Category: Chinese learning

With the continuous development of society, strengthening the development of Mandarin among Singaporean school-age children is a necessary path. Language is a cognitive system that endows sound, text, gestures, and other symbolic meanings.

In the overall system of language, it also includes oral language for listening and speaking, written language for reading and writing, as well as branch systems such as body language and sign language.

Children’s written language ability refers to their ability to read and write. Parents often overlook that young children have already gained a lot of knowledge and skills in reading and writing from their living environment before receiving formal literacy education.

If parents hope to improve their children’s reading and writing abilities in a targeted manner, they first need to understand the general process of strengthening the development of Mandarin among Singaporean school-age children. In the “Reading and Writing Series”, we will take you to understand the development milestones of children’s reading and writing, as well as some practical skills to promote children’s reading and writing abilities.

Monument to the Development of Children’s Reading Ability:

3-4 years old
Be able to recognize familiar signs and words, such as restaurant signs, signs and names on food packaging, and place names on street signs.

Be able to say some words and phrases from a story or book.

Be able to recognize and occasionally say rhyming short sentences (such as little swallows, wearing floral clothes, coming here every spring), and words with the same initial consonants (such as kites and airplanes)

4-5 years old
When reading picture books together, it is possible to distinguish whether the parents are reading the text on the book or talking about the pictures in the book.

Pretend to read and tell stories based on memory, and be able to recognize some common Chinese characters.

Understand that the words on the item are related to it and that each word has a corresponding pronunciation.

5-6 years old
When reading, they will point out and say the Chinese characters, letters, or numbers they know. And began to recognize some uncommon words.

When children can understand the content of picture book stories through two information channels: pictures and text, their reading ability gradually develops from learning to reading to acquiring information through reading.

Discuss topics that interest children: Parents need to always remind themselves that children are not passive listeners in reading, but active participants. The purpose of parent-child reading is to cultivate children’s reading interest and develop reading habits.

So, to continuously promote children to become the leaders of reading, it is necessary to take the children’s interests as the starting point. The role of parents in parent-child reading is to guide, inspire, assist, rather than lead. Only when children are interested in topics can they have more thinking and willingness to express themselves.

Pay attention to the logical structure and language expression of children’s communication from the perspective of their language development. Parents should encourage their children to express their thoughts and viewpoints, regardless of whether they are right or wrong, and encourage them to dare to express and actively think.

During the child’s expression process, it is possible to observe whether the logical structure of their expression is clear.

Of course, the logical thinking of children only begins to develop after the age of 7, but this does not mean that before the age of 7, their speech is all topsy-turvy, allowing children to recall stories, tell stories in their own words, and use the order of pictures, characters, and plot development to promote children’s logical expression, which helps children understand the content of picture book stories, the development of its logical thinking is also tempered in this process.

Parents can also observe whether their children’s spoken language is rich from their expression. If their language is too simple, parents should not take the place of arranged help, but should provide supportive assistance, inspire and guide children to express themselves in more complete and coherent sentences.

From the perspective of children’s independent reading ability development, pay attention to whether children consciously use basic reading strategies in reading. We have already introduced four basic reading strategies that play an important role in understanding content.

These reading strategies are not meant to be used by children, but rather to be applied by parents in reading. At the same time, we guide children to feel and experience these reading strategies while reading. As children accumulate reading experience, they gradually internalize them as part of their reading abilities.

Parents observe their level of understanding of the story, the logic of their language expression, the richness of their oral accumulation, and the creativity and depth of their expressed content when they express themselves.

In the development of strengthening the development of Mandarin among Singaporean school-age children, we also encourage them to express themselves in ways that are not limited to language expression.

They can also engage in many extended activities through picture books, such as props, handicrafts, graffiti, performances, dramas, and other forms of expression. These expressions are not only full of fun, but also rich in form, integrating imagination, creativity, understanding, and expression, playing an important role in children’s understanding of stories and life.

The development of children’s reading ability has its inherent laws, requiring parents to grasp the critical period of children’s learning basic reading ability and know what support parents can provide in parent-child reading? What kind of environment should we create?

What guidance will be provided? Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of one’s own children in reading development, and providing targeted guidance and assistance, can help children become truly independent readers.

Consciously cultivate basic Chinese reading and writing strategies for Singaporean children. Pre school children are still only beginners, and even if they have learned some words and are able to read independently, their understanding of the reading content is still very limited.

To become a fluent reader, parents also need to consciously help children develop basic reading strategies, in order to help children understand the reading content more comprehensively and deeply. There are four basic reading strategies: reflection strategy, expectation strategy, questioning strategy, and hypothesis strategy.

Reflection strategy:
It refers to children’s various reflections on the characters, plot, and other aspects of the story told in the picture book during the process of listening to the story or reading the picture book.

This reflection may be a manifestation of their own imagination or a reflection combined with their own life experiences. Regardless of the form, it will be beneficial for children to understand the reading content.

Expected strategy:
It refers to the ability of children, after accumulating a considerable amount of reading experience, to see or hear similar stories and speculate about the plot development and future behavior of characters.

This predictive ability can help children quickly understand the reading content and enhance their interest in reading in the future. With expectations, one wants to continue reading to verify whether their expectations are correct. At this point, expectations become a driving force and guide for continued reading, allowing children to engage in deeper reading comprehension.

Questioning strategy:
It refers to children’s questioning of the character setting, plot development, and story ending in picture books during reading comprehension. Why is this so? These doubts are related to the accumulation of children’s early reading experience, as well as their thinking about stories.

Queries help children find the reasons for events to occur and develop while reading, and are linked to their own reading or life experiences. They make children want to further explore and verify their doubts, and find answers.

Assumption strategy:
It refers to asking children to assume, after listening to a story or reading a picture book, that if they were in a different scene, the characters would behave differently, and if they were a certain character, what direction the story would develop and what different endings it would have.

Assuming that the strategy is an open-ended way of thinking, with no standard answers but various possibilities hidden. Children need to unleash their imagination and integrate, compare, and create their own life and reading experiences.

These four basic reading strategies can all be used in parent-child reading, where parents consciously use collaborative and interactive reading methods to help their children learn and apply them.

The use of different reading strategies can improve the efficiency and quality of children’s information acquisition through reading, and the use of basic reading strategies can also determine the level of children’s reading ability and how far they are from becoming mature independent readers.

The reading guidance ability of parents plays an external promoting role in the development of basic Chinese reading and writing strategies for Singaporean children.

To cultivate children as autonomous readers, it is also necessary to develop their internal strength. This cannot be achieved without the support of parents who have the ability to assist, and this assistance and support can be obtained from the following:

Creating a supportive reading environment for children=creating a physical environment+creating a psychological environment

Parents create their own comfortable reading corners for their children, allowing them to easily access picture books that they can read and enjoy at home. There are also plenty of picture books at home for children to choose from, which are all physical environments that parents can create for their children to stimulate their interest in reading.

To create psychological comfort and pleasure for children in reading, it is also necessary to create a psychological environment.

Reading with parents and children, enjoying the intimate time of snuggling together while reading, experiencing various fun of role-playing and game interaction in reading, feeling the warmth of parents’ love and the nourishment of language, all of which provide a safe and comfortable psychological environment for children’s reading.

The key word for creating a psychological environment is companionship: immersing oneself in the beautiful time of reading with children together requires parents to pay attention to their children’s emotional state and reading feedback during parent-child reading, adjust their reading interaction methods in a timely manner.

Engaging in discussions and exchanges with children during the reading process, encouraging and supporting children to express their opinions and ideas, and making children the leader in reading, Only in this way can children develop reading habits and improve their reading abilities.

Pay attention to the child’s state and ability development during reading, engage in dialogue and discussion.

To make children fall in love with reading, parents need to constantly monitor their children’s reactions during parent-child reading. Children’s level of understanding of the story can be judged by their expressions, body movements, etc.

Whether they are interested in this picture book story, and whether they are interested in reading at this time. If they are not interested at this time, do not force them to continue reading. This can easily lead to a sense of boredom in reading, and it is important to always connect reading with a sense of happiness.

Parents not only need to pay attention to their children’s reading status, but also need to pay attention to whether their children are willing to obtain key information in pictures by reading text.

Even if preschool children pay little attention to text in their reading, parents always tend to use pictures to communicate with their children. However, parents still need to realize that picture books are composed of both pictures and text. Picture books are not just a simple combination of pictures and text, but rather promote and integrate each other to tell a story.

Sometimes pictures and words describe two different things, and sometimes pictures and words complement each other in describing the same thing. Regardless of the way, the role of words cannot be ignored.

So when telling a story to a child, one cannot only interpret the picture and ignore the text, nor can one directly read the text and ignore the content that is not described in the text displayed in the picture.

To help cultivate basic Chinese reading and writing strategies for Singaporean children, it is necessary to enable them to grasp the key information in picture books during reading.

This is the information that can best help children understand the entire story content. In terms of understanding the meaning of the story, words often play a spiritual role, containing more crucial information in picture books.

Therefore, when parent-child reading, parents should consciously guide children to pay attention to the connection between pictures and words.

Chinese reading ability for Singaporean children is not innate, but only by becoming independent readers can children truly possess basic reading abilities.

The formation of this ability largely depends on the degree to which parents attach importance to children’s reading and their ability to accompany and guide children in reading.

Brain development:

The development of all brain related functions, including visual, auditory, emotional control, language, social skills, numbers, and symbols, is maintained at its highest developmental speed before the age of 5.

The formation of habits (green line), emotional control (purple line), language (yellow line), hearing (dark blue), visual (white line), and related development of symbols (red line) are all fastest developed around the age of one year.

Numbers (black) and social skills (blue line) rapidly develop from one year old to around 3 years old, and thereafter maintain a high development rate even at the ages of 6 and 7.
It can also be seen that early education and positive interaction for babies are better!

Human reading ability is formed between the ages of 3 and 8. Before the age of 8, parent-child reading can help children accumulate reading experience, narrative experience, life experience, and acquire reading ability learning.

After children have acquired basic reading abilities, after the age of 8, they can further develop methods and skills for obtaining information through these basic reading abilities, that is, the ability to obtain information through reading. This ability is the foundation for people to learn various knowledge.

Therefore, parents need to grasp the critical period for children before the age of 8 to learn basic reading skills, and can guide the development of children’s reading and learning abilities from four aspects.

At the age of 3, people basically acquire their mother tongue, and at this time, their mother tongue is basically only spoken. They can communicate with adults in various aspects of daily life, but acquiring spoken language does not mean that children’s spoken language is rich enough.

Parents will find that in the same scene, different children have different descriptions and expression abilities towards things, and this difference in expression level can reflect the richness of children’s oral language.

The richness of spoken language determines whether children can match the spoken words they hear when they see written text, or whether they can express what is said in written language after hearing it. This is the basic ability for children to learn reading.

The Chinese reading ability for Singaporean children is established through interest and knowledge. In daily life, children can see various written and pictorial symbols, and naturally acquire a lot of knowledge about written language symbols. The most important way to obtain written language symbols is actually through early reading.

Picture books integrate pictures and text to describe a story, a life scene, and connect pictures and text. In early childhood reading, parents help children deepen their understanding of the written language meaning in picture books through interactive parent-child reading.

At the same time, they establish a love for reading, which is necessary preparation for becoming a good reader in the future.

When children begin to consciously pay attention to words, they will realize that symbols and words have unique characteristics in their writing forms. They know that Chinese characters are composed of components, that words have the function of recording and expressing, and that there is a certain relationship between pictures and words.

This awareness and cognition is a manifestation of children’s sensitivity to words, and is the foundation for children to distinguish and understand Chinese characters.

The cultivation and improvement of Chinese reading ability for Singaporean children can help them develop interest in learning reading and enter the stage of learning written language earlier.

Before paying attention to text, children find that pictures convey more information than words, and after entering written language reading, they will find that language and words can describe more content that the picture cannot reflect. This is a significant shift towards becoming an autonomous reader.

Pinyin is now the first hurdle that both children and adults must face in the learning of beginners of Chinese pinyin in Singapore. Here are some key points on how to get started with children learning Pinyin.

How long does it take for children to learn Pinyin?

There are currently several mainstream approaches to how long it takes children to get started: 1. One week; 2. One month; 3. One semester.

Firstly, a one week introduction is feasible, but it is also limited to basic introductions. According to the current mainstream teaching, children can learn up to six simple final and tones, plus some simple initials, within a week.

If it weren’t for hoping that children’s Chinese learning would only stay at the basic level, such an “entry-level” approach would obviously not be enough.

What about that month? If the rhythm is relatively fast, it should be able to complete most of the vowels, but children cannot fully grasp these pinyin in such a short period of time.

Moreover, Pinyin is not independent of other studies of Chinese. How do children get started learning Pinyin? How long will it take? There is only one answer, which is that it will take nearly a semester to truly get started with Pinyin.

In fact, it takes children in China so long to master Pinyin in primary school. However, this does not mean that learning Pinyin alone requires such a long time. We will analyze this in detail in the following text.

Can children only learn Pinyin? Some parents want to know if their children can only learn Pinyin. The answer is no.

Pinyin in Chinese is like phonetic symbols in English, playing a role in assisting pronunciation and correction. Meanwhile, Pinyin cannot replace the use of Chinese.
Some children studying Chinese in China may feel lazy after learning Pinyin. They will use pinyin to replace the writing of unfamiliar or cumbersome characters.

Needless to say, this naturally leads them to lag behind other children in learning Chinese characters. Moreover, when reading, one only looks at pinyin and becomes illiterate when receiving articles without pinyin.

For some adults, their demands are limited to typing. Just learning Pinyin may be enough, and you don’t even have to worry about tone. For children who hope to learn Chinese well, this is obviously not enough. How do children get started learning Pinyin? Obviously, we cannot just learn Pinyin.

Can children learn Chinese without learning Pinyin?

Is it necessary for beginners of Chinese pinyin in Singapore when learning pinyin? If there were teachers in previous private schools who taught reading and correcting pronunciation, even without the concept of pinyin, it would not affect children’s learning of Chinese pronunciation.

The mainstream teaching nowadays generally prioritizes pinyin teaching. Some schools have also improved their teaching processes by not teaching Pinyin in the first month, but allowing children to recognize and read some simple Chinese characters, and gradually using the pronunciation of these characters to bring out Pinyin.

Of course, with a large input of Chinese, one may still be able to learn Chinese well without learning Pinyin. The Cambodian boy who became popular online a few years ago is an example.

This popular boy on the internet has mastered multiple languages at a young age, but his job is only to sell souvenirs to foreign tourists. Under the immersion of multiple languages, he acquired nine languages, including Chinese.

Such examples have also appeared in other languages. Legend has it that Liang Qichao learned Japanese in just one night. Some people may think that Japanese and Chinese have much in common. This statement is true, but it also provides the feasibility of learning a language without studying phonetics.

How do children get started learning Pinyin? The order and method are important.
To learn Pinyin, first learn six simple final. Among them, in terms of pronunciation from a to o, just turn the lips from round to flat. You just need to retract your tongue a little bit from o to e. The other three simple final can also be read through one or two small changes.

Of course, imitating sounds from life or animal calls can help children learn the pronunciation of these vowels more intuitively. For example, when a child wants to eat, they usually open their mouth and say “ah (a)”.

Next is the grouping of initial consonants, which is also learned based on the principle of simplicity before complexity. During this process, review the overall recognition and four tones at any time.

The next step is the most crucial – combining simple Chinese characters and incorporating the specific use of Pinyin in reading. Usually, under the persuasion of a large number of continuous pinyin, children will start to actively or subconsciously memorize character shapes and corresponding pinyin to save effort.

After another period of time, you will find that children can gradually recognize the pronunciation at the sight of the font shape.

Has Pinyin achieved success and retired at this stage? Of course not. Next, we can teach children to use pinyin retrieval to search for unfamiliar characters and words in a dictionary.

With the help of Pinyin, children can significantly improve their reading and literacy abilities, while also gradually starting to combine their own sentences. On the basis of such attempts, children’s oral English will make significant progress in the future.

The above are some methods for beginners of Chinese pinyin in Singapore to learn how to get started during the learning process. I believe that through them, you will have a deeper understanding of children’s learning of Chinese Pinyin, and can flexibly apply some methods to their learning of Pinyin, taking their Chinese learning to the next level.