June 27, 2011

Bilingual Speaking – Oral Exam Preparations

Dominique Parenting Views bilingual teaching, English and Chinese, Oral exam preperations

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?

Aloha Friday/5QF- End of June Holidays

Monkey boy and Me

Bleah.. I’m sure that’s how Monkey boy is feeling as he will be returning back to school next Monday. School vacations are officially over and it’s time to brush up on all the academic subjects and learning. We didn’t get around to doing any abacus practice and learning more Japanese but we did get started on English and Chinese composition writing and had lots of fun. Monkey Boy is looking forward to our next holiday in July when we go on a short weekend staycation at a local hotel.

1. What is your current favorite tv show?
I don’t have any ..does the NEWS count? I enjoy Sci-fi and investigative shows like C.S.I but I rarely have time nowadays to watch the telly.

2. What’s the worst haircut you ever got?
It would been the time I was in Melbourne as a student. I can’t really remember what hairstyle was that but recall that I went immediately to another shop for a re-cut.

3. What was something that you did as a child that you thought you were so cool for doing?

Traveling overseas with my classmates on a student exchange program to Taiwan. It was really fun and it was the first time I traveled without my parents.

4. Do you have any GREAT frugal family fun tips?
Baking, visits to the park, going swimming or bowling.

5. Would you drive across country if you had the money to fly?

I would certainly fly as I really doubt that I will be able to remain sane on a long road trip with the kids. We live on an island so any road trip will involve driving up to Malaysia which at the moment I’m not keen on.