Category Archives: Parenting Views

My views on education, mutilingual parenting and other parenting topics
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Preparing your Pre-Schooler- Bilingual Writing

July 22, 2011 – 1:05 pm

Doggy Boy at a cupcake decoration birthday party

Last month I posted about Oral Preparations for my eldest (Monkey Boy). This month my focus is more on my middle child(Doggy Boy).

My little boy is 4 and in Kindergarten One this year. He is very keen in academic learning but one thing he has been rather resistant to is writing. He is okay with learning new words in both English and Mandarin but when it comes to writing he will drag his feet and find all excuses just to get away from doing it.

In approximately 1.5 years time he will be entering elementary school like his elder brother and I will have to get him accustomed to writing and doing other written exercises. I know at this age boys have rather limited attention span and that they are rather more focus on fun and play then academics.

To get him sufficiently prepared for school we have started on some simple writing exercises at home during the week.

Practice books for Doggy Boy

I chose these books for him as they seem manageable with him only needing to sit down for a maximum of 5-10 minutes to complete an exercise. We do a page a day and alternate between English and Chinese. As Chinese writing is different from writing in English I want him to get accustomed to writing the different strokes that make up a Chinese character. I got him a few Character tracing books so that he learns how to write the different characters using the proper sequences in strokes.

It is important for him to write the strokes properly as if a certain stroke is too long or too short or written in the wrong direction you may end up with a different character ( word) then you originally want to write. It is the same case as in English where by a poorly written “h” can be mistaken for a “n” if the line is not written long enough.

Here are some photos of his written work.

English Exercises which he has done

Chinese Writing Exercises

Chinese Writing book with Tracing

Since starting Doggy Boy on these books his behaviour towards writing has improved a lot. He initially started out bawling and very reluctant to even write a single alphabet/character and could easily take up to an hour just to finish a page as he would sneak off to play or be doodling around when I took my eyes off him to attend to his siblings. Now he takes about 5 minutes and would consciously sit down to complete the page.

I will be moving on to getting him to do simple comprehension activities and starting him on basic essay writing once he completes this series of books.

How do you get your child started on writing?

Bilingual Speaking – Oral Exam Preparations

June 27, 2011 – 5:43 pm

Photo by Flickr

As Monkey Boy returns back to school for a new term it’s time to ramp up and accelerate my academic coaching with him. This semester we will be adding Oral practice to our to-do-list.

It can be rather daunting for a little kid to be tested on speaking in front of an adult on a given topic and carry out a conversation without much preparation. Therefore to make him more at ease in his speech, I will be doing quite a bit of scenario practice in both English and Chinese.

The best way for a child to describe and talk about a situation is for him to experience it first hand. Through personal experience the impact on him would be more long lasting and easier to relate to for Monkey Boy.

I use the same material/scene for both English and Chinese oral. Eg: After an outing to the supermarket I get Monkey Boy to talk about his experience to the supermarket. I initially started of with him talking in English as it’s his more dominant language as compared to Mandarin (Chinese). However now I’m getting Monkey Boy to start off in Chinese then repeat back to me once again in English.

My aim is to get him speaking more fluently in Chinese and be able to use grammatically correct sentences and not direct translated sentences from English to Chinese. As sentence formation in Chinese differs from those made in English. If Monkey boy directly translated from English they would be horrendous as he will be using the wrong sentence structure and the flow of his ideas/thoughts would be disjointed. He has to get use to forming simple sentences before he is able to use more complex ones.

By being able to speak well in oral will relate to being able to write better at composition as one already has mastery of formation of sentences. It will also help Monkey boy in expressing himself more clearly.

I bought for him this book and some other similar books for him to practice. My aim is to let him get use to the intonation and speeds of various speakers. I also got a similar one in English for him.

My next aim would be for him to be able to relate accounts/experiences in Cantonese as he too has to be able to speak our dialect to communicate well with the older relatives and his other cousins.

How do you prepare your child for their Oral Assessment?

Tags bilingual teaching, English and Chinese, Oral exam preperations | Comment (1)

Essay Writing-Monkey Boy Style

June 21, 2011 – 6:16 am

Monkey boy is current in his last week of vacations. It’s time to slowly engage him back into study mode and for him to catch up on his holiday homework.

During our recent vacation to Penang, Malaysia Monkey boy wrote and essay about his trip. (Scanned in above). I’m still working with him on how to improve his essay writing skills as it does need a lot of polishing.

Here are 10 tips on how to build up essay writing skills with your kids.

Do not be critical about spelling as it will stifle their flow of thought.
This is especially for beginning writers like Monkey boy. He still has quite limited vocabulary and is not really apt in his dictionary checking skills. Having a few misspelling is acceptable.
Give scaffolding.
It’s important that the child knows the proper structure in constructing an essay. In the above example Monkey boy was made to recollect and walk though the experiences that he had through the week in chronological order.
The 4 “W”s and 1 H
What, Which, Why, Where and How? These are the starters which I use to get Money boy’s creative juices flowing. They also help him to organize his thoughts before penning them down in the essay.
It’s all in Past Tense.
As in this instance of a recollection all has to be written in the past tense. Many a times kids forget and start writing using the wrong tense as they simple relate word for word what they have just spoken and use the present tense instead.
Describe and do it a lot!
One of the main key point I look out when I mark an essay is that it has relevant descriptions which help to give more depth into the story told. I’m slowly building up this aspect in cultivating his essay writing skills.
It needs to make sense.
Monkey boy tends to get sidetracked when he is planning his draft during an essay writing session. Sometimes he would put in aliens and even action words which they use. I have to remind him that he has to keep his focus on the topic and genre chosen for the essay or else he maybe marked out of point for unrelated ” creative additions” to the essay. It’s fine to write about aliens if the essay if about my imagination or creatures from outer space but not about a recollection about your holidays.
Keep your sentences to the point.
Brevity is better then being long winded. Having extremely long sentences sometimes may make one write out of point or even make the marker miss the key points. It also makes it hard to recognize the focus of the essay as the words “waffle” around too much making the essay less then outstanding.
Write legibly.
As a teacher what I can’t stand is really illegible writing. It’s bad enough that we have to mark stacks of essays per week. I don’t need to play a guessing game each time I read what you write. I’m constantly reminding Monkey boy to write clearly or he risks being marked wrong if his teachers are unable to decipher what he wrote.
Check and check again.
Checking through one’s work does mean just visually scanning through from the start to the end of the document. For essay checking I will make Monkey boy read out the essay to me line by line. I will next ask him if what he reads makes sense to him and if he understood what he was reading out. If he doesn’t really understand or I feel that there are some missing links I will get him to add in the missing parts.
Practice makes Perfect.
The only way to get better is through writing. I’ll be getting Monkey boy to do more essay writing and on the various genres so that he will get accustomed to writing and words will start flowing more smoothly from his pencil.