly used for teaching word recognition and reading right? For enrichment such as Berries, they will also incorporate other aspects of learning Chinese such as correct stroke formation, word writing and hanyu pinyin etc…so can self-teaching using the series completely replace some form of Chinese enrichment? My kids are in N2 class with very good Yang Lao Shi at the BB branch and it has been fun for them so far. At the same time, they are at Book 4 of the series. To do away with Berries completely, do you have other recommended teaching resources to achieve the same level of overall competency as Berries?

Thanks!

Hi sean wife,
You can find many books for practicising strokes and words in dangdang.com. I believe that it is not necessary for kids to practice writing Chinese before the age of 6, so I do not buy such practice books for them. Between the age of 3 to 6, it is most important to focus on word recognition. I think it is OK to start to practice writing Chinese words at 6 years old. In fact, it will be easier, because the child's fine motor skills would have been well developed by then.

Also, note that it is not necessary to make a child practice writing too many Chinese words. Note that Chinese characters are made up of 偏旁, 部首, and simple characters. Parents should teach kids the names of the 偏旁, 部首. When learning more complex characters, teach the kids to remember the word by its individual parts. Berries does not have ting xie, and also does not require a child to practice writing a word 10 to 20 times.

In fact, I never ask my kids to practice writing before P1. I asked my girl to write 2 to 3 sentences about what she has done everyday. This is much more interesting than writing the same word over and over again.

It is also not too late to start learning hanyu pinyin at 6, in fact Berries teach hanyu pinyin at 6 years old. There are many hanyu pinyin books selling in Popular bookshop.

[tree nymph]

Hi Tam,


Any good books to recommend? I’ve not bought anything since July last year I think. my bookshelves are bursting!