Learning Simple Sentences
Time to put it all together - now that my children became familiar with the sounds of Chinese and had learned some vocabularies, I wanted to find a DVD which put together simple sentences. But not too hard yet, I have tried to use the immersion method on my kids, ie let them watch completely Mandarin speaking cartoon. They could not understand anything and just lost interest. So I believe in gradually turning up the dial. I know many language programs out there are based on the immersion approach, I am sure it might work on some people, but it didn't work on my kids.
I wanted a video that teaches simple sentences, not just vocabularies (too easy), but not too hard. My kids, my Goldilocks seem so difficult to please! I found it in Journey to the East. It's really a great DVD. Very much Dora like, it lays out the steps of their journey "Lake, Mountain, Apple Tree!" (in Chinese) and repeats often. It teaches again numbers, colors, body parts, and other vocabularies like fruits, tree, sun, river, etc. But it also teaches how to use these vocabularies to build simple sentences like "I want an apple" in Chinese, and then "I want a red apple", "I want a yellow apple", etc. The animations are great, the songs are catchy. The two main characters are a big brother (ge ge) and a little sister (mei mei), my kids sometimes play ge ge and mei mei and pretend they are going on the Journey to the East to get apples and repeat what they say in Chinese. It's so educational and fun and my kids give it high marks!
Listening to a Native Speaker Read Books
Another aspect of learning a language, as most experts tell us to do to our babies, is to read to our babies often. Well, we got a problem! I can't read Chinese to them! There are some good books out there, which has soft copy books, and an audio CD/DVD to read the books. But somehow I wanted something which I can manipulate more. When you start a CD/DVD, it goes, you have to somehow figure out where are you in a book to follow along. I am ashamed to say, yes, I found even that step a little overwhelming! I found this great software ChineseforSmartKids.com, which are really books on the computer (downside is no soft copy books to hold). You open a book, you click play to read the page, which is usually just 1 sentence long. Each word lights up when that word is read. If you want to repeat, you just press repeat as many times as you want. If you are ready to move on, press next page. I also found the animations very cute. My kids also love these books. I bought both Level 1 and Level 2. I think if your child can learn all the words, all the sentences in both Levels, he/she is really ready to speak some real conversations and will understand most topics of daily living.
In addition to ChineseforSmartKids.com, I happened upon a set of very simple introductory books made for the preschool crowd (3-5 years old) called: "My First Chinese Words" which is a set of 36 books plus additional 12 books called "I Love Chinese". The books are very high quality yet fun products. This is a great set of books for English speakers to learn Chinese as a foreign language. These books come with an audio CD. These books cover pretty much the same set of "basic" topics every set of basic Learn Chinese curriculum like ChineseforSmartKids.com covers. I used these in conjunction with the ChineseforSmartKids.com software. As I grew more comfortable with the words in Chinese, I found it easier to follow along on the audio CD. A plus is of course these are books my kids can hold. They flip through on their own once in a while to look at the pictures.
(1) Greetings
(2) Numbers
(3) Family
(4) Nationality
(5) Body Parts
(6) Animals
(7) Colors
(8) Clothing
(9) Fruits
(10) Food
(11) Opposites
(12) School
(13) Games
(14) Sports
(15) Home
(16) Transportation
(17) Weather
Speaking/Singing in Chinese
After many months of going through the ChineseforSmartKids.com and My First Chinese Words with my kids, they still did not feel comfortable speaking. I tried every way to get them to talk, but they refused. Then I read somewhere that singing could be a way for kids to start to articulate. So I bought this set of CDs which are from the same company as My First Chinese Words. They are called Sing with Better Chinese. Finally, success! My kids started to say the sentences in the songs on their own. The songs are Chinese nursery rhymes as we would all know songs like "Itsy Bitsy Spider", "The Wheels on the Bus", etc. The songs use a lot of Western nursery rhyme music with Chinese words. It teaches the Chinese version of "Happy Birthday to you", same lyrics but sung in Chinese. Also, "If you are happy and you know it, clap your hands", again same lyrics but sung in Chinese.
I think this set of CDs are the best value as it comes with 4 CDs, each CD has 9 songs. Each song has probably 4-5 sentences so we have to learn the sentences, the meanings and it usually corresponds to the topics in the books in the "My First Chinese Words" set.
Our Study Routine
It took me a good 9 months when we "studied" very diligently, at least 3-4 times a week to get through all the topics. I wrote out a curriculum to go over all the topics, coordinating the songs in Sing with Better Chinese CDs with the books My First Chinese Words and the software ChineseforSmartKids.com. We would spend about 45 minutes to an hour each session studying Chinese, but it's never dull and time really flies. At the end of the it, they said, "mommy, so short.". I start with a song in the Sing with Better Chinese CD, if it's the first time we hear the song, we have to learn the words, we sing and dance to the songs and my kids love it. Then we sit down and read through a couple books in the My First Chinese Words set. I am usually teaching a new book, while at the same time reviewing an old one. My kids need about a week (3-4 lessons) to master a book. And then at the end I would use the computer to show them a "book" on the ChineseforSmartKids.com. I definitely make them repeat after each sentence. This way, we are switching between 3 mediums: song, book, computer and it doesn't get too boring for them to sit through a very long lesson. I did not just want my kids to hear the book read to them once and move on. I made them memorize, we don't move on until we have completely mastered a book and we constantly go back to review old topics so they don't forget them.
Traditional vs Simplified Chinese
By now you might have realized there are actually two ways of writing Chinese. One is called Traditional, the other is Simplified. Traditional Chinese was used in the old days so all the history books, classical poems and literature are all written in Traditional Chinese. People say if you want to become a Chinese scholar, you definitely want to learn Traditional Chinese. Also, today Hong Kong and Taiwan still use Traditional Chinese. On the other hand Simplified Chinese was invented in the last 60 years by the Communist party to simplify the Chinese writings as they are quite complicated. Today Mainland China and Singapore use Simplified Chinese. Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese are similar but very different. It probably doesn't make a big difference which style you choose. We chose Simplified Chinese just so happen because I bought this set of books based on the Singapore curriculum and unknowingly, I guess I bought into the Simplified system. I don't imagine my kids will really be studying classical Chinese literature. But if they do, I think they can probably pick up Traditional Chinese after having learned Simplified Chinese.
Next Blog
If interested, please continue to read my blog on Kindergarten Chinese next!
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