Recently, many parents have been asking questions about Singaporean children’s Chinese reading and writing thinking abilities, including those who are still in the pinyin stage at a young age and those who are already proficient in literacy and want to advance to the writing stage.
Chinese, as our mother tongue, has a long history and profound cultural heritage. For me, learning Chinese is not only about its inherent beauty, but also about taking us to explore the vast ocean of knowledge.
Regardless of any subject, to learn it well, one must first understand the underlying logic of learning, and Chinese is no exception, which will not be affected no matter how the environment changes.
As long as we fully understand the laws of learning and flexibly allocate learning resources and tools, even the most difficult knowledge can be simplified and easily mastered.
Which child doesn’t read Tang poetry? Regardless of whether parents are paying attention or not, kindergartens will more or less lead their children to learn Tang poetry for recitation.
But for children, the enlightenment of Chinese language, more important than these ancient classics and cultures, lies in the enlightenment of logic and language. Sometimes a child’s ability to express themselves is not just a matter of language, but rather the establishment of logic.
So the most important field to establish logic through language is the family. It is not an exaggeration to say that logical thinking lags behind and other subjects are not well studied, which is why.
So, when we say that big Chinese is important, it’s not that a certain knowledge point is important, but that the logical system established by language to understand and express the world is very important.
It is interesting that although I have done a lot of research on the enlightenment of Chinese language, what children spend time on in their daily lives is actually English, which seems to take the most time.
Why does this phenomenon occur? Saying that Chinese is the most important, but also focusing on English?
In fact, the enlightenment of Chinese language in the early days did not require strict planning of time and form, and could be fully integrated with daily living. There’s no need to say: Baby, let’s start learning Chinese now and then start studying seriously.
Every chat, every discussion of problems, and every parent-child reading together are all the gradual steps of Chinese enlightenment. Ensuring the quality of these times can help children establish a good foundation for communication. This is also why I say that Chinese enlightenment is the most important, but it is not limited to form, and daily life can be permeated with every detail.
As a foreign language, English learning requires dedicated time to learn and practice. Of course, this is because we need to learn a craft and specialize in learning English, while the infiltration of our mother tongue is more important, and the perception of daily details is more important.
Although the language development order of each child is not so balanced, with some occurring first and then, by the age of seven or eight, the difference in children’s language expression ability is not due to innate development.
At the age of seven or eight, when a child enters school, the entire learning becomes systematic and the social proportion greatly increases. At this time, language expression ability is actually a manifestation of the results of enlightenment.
We shouldn’t always force our children to read and memorize, and don’t always wonder, “Why do we do the teacher’s reading clock in homework on time every day, and why do children’s language expression skills still not meet expectations?” Even parents instinctively face such problems by enrolling in another eloquence class for training.
The improvement of Singaporean children’s Chinese reading and writing thinking abilities relies on the use of real environments to stimulate energy, which means that language is alive. Reading only textbooks and only listening to classes makes it difficult for children to improve without extensive access and habits.
Can we recall the time we spend with our children every day? Have we consciously asked our children to tell a complete story, talk about interesting things, or tell us a joke we saw? Have you discussed any issues and expressed different perspectives with him?
The enlightenment of Chinese language is most closely related to our lives. Let’s think about it, every time we take our children to the park to observe animals and plants, every time we have family gatherings due to holidays, and every time we travel, we actually integrate our traditional culture.
If Chinese language learning is isolated and treated as a discipline or a technology, it is actually impossible to learn the essence and appreciate the beauty of this culture.
Nowadays, parents are increasingly paying attention to the cultivation of their children’s comprehensive qualities, whether it is their logical thinking training, language communication ability training, or aesthetic cultivation, covering all aspects.
The cultivation of this aspect is not only about cultivating children’s basic language communication skills, but now the Ministry of Education also attaches great importance to the cultivation of students’ oral expression skills.
The official letter mentioned that the Chinese language curriculum standards clearly define the training objectives and course content for students’ oral communication skills.
The “Chinese Language Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education (2011 Edition)” specifically points out the training objectives of oral communication: “to have the basic ability of daily oral communication, learn to listen, express, and communicate, and preliminarily learn to use oral language for civilized interpersonal and social communication.”
In addition, a “Oral Communication” section is set up in the objectives and content of each stage of compulsory education, clarifying the teaching objectives and content of each stage.
From this, it can be seen that the development of children’s language eloquence ability is no longer limited to “extracurricular interest classes”. It has been planned to be included in compulsory education Chinese textbooks.
“In addition to being able to write, you also need to be able to speak” has become a trend for future students to gradually develop.
In addition to the official instructions from the Ministry of Education, parents can also find that “language communication” has become an important element that can gradually affect their children’s “personality”, “learning ability”, and “thinking” in their daily lives.
The “academic bully” has become a stereotype of being silent and engrossed in reading. Nowadays, which child is not proficient in speaking, writing, and martial arts, and pen skills are no longer a single criterion for measuring a child’s excellence.
So how to take a quick step and help children gradually master language expression skills?
One important aspect of Singaporean children’s Chinese eloquenceis the accumulation and application of vocabulary. Through active communication with children, teachers enable them to continuously accumulate vocabulary. The accumulation of vocabulary directly affects their oral expression ability and is an important factor reflecting their expression ability.
Education experts often say, “Language is the outer shell of thinking. A person who is capable of speaking is generally intelligent and quick thinking. The training of eloquence and thinking is mutually reinforcing. To make oneself smarter, one should train one’s oral expression skills more.
Eloquence and writing ability can be mutually transformed, and a person who is truly good at expressing themselves is a good writer by recording their speeches. One of the principles of composition training is that speaking of writing is the foundation of being able to write.
But some students are good at writing, and their articles are smooth and fluent, but when spoken with restraint, this requires training. Writing first and then speaking is also a way to practice eloquence. Writing an outline and clarifying ideas is generally a preparation for oral communication.
When practicing eloquence, read more books and news to increase your knowledge reserve. It has to be said that reading more literary works has a great impact on people’s thinking, and it not only affects children’s writing level, but also their language expression ability.
The level of language can determine others’ perception of your cultural and ideological level. You don’t have to read books like doing Chinese reading exercises, just read more. There are also various encyclopedia knowledge, current political news, historical events, and so on, which are purely to increase the “dry goods” that children can throw out when speaking!
Only in practice can true knowledge be revealed. Similarly, in addition to language learning in textbooks and classrooms, it is important to put it into action in real life in order to diversify and enhance children’s ability to apply their eloquence.
If we cannot showcase and train children’s learning outcomes through a platform that only speaks without practicing fake techniques, the final presentation effect will definitely not be as good as that of children with rich language practice experience.
How to find these practical opportunities? Generally speaking, there are many good practical platforms for practicing language structures on the market to hone children’s courage and language abilities.
For example, the annual “Radio and Television Cup” competition held by Radio and Television Education, as well as recitations and hosting competition activities of all sizes, can meet children’s requirements for stage practice.
And the upcoming Chongqing Children’s Spring Festival Gala, which is about to be rehearsed, is a professional and rare opportunity to showcase.
I hope that in the process of oral communication, children can use accurate, appropriate, vivid, clever, and effective oral expression strategies to achieve specific communication goals and achieve satisfactory communication results. This is the art and skill of oral expression!
Why do children still have “nothing to write” when they memorize model essays every day? This worrying problem is a major concern for both teachers and parents. In response, Singapore’s top teacher, Teacher Zhang, proposed creative Chinese writing for Singaporean children.
In order to fundamentally stimulate students’ inner drive for writing, it is advisable to try using the vivid and living “model text” – movies.
Writing Encounter Movies not only conforms to children’s internal growth patterns and closely aligns with their focus, but also more intuitively interprets the layout and writing techniques of “model essays”. The most important thing is that both teachers and parents can obtain the “key” to awaken children’s writing from it.
Due to children’s lack of life experience and limited access to direct materials; Moreover, they are not good at observation and have difficulty obtaining indirect materials, resulting in a shortage of materials and improper expression in current writing teaching.
Therefore, for children with monotonous daily life and insufficient social experience, capturing materials from movies with a wide range of themes to make up for the lack of life experience can be a twice the result with half the effort.
Movies open up children’s writing horizons – to understand knowledge in different fields, experience different life experiences, experience different emotional experiences, and freely write about the situation, feelings, and thoughts.
Children in primary school mainly learn through their senses, using their mouth, ears, eyes, nose, and body to feel, recognize, and discover the world.
And movies can intuitively simulate a perceptible world. Excellent film works often have a huge impact on people’s spiritual world, and can even affect a generation.
Movies enter childhood, allowing children to “digest and absorb” these classics into their own spiritual bloodline in the fantasy world of light and shadow. At the same time, children’s spiritual growth can be nurtured through writing.
A child who has been immersed in excellent movies for a long time will not have poor writing skills.
If a movie wants to attract attention and love from others, it is bound to be an innovative model in certain aspects. For example, unexpected and reasonable endings, creative compositions, harmonious and wonderful soundtracks.
These new ideas are subtly passed down to children, allowing them to explore unique expressions and forge innovative ways of thinking.
Looking at creative Chinese writing for Singaporean children, we still aim to pursue “high intention, precise selection of materials, clever structure, and beautiful language” as our writing goals, emphasizing the production and expression skills of articles, but neglecting the cultivation of communication skills in writing and students’ language communication abilities.
By comparison, writing teaching in many other countries is not only aimed at enabling students to master various writing skills and forms, but also at educating students to recognize the communicative value and function of writing.
The concept of creative writing is to closely connect writing and life, so that every writer deeply feels that writing cannot do without life, and writing also enriches our lives. How to improve children’s writing ability?
Interest is the best teacher, and the first step is to cultivate children’s interest in writing, so that they can work with half the effort.
Often telling children meaningful fairy tales or simple and easy to understand stories allows them to unconsciously be influenced by culture, thereby increasing their cultural temperament.
Encourage children to develop a good habit of reading books, persisting in reading for a while every day without demanding too much. When tired of reading, take a break and not be too demanding.
Developing the habit of keeping a diary for children can improve their writing skills to a certain extent and accumulate a lot of life materials for writing.
Give more positive and objective evaluations of what children write, improve their self-confidence, and stimulate their writing enthusiasm.
Through the joint efforts of primary and secondary education, general education, professional teaching, and social training, its development has formed a relatively mature system and is more comprehensive. The sinicization of creative writing is being solidly promoted.
The ability of Singaporean children’s Chinese oral expression ability is an aspect that parents should focus on cultivating. Having good language expression skills can benefit children for a lifetime. Although language plays a significant role in interpersonal relationships, not everyone possesses good language expression skills.
Language is a tool that can be proficiently used through acquired training. Learning to speak and speak is one of the key skills for children’s future career success. The training of language expression ability can be advanced to the early childhood education period and started in family education, rather than relying solely on written teaching from teachers.
Language education includes four aspects: listening, expression, early reading, and pre writing preparation.
It creates a free and relaxed language communication environment for young children, develops their language understanding and expression abilities, cultivates their interest in reading and writing, and helps them become familiar with, understand, and learn Mandarin.
Early childhood is the optimal period for children’s oral language development. Language education not only plays an important role in children’s lifelong oral expression ability, but also has a positive impact on their cognitive, social, and emotional development.
Parents can help their children improve their expression skills in the following ways: Try to find topics that your child is interested in to discuss with them, and do not deviate from their cognitive range so that they can “speak” out.
It is rumored that there was once a working elementary school teacher who, during his fifth grade essay class, asked his classmates to write the topic ‘If I were the Manager’, but none of the children’s writings were satisfactory.
Firstly, children have no emotional understanding of the role of “manager”, which is like asking someone who has not seen a horse to draw a horse.
From this, it can be seen that in order for children to learn oral expression, it is necessary to stimulate their enthusiasm, make them feel that they have something to say, and fully activate their thinking, because language always follows the movement of thinking.
This website often reports on which left behind children have autism, largely due to the lack of communication with their parents. Many parents do not know that the foundation of their children’s language learning is imitation, which is the so-called “learning by example”.
Therefore, parents should first talk to their children more and familiarize them with the language in order to maintain a high level of sensitivity to language. This is the most basic step in exercising children’s oral expression ability. Everyone has heard a lot about the story of the wolf child, and it is also true that the environment affects a person’s growth.
The term ‘practice more’ here mainly refers to giving children more opportunities to tell their own experiences, including retelling stories they have heard, telling book content, creating stories, and talking to others in daily life.
Children should be encouraged to creatively organize language based on their own understanding and mastery of vocabulary and grammar. The current practice of parent-child reading in many kindergartens is also based on this starting point. We always tell stories to our children, and we should also listen to them reading stories to us.
This is very important. When a child comes up with an understanding of something, regardless of whether the child’s ideas are correct or not, parents should not rush to judge and correct the outcome.
Being too hasty can easily dampen a child’s motivation, as it is the child expressing their own will. It is important for them to “speak up” and not care if they are “right” or not. Afterwards, find appropriate opportunities to guide and correct.
Language learning is dull and uninteresting, especially for children in their growth and development stages. This requires adding fresh and active elements to language learning to attract children’s attention. Singaporean children’s playful Chinese teaching can increase their interest in learning.
In the classroom, teachers are planners of communication training, directors of “Chinese language programs”, and organizers of game activities.
Real emotional communication between teachers and students can promote the formation and development of classroom communication training, allowing students to engage in enjoyable and informative Chinese language training in a natural and comfortable language environment.
The importance of Chinese tutoring for Singapore.In this Chinese language atmosphere, students will be very willing to respond to the questions raised by the teacher, which is conducive to the development of teaching activities.
In most classes, students’ Chinese proficiency is not very neat, and there are always some students in the class whose Chinese proficiency is higher than others. These people are the “little teachers” and “little translators” in the class, and they are good helpers for the teacher. When they help others, their Chinese proficiency is also improved.
Teachers should play these roles by grouping them into groups and selecting one student from each group to serve as the ‘little teacher’ to assist slightly weaker students. This can not only achieve the goal of promoting learning, but also alleviate the tension and shyness of slightly weaker students by practicing on a small scale, and each has its own benefits.
A formal teaching environment may make students feel nervous or constrained, especially for children from English speaking countries. They are relatively free to talk, walk, or eat freely in their own classrooms, but these are not allowed in China.
We can try to discuss daily topics such as weather and dates before class, creating a relaxed chat style teaching atmosphere. This can not only reduce the pressure brought by the formal classroom atmosphere, but also prevent students from getting distracted.
During the teaching process, it can help students maintain a good overall level of excitement.
Pictures and cards are both good tools for students to recognize characters. In the early stage of Singaporean children’s playful Chinese teaching, teachers can apply life pictures, animal pictures, plant pictures, etc. to classroom teaching. Colors and pictures can help students more effectively remember the Chinese characters next to the pictures. In the next stage, the format of card games can be changed.
I once tried a game called “Sharp eyes”, which divided students into two groups: A and B. The cards with new words were left in front of the students for one to two seconds, allowing them to quickly recognize the new words on the cards through instant memory. The fast group received a star as a reward, achieving good results. This method is also suitable for learning and training new sentence patterns.
Children often show a strong interest in role-playing in the classroom. Performing role plays using new words and sentence structures learned in the text to recreate certain scenes in the text or life is beneficial for cultivating children’s language communication skills.
For example, when learning the content of “payment”, I designed a scene of shopping in a store, where students were asked to use the newly learned words in this lesson to recreate the characters. The effect was surprisingly good.
The students not only used the words “change” and “package” learned in the text, but also used many words they had heard in daily life.
The repeated practice in Singaporean children’s playful Chinese teaching is the main way for children to learn and master a language. Practicing in games not only avoids students’ boredom, but also stimulates their interests. Games are generally divided into the following categories:
Card class You can read some new word cards one by one for students to recognize, and after one or two rounds, draw a card from them and buckle it on the table for the third round of recognition, allowing students to quickly reflect on what word the missing card is. This game tests students’ memory ability and can also effectively concentrate their attention.
Action class When playing the game of ‘antonymous actions’, students perform the opposite actions according to the instructions given by the teacher. When the teacher says’ big ‘, the students draw a smaller circle with their hands. When the teacher says’ cry’, the students must make a smile.
In the game of “matching numbers and taking seats”, the teacher prepares two sets of identical cards with words or phrases written on them, and sends one set to the students. The students hold their own cards and stand together. The teacher arranges the other set of cards in a disordered order, and the students find their rightful position according to the arranged order.
Performance category One is to perform dialogues or content in the text to help students understand the content, and the other is to train students in verbal communication. These games can exercise students’ communication skills.
For example, simulating real-life scenarios such as shopping, visiting hospitals for medical treatment, and conducting interviews with journalists, these practice students’ language communication skills.
During the game, students can not only gain the satisfaction of “growth”, but also receive the benefits of improving their language organization, expression, and listening and speaking abilities.
Memory class It can train students’ instantaneous memory ability and help transform short-term memory into long-term memory. Teachers can write multiple words on the blackboard and ask everyone to remember them in a short period of time.
Students are divided into two groups, each group selects a team member. The first group member faces everyone with their back to the blackboard, while the second group member erases one of the words.
The first group member turns to look at the blackboard, says the erased word, and makes a sentence using that word. The teacher will fill in the erased words and play the next round of the game.
According to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics in 2021, the current population of children aged 0-14 in China exceeds 250 million. The development of language ability is a lifelong task for humans, and the critical period for this ability development is in childhood.
China started relatively late in the research field of children’s language development, especially their listening and speaking abilities, and the scientific research efforts are correspondingly insufficient.
In the age range of 0-8 years old, there are multiple milestone nodes, marking a new stage in children’s language ability. Children’s language ability mainly involves the following aspects: phonetics, grammar, and pragmatics.
The first milestone is when children say their first meaningful word. This milestone usually occurs around 12 months after the child is born. In the pre language stage prior to this, the pragmatic abilities of several months old infants emerged, demonstrating the ability to interact with parents or primary caregivers and respond to certain commands.
At around 6 months, parents can observe the sprouting of a child’s speech ability, and at this point, the baby begins to babble and make sounds similar to speech, ready to truly speak the first word.
The second milestone roughly occurs between the ages of 1 and a half to 2, when the child has mastered approximately 50-100 vocabulary words and learned to put the two words together, such as “Mom hugging”.
At this stage, children express richer and more diverse meanings through language, and are able to convey communicative intentions such as questions, protests, and requests. Around the age of 3, children’s vocabulary development enters an “explosive period”, with their expressive vocabulary increasing from hundreds to thousands. Around the age of 5, Chinese speaking children can speak approximately 2000-2500 words.
At the age of 3-5, children are able to master the vast majority of Chinese initials, vowels, and tones, with continuous improvement in speech clarity. At the same time, their grammar abilities are rapidly developing. They speak longer sentences with more complete and complex syntactic structures.
Children aged 4-5 are able to utter complete sentences containing 7-10 words, produce quantitative structures, master sentence structures such as negative, passive, interrogative, and relative clauses, and frequently use “then” to connect sentences.
Children’s narrative ability usually begins to develop at this stage, demonstrating the ability to narrate their experiences in chronological order, telling and retelling simple stories.
Developmental language disorder refers to a significant obstacle in language understanding and expression, with some children experiencing only one aspect of language understanding or expression, while others experiencing both. Children may have obstacles in syntax, vocabulary, semantics, and pragmatics.
The specific manifestations vary from person to person, and common manifestations include small vocabulary, short average sentence length, inability to understand instructions given by adults, etc.
The above scientific research results indicate that delayed language development in children should be given early attention.
In terms of talent cultivation, the “14th Five Year Plan” emphasizes the importance of cultivating a special education teacher team and proposes to “strengthen the construction of special education teacher teams”.
In addition to increasing efforts to cultivate full-time teachers, the action plan also requires “organizing and conducting training for all principals and teachers of special education schools and regular schools, and incorporating integrated education into the compulsory content of continuing education for regular school teachers”.
On this basis, we suggest that in the next stage of the plan, the important position of language ability development should be further highlighted: firstly, in terms of talent cultivation, the professional fields of special education teachers should be refined, and professional literacy should be improved.
Courses such as “Linguistics” and “Language Intervention” should be included in the training curriculum of special education teachers.
Secondly, in terms of school curriculum, promote the establishment of specialized language proficiency enhancement courses in special education schools and regular schools.
Thirdly, it is recommended that relevant departments take the lead in promoting cooperation between university researchers conducting research on language barriers and interventions, as well as special education schools, classrooms, and frontline teachers.
By combining theory with practice, we can improve the quality of language intervention courses while continuously improving the professional level of special education.
The developmental language barrier of Chinese developmental language disorders in young children deserves our high attention. At present, China has begun to promote the establishment of job standards for “rehabilitation therapists”.
On this basis, we suggest that: firstly, the government actively promotes the standardization of professional standards for rehabilitation practitioners and advocates for professional refinement.
Secondly, policies should be introduced to develop language and speech therapy majors, referring to mature training processes and plans (such as undergraduate and master’s education at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University), and improving professional talent training mechanisms.
Finally, at the policy level, supporting the talent introduction of speech and language therapists can not only solve the current “urgent need” for professional practitioners, but also provide assistance for the subsequent talent cultivation.
