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Girls will like books by Gail Carson Levine (Ella Enchanted), Diana Wynne Jones (Howl's Moving Castle, Charmed Life, etc).


Ursula Le Guin (A wizard of earthsea), Louis Sachar and Neil Gaiman all write very well and their books are suitable for both teenage boys and girls.

Check http://www.amazon.com and read the customer reviews to look for more good books.

ridcully:

antebellum:

ridcully,

I am impressed. It is refreshing to find someone who speaks frankly in this forum.

Are you an English teacher ? Just curious.

I have a question. Is it necessary for a child to understand all these terms like subjects, false subjects, etc if her ambition is not to be an English teacher ? Is it possible for a child to do very well in creative writing if she does not know how to explain all these terms ?

Possibly too frankly at times. I hope my sincere message in improving people's English is not spoilt by my giving offence.

For my sins, I am an English teacher with over thirty years' experience.

Well, that's a very interesting question about whether it is necessary for a child to understand all these terms like subjects etc. I would have to say no. Writing expressively requires style and content substance rather than grammatical exactitude. However, most parents want their children to write decent compositions for school examinations, especially the PSLE; therefore, grammatical exactitude, together with extensive vocabulary, is indeed necessary. The PSLE compo paper is not creative writing.

Notwithstanding my initial 'no', I would say though that stylish writing requires a feel for the language and clarity of thought. These, in my experience, are greatly assisted by having a technical command of the language. There are some children who are natural writers, but a little bit of grammatical polish does not harm. On the other hand, a lot of children will not be stylish writers; they should at least not burden the reader with a double whammy of poor style and inexactitude.

:salute:
R

Hi ridcully,
Thank you very much for your reply.

ridcully:

The nail which stands out takes a chance in getting hammered down. It is easy for you to post saying \"I don't like that!\", but you should ask yourselves whether you really try to help others here, or do you simply consume others' knowledge and advice?

I really hope to see more people like you who can continue to speak the truth instead of worrying too much about offending people.

The problem is that most parents cannot judge for themselves whether a tuition teacher's English is really good or not. They are happy enough when their kids' English compositions improve by a few marks, which could be due to the fact that TAS makes their kids memorize model compositions, and not because the quality of the teachers are good.

Comments from experts in English like you are far more accurate that those written by other parents who are not even good in English.

ridcully,

I am impressed. It is refreshing to find someone who speaks frankly in this forum.

Are you an English teacher ? Just curious.

I have a question. Is it necessary for a child to understand all these terms like subjects, false subjects, etc if her ambition is not to be an English teacher ? Is it possible for a child to do very well in creative writing if she does not know how to explain all these terms ?

General99all ,

The problem is that most parents and caregivers do not know what are the correct grammar and phrases. Although the bilingual policy has been around for so many years, how many adults do you know are very good at speaking mandarin ? The language used in our work place is predominantly English unless you are a Chinese teacher or if you work for the Chinese newspaper. Otherwise most adults do not have a chance to speak Mandarin. Most of my colleagues cannot hold a proper conversation in Mandarin, though all of them learned Chinese in school. I believe that most adults do not even read any Chinese novels or Chinese newspapers after they left school.

So it is not that parents do not want to speak to their kids using grammatically correct Mandarin, it is because they are not capable of doing so.

Instead of complaining about the mistakes, we should look into how to improve the standards of mandarin. We cannot depend on school teachers to teach because kids do not spend enough time with them. The best way to learn proper mandarin is to read Chinese books every day, and also to listen to perfect mandarin from good TV shows from China.

Wu MaMa:

教育本要从家里开始，而越标准越好。

I absolutely agree with this. However, please note that Singaporeans are not native speakers of Mandarin. Many Singaporeans are more comfortable with speaking dialect such as Cantonese, Hokkien, etc, and many grew up speaking English. Our bilingual policy has not been successful in producing adults who are capable of speaking mandarin fluently and correctly. The worst part is that many adults make mistakes when they speak Mandarin, and they don't even know that they are wrong.

I just read the first few pages of this thread, and to those people who mocked at General99all’s mistakes, I hope that you can reflect on what you have done. Will you say the same thing if you were talking to General99all face to face ? The internet allows you to hide behind a nickname and say whatever you like without any concern about other people’s feelings, but that does not mean that it is right to do so.