Kay Ren Tse:

As a result, those steeped in Chinese culture look askance at students who clamour for more stimulating lessons: 'Why don't you bite the bullet and work harder?' Those steeped in Western culture respond: 'Learning should be enjoyable.'

Kay Ren Tse:

We also cannot teach Chinese the way English is taught, because the construction of Chinese is best mastered in time-honoured ways such as ting xie (spelling) and mo xie (dictation).

dimsum:

karmeleon:

I was greatly encouraged when I realised he could read quite many words at 10months, and then only I put in more effort as you can see in those books. *haha*. Before that, I didn't know whether the effort was going to be fruitful or not.

wow wow! Reading at 10months. I think my boy only spoke his 1st word at that age.

karmeleon:

I was greatly encouraged when I realised he could read quite many words at 10months, and then only I put in more effort as you can see in those books. *haha*. Before that, I didn't know whether the effort was going to be fruitful or not.

karmeleon:

I was greatly encouraged when I realised he could read quite many words at 10months, and then only I put in more effort as you can see in those books. *haha*. Before that, I didn't know whether the effort was going to be fruitful or not.

EN:

Don't worry about it. There are some forumers that are still talking to me or can guess. I have autumnbronze too who is brave enough to blow her own cover. :lol:

Nah...you are not too old to learn a language. Distant nieces/nehpew are currently working/studying/living in China, another in Norway, Denmark & France. They are forced to pick up and learn language as quickly to survive.

tamarind:

karmeleon,

Wow I think you have really put in a lot of effort to teach your kids Chinese at home. Thanks for sharing those good books.
Before the age of 6, I think parents are the ones who have to put in the hard work to make sure that kids are on the right track. Kids do not really have to spend too much effort to learn

EN:

autumnbronze, a relative of mine put their son in a SAP school as it is near their place. Their son is taking Mandarin as 2nd language. They are not from a mixed parentage. The boy is currently in p1 going to p2 next year.

EN:

I thought learning language takes a while to build? It's an everyday effort. My children are exposed to English language at home daily. Their spoken mother tongue are not fantastic. I don't expect an A immediately but I believe the marks can be improve year by year slowly.

karmeleon:

Tamarind, i took a look at your webblog on the p1 textbooks. The words there are not even difficult for my 1yo.! He can read all those. So I guess we are on the right track.

tamarind:

autumnbronze:

Anyway, the point is ... I NEVER for once remember thinking that CL was difficult to learn. I just did not have the much needed support for it. I had to struggle on my own. And I knew that, w/o the support, if I spent too much time on CL and neglect the others, then I am done for.

Thanks for sharing. It is good to know someone whose MT is not Chinese, did not think that CL was difficult to learn.

That makes me wonder why many other Chinese Singaporeans complain that Chinese is difficult. Personally I believe that there are 2 causes :
1. In schools, they had very bad Chinese teachers who taught using the wrong methods.Since they don't know what are the correct methods, they don't even understand why Chinese is so difficult to learn (I am not referring to anyone in this thread.) It is like learning English without any knowledge of phonics, it is even more difficult to memorize the spellings of so many English words.
2. They did not have the correct attitude towards Chinese. Some people does not even realize that.

I have added photos of the P1 textbook in my blog, scroll down to the bottom of the page.
http://tamarindvillage.blogspot.com/2009/12/reading-chinese-books.html

and explanations of why I think that the textbook is bad. I think it is very unfair for parents who did not send their kids to Chinese enrichment classes before P1.

For parents who want to teach Chinese at home, it is very important to look for good teaching materials, sadly, such materials cannot be found in Singapore. We have to search in China websites like http://www.dangdang.com.

There are some good materials in the Teaching Chinese at Home thread.
http://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3878&start=0

It is very difficult to teach without good materials. That is why I sent my kids to Berries, their materials are good, but only their students can get the materials.

autumnbronze:

Although my Mandarin is V rusty, I make an effort to speak to him in it evry day. Because most of the time I can't remember many of the words, I just intersperse it with EL words. Have thought of enrolling for conversational classes for myself sometime in the future too. The point is, I want to/and am making an effort to provide my son with a conducive and supportive environment for him to learn the language. I believe that parental support is v v impt. I know eventually DS will know my Mandarin is 'koyak', but at the same time, he will also know that mummi has been making an effort to re-learn it and that itself, I believe will be a motivational factor for him. That, I also believe, will set the tone for him to be interested in the language and hopefully will not cause him to have a mental block.

It is best for one parent to always speak in English and one parent to always speak in Mandarin. Try not to mix English and Mandarin. Otherwise send the kid to a good enrichment class, or a nursery/kindergarten which has at least one hour of Chinese lessons everyday.

It is also very important that the child learn both A, B, C, etc and the simplest Chinese characters and strokes at the same time. My boy faced the same amount of difficulty when learning to write the alphabet, as well as 亻, 扌, 辶, 氵, 犭, 人, 口, 天, 大, 小 etc. So he does not complain that Chinese is more difficult to learn.

I have been doing some research in the China websites, and I found that it is possible for kids to learn enough Chinese to be able to read newspapers before they enter primary school. In China they are aiming to teach kids to recognize as many Chinese words as possible so that they can read independently at 7 years old. We should also try to do the same.
If the child is able to read Chinese effortlessly, and he/she reads Chinese books consistently, then Chinese will not be difficult at all.

buds:

I was informed by a parent before. that one of the child's parent has to be a

Malay to take up Malay as second language... and likewise one parent who is
Chinese to be able to take up Chinese as second language. This is to
ensure there is one able speaker in the home. Dunno to which extent
this is true though..

karmeleon:

tamarind:

[quote=\"ks2me\"]
Like Peranakans, is their MT Chinese or Malay? There should be a choice right? Any Peranakans here to advise on this?

I cannot find anything in the MOE webpage stating that Chinese cannot choose Malay as a second language. May be it is possible to do so all along ?

tamarind:

2. They did not have the correct attitude towards Chinese. Some people does not even realize that.

I have added photos of the P1 textbook in my blog, scroll down to the bottom of the page.
http://tamarindvillage.blogspot.com/2009/12/reading-chinese-books.html

and explanations of why I think that the textbook is bad. I think it is very unfair for parents who did not send their kids to Chinese enrichment classes before P1.

For parents who want to teach Chinese at home, it is very important to look for good teaching materials, sadly, such materials cannot be found in Singapore. We have to search in China websites like http://www.dangdang.com.

There are some good ma.

tamarind:

ks2me:

Like Peranakans, is their MT Chinese or Malay? There should be a choice right? Any Peranakans here to advise on this?

I cannot find anything in the MOE webpage stating that Chinese cannot choose Malay as a second language. May be it is possible to do so all along ?

Tamarind:

My 6 year old girl enjoys memorizing and reciting Tang Poetry, she loves the beautiful characters and the rhymes and she asks to learn more. She is certainly not suffering.

ks2me:

Like Peranakans, is their MT Chinese or Malay? There should be a choice right? Any Peranakans here to advise on this?