Basic guidelines when teaching Chinese to children under eight

[Joha]

I found this blog that has very intereSting information about teaching Chinese to children. http://www.poppingpandas.com/pandablog.html

This specific post had very good information:

Here are some basic guidelines for children under eight:

• Always remember that your goal is to help your child fall in love with learning Chinese. He or she has the opportunity to develop almost native speaker level pronunciation at this age. This is the most important goal! Vocabulary and everything else can be studied, but native speaker level pronunciation can only be acquired at this age!
• Select five to ten hours worth of age-appropriate material. Buying vocabulary drills or structured lessons on tape do not count!
• Create a stress-free and relaxed environment for your child and play the DVDs or CDs.
• Leave your child alone (unless you speak Mandarin) to soak in the language. It's hard to listen to a new language when Mom or Dad is chatting away in English (or whatever your native language might be).
• The length of the time spent with the material is determined by your child. If you are tempted to force your child to watch the material you have selected, you have purchased the wrong material!
• Let your child's interest level guide you. Does he or she enjoy the current material? If so, get more. Basically, go with the flow!
• Do not push the introduction of pinyin until your child reads English well. See our early blog posts for a discussion of pinyin.
• Focus on listening and speaking skills.
• Use flashcards with pictures and characters to introduce reading when your child becomes interested. Children learn quickly which characters go with which sounds. You can let them use the pinyin, if they find it interesting, but let them work with the cards on their own and see what happens. Many children focus on the link between the spoken Chinese word and the written Chinese character. This is perfect. Once your child is reading English well, he or she can quickly pick up pinyin in an afternoon!

Teaching tips: Credit to our Beijing-based language instructor and former middle school teacher Zhang. Translated from the original Mandarin by Montessori House staff (the original Mandarin was more elegantly put!)

[KL]

Good tips, thanks! I'd say that those guidelines apply to any foreign language, actually!

[wenjonggal]

Thanks for pointing out that Popping Pandas site! That is GREAT! And it really aligns along with what I have been doing: getting my child (and I) to watch Dora in Chinese, looking up exact translations of chinese words/characters as well as getting the rough translation of a whole phrase etc.
There is also this entry:

 How to help your child start learning Mandarin Chinese
Tips for starting out:

   1. Begin with simple DVDs such as Dora the Explorer in Mandarin Chinese.
   2. Focus on DVDs and songs instead of books (unless you speak Chinese well enough to read the books aloud)
   3. Use flashcards and beginning books to teach basic characters such as numbers from 1 to 100.
   4. Avoid saying words in Mandarin to your child if your Mandarin pronunciation is not good. You can watch programs with your child and learn together!
   5. Avoid textbooks that are not clear and easy to understand. A lot of books published in China and Taiwan for teaching Chinese to children are horrible!
         1. Look for texts that build lessons sequentially. For example, children should learn the numbers from 1 to 10, and then learn how they combine to make numbers up to 100. Children love this progression because it makes learning characters logical and intuitive.
         2. Texts should review old vocabulary as they introduce new vocabulary. Watch out for this one. A lot of texts introduce a ton of new words in each chapter, but do not focus on words that build sequentially. For example, if your child learns the word for book (shu), he or she should then learn basic adjectives such as red （hong) or big（da) to combine with the word he or she just learned. Why teach another random word that does not fit with anything else?
         3. Dick and Jane. Chinese is basically like learning how to read with whole words (the methodology where you memorize words instead of using phonics to sound them out). Children need simple storybooks that repeat words over and over again.

posted by Popping Pandas at 1:45 AM 0 Comments
http://www.poppingpandas.com/pandablog.html

They also have all sorts of books, flashcards, dvds  Excellent resource, thanks so much!

[aangeles]

Thanks for the tips!

What is your opinion of the Baby Learns Chinese videos? Are they effective in teaching to read Chinese? I have volumes 1-3 and, so far, my 14 month old loves watching them but I am not sure if she is learning to read. She is already reading very well in English using the YBCR program. Also, we live in the U.S. and I am the only one speaking and reading in Mandarin to her. I work fulltime so her exposure to Chinese is limited. At this point, she understands simple instructions in Chinese, knows her body parts in Chinese, and the names of some animals. I would like her to be exposed more to conversational Chinese but there are no Chinese playgroups or even any Chinese kids around here. I tried to search online for Chinese learning videos but most of them use simplified Chinese. I would like her to learn traditional. Is Dora the Explorer available in traditional Chinese? I would like something similar to Sesame Street but in Chinese so that she would become familiar with conversational Chinese in addition to the vocabulary words in Baby Learns Chinese. So far, I have only seen Sesame Street in Cantonese but not in Mandarin. Do you have any recommendations?

Thanks for reading!

[Joha]

wenjongal,

That post was very good too. They definetly have very good information in that website and they do carrie some interesting products if you want to expose your child to Chinese.

aangeles,

I'm not sure if they offer this products in traditional chinese. Maybe you can contat them through the blog and if they don't offer them, they may be able to point you in the right direction. I have not checked the baby learns chinese videos. Right now we are using wink to learn, but honestly I'm not sure how much my dd has learned since she doesn't talk yet. I'm hoping that this exposure will help her with her acent later on when we can put her in Mandarin classes.

[RS Mum]

Hi
Thks for all the great tips here.
English & Chinese are my 1st languages.
My hubby & I speak to our daughter in both English & mandarin.

My mum & dad are her care-givers since birth so she learns & babble a lot of simple Chinese words when she started talking around 9 mths. Had never heard of YBCR or briefly read abt Doman method, with skepticism then.

It started when i gave her some flash cards during the potty sessions to keep her sitting down, i realised she learns very quickly with the flashcards. She is always looking forward to the flashcard sessions. So i began to look up more resources and more flashcards to keep up with her enthusiasm. This is how i stumbled on LR, YBCR, Doman/ Shichida methods etc... and eager to know more of their benefits.

My girl is more of an auditory learner, since ard 9-10mths, she will try to follow what we are trying to say and she likes to practise on her own. Or maybe we didnt realise babies can read then. Now at 17mths, she still do that alot, looking at our lips and repeat, pretty well i would say.

A couple months ago, i started to write on blank A4 papers with large bold markers -Chinese Characters of the people she knows like Father, Mother, Grandma, Grandpa, Uncle, Aunt, and her name and sight words like I (wo), you (ni), he/she (ta) etc...

She can pick up/ relate to the characters in 2 sessions as she had already known the sounds and meanings. So for learning Chinese, it is not necessary to start from characters with the least numbers of strokes which mean nothing to the child. Hence, i believe cognition of chinese charcters can be enhanced by DVDs like Baby Learns Chinese, thanks to Wenjongal's recommendation.

After reviewing Wink to learn Chinese/ Sing to Learn's sample video, i personally wont buy them as there are many pronounication errors. Children pick them up easily. As for Dora, Pororo's kind of bilingual DVDs are not my personal preference as well, would prefer immersion in a single language at a time.

The most difficult part of learning chinese is writing, hence pre-writing skills like understanding the origins of the characters and recognition of the radicals are often neglected.

There are many good Chinese learning resources for children in youku.com (Chinese version of youtube).
Try search with 幼儿识字 (Baby learns to read).

I am particularly impressed with one of the Chinese method 全脑通识字 (quan nao tong shi zi).
http://www.youku.com/playlist_show/id_3609806.html

Each character is explained with animation how it is derived. Children not only learn the characters by memory, the beauty of the chinese language would be appreciated.

Another Chinese series 洪恩宝宝看世界 (Hong en babo bao kan shi jie) focus on encyclopedia knowledge which my girl & i enjoy very much. These program only can be bought from China but many video clips are put up in youku.com. Really hope to get these series if there are some safe ways to pay/ buy fom Chinese sites. Or if any one can advise on this.

http://so.youku.com/search_playlist/q_%E6%B4%AA%E6%81%A9%E5%AE%9D%E5%AE%9D%E7%9C%8B%E4%B8%96%E7%95%8C

Simplified Chinese is commonly used but i would have no problem with my girl learning the traditional. I had learnt to read the traditional chinese myself by reading alone. 

[wenjonggal]

Hi, very interesting post, thankyou Jinji!

I will reply more later, but just wanted to point out that Pororo is not bilingual. It is 100% chinese and our teacher from Beijing said the pronunciation was very good and they speak slow enough to understand easily. They do have the option, like many dvds, to listen to different language audio, ie switch from Chinese to English. But it would then be all English, which is good for us parents who don't speak Chinese to get a good grasp of what the story is about before we listen in Chinese.

Also, Dora is also Chinese. It is only bilingual in that it is for Chinese children to learn some English. Since my kid speaks English already, and knows his colors etc, that part is negligible.
It does NOT translate the chinese that Dora and other characters speak. I will write a sample where the english I put in capital letters (My chinese is good enough to understand but not good enough to write here without an hour with a dictionary, so the noncapitals in this please understand to be Chinese):

"Where are we going? Let's go ask the map! Say MAP. MAP!"
"Hello children! I'M THE MAP! I'm the map! Wherever you want to go you can ask me where to go! To get to Grandma's house, first you need to go to the happy forest. HAPPY FOREST. Then we need to cross the laughing brook. Say LAUGHING BROOK. And then we go down the yellow road to Grandma's house. YELLOW ROAD. So let's go tell Dora! HAPPY FOREST, LAUGHIG BROOK, YELLOW ROAD! Have a great time! Byebye!"

So, you can see that all the actual speaking is in Chinese. There are only a couple phrases and words per episode in English. Like "Yellow" or "Open" or "No problem" or "Waterfall".

But yeah, Pororo, Little Robots, Bob the Builder we have 100% in Chinese audio, with the options of putting also Chinese subtitles on the screen.

[tobias8]

thank you so much for all the guidelines.  I am struggling with introducing another language to my son.  I want him to learn Chinese, of which no one speaks in the household.  But, we are also introducing French (my wife speaks, as well as her parents), Spanish (I can speak) and Tagalog ( I can speak, as well as my parents.).  It's exciting to see others attempt to expose their children to languages that the parents are not familiar with.  I am curious, however, if everyone agrees with the comment made that Wink to learn Chinese has poor pronunciation.

Thanks

[hypatia]

Tobias
Which languages have you introduced your son to, so far?
I'm in the same boat. Most of the time i'm thinking that i should wait until my daughter speaks two word sentences before i add another language. so far she's been been speaking French with me (only), English (from her dad) and I've introduced her to Mandarin. I started showing her Little Pim Mandarin for 6 months now, around 5 times a week. (some Chinese songs in the background as well when she plays)
Would you recomment showing her Little Pim Japanese as well (she adores Little Pim)
I KNOW i won't harm my child by having her surrounded by many languages, but will she really benefit from this (I don't speak chinese or japanese, so there isn't any backup aside from those dvds..)

[aangeles]

thank you so much for all the guidelines.  I am struggling with introducing another language to my son.  I want him to learn Chinese, of which no one speaks in the household.  But, we are also introducing French (my wife speaks, as well as her parents), Spanish (I can speak) and Tagalog ( I can speak, as well as my parents.).  It's exciting to see others attempt to expose their children to languages that the parents are not familiar with.  I am curious, however, if everyone agrees with the comment made that Wink to learn Chinese has poor pronunciation.

Thanks

Hi Tobias,

How are you introducing Tagalog to your son? We live in the US and my daughter's only exposure to Tagalog is from her dad. We want her to grow up knowing her Filipino heritage but it is difficult to get Tagalog educational materials here. We are kind of in the same situation as you are. Her dad speaks Tagalog to her, I speak Mandarin Chinese to her, and she gets English from daycare. We are also introducing French and Spanish to her via Little Pim and music CDs. Regarding Wink to Learn, I agree with the previous comment that the speakers in the DVD have an accent from the southern provinces of China. The pronunciation is not that clear, unlike Baby Learns Chinese. So I am not letting her watch Wink to Learn because I want her to develop proper pronunciation. I heard Little Pim Chinese is not bad but I haven't checked it out yet.

AAngeles

[Joha]

I KNOW i won't harm my child by having her surrounded by many languages, but will she really benefit from this (I don't speak chinese or japanese, so there isn't any backup aside from those dvds..)

Based on what I have read the benefit is that once they study the language they will have no accent. This is huge! Believe me, I'm still learning English, but my biggest issue is my accent which I'll never be able to get ride off even in 20 years when I'll have lived longer here that in my native country.  I don;t speak two of the languages I'm teaching my daughter, but I'm confident that even if she mixes the languages at the beggining she'll qickly figure out which words belong to which language. We say this all over this forum, our children are geniuses! The youngest we expose them to languages the easier is going to be for them.

[Shannen]

You are absolutely right.  Children are geniuses. My husband is non-chinese and I am Chinese. At home we speak English.  When my son started going to kindergarten at the age of 3, he started picking up his Mandarin. Having maid at home also an advantage whereby my son picks up his Bahasa melayu.  Now he is 7 years. He is "trilingual". Consider very fluent in 3 languages.

[Skylark]

Jinjl,

excellent links!!!! Will be great if you can share any other ones, that you use, it makes it easier to find the materials, especially since I myself dont speak or read Chinese, but my daughter is learning it

Thank you for sharing these and also for giving a short description -- VERY VERY HELPFUL!!!!

[hypatia]

Has anyone, for whom Mandarin in not an 'heritage language' (i love this phrase), succeeded in having a child with a good proficiency? If so, what tools were used (chinese nanny, dvds, playgroups?)
I'm not a speaker and do not know what is the next step i should take to really get my daughter started on Chinese (she's 13 months)

[Skylark]

Hi
Thks for all the great tips here.
English & Chinese are my 1st languages.
My hubby & I speak to our daughter in both English & mandarin.

My mum & dad are her care-givers since birth so she learns & babble a lot of simple Chinese words when she started talking around 9 mths. Had never heard of YBCR or briefly read abt Doman method, with skepticism then.

It started when i gave her some flash cards during the potty sessions to keep her sitting down, i realised she learns very quickly with the flashcards. She is always looking forward to the flashcard sessions. So i began to look up more resources and more flashcards to keep up with her enthusiasm. This is how i stumbled on LR, YBCR, Doman/ Shichida methods etc... and eager to know more of their benefits.

My girl is more of an auditory learner, since ard 9-10mths, she will try to follow what we are trying to say and she likes to practise on her own. Or maybe we didnt realise babies can read then. Now at 17mths, she still do that alot, looking at our lips and repeat, pretty well i would say.

A couple months ago, i started to write on blank A4 papers with large bold markers -Chinese Characters of the people she knows like Father, Mother, Grandma, Grandpa, Uncle, Aunt, and her name and sight words like I (wo), you (ni), he/she (ta) etc...

She can pick up/ relate to the characters in 2 sessions as she had already known the sounds and meanings. So for learning Chinese, it is not necessary to start from characters with the least numbers of strokes which mean nothing to the child. Hence, i believe cognition of chinese charcters can be enhanced by DVDs like Baby Learns Chinese, thanks to Wenjongal's recommendation.

After reviewing Wink to learn Chinese/ Sing to Learn's sample video, i personally wont buy them as there are many pronounication errors. Children pick them up easily. As for Dora, Pororo's kind of bilingual DVDs are not my personal preference as well, would prefer immersion in a single language at a time.

The most difficult part of learning chinese is writing, hence pre-writing skills like understanding the origins of the characters and recognition of the radicals are often neglected.

There are many good Chinese learning resources for children in youku.com (Chinese version of youtube).
Try search with 幼儿识字 (Baby learns to read).

I am particularly impressed with one of the Chinese method 全脑通识字 (quan nao tong shi zi).
http://www.youku.com/playlist_show/id_3609806.html

Each character is explained with animation how it is derived. Children not only learn the characters by memory, the beauty of the chinese language would be appreciated.

Another Chinese series 洪恩宝宝看世界 (Hong en babo bao kan shi jie) focus on encyclopedia knowledge which my girl & i enjoy very much. These program only can be bought from China but many video clips are put up in youku.com. Really hope to get these series if there are some safe ways to pay/ buy fom Chinese sites. Or if any one can advise on this.

http://so.youku.com/search_playlist/q_%E6%B4%AA%E6%81%A9%E5%AE%9D%E5%AE%9D%E7%9C%8B%E4%B8%96%E7%95%8C

Simplified Chinese is commonly used but i would have no problem with my girl learning the traditional. I had learnt to read the traditional chinese myself by reading alone. 

Is there any program I can use to save these short videos to my hard disk? WE are not always able to use Internet, and that would really help me to use these  short videos in Chinese teaching? There are some programs that can be used for english youtube, but they do not work for this... Any suggestions?

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