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Lian He Zao Bao
20 April 2011
I am delighted to read about this story of an RGPS girl, 睿祺, who started to love Chinese, after her school teacher gave her a 卫斯理 novel. In P6, she even wrote a 10000 word novel in Chinese, which is amazing, considering that she used to cry when doing Chinese homework at P4.
This confirmed my belief that the best way to motivate a child to learn Chinese, is to let her read very interesting and exciting story books. This is also the fastest way for to improve, as proven by 睿祺.
I used to be a huge fan of the 卫斯理 science fiction novels when I was in secondary school. Each novel is highly original and imaginative, and you cannot put it down until you finish the whole book. These novels are available in the National Library.
Author : 卫斯理 (倪匡)
Titles:
老貓
蓝血人
透明光
支离人
不死药
There are many more books in the 卫斯理 series. these are also sold at www.dangdang.com. These books are suitable for P5 and above.
Read the following page for a list of excellent Chinese story books for younger children :
3 comments:
Hi - I am really happy to discover this. cool job!
Would like to ask how old when both of your children started to write in Chinese? How to start them and train them to write in Chinese?
Hi Winnie,
Both my kids attended Berries since 4 years old. At Berries they started by learning the 部首 like 亻, 辶, 氵, 纟etc. Then they moved on to write words by the second part of their N2 class and sentences by K1.
Before the age of 6, I only let them write the words required their Berries class. Berries class did not give a lot of homework, every week my kids only wrote about 3 sentences (6 to 7 words each). Other than that, I do not train them to write at home at all.
In fact, even after they stopped attending Berries at the end of K2, I also did not make them practice writing many Chinese words at home. I think that kids before the age of 7 should focus in character recognition. Both my kids are reading long Chinese chapter books by P1. It is not necessary to spend a lot of time learning how to write the Chinese characters.
I posted the following in this page :
How to raise a bilingual child
How about writing in Chinese ?
I do not advocate writing too many Chinese words before the age of 6. An early childhood expert wrote that kids before the age of 6 do not have the fine motor skills to write Chinese characters, it is cruel to force them to practice writing everyday.
In the case of my kids, my girl has excellent fine motor skills at 3 years old, she could copy an entire Tang poetry at 5 years old, on her own initiative. I did not make her practice writing at all. My younger boy could only write legibly after 5 years old, by 6 years old his writing is fine. I also did not make him practice writing everyday.
Every child is different, and we should let the child progress at his own pace. If he is ready to write, he will write well, if we try to make him write before that, we will only be very frustrated.
It is absolutely fine to start to practice writing Chinese at 6 years old. It is definitely not too late. At P1, the Ting Xie words are still very simple.
Also note that Chinese characters are made up of 偏旁, 部首, and simple characters. Parents should teach kids the names of the 偏旁, 部首. When learning more complex characters, teach the kids to remember the word by its individual parts. For example, take a look at these words :
弟 第 剃 梯 涕 递
Once the child knows how to write 弟, just tell him to change the 偏旁, 部首 to make different words.
Personally I think it is easier than English spelling without knowledge of phonics.
Do not make the child remember the word stroke by stroke ! There are too many Chinese characters and you cannot possibly learn Chinese this way, this is the reason why kids hate Chinese. Many English educated parents think that the only way to learn Chinese is to remember the word stroke by stroke, this is a big mistake.
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