Primary 1 Chinese Tuition, the Next Chinese Interview Winner will be your Child!

"My family, Jeff, is already in primary 1 Chinese tuition. He has started learning Chinese for more than half a semester. He is serious about reading, writing, pinyin, and literacy, but when he speaks Chinese, he becomes dumb. What should I do when the primary one interviews? What? Looks like I have to show Jeff a little one interview tutoring."...

In fact, children do not speak Chinese because they dare not speak it. Children who have just learned a new language will inevitably feel that they cannot speak Chinese well and thus lack the courage to speak;

So at this time, we need to encourage the children even more. We need to let the children understand that it doesn't matter if they say something badly, and it's great to speak up boldly!

"Practice makes perfect", more talk and more practice will always make progress!

So how can parents encourage primary 1 Chinese tuition?

If the child does not know what to say at the beginning, please encourage the child to read more, remember! Make sure your child reads aloud, not silently.

Q: How can I encourage our children to read correctly?

In this article, we interview a Chinese teacher, Ms. Lin, whose daughter Jane* is currently attending a top SAP middle school and can independently read Chinese novels like To Live.

You might think: "Obviously her daughter is good at reading - her mother is a Chinese teacher." However, like most Singaporean children, Jane is far less used to English than Chinese, and she doesn't want to read Chinese books most of the time in elementary school. And Ms. Lin doesn't teach Jane Chinese either.

Q: What was the most important thing you did to help Jane fall in love with reading?

For the children not to be afraid of taking tutoring in Primary One, the most important thing I did was to focus on reading very much when Jane was in preschool.

Most parents know that primary 1 Chinese tuition is the golden age of language acquisition and they can soak up new words like a sponge. What most people don't realize is that it's much easier to coax young children into reading.

Young children naturally want to spend time with their parents, and almost all children enjoy hearing stories, so encouraging reading is easy. I started reading to her every night and then encouraged her to read the stories herself.

Q: What are some common mistakes you see parents make when reading to primary ones?

The biggest mistake I see parents make is choosing not to read to their preschoolers out of fear that their imperfect pronunciation might teach them the wrong things.

For children, exposure to Chinese books is much more beneficial than no exposure at all. Even when children spot pronunciation mistakes, they are quickly corrected at school.

Q: Did your daughter (Jane) continue to read Chinese books when she was in primary school?

After entering elementary school, Jane suddenly became only interested in English books and did not read Chinese books for a while.

Q: Why do you think this happened?

I think when kids go to primary school, they naturally become more independent. And the children have much less free time. If they had to choose between English books and Chinese books, they would naturally prefer to read English books.

In elementary school, she had her own preferences about what she wanted to do or what she wanted to read and I needed to respect that or she would end up hating Chinese. But at the same time, I also want her to continue reading Chinese books.

Q: I believe that many elementary school parents have similar situations. So what did you do?

Well, I explained to her the importance of reading some Chinese books, even though she really likes English books.

Then I will discuss with her: If we go to the library, I tell her that for every 10 English books you borrow from the library, you need to borrow 3 Chinese books.

Or every time you read 1 hour of English, you need to allocate a certain amount of Chinese reading time.

Q: Many parents have tried similar methods, but all their children end up brought back from the library English books. what is the difference?

I think the difference is that the vocabulary foundation that Jane laid in kindergarten has always been with her, so even though she prefers to read English books, reading Chinese books is not painful for her.

So it's easier to convince her to at least read some Chinese to ensure her vocabulary remains solid.

Then, during the tutoring stage of the primary one interview, she was encouraged to read more books, and when she reached P5 and P6, she realized that if she wanted to do well in PSLE and enter her dream school, she needed to read more Chinese books.

If you want to encourage your child to read, check out the 100+ animated stories on Vocab King.

This online review portal helps your child learn and review over 100 new or forgotten words each week through animated stories, quizzes, and fun games.

Primary 1 Chinese tuition - I hope your child can become the winner of the next primary one interview!