Tips for Parents

In this Page, you will know about:

1. What type of Tutor should you find?
2. The following are some myths that once worked:
3. Tips for comprehension
4. Tips for Composition
5. Tips for choosing the type of assessment book
6. Tips for writing narrative composition
7. Mandarin Chinese Most Useful Business Language After English
8. How do I help them?
9. What are the daily tasks?
10. Choosing your dream Secondary School
11. Support from parents on the daily tasks

What type of Tutor should you find?

For Higher Ability Sec Students e.g those taking HCL & Literature

1. PRC Tutors who graduate from Arts subject they call it "wen ke 文科".
2. Not all PRC Students know about Chinese Literature very well esp. those graduate from science subject "li ke 理科".
3. Bilingual and at least 3 years living in Singapore knowing the context and student behaviour towards Chinese learning.
4. Get these PRC to teach these 3 types of Compositions, 议论 expository，报章报道 newspaper ，叙述 narrative.

For Average Ability Sec Students & all Pri students

1. Bilingual local MOE trained tutors, easier to relate to Esp. primary school students
2. For K1 K2, hire student tutors if you have a budget, otherwise early childhood trained because children at this stage is "playing stage", they cannot accept abstract information and be concrete operational.
3. But for P1 onwards, it is better to hire professional tutors (MOE / Ex MOE) as it is the foundation for P4 to go banding for P5 & 6. Based on my experiences, a lot of P3/4 children did not perform due to poor P1/2 foundations because of the words they learnt and forget.
4. I would advise not to spend money just to teach Spelling, get them to teach Compositions, comprehension school will teach.

The following are some myths that once worked

Close passage training: AVOID reading word by word & find the meaning with a dictionary because time is at your disadvantage. Always guess the meaning from the surrounding context.

Comprehension: Avoid watching News and hope that it will improve comprehension unless your child is a secondary student.

Composition: Avoid reading story books and hope that your child will know what to write.

Comprehension is not a matter of language but it is the personal development of the child itself.

The language is merely a medium to transmit the message across from the story to the reader. You may want to try using two similar paragraph in English and Chinese, and test out your child's response.

For Primary school students, News are not yet their area of concern in their lifestyle. they are still in the mode of "childlike" contents, e.g the sun can sleep, the cloud would smile, these are literature form of expression that one should not depress the child. Because once they outgrown this stage, they will naturally be critical of the surroundings, going to to "News" mode, giving their opinions the 5 W 1 H on the issues arising etc.


When they start to asked about the surrounding events, that is when watching news help them in their secondary Compositions & Comprehension. As they absorbed technical terms from the news, the more they are more exposed to the News content, the more they have content to write. There is no short cut to Close Passage training. The Key to mastering Close Passage is the Grammatical feeling and the logical decision between which word to use esp. if they are close.

It is impossible to know all vocabularies in Chinese, but at least the commonly used. The Secret is exposure, listen to how people use certain words in their sentences, after that may consider check it out in Google, or discuss with the person who used it directly. This is how i learn my close passage.

Tips for comprehension

Objectives of the hand-held lessons:
to expose student to the language over time in term of independent silent reading and reading aloud.
to improve in expressing understandings verbally then transfer to written response.

Steps by steps:

1) do not explain anything halfway through the reading, finish the whole reading, anything don't know, guess

2) let your child follow your reading speed and patterns, via you read and he repeat after you, one time.

3) attempt comprehension questions knowing the 5W 1 H.

4) best results, 1 passage a day.  otherwise 3 passages a week for maintainence.

Tips for Composition

 Composition is a very complex activity in all. However, we can look into 2 big factors.

1) Content

It requires some memories, prior knowledge, life experiences, and little creativity to fill in the content, and the sources of these maybe from books/movies/drama/friends/people & any form of media.

 2) Expressions (Grammar Applications)

It requires consistent usage of habitual sentence structure used in conversation in daily life, and favourite Fixed-Excellences Vocabulary or sentences or even paragraph (好词好句好段）. 

One of existing problem is there is a  好词好句好段 fever in the market that students just memorise and apply it in composition. It is a good step but composition is not about these only. 

We could use simple words to bring out the feeling to get the acknowledgement of the readers by "hooking their feelings". This is suppose to be literature work, which is stated clearly in MOE syllabus, and Literature means Personal development in humanity and excellence in style of expressions. We present excellence in style of expressions by "hooking" up the reader's emotions and develop humanity via putting our values, philosophies into our literature works, but this stage is very advance. Hence we need a stepping stone.

Speech affects Writing, hence the most basic stepping stone is speaking of the language itself. Next would be absorbing what said and how they use certain vocabulary. Lastly put them into use.

A Composition with fluent sentences structure is more important than having many Excellence Vocabulary.

It requires prior knowledge accumulated by life experiences of the learner in order for the flow to be logical.

 The followings are for Parents to take note while helping with your Child.

Common Mistakes:

1. written word with wrong strokes
2. lack of use in preferred word
3. confusion between story characters
4. invalid of pairing vocab
5. flow of story illogical
6. forced applications of idioms resulting in inappropriateness

Tips for choosing the type of assessment book

Buy Assessment books that are Topical, and practice in periodical manner, Hot School's exam papers are only good for Pri 1-4/Sec 1-2, the levels which there are no national exam papers(anything mocked or created by school teacher-not recommended), 3 sets enough, to be done 1 month before School official exam.

Mandarin Chinese Most Useful Business Language After English

By John Lauerman - Aug 31, 2011 3:34 AM GMT+0800

Mandarin, China’s official tongue, is also the top language worldwide for business other than English, according to Bloomberg Rankings.
Mandarin, spoken by 845 million people, scored highest in a ranking of languages, excluding English, based on business usefulness. The ranking scored languages according to the number of speakers, number of countries where the language is official, along with those nations’ populations, financial power, educational and literacy rates, and related measures.

Attachment: Most Useful Business Languages

French, spoken by 68 million people worldwide and the official language of 27 countries, was ranked second, followed by Arabic, which is spoken by 221 million people and is official in 23 nations. Mandarin is unlikely to supplant English soon as the primary language of business, said Leigh Hafrey, a senior lecturer in communications and ethics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management.
“In much the same way that the dollar remains the preferred currency, English will remain the preferred language for the foreseeable future,” Hafrey said in a telephone interview.
Mandarin speakers can gain an advantage in doing business in China, Hafrey said.
“Speaking the language confers a huge advantage for anyone who wants to do business in a non-English-speaking country,” he said. “It gives you flexibility, knowledge that you need, and personal connections that can make a difference in the speed and effectiveness of your negotiations.”
Spanish, the official language of 20 countries and spoken by 329 million people, came in fourth, the rankings showed.
Spanish was the top foreign language studied in U.S. college classrooms in 2009, according to research from the Modern Language Association in New York. Chinese tallied seventh by the number of U.S. students enrolled in classes that year, after Spanish, French, German, American Sign Language, Italian and Japanese, according to a December 2010 report by the association. Arabic was eighth.
To contact the reporters on this story: John Lauerman in Boston at jlauerman@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jonathan Kaufman at jkaufman17@bloomberg.net

How do I help them?

Most of the students I had taught are all from English Speaking Background and have difficulty with Chinese.

My Pedagogy is learning through games, just imagine Facebook games in physical mode played.

Generally

First I start off with listening and oral, as this is the most basic and easiest of all, next, then i will go to reading and lastly the most difficult of all is writing.

Structure of My Curriculum

Because of my action research in Pedagogy in Chinese Teaching, my teaching will be a bit different from MOE-School teacher. However, we have the same goals because according to the MOE syllabus (refer to chart) we will both meet the same place by different approach.

    Homework / Daily tasks to Student

Homework given are tested real time with the student during one of the lessons to calculate the speed of a student in completing a task.

They will need to do four daily tasks and is expected to complete within 30-50 Min. Hence even when the lesson is cancelled, their tasks still carry on! There will be no excuse such as "no homework or teacher never give anymore!"

Counselling

Sometimes there are just something that your child would not tell you, be it for whatever reason, I may get to listen to your child's secret and will counsel them whenever necessary.


Recommended frequency

In the perspective of operating business, of course I wish you would want as many as possible but I would recommend Once a week to give your child a breather and on another hand, the spreading period is just nice to recap all his weekly learnings.

Pre-Implementations:

Do have a talk with your child first, normally I would suggest a trial lesson, sometimes rapport is very important, then follow by once a week.

Daily Tasks

the details of the tasks are explained and taught in class. Parents just have to go through the check-list to see if the child had done the work. At the beginning students may take over 1 hour to do. but as they get used to it, they are actually doing faster and faster. the stated timing is derived from timed students throughout my years of teaching.

Primary Level (30-40 min)

1) Xuele 学乐, read one topic per day
2) Oral script, 看图会话, read once before going to sleep.
3) Compo, copy self written compo that are taught in class
4) MCQ, 20qns
5) On radio FM 88.3 / 93.3 / 100.3 while doing tasks 3 and 4.
6) Watch Chinese drama/variety shows/movies/comics esp. from Taiwan
7) Follow time allocated in Time table

Secondary Level (30-50 min)

1) Model essay 范文草稿，七选一, read and draft one topic per day, choose one to do full.
2) Oral script, 看图会话, read once before going to sleep.
3) Compo, copy self written compo that are taught in class
4) MCQ, 20qns
5) On radio FM 88.3 / 93.3 / 100.3 while doing tasks 3 and 4.
6) Watch Chinese drama/variety shows/movies/comics esp. from Taiwan
7) Follow time allocated in Time table

* Some old school teachers discourage Comics and that think they are not proper language which is not necessary the case. In fact comic is one of the best stimuli for creating interest in that particular subject because of the aid of illustrations.
Language is application and it is every where in life, we will learn its "properness" over the years.

* Some romantic dramas about relationship are not about intimacy, but actually portrait the literature and artistic side of the human, and what students these days lack is the knowledge of learning how to understand moral. The "long life" Taiwanese/SG drama for instances is a good medium to learn about morals, values, and human relationships. These appeal more to Primary students, and those who are lucky to watch it, actually fair better in comprehension.

Choosing your dream Secondary School

1) Proximity - My Top Choice!

How I love my school is just opp my house across the road!
Sec Sch life is gonna to be very busy, distance travelled is very crucial for rest and the time used for extra revision. Academic study is actually about how much time is invested with the right strategy!

2) School Culture - very unstable

Some school cultures seems to be more positive than the rest, however, this depends on the school management and the team of teachers that lead them. Over the years how many positive schools were now history? No doubt "good" school seems better but their act of mischief escalate at different level e.g bullying will appear in the form of hooligan type in "bad" school, while cyber/political bullying in "better" school etc. of course there are bound to have black sheep and role model in every school or both type of bullying exist in every kind of schools, for some may want to choose "good" school for better job employment in future, however, perhaps we should focus on current issues first.

3) Favourite/Niche CCA/Courses

I used to have one student accepted by a "good" school because of his excellency in basketball, but within first year he could not catch up with school work and is asked to transfer.

4) Affiliate school

As your child maybe familiar with the school staff and peers, while sometimes changing of environment makes new skills, while thousands of the rest who did not go to affiliate school could do that, why not give it a shot? A new life, new begins! Moreover, a change of Leadership of the school may benefit more for your child because sometimes certain practices in school are cater for majority or specific group of pupils. Note: if the school just change new principal for 1-2 years, there are lots of unstableness, e.g teachers transferring in and out, may affect some classes involved because I had a student whose teacher kept changing almost every 2 months.

Nevertheless, whichever school you go, O'level is the same across the broad, most importantly is be happy and work hard!

Support from Parents on the daily tasks

As exam is around the corner, I understand Parents anxiousness, and the more I need your support in monitoring your child's consistency in completing my daily tasks for them. My daily tasks are designed revisions which is according to Ebbinghaus's Forgetting Curve., that can help your child to remember acquired knowledge longer and minimised forgetfulness.

*note: to understand more on how my system help your child click here..

All it takes for Chinese daily tasks is around 30 - 40 mins daily, so please avoid the following:

1. Sacrifice it to study other subject except during exam week which Chinese paper is over (it may cause 2 ends not to meet)
2. Allowing your child to exceed given time and eats into other subject revision time.
3. Give your child personal homework to do 1 month prior to exam (this create confusions and lose focus of the learning objectives)
4. When doing revision, it is wise to revisit what is learnt and relearn them. Doing "revision" that require acquiring new knowledge is not encourage, because old knowledge and yet to stem in the brain, and new knowledge could not retain, thus 2 ends did not meet. 

Time flies, PSLE is around the corner and our tuition is coming to an end. It has been my pleasure to help your child and thank you for the support given all these while!

Let's keep in touch!

Good Day!