MandyMummy:

课外阅读， 读书， 读好书 are ways to improve Chinese. Get your child to starting reading Chinese books apart from speaking and listening.

I totally agree. Whatever methods we use, we must be careful not to kill the interest of the kids. It is sad to hear so many kids hate Chinese because their parents use the wrong methods. The fact is that Chinese is a lot easier to learn compared to English, and it is entirely possible for kids to learn it in a fun and relaxing way.

Hi Oppsgal,

The Si Wu Kuai Du methods are meant for parents to teach using games. Parents need to follow the instructions in the first 30 pages of book 1 to effectively use these books. These books are suitable for kids age 4 to 5 years old.

For 3 year old kids, you can try to use Ji Chu Han Zi instead :
http://tamarindvillage.blogspot.com/2009/12/basic-chinese-500.html

These books are very easy to use, just point and read.

ChiefKiasu:

A Community Support Award of 1000KPs has been given to Tamarind for:

\"Relentless Encouraging People To Teach Their Children in the last 3 years up to 16 June 2011\"

Citation by ksi for http://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/users/tamarind:
Though I see her relentlessly encouraging people to teach their children phonics, I am even more encouraged by her efforts to get parents to teach Chinese at home. Every language learning begins from home so I see her efforts significant in sharing her experiences on how her children can be bilingual because of the home learning environment in practical terms.

Supported by:
hquek: I have learnt a lot from her postings in areas of English phonics, Chinese reading, maid issues.

Penn88n: I have learnt a lot about teaching young kid Chinese from her posting as well as her sharing of the type of books to get from Dangdang.

LKVM: I support nomination for tamarind

We thank Tamarind for her contributions to KiasuParents.com and also the recommender and seconders in supporting her citation.

PS. Please post congratulations in tamarind's Newbie thread by clicking on the tamarind's profile and looking for the \"Link to Personal KiasuParents.com Newbies thread\". Thank you.

Hi ksi, hquek, Penn88n, LKVM,
I just discovered this thread. Thank you very much

BeContented:

Hey, :goodpost: :rahrah:
Personally, while I think the education system is not vastly different now and then, I do find that the standard/level of difficulty is much higher.....partly a natural progression since more of us are educated, but more so because we parents are a lot more kiasu, more focused and do a LOT LOT more to push the kids. I kinda pity kids these days but unless the parents' mindset changes, I doubt there's any solution.

Talking about influence, it's definitely hard to resist and gnaws subconsciously at us. I tend to be more relax (lazy lah....haha) but whenever I see my friends/neighbour putting many hours and effort tutoring their kids, I feel guilty & must also sit my kids down to study. See others reading all the cheem cheem stuff, must try to get my kids to read too.....see others attend this & that, I start enquiring too. Seriously, must really be confident & strong to resist all these influence from all angles :scared:
DH also more relax type, but whenever he hears about who and who spend so many hours studying, able to do this and that & come home only to see our kids playing/watching TV, he will unconsciously question me and start complaining our kids are playing too much.......but normally, he subscribe to the need to strike a balance between study & play....

I actually enjoy seeing the look on other people's face when I told them that my kids do not have any tuition. The only enrichment they have is swimming.

Positive influence is good. For example, if we learn about a more efficient method of teaching a subject, or good teaching materials, then it is fine to follow others and do the same thing.

However, if parents want to push their kids to do well because all their friends' kids are in GEP, or all their friends' kids go into the top secondary school, then it is going to be very stressful for the child because he may not have the ability to do so.

Quote from Steve Jobs:
\"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.\"

The problem with parents in Singapore is that many are trying to make their kids live someone else's life, NOT the life the their kids want to live.

Every parent has a different opinion of what is "good enough". In general 85 to 90 marks is considered bad and teachers will tell you that your kids need tuition. For some parents, they are satisfied only when their kids get 100 marks for all subjects. If the child gets 99 marks for one subject, he must go for tuition. Even when the kids get 100 marks for all subjects, parents want them to get into GEP, so they send them for GEP preparation classes. Getting A* for all subjects is not enough, because the child’s PSLE score may still be lower than 260 and cannot enter the top secondary schools. Having tuition for all subjects is not the scariest, wait till you hear about kids who spend many hours memorizing model compositions every day. Are kids too tired ? Yes I think so but then parents will tell you this is good for their kids. The reason is because many parents think that NOT getting into the top secondary schools means that the kids will end up in neighbourhood schools which they think are full of gangsters. The fact is it is NOT true that neighbourhood schools are gangsters schools.

Hi kids_r_innocent,

It is not necessary to revise all over again. You can try any phonics readers sold locally for more practice. At the same time continue to read story books everyday. In the case of my boy, after he stopped learning phonics, he needed about one to two years of practice by reading story books, to be really good at phonics.

I absolutely agree that Chinese tuition is not helpful, and if you get a bad teacher who makes the child memorize a lot of things, your child will end up hating Chinese. HeSheMe has given good advise about the ways to learn Chinese.


For young kids who are starting to learn Chinese, the easiest and most effective way is to make sure that he reads Chinese story books without hanyu pinyin every day for about 30 mins. Ask him to read every word out loud. This is also excellent for improving his oral skills. Even kids from English speaking families can excel in Chinese this way. This method is also good for primary school kids who cannot read chinese story books independently. When a child has read enough books outside of the textbooks, he will have no problems with Chinese.

Check out my blog for more information:
http://tamarindvillage.blogspot.com/2011/06/reading-long-chinese-novels-by-7-years.html

Brenda10:

Hi, some update of the 2nd order that I have experience with Peeka.


After the down payment, Peeka notified me that the item was out of stock and request me to change to other item and so happen I have just placed the 3rd order and not yet make the down payment, as such I request them to off set the amount with the 3rd order and they done it instantly by transfer the items in 3rd order to 2nd order and cancel the 3rd order.

Hi Brenda,
Thanks for the update.

I have also asked peeka to change the shipping method for me before. I chose the 7 day shipping at first then later realized that the books may be very heavy and requested that peeka changed to economy shipping before the books were received in China. They readily changed for me.

Hi MyBaby,

Many parents have been buying direct from http://www.dangdang.com, this is the largest online bookshop in China with a huge variety of Chinese books. Any book that you want can be found there and they offer big discounts which bookshops do not offer. Even including shipping, books from dangdang are very cheap compared to Maha Yuyi.

http://buy4u.peeka.sg/ is a service that helps us order and ship from http://www.dangdang.com or http://www.taobao.com.

mum2dan:

Tamarind,

IC. Thanks!
Re: Peter and Jane series, my son actually started/completed bk 1-3 before 2.5 yr old. But he doesnt seems to have the patient to read bk 4 as it's more wordy.
So i change to other story bks (Fiction and Non Fiction), few sentences in a page. How do i get him to read those more wordy bks?

The best way to train a child to read more wordy books is still to use the Peter and Jane series. If you use other books, it will take a lot more patience and time because the child will lose interest and patience even faster since there are so many words that he cannot read. The Peter and Jane books introduce new words systematically and kids gain confidence as they read.

Whatever books that you use, you need to train the child to point to every word and read out loud. Also, it is best to make sure that the child already knows basic phonics well.