06 • Learning Mandarin with My First Chinese Words (Better Chinese)

(Originally posted on July 2, 2017)

Even though they're 4.5 years apart, I have been teaching River and Brooks Mandarin at the same time. Ideally, I should have had Brooks learn Mandarin the moment he turned four, but I started teaching him reading (in English) instead.

We use Better Chinese's My First Chinese Words because they are targeted to non-Mandarin speakers. In contrast, SageBooks (Hong Kong publisher) require the students to be Mandarin/Chinese speakers. (SageBooks are like BOB books in that they teach children how to read).

I try to do Mandarin two, three times a week. I read one sentence and each child repeat after me. We do two 8-page picture books each session. Brooks usually has the attention span for one picture book but not two.

So far we have done six sessions. In between sessions, I have J independently listen and repeat after the included CD.

Brooks often acts silly and intentionally gives the wrong answers (e.g. "This is my grandfather" instead of "This is my father.") Usually I end up focusing on River when Brooks has the sillies.

As expected, Brooks' pronunciation is just beautiful. Being older, River has a harder time with pronunciation. (When River was four, his Mandarin accent was practically perfect too. Once he started kindergarten, we got busy with reading/writing/spelling/poetry/etc. and stopped doing Mandarin).

I was afraid that River, who just turned nine, would find the books boring because they’re a bit childish, but he has been motivated so far. Earlier today, he asked me to do Mandarin.


☆ 06/100 moments in multiples of 50 words

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If we do this three times a week, we should be done in a year; two times a week, a year and a half.

My tentative lesson map:

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List of the 36 book titles: ( Read more... )