This evening was Chinese revision with Big Bee - after an English session with Little Bee - and I was a bit perturbed by the primary 3 Chinese standard.
I was going through the supplementary "newspaper" 知识画报 that Big Bee's school subscribed for them, and was rather amazed by the P3 Chinese standard! These days, having strong Chinese vocabulary is not sufficient - what is fundamental is that the kids need to have mastery of strong Chinese sentence structure（句式) written in a formal and elaborate manner, plus engaging content! I am trying my best to coach Big Bee on these, but it is an uphill task as she is not very interested in reading Chinese story books.
Here was a part of what we covered tonight:
The topic of the article we were reading was 与动物共进早餐
位于我国万礼路的动物园是世界上最美丽的动物园之一。园里拥有超过3600种的鸟兽。园林设计具有浓厚的热带雨林色彩，不过它最特出的地方还是以“开放式概念”经营，让游客们有机会亲身体验大自然的奇妙，因而被誉为全球最有特色的动物园之一。
There are 3 more paragraphs in the article. Perhaps this is easy peasy for P3 kids from SAP schools, but Big Bee's school is not one of those SAP schools. Furthermore, we do not speak much Mandarin at home. I guess I should just nudge her to read more Chinese story books and write more Chinese compositions - which is also another battle!
2 comments:
It is a challenge to get my kids more interested in chinese too. I don't want to force them to learn chinese. But sometimes when I suggest playing some chinese games (mostly for word revison), Mandy will scowl and said "I don't like chinese." She understands almost all our conversations in mandarin but plainly refuses to speak in it!
Good thing is both love chinese storybookd very much.Maybe you should find chinese books with a topic of interest for big bee? Barry loves to read the few chinese books about food. and one has a spinning wheel showing different types of food when spun. He has since learnt the names of all the food in the book.
As for Mandy, well, I must slyly add mandarin into our conservation. Sometimes she forgets that she dislikes chinese and would reply back in the language. Hah.
How do you stir their interest in chinese? Do share. Oh, I tried chinese cartoons. Sadly, they are not very interested.
Hey K, thanks for this very interesting comment post. I think your Chinese homelearning is wonderful, and I think I need to do more like you. For Big Bee, it is tough for her to do independent Chinese reading, as the interest level is not there, sigh. And I can't let her read over-simple books cos she will say those are for babies. Yet for the cheemer books, she will complain some words are hard to read, sigh. So, I have to read articles with her. As for Little Bee, she is slowly enjoying Mandarin, esp since she has a wonderful Chinese teacher whom she loves in school. So, she loves to read and write Chinese, so she has no issues yet. Most kids are turned off by Chinese only in primary school, and it is an uphill task trying to revive their interest! Haiz. But you do a great job with your kids in Mandarin :)
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