Basic guidelines when teaching Chinese to children under eight

[WINK to LEARN]

Dear friends from the forum,

Thank you very much for your kind feedback about our Speak & Read Chinese 6-DVDs program. We had noted that some of the customers are unhappy with the children's pronunciation in some of the lessons in Level 5 & 6. Rest assured that we are reviewing this matter seriously and will include these corrections in the new version up and coming. At the same time, we had submitted our SING to LEARN Chinese DVDs for external review as well. The pronunciations of the words and songs are very accurate and we are very happy to inform you about it.

However, rest assured that the adult pronunciation which is the key voice-over for the entire program (more than 95%) is extremely accurate. The speaker that we had engaged is a Chinese teacher, from a reputable school in Singapore, is trained and specialized in Beijing pronunciation. This is why we do have a number of Chinese school teachers in Singapore feedback to us that they thought that the voice-over was done by a teacher from Beijing.

Again, I thank you so much for your kind feedback. Without your precious feedback, we are unable to perfect our programs to help more young children in learning English and Chinese from young.

Last but not least, we do like to offer you a free upgrade to our revised version to be launched at the end of the year in the event that you decide to purchase the Speak & Read Chinese 6-DVDs program earlier.

Your sincerely,
Hazel
www.WINKtoLEARN.com

[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

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

Hi AAngeles,
I have some tagalog educational dvds which are geared more for adults, but there really aren't a lot of other options out there that i know of.  I also try to "superimpose" some tagalog translation when I review spanish or when my wife reviews french. 

Overall, he seems to respond most to the musical themes.  Our goal is to take advantage of this "language window" which is only open for these precious early years.

[tobias8]

Dear friends from the forum,

Thank you very much for your kind feedback about our Speak & Read Chinese 6-DVDs program. We had noted that some of the customers are unhappy with the children's pronunciation in some of the lessons in Level 5 & 6. Rest assured that we are reviewing this matter seriously and will include these corrections in the new version up and coming. At the same time, we had submitted our SING to LEARN Chinese DVDs for external review as well. The pronunciations of the words and songs are very accurate and we are very happy to inform you about it.

However, rest assured that the adult pronunciation which is the key voice-over for the entire program (more than 95%) is extremely accurate. The speaker that we had engaged is a Chinese teacher, from a reputable school in Singapore, is trained and specialized in Beijing pronunciation. This is why we do have a number of Chinese school teachers in Singapore feedback to us that they thought that the voice-over was done by a teacher from Beijing.

Again, I thank you so much for your kind feedback. Without your precious feedback, we are unable to perfect our programs to help more young children in learning English and Chinese from young.

Last but not least, we do like to offer you a free upgrade to our revised version to be launched at the end of the year in the event that you decide to purchase the Speak & Read Chinese 6-DVDs program earlier.

Your sincerely,
Hazel
www.WINKtoLEARN.com

Hello Hazel,
I have recently purchased the WinktoLearn DVD's.  How will you be notifying us when the free upgrade is available.  This certainly gives me more confidence in my purchase.  Thank you.

[WINK to LEARN]

Dear friends from the forum,

Thank you very much for your kind feedback about our Speak & Read Chinese 6-DVDs program. We had noted that some of the customers are unhappy with the children's pronunciation in some of the lessons in Level 5 & 6. Rest assured that we are reviewing this matter seriously and will include these corrections in the new version up and coming. At the same time, we had submitted our SING to LEARN Chinese DVDs for external review as well. The pronunciations of the words and songs are very accurate and we are very happy to inform you about it.

However, rest assured that the adult pronunciation which is the key voice-over for the entire program (more than 95%) is extremely accurate. The speaker that we had engaged is a Chinese teacher, from a reputable school in Singapore, is trained and specialized in Beijing pronunciation. This is why we do have a number of Chinese school teachers in Singapore feedback to us that they thought that the voice-over was done by a teacher from Beijing.

Again, I thank you so much for your kind feedback. Without your precious feedback, we are unable to perfect our programs to help more young children in learning English and Chinese from young.

Last but not least, we do like to offer you a free upgrade to our revised version to be launched at the end of the year in the event that you decide to purchase the Speak & Read Chinese 6-DVDs program earlier.

Your sincerely,
Hazel
www.WINKtoLEARN.com

Hello Hazel,
I have recently purchased the WinktoLearn DVD's.  How will you be notifying us when the free upgrade is available.  This certainly gives me more confidence in my purchase.  Thank you.

Dear Tobias8,

Thank you very much for your kind revert. I am happy to inform you that the free upgrade procedure starts from being a member in www.WINKtoLEARN.com. With your details within our database, we will notify you via email once the improved version is ready. Please reply us using the same email for further details on the free upgrade and we will guide you from thereon.

Thanks again for your kind accomodation and support for our programs. We hope to hear from you again!

Best Regards,
Hazel
Customer Service

[Nikita]

Montessori have a how to teach chinese to kids blog...

http://montessorichinese.blogspot.com//

[aangeles]

Dear friends from the forum,

Thank you very much for your kind feedback about our Speak & Read Chinese 6-DVDs program. We had noted that some of the customers are unhappy with the children's pronunciation in some of the lessons in Level 5 & 6. Rest assured that we are reviewing this matter seriously and will include these corrections in the new version up and coming. At the same time, we had submitted our SING to LEARN Chinese DVDs for external review as well. The pronunciations of the words and songs are very accurate and we are very happy to inform you about it.

However, rest assured that the adult pronunciation which is the key voice-over for the entire program (more than 95%) is extremely accurate. The speaker that we had engaged is a Chinese teacher, from a reputable school in Singapore, is trained and specialized in Beijing pronunciation. This is why we do have a number of Chinese school teachers in Singapore feedback to us that they thought that the voice-over was done by a teacher from Beijing.

Again, I thank you so much for your kind feedback. Without your precious feedback, we are unable to perfect our programs to help more young children in learning English and Chinese from young.

Last but not least, we do like to offer you a free upgrade to our revised version to be launched at the end of the year in the event that you decide to purchase the Speak & Read Chinese 6-DVDs program earlier.

Your sincerely,
Hazel
www.WINKtoLEARN.com

Dear Hazel,

Do you have any plans to release a Traditional Chinese version of Wink to Learn?

[Nikita]

OK, so as a complete moron when it comes to Chinese, should I have my kids learn simplified Chinese, as I'm told that's what they use in China. Is simplified chinese simplified characters or spoken words or both? And what is BO PO MO?

[WINK to LEARN]

Dear friends from the forum,

Thank you very much for your kind feedback about our Speak & Read Chinese 6-DVDs program. We had noted that some of the customers are unhappy with the children's pronunciation in some of the lessons in Level 5 & 6. Rest assured that we are reviewing this matter seriously and will include these corrections in the new version up and coming. At the same time, we had submitted our SING to LEARN Chinese DVDs for external review as well. The pronunciations of the words and songs are very accurate and we are very happy to inform you about it.

However, rest assured that the adult pronunciation which is the key voice-over for the entire program (more than 95%) is extremely accurate. The speaker that we had engaged is a Chinese teacher, from a reputable school in Singapore, is trained and specialized in Beijing pronunciation. This is why we do have a number of Chinese school teachers in Singapore feedback to us that they thought that the voice-over was done by a teacher from Beijing.

Again, I thank you so much for your kind feedback. Without your precious feedback, we are unable to perfect our programs to help more young children in learning English and Chinese from young.

Last but not least, we do like to offer you a free upgrade to our revised version to be launched at the end of the year in the event that you decide to purchase the Speak & Read Chinese 6-DVDs program earlier.

Your sincerely,
Hazel
www.WINKtoLEARN.com

Dear Hazel,

Do you have any plans to release a Traditional Chinese version of Wink to Learn?

Dear Aangeles,

Thank you very much for your enquiry. 

I am very happy to inform you that we are launching our traditional Chinese version by the end of 2009. Please register your kind self as a WINKtoLEARN.com member as we will notify to all our members once the new program is ready for the market.

Best Regards,
Hazel
Customer Service
www.WINKtoLEARN.com

[WINK to LEARN]

OK, so as a complete moron when it comes to Chinese, should I have my kids learn simplified Chinese, as I'm told that's what they use in China. Is simplified chinese simplified characters or spoken words or both? And what is BO PO MO?

Dear Nikita,

This is a good question. It has been a long debate over traditional Chinese or simplified Chinese. Traditional Chinese is primarily used in Hongkong and Taiwan. The whole of China and South East Asia is generally using simplified Chinese. At the end of the day, there is no clear answer to your choice.

My suggestion is simple. If you want to prepare your child for China immersion, then simplified Chinese is sufficient. However, if you are more inclined towards Hongkong or Taiwan, I would suggest you to take up traditional Chinese instead. What we are discussing here is purely the font type. When it comes to pronunciation, both Chinese versions share the same pronunciation in general.

Bo Po Mo is the traditional Chinese way of input. Simplified Chinese uses mainly Hanyu Pinyin phonetic input.

I strongly encourage you to start your child on this language at early age. So much research has proven that young children's brains are a lot more plastic and absorbent compared to adults'. Linguistic abilities is a right-brain function whereby a young child's right brain is typically stronger and more open compared to his/her left brain. However, over time, the right brain will start to decline and submit to the left brain. This is why adults have more difficulties learning new languages compared to kids. This is what Dr. Makata Shichida has researched into over his life-time.

Cheers!
Hazel
Customer Service
www.WINKtoLEARN.com

[aangeles]

Hazel,

That is good news! I have already registered at winktolearn.com and will definitely be one of the first to order it when it becomes available. 

[Connie Lim]

Thanks for the suggestions.  I find the website http://so.youku.com/ very interesting and useful, especially in teaching chinese words, it even teach kids to write with the proper strokes.  From the animated images, it shows us the root of the chinese charater and where does it comes from.

[RS Mum]

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?

U may download youtube downloader or realplayer downloader or many other freeware to save all these clips in your computer. (Provided they are not locked by the author). The file format is in flv, may download another converter software to convert to avi-files, so as to play in dvd player.

[RS Mum]

Hi
Hazel of Wink to Learn,

Glad to hear that there will be improvement and look forward to the new version.

Some questions on the Wink to Learn Chinese program:

1. What is the rational of the colour coded radicals?

It does not follow any rule/ or reasoning which i am trying to figure out.
Breaking up the characters is a good aid for the learners to decoding, however the same radical seems to be in diff colours as it appears in different words.


2. Any plan to increase interactivity of the program?

No matter how gd a dvd, putting a child long hours in the front of the TV simply flashing a few hundreds of words and pictures do not guarantee the absorption of the materials. It would be another baby-sitting program which give the parents a piece of mind cos it boasts a huge volume of educational content.

3. Rapid flashing with distorted voices

Is this issue being tackled as well?

I may be in no position to scrutinize but it does not need a PhD educator or language instructor to point out these observations.
I really appreaciate your remarkable effort in putting up a great dvd to benefit our children and many others who have great interest in Chinese language.

Thank you very much.

[GloriaD]

Dear Hazel,

I know you are currently working at posting the translation or script for the Sing to Learn Chinese dvdS, any idea when will they be posted? 

Thanks a million

Gloria

[WINK to LEARN]

Dear Hazel,

I know you are currently working at posting the translation or script for the Sing to Learn Chinese dvdS, any idea when will they be posted? 

Thanks a million

Gloria

Dear Gloria,

We are happy to inform you that we had received the translation for SING to LEARN Chinese Vol. 1 today. It should be uploaded into our website on Monday. Once the file is posted in our website, we will notify you immediately.

As for Vol. 2 and 3, the translations will be submitted to us in the next two weeks. Once ready, we will post it in our website as well.

Wishing you a wonderful weekend ahead!
Hazel
Customer Service

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