There has been a lot of talk about Chinese DVDs and CDs, but very little about books. I decided that all the flashcard based learning was very good, but I wanted interaction and so I started looking at books that can be used with toddlers by novice Chinese speakers.
I was intrigued by the My First Chinese Words 36-book set, but they aren't cheap. There is a smaller 12-book set called I love Chinese which is what I bought. I now realise I should have got both!!!
I love the format of these books, they have pin-yin over new words (when a phrase is repeated, the pin-yin is shown on the first phrase and any new words) and a CD which helps with pronunciation. Each book is only 12 pages long, so there are a maximum of 12 short phrases per book, though it is often a repeated structure such as 'this is a circle/square/triangle etc.
I have decided to do a book a week, so that we actually learn to say all the phrases (mostly
)
They are such a huge hit with my son! He loves that he now has Chinese
books and will happily get me to read them over and over until I hide the book! The pictures are cute and there is a brief English translation on the inside front cover so that I can re-tell the story in English to reinforce the meanings of the words we are learning. I couldn't believe that he was repeating 'ni how' after me the first time we read the book - he rarely does that with English books! After two days I have the book half-memorised, so I can only imagine that he knows most, if not all, by now.
This is great for making Chinese something interactive that we can do together, without me having to do much of a crash-course
Has anyone else found anything similar? So far, these are the only books that I have found for toddlers who are not Chinese natives, apart from a few very expensive bilingual books which may or may not have pin-yin and are generally much longer and thus hard for a non-Chinese speaker to try to read. I don't know how long 48 books will last, as I suspect he will soon want more than one book per week
Thanks
Digg
