Children change in every learning stage, thus our teaching methods need to be changed accordingly.
The following are the helpful guidelines in teaching young children Chinese, which are more appropriate for toddler or preschoolers who just started learning Chinese:
1) Learning through plays
Young Children has short focus span, in order to get their focus and interest, you will need to let them play and learn at the same time. This has been my methodology since I started teaching my girl when she's 28 months old, and this apply in teaching Chinese too.
Some parents told me, they couldn't make their children sit down and learn, they asked me how do I make my girl sit down and listen to me. The answer is, I have never made my girl sit down to learn from me, when I show her something interesting, she would come over and listen to me.
"Interesting" is the key point here, you need to catch their attention and sell your stuff to them before their attention went off.
2) Understand the Chinese Characters
Chinese characters are Logograms, unlike English words which are Phonograms. This means, it is easier to tell the meaning of a Chinese character, than to pronounce it, while for English, you might be able to read the word, even though you do not know the meaning of it. I thus strongly disagree with the method of teaching Han Yu Pin Yin first without teaching the Chinese characters.
You need to understand the difference of Chinese and English, in order to teach your children effectively. When teaching English, we start with alphabets and phonics, but when teaching Chinese, we should emphasize on words recognition and the meaning.
Chinese characters can be very fun and meaningful, e.g. 日(sun) is evolved from the shape of sun, 口(mouth) looked like the shape of mouth, 月(moon) is similar to a crescent moon and etc.
3) Make your lesson interesting and interactive
As mentioned in point 2, Chinese characters are very meaningful, when teaching Chinese, we should make it fun and interesting by elaborating the meaning of the word, instead of forcing the kids to memorise the meaning of the word, which could be very dry and boring.
E.g. when teaching 人(human), we can use our body to make the shape of this word by putting our hands down and stepping forward. You can tell the kid,"all human are 人, do I look like the word 人?"
E.g. when teaching 哭(cry), we can ask the kid what will come out from the eyes when you are crying? If the kid says "tears", you can tell him "yes, tears, look at the word哭, does it look like someone crying with a drop of tears below the eyes?
4) Not necessary to teach the simple words first
Some parents thought they should start with easy words or words with lesser strokes first, but this is not the case. Simple or tough words are the same to our little ones, they memorise the words through its graphics, some simple words might be more confusing to them. E.g. 三(three) and 川(river), they might think these 2 words are the same.
Difficult words like 美(beautiful) can be broken down into 羊(sheep) 大(big), which you can explain like "a big sheep is considered beautiful", 一只大大(big)的羊(sheep)是不是很美(beautiful)? A story can make the kid memories the word easily.
5) For multiple sounds or meaning characters, teach the most commonly used one first
Some characters have more than one sound or meaning, we should teach the commonly used one first. E.g. 好(for meaning of "good", it is pronounced as hao3; for meaning of interest i.e. 爱好, it is pronounced as hao4), we should teach the kids 好 means "good", if you are behaving yourself, you are 好宝宝(good baby). After they accepted this word, we can introduce them to other meanings of the word.
6) Use proper pronunciation
It is common to speak local Chinese in our country, we are especially lazy in pronouncing the 翘舌声母like Chi, Shi, Zhi and long sound ended with "ng". We should speak proper language when teaching young children, as it is easier to pick the language up at young but it will be very difficult to correct it after they grow older.
7) Teach the words that they can see and understand first
It is easier to learn words like 头(head), 手(hand), 口(mouth), 爸爸(father), 妈妈(mother), 生气(angry), 开心(happy) than words like 很(very), 的(adverb), 哪里（where).
We should start with words that the kid can visualise or understand first.
8) Keep your explanation simple and short
Try not to give long explanation on a word, the kid might not be able to absorb all. E.g. when you teach 坐(sit), you may explain it as "宝宝坐在椅子上的坐"(baby sitting on a chair). Tell them something they can understand, instead of confuse them with long winded explanation.
9) Avoid teaching similar words at a time
Words like 鸟(bird), 乌(dark), 枭, look very similar to the kids. They will easily get confused over the words. We should teach them the easy one first, example 鸟(bird), the next time when they see 乌鸦(dark bird i.e. crow) we can explain to them this word 乌 is not bird, it does not have the 'eye' (point to the dot) in it, it means dark colour.
10) Encourage early reading
There are kids who can recognise more than 1000 Chinese words but do not like to study Chinese. Parents should encourage reading in young kids once they are able to recognise a few words. They will only appreciate the Chinese characters when they realise those characters can tell them story when put together. Reading help to cultivate their interest in Chinese and encourage them to find out more about Chinese language.
Do not force if your children are still not picking Chinese up. The above are just some useful tips which might or might not be suitable for your kids. This article is written in English to assist those English speaking parents, but it is more advisable to teach Chinese by speaking and explaining in Chinese.
I hope the above is useful for you :) Do like my Facebook page "Learn The Fun Way" if you like this article and would like to get more updates :)
I admire the valuable information you offer in your articles. I will bookmark your blog and I am quite sure they will learn lots of new stuff here than anybody else!
ReplyDeleteChinese Lessons for Kids
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteTeach Your Child to Read Today!
ReplyDeleteReading is one of the most important skills one must master to succeed in life. It helps your child succeed in school, helps them build self-confidence, and helps to motivate your child. Being able to read will help your child learn more about the world, understand directions on signs and warnings on labels, allow them to discover reading as an entertainment, and help them gather information.
Learning to read is very different from learning to speak, and it does not happen all at once. There is a steady progression in the development of reading ability over time. The best time for children to start learning to read is at a young age - even before they enter pre-school. Once a child is able to speak, they can begin developing basic reading skills. Very young children have a natural curiosity to learn about everything. They are naturally intrigued by the printed texts they see, and are eager to learn about the sounds made by those letters. You will likely notice that your young child likes to look at books and thoroughly enjoys being read to. They will even pretend to behave like a reader by holding books and pretend to read them.
At what age can you start teaching a child to read? When they're babies? At 2 years old, 3, 4, or 5 years old, or wait until they're in school?
If you delay your child's reading skill development until he or she enters school, you are putting your child at risk...
Did you know that 67% of all Grade 4 students cannot read at a proficient level! According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, of those 67%, 33% read at just the BASIC level, and 34% CANNOT even achieve reading abilities of the lowest basic level!
There is a super simple and extremely effective system that will even teach 2 and 3 year old children to read.
This is a unique reading program developed by two amazing parents and reading teachers, Jim and Elena, who successfully taught their four children to read before turning 3 years old. The reading system they developed is so effective that by the time their daughter was just 4 years 2 months old, she was already reading at a grade 3 level. They have videos to prove it.
>> Click here to watch the videos and learn more.
Their reading system is called Children Learning Reading, and it is nothing like the infomercials you see on TV, showing babies appearing to read, but who have only learned to memorize a few word shapes. This is a program that will teach your child to effectively decode and read phonetically. It will give your child a big head start, and allow you to teach your child to read and help your child develop reading skills years ahead of similar aged children.
This is not a quick fix solution where you put your child in front of the TV or computer for hours and hope that your child learns to "read"... somehow...
This is a reading program that requires you, the parent, to be involved. But the results are absolutely amazing. Thousands of parents have used the Children Learning Reading program to successfully teach their children to read.
All it takes is 10 to 15 minutes a day.
>> Click here to get started right now. How to Teach a 2 or 3 Year Old to Read.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------