With learning Mandarin Chinese as a second language - its difficult exactly to know where to start, what a child should or should not be able to do at a specific grade, what the learning outcomes must be. I spent hours researching on the Internet and have found a few resources which act as a guide for me to work with.
I have found these are useful curriculum guides. It gives me something to work with, as to what is expected of the children for different grades. Obviously we also did not start Mandarin from Grade 1 so we are having to work extra hard on all aspects of Mandarin but that's OK. I know that they will become more proficient!
I also don't let this become an all consuming list of things to do but it's good to keep this in front of me to keep the end in sight. Our intention is to eventually do our final exams in Mandarin though we do hope that by that time, we will already be in China - as I do believe that full immersion in a language you are learning is the best way to learn a language.
I think that if I lived in an environment where other children were studying Mandarin in schools, I could use them as a bench mark to find out what they were doing in school and what type of resources they were using - but I have yet to find someone in my area, who is also studying Mandarin. Though there does seem to be a universal trend towards the study of Mandarin - I don't think there are many South African families who are picking this language up as a second or third language because of the lack of support or even information on this language.
I have found these are useful curriculum guides. It gives me something to work with, as to what is expected of the children for different grades. Obviously we also did not start Mandarin from Grade 1 so we are having to work extra hard on all aspects of Mandarin but that's OK. I know that they will become more proficient!
I also don't let this become an all consuming list of things to do but it's good to keep this in front of me to keep the end in sight. Our intention is to eventually do our final exams in Mandarin though we do hope that by that time, we will already be in China - as I do believe that full immersion in a language you are learning is the best way to learn a language.
I think that if I lived in an environment where other children were studying Mandarin in schools, I could use them as a bench mark to find out what they were doing in school and what type of resources they were using - but I have yet to find someone in my area, who is also studying Mandarin. Though there does seem to be a universal trend towards the study of Mandarin - I don't think there are many South African families who are picking this language up as a second or third language because of the lack of support or even information on this language.
What curriculum guidelines do you use? Or do just let your children learn freely?
Posts
Have you seen Magic Story Box? There are print readers and online readers that read the stories aloud! http://www.wor.com/cat-chinese-curriculum---the-magic-story-box.cfm - really well done and affordable!
ReplyDeletethanks for that! I would love to review the readers.
Delete