Teaching Chinese at Home

[znzyzyzx]

MyBaby:

I know this is the thread for teaching Chinese at HOME but I am looking for an enrichment centre that focuses on speech and drama (no worksheets, please!) for my P2 DS, to work in tandem with what we are doing at home.


He is dyslexic. Amongst the 4 components of language learning - Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening, he has no problems with Speaking and Listening, his Reading is improving as we are building on his word recognition using 四五块读 (we are still on Book 4 and progress is slow!). Writing is still a challenge.

I am in favour of boosting his spoken skills so as to somewhat compensate for his weaker areas. Thought this is particularly important as at higher level, composition (which would be very challenging to him) and comprehension would be tough for him to handle.

He used to attend enrichment with one centre but as it was group and there were worksheets to complete in class, he was not coping well as he could not recognise many words and have difficulty reading aloud.

Does anyone know of any centre that focuses on speech and drama -rather like Lorna Whiston but in Chinese?

Hi ,
Yppae at Waterloo street provide Chinese speech and drama. http://www.yppae.org/portal/

Their program is quite structured , 45 mins of speech and 45 mins of drama and the person in charge 马老师 is very dedicated.

[keltong]

tamarind:

Also, I want to emphasize that kids before the age of 6 must read a large number of picture books with interesting stories that kids can understand. Pictures are the best way to teach kids the meaning of words, and how to use the words. If we focus only on word recognition, and discourage kids from looking at the pictures, then kids may know how to recite thousands of idioms and tang poetry, but he may not understand the meaning, or know how to use them in compositions.

Point noted. Thanks!

[phankao]

tamarind:

Also, I want to emphasize that kids before the age of 6 must read a large number of picture books with interesting stories that kids can understand. Pictures are the best way to teach kids the meaning of words, and how to use the words. If we focus only on word recognition, and discourage kids from looking at the pictures, then kids may know how to recite thousands of idioms and tang poetry, but he may not understand the meaning, or know how to use them in compositions.

Kids are not stupid. My 2yo understands the words that he is able to read. There is never a \"one-size-fits-all\" approach to learning. Never underestimate the young children's ability. What is also important is conversing to your child in Chinese. Immersion by conversation, listening, and reading - all important.

[MyBaby]

znzyzyzx:

Hi ,
Yppae at Waterloo street provide Chinese speech and drama. http://www.yppae.org/portal/

Their program is quite structured , 45 mins of speech and 45 mins of drama and the person in charge 马老师 is very dedicated.

Hi znzyzyzx, tks for the info on Yppae. DS used to attend there when he was in K2 but it didnt work for him. He had a very young teacher and his teacher frequently complained that he could not do hanyupinyin and that sort of put him off. It was also about that time that we decided to send him for assessment as there were also some other signs.

However, I got to qualify that my older child had a good experience there and benefitted from a strong foundation in hanyupinyin and her oral diction is very exact.

Anyway, I think I \"off topic\" here for too long already. Will check out more information from the thread on Chinese Enrichment. Tks!

[tamarind]

phankao:

tamarind:

Also, I want to emphasize that kids before the age of 6 must read a large number of picture books with interesting stories that kids can understand. Pictures are the best way to teach kids the meaning of words, and how to use the words. If we focus only on word recognition, and discourage kids from looking at the pictures, then kids may know how to recite thousands of idioms and tang poetry, but he may not understand the meaning, or know how to use them in compositions.

Kids are not stupid. My 2yo understands the words that he is able to read. There is never a \"one-size-fits-all\" approach to learning. Never underestimate the young children's ability. What is also important is conversing to your child in Chinese. Immersion by conversation, listening, and reading - all important.

As full time working mommies, I do not have time to teach my kids for many hours a day. I can only teach Chinese for less than 30 mins a day, so I need to look for methods that are most effective.

I remember that once I saw on TV, a 3 year old boy who could read hundreds of 成语. His mother pointed to a book with rows of 成语, no pictures, and the boy was able to read everyone of them. I was not impressed at all, because the boy could not use them in compositions.

I also never teach my kids to memorize San Zi Jing, Di Zi Gui, etc, because I think these are irrelevant and not practical nowadays. I do teach my girl Tang poetry, only because I love Tang poetry myself and my girl loves them too. I wonder how many parents in Singapore really understand the meaning of San Zi Jing and Di Zi Gui ?

It is most important to develop a love for the language, not just forcing kids to memorize things that are meaningless to them.

[MyBaby]

tamarind:

phankao:

[quote=\"tamarind\"]
Also, I want to emphasize that kids before the age of 6 must read a large number of picture books with interesting stories that kids can understand. Pictures are the best way to teach kids the meaning of words, and how to use the words. If we focus only on word recognition, and discourage kids from looking at the pictures, then kids may know how to recite thousands of idioms and tang poetry, but he may not understand the meaning, or know how to use them in compositions.

Kids are not stupid. My 2yo understands the words that he is able to read. There is never a \"one-size-fits-all\" approach to learning. Never underestimate the young children's ability. What is also important is conversing to your child in Chinese. Immersion by conversation, listening, and reading - all important.

As full time working mommies, I do not have time to teach my kids for many hours a day. I can only teach Chinese for less than 30 mins a day, so I need to look for methods that are most effective.

I remember that once I saw on TV, a 3 year old boy who could read hundreds of 成语. His mother pointed to a book with rows of 成语, no pictures, and the boy was able to read everyone of them. I was not impressed at all, because the boy could not use them in compositions.

I also never teach my kids to memorize San Zi Jing, Di Zi Gui, etc, because I think these are irrelevant and not practical nowadays. I do teach my girl Tang poetry, only because I love Tang poetry myself and my girl loves them too. I wonder how many parents in Singapore really understand the meaning of San Zi Jing and Di Zi Gui ?

It is most important to develop a love for the language, not just forcing kids to memorize things that are meaningless to them.[/quote]I do agree with you, Tamarind, about it not being meaningful for kids to memorise/recall lots of things but couldn't apply their knowledge.

Your post came in at a time when I logged in to give a tip to fellow parents who are using 四五快读。

DS is already in Book 4, towards the end. I didn't cut up the words in the word cards given with the books as firstly, I can't be bothered and secondly, I thought as DS is older, there is no need to do so.

We usually start each session with him recalling and reciting the words at the back of the book up to where we last stopped. He can read them off quickly and correctly. then we will go to the book where I will introduce new words, and he reads the phrases and sentences or short passages that follow. In book4, there are longer passages (about 1.5 to 2 pgs long) and as he read the longer passages, I realised that there are some words that he could not recognise (eg. 驼， 着急), when he could read these individual words without problem.

I immediately realised that he is simply memorising and reciting the unfamiliar words when reciting based on word order. There are some words that he knows and when the words he does not know is interspersed in between, he could \"read\" them by following a certain pattern. [DS has good memory and is very creative in finding ways to compensate for his shortcomings).

This encounter reinforced that young kids have good memory and can memorise anything as long as they are interested and are exposed to it (like this mummy who talked about how her DS could recall all the capitals of different countries and their location on the world map). The crux is, whether the child can meaningfully apply what they have learnt. To me, the ability to apply is a higher order learning skill and only when this happen, do real learning occur.

As for 四五快读, heh heh, dear DS, mummy's going to cut up the word cards today and let's see how many of those words (from Book 1 to 4) do you REALLY know

[tamarind]

MyBaby:

This encounter reinforced that young kids have good memory and can memorise anything as long as they are interested and are exposed to it (like this mummy who talked about how her DS could recall all the capitals of different countries and their location on the world map). The crux is, whether the child can meaningfully apply what they have learnt. To me, the ability to apply is a higher order learning skill and only when this happen, do real learning occur.

MyBaby,
I absolutely agree with you. I think you have put the point across so much better than me

If we want our kids to love Chinese, the best method is to find good story books with pictures and stories that they can easily understand, stories that make them laugh, and make them eagerly read on to find out what happens next. I read in the internet that many parents in China understand the benefits of picture books and are buying tons of these books for young kids.

[phankao]

tamarind:

phankao:

[quote=\"tamarind\"]
Also, I want to emphasize that kids before the age of 6 must read a large number of picture books with interesting stories that kids can understand. Pictures are the best way to teach kids the meaning of words, and how to use the words. If we focus only on word recognition, and discourage kids from looking at the pictures, then kids may know how to recite thousands of idioms and tang poetry, but he may not understand the meaning, or know how to use them in compositions.

Kids are not stupid. My 2yo understands the words that he is able to read. There is never a \"one-size-fits-all\" approach to learning. Never underestimate the young children's ability. What is also important is conversing to your child in Chinese. Immersion by conversation, listening, and reading - all important.

As full time working mommies, I do not have time to teach my kids for many hours a day. I can only teach Chinese for less than 30 mins a day, so I need to look for methods that are most effective.

I remember that once I saw on TV, a 3 year old boy who could read hundreds of 成语. His mother pointed to a book with rows of 成语, no pictures, and the boy was able to read everyone of them. I was not impressed at all, because the boy could not use them in compositions.

I also never teach my kids to memorize San Zi Jing, Di Zi Gui, etc, because I think these are irrelevant and not practical nowadays. I do teach my girl Tang poetry, only because I love Tang poetry myself and my girl loves them too. I wonder how many parents in Singapore really understand the meaning of San Zi Jing and Di Zi Gui ?

It is most important to develop a love for the language, not just forcing kids to memorize things that are meaningless to them.[/quote]Sanzijing, dizigui are mainly to train their memory, quickness too. Tangshi in a way too. But as you say, the beauty of the poetry. It's really a step towards the Chinese culture. It's our culture. We would like to introduce it to our kids. Hopefully they will love it, but whether they do or not, that's their heritage, like how they cannot choose their ancestors. I, too, do not teach my kids. They learn themselves. My ds2 loved Tang Poetry. My ds3 learnt all those sanzijing/dizigui by himself from cds that he heard and bc he could read very early. I only heard him mumbling it one day and realised how much his little brain had been absorbing.

30mins? For the really young, it's only 5mins at most. But to converse, teaches them the sentence structure, how the language sounds, etc. This cannot be just taught. It has to be through usage.

Oh well, if learning seemingly \"meaningless\" things is useless, then we shouldn't go into nursery rhymes or using songs to teach either.

[tamarind]

phankao:

Oh well, if learning seemingly \"meaningless\" things is useless, then we shouldn't go into nursery rhymes or using songs to teach either.

San Zi Jing and Di Zi Gui are written in very old forms of Chinese. Honestly, do you understand the meaning ? Most adults in Singapore do not understand it, but they make their kids memorize it. They might as well ask kids to learn Hindu songs and they will not know the difference. That is what I mean by meaningless. Kids will not learn to appreciate Chinese culture if they don't understand what they are reciting.

Tang poetry is very meaningful to me, and I try to explain every poetry to my girl when I taught her between the ages of 3 to 5.

Nursery rhymes can be very easily understood by kids. There is no comparison here. Shakespeare is ancient, and we don't see any young kids memorizing it.

There are many meaningful ways to appreciate Chinese culture. Like reading all the traditional stories of 嫦娥,花木兰,岳飞,二十四孝,etc, these are so much more meaningful and can be easily understood by kids.

[phankao]

tamarind:

phankao:

Oh well, if learning seemingly \"meaningless\" things is useless, then we shouldn't go into nursery rhymes or using songs to teach either.

They might as well ask kids to learn Hindu songs and they will not know the difference. That is what I mean by meaningless. Kids will not learn to appreciate Chinese culture if they don't understand what they are reciting.

That's an idea. The Hindu, I mean. Maybe I'll let him learn. Afterall he's already learning Japanese and Malay. Kids below 3years old can learn really fast. I keep being amazed at his own sentence-formation which means he understands really more than we can imagine.