Comparing Chinese Enrichment (Primary/Preschool)

[VooVoo]

MMM:

Hi which time slot are you in? My girl is on monday 4.45pm i think.

Sun class!

But I have no idea how this class will be conducted! Do you know?

BTW, how many kids per class?

[MMM]

I can only relate from my son’s K1 experience. There is less than 8 in a class …sorry recently my memory is failing me. But definitely not a big class.


I think the teaching is based on theme for that age group. So they learn about the names of various items say within the living room,etc… They also does some art & craft kind of stuff that relates to the topic they are learning. Typically in a molin class for pre-school, teachers expose them to the chinese words, chinese rhymes and those er ge. So the kids are usually able to "memorise" the rhymes and songs. They also have performances for the parents on a regular basis.

Teachers are all native speaker, Principal is a local and so far the teachers that my kids have are pretty loving type and is able to connect with the kids well. My observation is that the teachers will also use simple english to translate to the kids. BTW, all the teachers seem ok so far.

Similar with other courses, if you want to see vast improvements in your child’s chinese, I would suggest that you revise what the teachers taught. One mum that i met told me that her dd started from nursery and she is able to recognise chinese characters in the P4 sister’s textbook.

Prior to molin, my kids (nursery and K1 at that pt) were attending children arts theatre at kembangan plaza. It was featured on the papers before as they have non chinese speakers attending their classes and went on to speak the language. It’s alot more fun but I felt that it wasn’t serious/ "academic" enough particularly when my kids are bilingual and uses both languages well enough. The teachers include people like zhao jin (some guy who appeared on tv saying those xiang seng). So they speak the "perfect" mandarin.

[VooVoo]

Thanks for your detailed info!

[ChiefKiasu]

hquek:

Hi all,


Hokkien Huay Kuan has a arts & cultural centre where they conduct a lot of chinese courses, including a new type called 乐乐华语班 that's supposed to be fairly similar to Berries.

Has anyone tried that out?

Hi hquek, are you referring to the centre in Toa Payoh? My son attended a Sunday speech and drama course there. The courses there are very popular.

[Irene66]

Hi, I am hesitant as to which to send my girl, who is 4 yrs old this yr. She can speak little Mandarin and I hope she can learn through fun.


I called up Eduplus just now and the teacher at Toa Payoh Safra sounded very nice, from her speech, guess she must be a Chinese National. However, they only have one Sunday class for age 4.

Berries is another of my option as it is nearer to home and they have more time slots to choose from.

From the past thread, ChiefKS has suggested Berries for age 3 onwards as it is more fun. Anyone else has advice which one to choose?

[Ros]

I think you should let her do a trial class at both Eduplus and Berries, and see what one she like, and you can also assess the teachers. The quality of teachers varies from class to class, centre to centre.


My girl (6 yrs old) is now at Eduplus (Ghim Moh) and all the teachers are Chinese nationals. She seems to be enjoying her classes.

ChiefKiasu, I've seen from previous thread that your kids enjoyed Yuquan classes on Chinese idioms and Zijing. I'm thinking if I should let my girl try that? Her Chinese is very poor (can't read), as we have just returned from overseas. But I am wondering what's the point of being able to recite 548#8re89% when she doesn't know much of of the basics? I spoke to Ms Soh from Yuquan and she sounds very convincing that that Zijing is the equvialent of \"I can read\". Do you agree? Thanks for your comment.

[ChiefKiasu]

Ros:

...ChiefKiasu, I've seen from previous thread that your kids enjoyed Yuquan classes on Chinese idioms and Zijing. I'm thinking if I should let my girl try that? Her Chinese is very poor (can't read), as we have just returned from overseas. But I am wondering what's the point of being able to recite 548#8re89% when she doesn't know much of of the basics? I spoke to Ms Soh from Yuquan and she sounds very convincing that that Zijing is the equvialent of \"I can read\". Do you agree? Thanks for your comment.

I wouldn't say that ZiJing is totally similar to I Can Read. The purpose of I Can Read is to introduce phonics concepts to the child so that the child can start to recognize and read words independently. Zijing is more to wire the auditory senses of the child to the Chinese language in relation to a story. Think of it as nursery rhymes. In general, the child may only understand a small percentage of the words of ZiJing itself, but will fully understand the story behind it. Depending on how it is taught, Zijing can also improve character recognition. I suppose this is why Yuquan is promoting it as the \"Chinese equivalent\" of I Can Read.

That said, I feel that Yuquan's idiom classes give better bang for the buck, simply because they can be directly applied to primary school work. I started my son in June this year, and he has definitely improved in his use of the Chinese language. More amazingly, he actually begged me to let him continue with the next modules. Given his initial dislike for the language, I must say this comes as a total surpise for myself.

[Ros]

Thank you ChiefKiasu. Is there any program for Chinese that would be a close equivalent to "I Can Read" for the English? I find it so hard to teach my girl to read Chinese since very character is different, unlike English where reading can be taught with phonics.

Given that my child is only 6 years old, is that too young for Yuquan’s idioms class since she wouldn’t be using much in school?
Thank you for your comments.

[googaga]

MMM:

Hi which time slot are you in? My girl is on monday 4.45pm i think.

hi mmm, i'm new here n have been reading all the posts on chinese enrichment and glad that you've shared so much on Molin : )

i've just placed my son, N2 on Molin's Wed class, 4.45pm. But there's currently only 1 student for that slot : ( was hoping they'll be able to open up the class then at least i dun haf to walk there twice!! i've another boy k2 also same day, slot timing.

We've been attending Berries for this whole year and only lately thinking of switching to either Jiang education (too far n no N2 class) or Molin (at least nearer)..

After reading your post, i feel more at ease placing them there.. really worry their level of chinese cannot fit into primary la..

[jedamum]

googaga:

We've been attending Berries for this whole year and only lately thinking of switching to either Jiang education (too far n no N2 class) or Molin (at least nearer)..

hi...any reason why you are dropping Berries?