四五快读 Methods
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(Page 3)
3) Reading starts from word recognition. Those who read early find learning easy, leading to positive reinforcement
1. Those who recognize words early can improve IQ
A lot of people think that Chinese characters are boring which cause damage to the kid when forced upon them. In reality, if Chinese characters are introduced to kid appropriately, the process helps to develop the kid’s IQ.
(1) Training in concentration
A young child remembers thing via unconscious memory and mechanical memory. For adult, memory arises from conscious and comprehension. If we do not intentionally trains the child memory and let him develop naturally, the process of unconscious to conscious, mechanic to comprehension will be long. However, if we consciously and appropriately train them, this process will be shortened substantially.
A child often remembers things unconsciously, through the eye; captured images are remembered without comprehension. However, if we tell them seriously, “Now I am going to teach you a word, you have to look carefully and remember it. I know you are a good kid who is capable and love to learn”, what would happen? As we give them a concrete task, and motivate him first, he will naturally concentrate, actively receive the signal and focused intentionally. If we train him gradually in this manner, the kids focusing and conscious memory will develop faster.
(2) Training in observation
When a child starts to learn Chinese characters, he will naturally become interested in items associated with these characters. For example, he will read the name of the shop on the street; when he see a book, he will read the name of the book; when he watch TV, he will look for the word he know and read it out loud, or may even try to find words he know from a small piece of paper. If the kid does not recognize words, he will normally not pay attention to so many things. Therefore, word recognition trains and develop they observation.
(3) Training in thinking
When the kid knows more words, he will automatically look for the radical of the word. When my child is three, she will often ask questions about Chinese characters. For example, why so many word have “wood” on one side? Through leading the kid consciously, they will start thinking: because “wood” comes from tree, so “tree” uses “wood” as radical. Other example includes, peach, willow, plum, apricot trees. Traditionally, furniture comes from wood e.g. chairs, cabinet; table etc. all uses “wood” as its radical. Therefore, the kid develops a concept: word with “wood” as characters are mostly trees and furniture. When they see a new word with “wood” as radical, they will guess that the word is either a type of tree or furniture. -
fristrom, awesome! :salute:
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(Page 4)
Furthermore, she will ask about “long/grow”: why it is read as zhang(3) and chang(2) at different time? When the kid ask question voluntarily, it helps to improve his comprehension and memory. When you tell him that, this is a word with multiple pronunciations, when it is read as zhang(3), when it is read as chang(2), he will remember it well.
He may voluntarily breaking down of Chinese character into parts e.g. “friend” is made up of two “moons”, when two moons are together, they become good friend.
Sometimes he will ask about many words with the same pronunciation. Why are there so many word pronounced as “ming(2)”? Does all these words mean the same thing?
All these train and develop a child’s thinking ability, and cultivate a good habit of thinking. If the kids can’t ask these questions voluntarily, we can develop and train their thinking ability consciously.
(4) Training of imagination
Chinese characters have a lot of words with profound meanings. We can break these words up to help them to memorize.
For example, “bi(4)” means white jade, “bao(3)” means the precious jade at home, and “xie(4)” means bowing, shorten by a few inches and saying thank you at the same time.
Under our guidance, the kid will be able to break up the words quickly. This will heighten their interest in learning Chinese and develop their imagination and creativity.
Further, we can lead to think of some historical questions. For example, “she(4)” (only one inch tall), should mean “short”, and should read as “ai(3)”, so why is the word read as “she(4)”? The word “ai(3)” (shooting arrow), should read as “she(4)”, so why does it read as “ai(3)”? Also, “chong(2)” can be broken down into “thousand miles”, and should be pronounced as “chu(1)”, “chu(1)” can be viewed as two mountains stack on top of each other, and should be read as “chong(2)”, so it seems like that meaning of these two words should be swapped. Could it be our ancestors accidentally mix up these words? When we analysis these words in details, it helps to train the kids imagination and creativity. I still remember my daughter created a lot of words she found meaningful. These are great tools in developing kids imagination and creativity.
(5) Training of memory
Good memory are not born, but can be acquired through training. Adult remembers through comprehension, association, and images. When kids first start to recognize words, they rely heavily on mechanical memory, so they can’t remember a lot of words in one go. But with an increase in interest and development of analytical power, the number of words they remember will increase, from 2 to 4 to 8 to 10. My daughter learns on average learn 10 words a day, so in a couple months, she will learn 1000 words. If motivation, their memory will further improve. I have taught kids who can initially only remember 2/3 words but in one or two months, they can remember 6-8 words each time.
In conclusion, if we teach word recognition via images, and in interesting way, it will provide an all round IQ development for kid during the process. -
(Page 5)
2. Developing good habit and character
(1) Motivated to learn
When the kid learn a certain number of Chinese characters, and develop an interest in reading, they will look forward to reading so that reading book becomes an enjoyment. When my daughter is almost 3 years old, she knows about 1000 words. I put together a book for her, about 20 pages, with large font size. Every night, she asks to read book, and every time she reads, she finishes the whole book. When she is done, I asked her: “Shall we play something else?” “No, I want to read again.” So there she read the book again. In this manner, she read on and off for 2 hours a day. When she was 4/5, she can read thick books for hours, sometimes laughing, sometime crying and totally absorbed in the reading.
At this stage of a kid’s development, they are hungry to learn, as if they are sponges that have been squeezed dry, desperately wanted to absorb knowledge. They roam freely in the world of fairy tale and in the oceans of knowledge, to explore the beauty and secrets of the world.
(2) Character development
Children literature helps a kid to distinguish between good and evil, and teaches them to be an upright person. Especially in fairy tales, with simple characters and storylines, and unambiguous endings: good person will be rewarded while bad person will get what they deserve. Because children literature is close to the heart of the child, with adorable character and animals, it is easy for them to understand when they read, and hence, take on the moral value and correct their bad habits. This is more effective than parents repeating over and over again, to teach the kid how to be a caring, honest, brave person.
(3) Improve self-confidence, discipline, leading to a positive reinforcement cycle
An early reader often receives compliments. This motivation improves the kids self-confidence and discipline.
From reading widely, the child learns more, and the more they learn, the more they want to learn. When they come across words they don’t know, they will learn under their own initiative. This develops good learning habit, and train independent learning.
Hence, this is why early reader doesn’t need training from adult to develop good character and habit to become independent learner.
4. Good EQ is developed from reading
Kids start competing early because the parents want them to. They compete in academics and skills e.g. English, Olympic maths, composition, piano, drawing, dancing, gymnastic, soccer, weiqi. These are very good training, giving kids an all-rounded education which surpass what was available to the parents. -
MissAshley:
Guess you miss my point here. I am not trying to fault any parent who is trying to learn by using translation. What I am trying to say is don't rely too much using translation, otherwise it will impede the whole learning. My advise is try to either get a dictionary or get an chinese dictionay apps, which is what I am doing. Rather than waiting for a translation to be done.....why don't you rely on yourself? How long can you wait for the translation in the first place?
If the parent can't fully read and understand providing with translation will help the child in question then why not? We are basically here to help the kids learn.
It's kudos to the mum who cannot fully understand mandarin to help her child, why should we fault her for her efforts instead of helping?
If you do have the ipod, iphone or phone with endroid, just simply download the apps for the chinese dictionary. It is very easy.
To be honest, this is not the only book that you might encounter. There is another one which is also very good by the same author as well. -
tamarind:
Hi laughingcat,
I totally agree with you that the English version may not fully capture all the meaning. You are definitely doing the right thing, and you are setting a very good example for other parents
Actually I don't mean asking the author to translate, she is a professor in China, I don't think her English is good. I mean to ask if any other parent who is good in both English and Chinese want to translate. I was thinking it may be helpful to those parents who are poor in Chinese
Thanks Tamarind sensei. Actually I learn from you and that is to perservere. It was difficult initially but I need to pull through fast as I want to teach my boys effectively and also much faster. Also I want to set an example for my boys too. So during family quiet reading time, we are all reading.
Actually initially it was difficult however after I crossed that big hurdle, thereafter all seems natural. So even now I am still learning.
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(Page 6)
However, have you thought of what is the most important factor in establishing and advancing one career? It is the relentless pursuit of your aim, unselfish sacrifices to your career, being able to access people objectively, maintaining an optimistic view of life, work hard despite difficulty and failure, pushing yourself beyond the limit, value differences, and how to standup again when you fall. Therefore, it is important to cultivate good character, state of mind, behavior and habit in kids.
Even though when we pay a lot of attention in character building, and conscious about training of behavior, within a short life span, when can be experienced is so short-lived and what can be comprehended is often too abstract. So how does one start to learn differentiating right and wrong, good and evil, empathy and lessons of life? It is from stories that mother told when you are young; and from fairy tales and folklores when you can read; and from novels, biography in the adolescent years. For those who read widely, from books that describes different phase of history, different background, different races, different countries, they will be able to understand what happens to different people from different places, their experiences and feelings, understand what is hardship, pain, failure, torture, from these enriches oneself, and improves one moral standard. These are difficult things for parent and teacher to teach. Only from books, accumulated from thousands of years, will be able to provide us with the philosophy of life. So one should let the kid read widely, from books around the world and from books from different periods.
5. Parents in our country does not think highly of reading
In reality, our education system is going backwards. Why? Because many kids do not think much of reading, lack the foundation of knowledge and view reading as something useless.
First, as “primary teacher” of the kids, parents are often busy with work, and give up reading to recharge. So that, in China, only 2% of adult read regularly. This sets an example of “reading is not essential” to kids.
Furthermore, schools are too busy with grades and assessments, and have no time for times to read. This lead to the erosion of 5000 years of tradition of respect of culture and reading. The nation advocating, “travel 1000 miles, read 10000 books” has stopped moving forward, and in reality, going backwards.
In fact, the ministry of education has instructions for secondary and university students to read a lot of non-academic books. However, in reality, many secondary school students have not read 90% of those books on the recommended list. Many university students have not read the four Chinese masterpieces. Those who major in Chinese at the university have not come across of recent famous works like “midnight”, “thunderstorm”, and “the camel man”. In the 100 essential books for university students, some of the students major in literature have only read 10s of them. If this is the situation for Chinese major, those in other faculty will only fare worse. -
Will be away for a few days. Hope someone will have a go with the translation…
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Hi laughingcat,
Yes we all need to perservere. In fact, we all expect our kids to perservere and learn all the way to university, so parents must first set a good example.
To other parents,
The English translated version is very helpful, but do try to use the dictionary to learn like laughingcat advised. Note that after kids have completed all 6 books, you will need to continue to read story books with them for a while before they can read independently. You will encounter more difficult words which you need to learn before teaching your kids. Then you need to teach kids to use the dictionary so that they can learn independently.
fristrom,
Thanks for the excellent translation ! -
Fristrom,
Wow! Fantastic! Thank you so much for your awesome contribution!
:salute:
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