Learning Chinese (Primary/Preschool)
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Yes, I feel it’s worth a try for ds this year. Instead of being turned off by Chinese compos and books, at least he has an ready arsenal of decent sentences, phrases and cheng yu that he can apply accordingly. It does give him some confidence. As his reading/writing improves, I hope his comprehension and interest will rise too.
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I must confess that I am MOST pleased with the results of our desperate experiment with Chinese Compos. Little Boy's compositions have improved by 6/20 marks, from 8/20 to 14/20... from last November. I didn't want him to reproduce an essay he had learnt. I wanted him to have spontaneous recall of words and phrases that would express his own meaning. He could do that.
In addition, he is a lot more fluent at the random bedtime reading sessions of \"ma xiao tiao\" his Dad conducts with him to check progress. He reads very much more fluently. Lastly, when he did his Chinese Compo homework this weekend, he was squirming excitedly in his seat asking me after every half page of writing \"Mom, you wanna hear what I wrote... Mom? It's nice you know!!\"
He was actually ENJOYING writing out his compo. This is, I think, the best result from the experiment... above and beyond the gains in marks.
Of course, one needs to account for the fact that in December 2010, it was almost total immersion. We are going a lot slower now since the school year started because there is a LOT more homework than we expected in P5.
The biggest biggest disadvantage of this method is the risk of turning a child's interest off. However, what Amy Chua said about enjoying any endeavour holds true here. You will enjoy it when you get better at it. Whilst normally, I wouldn't ever FORCE a child to do what he doesn't like in order to GET good at it (e.g., I'm ok if they hate music) but as far as Chinese goes, we have no choice. We ended last year with Chinese Phobia. We have started this year with Little Boy saying \"Chinese class is more interesting because I can read faster and I recognise more words\". Those are words to warm any Potato Mother's heart. And I am a Potato Mother.
Now, if your speak Chinese OR you are English-speaking but do have a rudimentary grasp of Chinese, then there are other less unpleasant methods to get your child competent enough in Chinese to like it. I am neither. I am only an conversant with strategies of Human Motivation. As such, I applied a few Human Motivation strategies to get my child through the early bumps (large bumps too) of memorizing Chinese compos in order to get him to a level of competence where he can like Chinese. Here is what I did...
1) I preferred compos to novels because compos reach an end faster. The end of every compo is a milestone that once reached is an natural encouragement for the child - \"Wow! I finished ONE compo\". This is motivating. The more challenging the task, the more short-term wins one needs to design into the process.
2) I preferred compos (that were very difficult) to easy storybooks because Little Boy was put off by the baby stories that his meagre vocabulary could handle. He liked the content of difficult compos much better but he needed help to get at them.
3) I made sure the compo was cut up into parts of 3 sentences each. These parts became longer as Little Boy became better. He now works with chunks of 6 sentences each. Everytime he masters 6 sentences, he comes to look for me and quickly rattles off what he knows. Then he moves on to the next chunk. Again, this motivates because of a sense of short-term wins.
4) I don't require him to recite the WHOLE essay at one shot. As long as he can recite 3 to 6 sentences at a time, I am happy. I don't care if by the time he gets to the second chunk, he can't recall the first chunk. After all, when you do Total Immersion in Japan, no one expects you to remember every single conversation verbatim. Things will stick in there even if he cannot recite one WHOLE essay at a time. Learning to recite the whole essay takes so long that the child will not have time to memorize more essays. And volume counts because the more words the child encounters, the more familiarity he gains with Chinese. I didn't want depth. I wanted breadth.... and therefore volume was important.
5) Potato Mothers, please don't leave a Potato Child alone with a long novel and leave him alone to read for fun. Little Boy did not find that fun because he couldn't recognise so many words. He did however, enjoy being able to recite chunks of a compo because there was a clear beginning and an end, and a sense of progressing from one short compo to another.
6) Potato Mothers, please don't leave a Potato Child alone with a compo to memorize by himself without (a) a digital audio recording (b) a glossary of the difficult words in that compo (c) being available to listen to his recitation anytime and anywhere. Little Boy could call me anytime and I made sure I listened and praised EVERY TIME. I would also ask him to explain terms I didn't know. He enjoyed explaining to me. Whatever is enjoyable, motivates. In essence, he kept at it because I was at his side all the time... and he enjoyed my company, and was happy to be able to interact with me about what he was doing. If you have a contentious relationship with your child or are used to yelling at him everytime you work together then this method of memorising compos is guaranteed to kill your child's interest in Chinese - because it is itself very arduous, and if the emotional relationship with you is arduous too, then all hope is lost
7) At the end of the day, Little Boy had to read the compo he had recited to me. I would then get him to teach me the terms therein. Not all the terms... just enough to make him feel like a little Professor.
8 ) Then I set targets. I told Little Boy that every compo he wrote had to contain at least 5 \"cheng yu\". This kick-started the process of \"cheng-yu\" recall. At the start, he took very long to recall and had to refer... now, spontaneous recall is coming easier. Again, I have to be very supportive. Sometimes, I require that he work in my study and not in his room. My presence alone is comforting and motivating. For every other subject, he works in his room, and does not need me.
9) Little Boy devised a way to consolidate his learning from the recitations. He devised a way of giving himself \"ting xie\" using hanyupinyin. We also provided a school exam endorsed electronic dictionary to help him along. I limited him to 5 phrases per compo for ting xie because there were so many new words that if he were to learn them all, we would again have to sacrifice depth for breadth. I wanted a high volume of words to go through his mental processor.
10) When he gets even more competent with spontaneous cheng yu recall, I will take away the reference materials and leave him the dictionary. That way, he will be better equipped to tackle the compo exam.
11) We didn't force Little Boy to memorize. We discussed with him and he committed to do it. This is VERY important. Forcing compliance undermines internal drive. The child must take ownership or everyone will suffer. The parent AND the child.
When he started, he couldn't recognise more than half the words in each compo. That was how daunting the task was. This underlines the importance of providing short term wins and constant positive feedback (every 30 minutes sometimes). The motivation principle here is this - the more difficult the task, the shorter the feedback loop must be to keep the subject engaged and enthused. This is the motivation principle at work in computer games. People keep wanting to play because there is always a scoreboard that gives constant feedback. The feedback loop is very short and it keeps people engaged thus.
I cannot emphasize enough how UNPLEASANT this business of memorizing compos is. But there are ways to make it palatable enough that the child keeps at it, and derives some sense of achievement from it. And once a certain tipping point is reached (i.e., enough vocabulary) then the child is likely to enjoy long novels all by himself. And I am happy to note that Little Boy is beginning to do this quite spontaneously.
I am hoping that by next year, we won't have to memorize compos anymore.
Lastly, get the model compos from PRC... not the local ones from Popular. The quality is markedly better. -
Hi Chenonceau,
I also having a challenge to get my son who is in P3 this year to like his Chinese compo. So far his practise compo came back with all the red marking remarks from his Chinese teacher
. I am in end wits as i am illeterate in chinese.
Would like to learn from you regards the compo books that you purchase it from PRC. I really did not understand the reason of you getting him to memorise the whole compo. Do you mind to explain it? Thank you so much. -
racoon12:
What language do you speak at home then?Hi Chenonceau,
I also having a challenge to get my son who is in P3 this year to like his Chinese compo. So far his practise compo came back with all the red marking remarks from his Chinese teacher . I am in end wits as i am illeterate in chinese.
Would like to learn from you regards the compo books that you purchase it from PRC. I really did not understand the reason of you getting him to memorise the whole compo. Do you mind to explain it? Thank you so much.
My son hears no Chinese at home at all. Neither has he been exposed to Chinese books gradually over the years. Since he hears no Chinese, he has no sense of Chinese sentence structure. Since he has not been reading in Chinese, he recognises very few words.
The only Chinese books he can comfortably read for fun are too childish for him because he is already reading adult literature in English.
I needed a fast and intensive way to increase his vocabulary in very short time so that he can begin to enjoy Chinese books with content more appropriate to his age. Reading for pleasure is still the most effective and enjoyable way to achieve language mastery I thought of 2 options.
Option 1
One way is to enrol him for 6 months in a school IN China.
Option 2
Another way was to artificially immerse him Chinese words (through his ears and through his eyes and through his hands) on a daily basis over the December holidays.
The audio recordings of Chinese Compos immerses his ears in Chinese words. The memorisation of the Chinese Compo text immerses his eyes in Chinese words. When he chooses difficult words to give himself ting xie, he immerses his hands in Chinese words.
The process is arduous and not exactly pleasant. But it is fast and effective. Because it is not exactly pleasant, I intend to TRANSITION him to reading Chinese books as soon as he has picked up enough vocabulary to comfortably read Chinese books appropriate for his age group.
The process is arduous and not exactly pleasant. That is why it is important to discuss with your child and gain his whole-hearted commitment. It is also important provide encouragement after every short passage memorized. It is also important to break things up into very small and manageable portions so that the whole process seems less scary. This is the power of motivation. If you don't know how to motivate, this whole thing will backfire on you. It's easy to motivate when something is inherently enjoyable. The easiest way to motivate is to choose inherently enjoyable learning activities, and stay away from the unpleasant ones like compo memorizing. As far as possible, I try to do that. However, in Life, not everything is enjoyable... and because Little Boy is in P5, time is short... and I have to use an unpleasant alternative.
Happily, there ARE motivation strategies that can make an unpleasant learning activity palatable and halfway enjoyable. One must make sure to use these motivation strategies... or this whole thing will backfire.
Short and Long Term Objectives
In the short term, his increased vocab is helping him do well in compo writing in school. In the long term, I am hoping that greater competence and the ability to read Chinese literature for his age will instil a love for the Chinese language which 4 years of doing Chinese assessment books killed off.
The objectives are NOT
(1) to get him to regurgitate the whole compo regardless of topic
(2) ONLY to get good results
The MORE IMPORTANT objective is to get him to a level of competence where he can ENJOY the language through reading.
There were other things I did to transfer his reading and understanding skills, to WRITING COMPO. I did not share those strategies here in this thread... yeah? Hope this helps to clarify why I took Little Boy on an unpleasant journey. -
Hi Chenonceau,
Thank you very much for your advise.
We speak mixture of chinese and english at home and for past 2 years i did engaged his ex-K2 Chinese teacher (who is China native) to groom his Chinese. Other than that, he is on his own for his chinese.
I agree with you totally on the power of motivation, encouragement and motivation.
I had a talk with him yesterday on his compo. He told me that learning be it chinese and english are very ‘BORING’. I must find out ways to arouse his interest in learning again >haiz<. -
tamarind:
Tamarind, I am keen to get this 1000 best essays book, not sure if you can help to get this book for me in your next purchase. thanks alot.
For your information, it is very easy to order books from China through dangdang.com which has a huge collection of good books.
I found this book of 1000 best essays :
http://product.dangdang.com/product.aspx?product_id=20383611
It can be shipped to Singapore for a shipping charge of about ￥18. -
SoWoW:
Hi SoWoW,
Tamarind, I am keen to get this 1000 best essays book, not sure if you can help to get this book for me in your next purchase. thanks alot.tamarind:
For your information, it is very easy to order books from China through dangdang.com which has a huge collection of good books.
I found this book of 1000 best essays :
http://product.dangdang.com/product.aspx?product_id=20383611
It can be shipped to Singapore for a shipping charge of about ￥18.
I will not be ordering from dangdang within the next few months. You can try asking other parents in this thread.
http://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14081&start=460
Do take note of what I wrote earlier before you decide to buy these books :
An educational expert in China, author of the best selling \"Hao mama sheng guo hao lao shi\" (A good mother is better than a good teacher) book, wrote that the quality of these so-called model compositions are actually quite poor. She wrote that the publishers allowed parents to send in money to have their kids' compositions published in the books. The compositions do not have interesting vocabulary or good content, and it is pointless to read them.
The author also wrote that reading model compositions alone is not sufficient, because there are not many words in these compositions. In order for kids to do very well, they should be reading many long novels of hundreds of thousands of words.
The author raised a daughter who is brilliant in her academic studies. She attributed her daughter's success to reading large numbers of interesting Chinese novels.
Note that forcing a child to memorize model compositions is one of the worst ways of teaching Chinese, and it is very likely to make a child hate Chinese. The reason why so many kids hate Chinese nowadays, is because they are forced by their parents to memorize compositions. It is so much better to let the child read good novels like the 笑猫日记 series of books which is far superior to any model compositions, and so much more meaningful and fun to read. -
tamarind:
Hi SoWoW,
Tamarind, I am keen to get this 1000 best essays book, not sure if you can help to get this book for me in your next purchase. thanks alot.SoWoW:
[quote=\"tamarind\"]
For your information, it is very easy to order books from China through dangdang.com which has a huge collection of good books.
I found this book of 1000 best essays :
http://product.dangdang.com/product.aspx?product_id=20383611
It can be shipped to Singapore for a shipping charge of about ￥18.
I will not be ordering from dangdang within the next few months. You can try asking other parents in this thread.
http://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14081&start=460
Do take note of what I wrote earlier before you decide to buy these books :
An educational expert in China, author of the best selling \"Hao mama sheng guo hao lao shi\" (A good mother is better than a good teacher) book, wrote that the quality of these so-called model compositions are actually quite poor. She wrote that the publishers allowed parents to send in money to have their kids' compositions published in the books. The compositions do not have interesting vocabulary or good content, and it is pointless to read them.
The author also wrote that reading model compositions alone is not sufficient, because there are not many words in these compositions. In order for kids to do very well, they should be reading many long novels of hundreds of thousands of words.
The author raised a daughter who is brilliant in her academic studies. She attributed her daughter's success to reading large numbers of interesting Chinese novels.
Note that forcing a child to memorize model compositions is one of the worst ways of teaching Chinese, and it is very likely to make a child hate Chinese. The reason why so many kids hate Chinese nowadays, is because they are forced by their parents to memorize compositions. It is so much better to let the child read good novels like the 笑猫日记 series of books which is far superior to any model compositions, and so much more meaningful and fun to read.[/quote]Even though I have obtained the results that I wanted for my son (i.e., compo marks went up from 8/20 to 16/20 - without wholesale regurgitation and depending only upon recall of good phrases), I would tend to agree with Tamarind that reading for fun is VASTLY better.
Reading for fun is less likely to backfire on you.
The method that I have used can really backfire if you don't manage the process well. However, if you do manage the process well, then your child may (like mine) stop hating it... but in order to get my son to really like Chinese, I stiill need to transit him from compo memorizing to reading for fun.
The jump from P4 to P5 is stupendous. I observe that P5 papers are set at about 90% of the PSLE prelim standards. I have no time and my child is far behind... we don't speak ANY Chinese at home. I needed a fast and radical solution. But I am also able to manage the process well. Please note that the way you manage this process and make the difference between
(1) success (your child develops competence and some liking)
(2) failure (your child hates you and the language)
If you have time and you speak Chinese at home... then go the route of reading for fun. It is preferable. Another Mommy uses cheng-yu games with her P5. If you can speak and write Chinese, you can do that too. -
For those parents who do not know Chinese, I strongly advise you to send your kids to well established Chinese enrichment classes like Berries and Tien Hsia to learn from the experts.
The following are results for the students attending Berries :
93.9% scored A & A* in 2010 PSLE Chinese
83.6% got merit/dist. for higher Chinese
The experts know what is the best way to teach Chinese.
I do not have parents who speak mandarin at home, and they cannot help me with Chinese, but I managed to do very well in Chinese all the way to A levels without any tuition or enrichment classes, and I never have to memorize anything : http://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/content/learning-chinese-independently
For those parents who know Chinese, there is no need to spend a lot of time teaching your child to read at home. I am a full time working mommy who can only afford to spend half an hour teaching each child everyday, and the results have been amazing. -
tamarind:
Hmmm... I may be wrong but it seems that 80% of cohort scores A. However, this does not mean that their PSLE t-score will be high. And it is the t-score that determines entrance into schools. Not the number of A's.For those parents who do not know Chinese, I strongly advise you to send your kids to well established Chinese enrichment classes like Berries and Tien Hsia to learn from the experts.
The following are results for the students attending Berries :
93.9% scored A & A* in 2010 PSLE Chinese
83.6% got merit/dist. for higher Chinesetamarind:
I tried experts when The Daughter was young... established experts with years of experience having taught in MOE, and from China too. Didn't work. The Daughter scored between D to F from Sec 1 to Sec 4. In the end, at the end of her tether, she buckled down to memorizing compos and cheng yu... and got an A1 for AO level Chinese.The experts know what is the best way to teach Chinese.
BUT she hates the language. She absolutely DETESTS it.tamarind:
The PSLE today is far more difficult than what we went through. The past may not predict the future.I do not have parents who speak mandarin at home, and they cannot help me with Chinese, but I managed to do very well in Chinese all the way to A levels.
tamarind:
Notwithstanding that the essays may have been paid for by parents for publication... they are still better than model compositions published in Singapore. So, for those who want manageable and short 800 character pieces from start to finish, these collections are a viable alternative. But I will make sure to check out 笑猫日记.If you must make your child memorize something, it is far better to let him memorize the 笑猫日记 series of books since these books are far superior to model compositions which are paid by parents to be published.
Thanks much much.
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