Teaching Chinese at Home

[keltong]

ksme:

My son started reading Doraemon comics at end p3 to early p4 last year. After some encouragement from school teacher and me, he progressed to read Chinese students novel by end last year. The comics was good way to get him to read Chinese storybooks as a start.

I am sure your boy will like them.

Thanks ksme, that is very encouraging. I started yesterday night with him and at first he didn't want to read, so I say I will read with him while he sits besides me and look at the book, than he begin to show some interest. I try to make the 'conversation' as lively as possible to keep him interested and so far seems quite ok. Will keep on going. Wish I have bought the colored version!

[porcupine12trade]

tamarind:

Note that the library also has almost all of the books that I recommended.
Parents can search for the books :
http://www.nlb.gov.sg/

Gosh I just put in sgd200 worth of books from dangling.com! Coz they take forever to deliver n i din want to wait too long. I tried borrowing Chinese bks fr nlb, but I don't know what bks to search for. The few that I know, found on catalogue n showed avail, but can't b found physically on shelf, quite frustrating.

I'll go nlb try my luck again :). Thanks

[jollyme]

tamarind:

In China 小叮当 is called 哆啦A梦 Look for them in Popular first, they are selling quite cheap.

I recommend this version of 哆啦A梦. There are 6 books, all in colour, and the words are bigger and a lot easier to read.
哆啦A梦1（彩色收藏版）

Hi Tamarind, thanks for the reply. Will check it out at Popular!

[jollyme]

keltong:

Found 多啦A梦 at Sembawang Shopping Centre Popular today. I think I will finish reading before my boy...haha....saw 18 books in the series (not sure got more or not) and bought 6. This is for my P5 boy who HATES chinese. Haiz...hope to read with him .....

thanks keltong for sharing, i hope to buy this for my P6 nephew, hope he will grow to love chinese..not sure if its too late

[keltong]

jollyme:

keltong:

Found 多啦A梦 at Sembawang Shopping Centre Popular today. I think I will finish reading before my boy...haha....saw 18 books in the series (not sure got more or not) and bought 6. This is for my P5 boy who HATES chinese. Haiz...hope to read with him .....

thanks keltong for sharing, i hope to buy this for my P6 nephew, hope he will grow to love chinese..not sure if its too late

No problem...I regret not checking out the color version, sure looks more attractive, even though at our times black and whites one are just as interesting to read.

Nowadays they read ironman, ben10, tron legacy, megamind...haha....all the 'angmo' books which I never read.

I have a whole collection of chinese comics series which I hope to slowly interest him to read. But because they are in traditional chinese, I think I spare him the confusion at the moment. But if he starts to show interest in 多啦A梦, I will be most glad to re-invest in some of these comics that are now in simplified chinese.

[MyBaby]

jollyme:

keltong:

Found 多啦A梦 at Sembawang Shopping Centre Popular today. I think I will finish reading before my boy...haha....saw 18 books in the series (not sure got more or not) and bought 6. This is for my P5 boy who HATES chinese. Haiz...hope to read with him .....

thanks keltong for sharing, i hope to buy this for my P6 nephew, hope he will grow to love chinese..not sure if its too late

For comics for older kids, you might wish to consider the series by 翁添保。 Some of his books are 这一班日记 (books 1 and 2), 乐在其中，一本正经漫画之家在新加坡。But this series of comics are more like comic strips , whereas in 多啦A梦 each chapter surrounds one adventure/escapade.

However, just to digress abit, I am not sure about the use of comics to get kids to read or be interested in Chinese.

For me, the purpose of reading is to get children to pick up (though informally, that is, not direct teaching, otherwise reading would not be a pleasure acitivity) vocabulary, sentence structures, writing styles, and of course, other \"hidden\" things like morals, values and culture.

If the objectives of getting children to read Chinese is to expose them to good language and vocabulary, then comics might not be able to serve this objective well as the language tend to be truncated and alot of things need not be addressed in the written text as they can be conveyed via the illustrations/drawings.

Reluctant readers might be more willing to pick up a comic book as comics migth be more accessible (less daunting than picking up a \"proper\" storybook) and attractive (with the pictures and colours) to them. However, I am not sure whether these reluctant readers will progress beyond comics to read storybooks.

I advocate starting with storybooks and when they are reading to a certain extent, to let them read comics as a different type of genre (other genres are storybooks, information books, magazines, newspapers, brochures etc).

[tamarind]

MyBaby:

jollyme:

[quote=\"keltong\"]Found 多啦A梦 at Sembawang Shopping Centre Popular today. I think I will finish reading before my boy...haha....saw 18 books in the series (not sure got more or not) and bought 6. This is for my P5 boy who HATES chinese. Haiz...hope to read with him .....

thanks keltong for sharing, i hope to buy this for my P6 nephew, hope he will grow to love chinese..not sure if its too late

For comics for older kids, you might wish to consider the series by 翁添保。 Some of his books are 这一班日记 (books 1 and 2), 乐在其中，一本正经漫画之家在新加坡。But this series of comics are more like comic strips , whereas in 多啦A梦 each chapter surrounds one adventure/escapade.

However, just to digress abit, I am not sure about the use of comics to get kids to read or be interested in Chinese.

For me, the purpose of reading is to get children to pick up (though informally, that is, not direct teaching, otherwise reading would not be a pleasure acitivity) vocabulary, sentence structures, writing styles, and of course, other \"hidden\" things like morals, values and culture.

If the objectives of getting children to read Chinese is to expose them to good language and vocabulary, then comics might not be able to serve this objective well as the language tend to be truncated and alot of things need not be addressed in the written text as they can be conveyed via the illustrations/drawings.

Reluctant readers might be more willing to pick up a comic book as comics migth be more accessible (less daunting than picking up a \"proper\" storybook) and attractive (with the pictures and colours) to them. However, I am not sure whether these reluctant readers will progress beyond comics to read storybooks.

I advocate starting with storybooks and when they are reading to a certain extent, to let them read comics as a different type of genre (other genres are storybooks, information books, magazines, newspapers, brochures etc).[/quote]MyBaby,
Reading Chinese comics is purely for enjoyment. It is for the purpose of showing kids who hate Chinese that they can find fun and laughter in Chinese books. For these reluctant readers, parents should read the comics with them, and then slowly introduce story books to them. So long as parents guide them along the way, they should be able to progress to long novels.

Besides comics, parents can should let your kids read the long list of excellent picture books in my blog.
http://tamarindvillage.blogspot.com/2010/09/how-to-raise-bilingual-child.html

However, P5 kids may find some of these picture books to \"baby-ish\" for them, even though they may not even be able to read them independently. I feel that comic books like the Doraemon series has more complicated plots and are easier for them to read.

I think that comic books are an excellent way of learning oral Chinese, because all the text are conversations. In fact, I learned almost all my spoken mandarin from reading the Doraemon series because I did not grow up in a mandarin speaking family.

I totally agree with you that in order to write good compositions, kids must certainly read tons of story books besides comics. Reading comics alone is not going to help kids get 90+ marks in Chinese.

I also want to recommend this very interesting series of books :
雾灵三部曲（全3册
http://product.dangdang.com/product.aspx?product_id=20692397

It is part comics, and part novel. The 1st chapter is comics, the 2nd chapter is novel, the 3rd chapter is comics, the 4th chapter is novel and so on. The plot is about far in the future when humans are extinct and animals can talk, complicated enough to keep any child interested. However, the Chinese text is not easy to read for our average P5 kids, parental guidance is necessary.

I think that the most important thing to do is to instill a love for Chinese in kids. The best way to do this is to find books with content that will interest them. Then they will be motivated to learn the language in order to read the book. The following customer review from dangdang, for the books 雾灵三部曲, is a good example :

看当当推荐得厉害，所以买了这套书。
没想到儿子如此喜欢！
他6岁，新晋绿领巾，正在学习“我是小学生”一类的语文，大概认识了200个字啦，以前的故事都是我读他听，而这本可是我们共同读的。为了能读这本书，他一点都不拖拉地完成老师布置的家庭作业，甚至在学校时就主动用同学们玩的时间做家庭作业了！
估计小学生们都会喜欢《雾灵》的。
其实，后现代的作品通常会让我脑子打结，没想到跟儿子一起读下来，竟然这么遛，完全没有以?的异样感。
看哥本哈根气候大会的闹哄哄时，感觉这个会没必要这么开，更有成效的开法，就是给与会代表一人一套《雾灵》，大家一起读，还可以让场外的示威人群同声诵读，三天下来，大家肯定会达成一个不让人类走向灭绝的共识。

[tamarind]

porcupine12trade:

tamarind:

Note that the library also has almost all of the books that I recommended.
Parents can search for the books :
http://www.nlb.gov.sg/

Gosh I just put in sgd200 worth of books from dangling.com! Coz they take forever to deliver n i din want to wait too long. I tried borrowing Chinese bks fr nlb, but I don't know what bks to search for. The few that I know, found on catalogue n showed avail, but can't b found physically on shelf, quite frustrating.

I'll go nlb try my luck again :). Thanks

You can place a reservation for the book that you want at the library, it costs $1.55 per book. Then you can collect at a branch near you.

dangdang.com makes it easy to find good books by listing the best sellers, and we can also read many customer reviews about each book. I usually buy those books with hundreds of good reviews. For some books without reviews, I will try to borrow from the library to read and see if it is good before buying it.

[MyBaby]

Hi Tamarind, agree that reading comics is ok if purely for enjoyment and to show kids who dislike Chinese that Chinese books can be fun too.


Just wanted to highlight that comics alone won't work for developing a better grasp of Chinese language.

I've found the book list in your blog to be very useful, especially for my DD. Will check out the 雾灵三部曲（全3册) and see if can interest her to read. Besides reading, I've also introduced songs like 民歌/新谣 (eg. 童年，光阴的故事，排排坐 etc) and brought DD to musicals like 雨季 (but expensive ... )

tamarind:

MyBaby:

For comics for older kids, you might wish to consider the series by 翁添保。 Some of his books are 这一班日记 (books 1 and 2), 乐在其中，一本正经漫画之家在新加坡。But this series of comics are more like comic strips , whereas in 多啦A梦 each chapter surrounds one adventure/escapade.

However, just to digress abit, I am not sure about the use of comics to get kids to read or be interested in Chinese.

For me, the purpose of reading is to get children to pick up (though informally, that is, not direct teaching, otherwise reading would not be a pleasure acitivity) vocabulary, sentence structures, writing styles, and of course, other \"hidden\" things like morals, values and culture.

If the objectives of getting children to read Chinese is to expose them to good language and vocabulary, then comics might not be able to serve this objective well as the language tend to be truncated and alot of things need not be addressed in the written text as they can be conveyed via the illustrations/drawings.

Reluctant readers might be more willing to pick up a comic book as comics migth be more accessible (less daunting than picking up a \"proper\" storybook) and attractive (with the pictures and colours) to them. However, I am not sure whether these reluctant readers will progress beyond comics to read storybooks.

I advocate starting with storybooks and when they are reading to a certain extent, to let them read comics as a different type of genre (other genres are storybooks, information books, magazines, newspapers, brochures etc).

MyBaby,
Reading Chinese comics is purely for enjoyment. It is for the purpose of showing kids who hate Chinese that they can find fun and laughter in Chinese books. For these reluctant readers, parents should read the comics with them, and then slowly introduce story books to them. So long as parents guide them along the way, they should be able to progress to long novels.

Besides comics, parents can should let your kids read the long list of excellent picture books in my blog.
http://tamarindvillage.blogspot.com/2010/09/how-to-raise-bilingual-child.html

However, P5 kids may find some of these picture books to \"baby-ish\" for them, even though they may not even be able to read them independently. I feel that comic books like the Doraemon series has more complicated plots and are easier for them to read.

I think that comic books are an excellent way of learning oral Chinese, because all the text are conversations. In fact, I learned almost all my spoken mandarin from reading the Doraemon series because I did not grow up in a mandarin speaking family.

I totally agree with you that in order to write good compositions, kids must certainly read tons of story books besides comics. Reading comics alone is not going to help kids get 90+ marks in Chinese.

I also want to recommend this very interesting series of books :
雾灵三部曲（全3册
http://product.dangdang.com/product.aspx?product_id=20692397

It is part comics, and part novel. The 1st chapter is comics, the 2nd chapter is novel, the 3rd chapter is comics, the 4th chapter is novel and so on. The plot is about far in the future when humans are extinct and animals can talk, complicated enough to keep any child interested. However, the Chinese text is not easy to read for our average P5 kids, parental guidance is necessary.

I think that the most important thing to do is to instill a love for Chinese in kids. The best way to do this is to find books with content that will interest them. Then they will be motivated to learn the language in order to read the book. The following customer review from dangdang, for the books 雾灵三部曲, is a good example :

看当当推荐得厉害，所以买了这套书。
没想到儿子如此喜欢！
他6岁，新晋绿领巾，正在学习“我是小学生”一类的语文，大概认识了200个字啦，以前的故事都是我读他听，而这本可是我们共同读的。为了能读这本书，他一点都不拖拉地完成老师布置的家庭作业，甚至在学校时就主动用同学们玩的时间做家庭作业了！
估计小学生们都会喜欢《雾灵》的。
其实，后现代的作品通常会让我脑子打结，没想到跟儿子一起读下来，竟然这么遛，完全没有以?的异样感。
看哥本哈根气候大会的闹哄哄时，感觉这个会没必要这么开，更有成效的开法，就是给与会代表一人一套《雾灵》，大家一起读，还可以让场外的示威人群同声诵读，三天下来，大家肯定会达成一个不让人类走向灭绝的共识。

[porcupine12trade]

tamarind:

You can place a reservation for the book that you want at the library, it costs $1.55 per book. Then you can collect at a branch near you.

dangdang.com makes it easy to find good books by listing the best sellers, and we can also read many customer reviews about each book. I usually buy those books with hundreds of good reviews. For some books without reviews, I will try to borrow from the library to read and see if it is good before buying it.

I don't have the habit of reserving books as my kids only borrow eng books, there are so many choices, if unavailable, we'll look for something else or wait. For books tt I find can pass down I'll buy. But the library is really great :).

Actually I meant I can't find the books physically on shelf when the catalogue
says bk is avail. I find it frustrating. Today I borrowed 14只老鼠 (I find the
words v tiny, good thing I did not order this) 和 魔法小公主莉莉(I ordered this series fr dangdang). Quick fingers to order, too excited n did not think of lib! I always look to lib for eng bk but don't know y I forgot Abt it when it comes to Chinese books. Abit regret being so 冲动。ordered so many books from dangdang, all r ur reco, hope I can use them long enough to justify the buy :D. Like u say, Shld borrow from library to see if kids like them first.