Generally speaking, overseas Chinese parents have good economic strength and received good higher education. They know the importance of Chinese education to children and will take the initiative to create a Chinese environment for children. Even try some "language tyranny", such as stipulating that Chinese must be spoken at home, and Chinese elders must talk in Chinese. This is also the biggest advantage for children in China to learn Chinese. Therefore, most of these children are good at Chinese dialogue. Although there are some grammatical problems, ordinary dialogue and communication are relatively smooth.
On the other hand, due to the influence of the surrounding language environment, many children in China often stop here in their Chinese learning, and it is difficult to improve their reading and writing ability. Due to the limitation of family and social environment, compared with children of the same age in China, overseas Chinese children lack the original accumulation of Chinese characters in reading and writing, such as: Chinese characters are square, Chinese characters are written one by one according to certain rules, some Chinese characters are meaningful by stippling, and Chinese characters can be split and combined into disyllabic words.
Coupled with the lack of China culture, children in China don't know much about the history, development and reality of China, the traditional virtues and classic stories in China culture, and the uses of Chinese characters and the stories behind them. Moreover, most children in China are forced by their parents to learn Chinese, and they are not interested in themselves, which makes the already difficult Chinese reading and writing learning worse.
As a Chinese teacher, I often receive many questions from parents:
Is there a good way to tutor children to read?
My child is almost 8 years old, and he only knows pinyin. What should I do?
......
In the face of these parents' questions, today I will share with you some ways to help children improve their Chinese reading and writing skills at home.
Because literacy can be divided into three levels, reading and writing, and each part has a lot of information, so in this article, we will focus on the first one-literacy.
Here, I want to distinguish two concepts of literacy with parents first.
According to the Chinese Dictionary, "recognition" refers to recognition; In addition to distinguishing, "knowledge" also means knowing and understanding.
So many teachers and book publishers often say "literacy enlightenment" instead of "literacy enlightenment". It is the most basic and important ability to let children understand the connotation concept of the trinity of sound, shape and character of Chinese characters, not only to recognize characters and read cards, but to understand the meaning behind Chinese characters.
Etymology teaching is a great killer with twice the result with half the effort.
Parents should pay attention to two combinations when their children are just preparing for reading, and must adopt the idea of "word source" teaching, that is, the combination of "word and picture"
Why?
Chinese characters themselves are pictographs. All pictographs have developed from thinking in images to thinking in abstractions, that is, they have gone through the process of pictographs, explanatory characters, cognitive characters, pictographs and phonetic characters. Etymology teaching emphasizes the shape and origin of characters, and the development process of etymology literacy is very similar to that of children's thinking, which is also the advantage of pictographs.
For children who have little literacy or only know pinyin, parents can prepare some reading cards similar to the picture below, and accompany their children to slowly improve their literacy through some listening and reading games; Of course, it is also possible to pass some literacy apps, which are simple and convenient, but we must be careful not to let children develop the habit of relying too much on electronic devices.
For children with a certain amount of literacy (about 1600, who can write about 800, which is equivalent to the level of domestic 1~2 grade children), it is not enough to simply write and read. In order to lay a foundation for future reading and writing, it is suggested that parents with conditions can explain each word and its deep meaning, usage and part of speech in detail with picture books with stories, and encourage children to make sentences and use them.
This kind of picture book is also easy to buy, and there are many on Amazon. As to whether to use the classic "Four or Five Speed Reading" or the story-telling "Red Dragonfly", parents can choose according to their children's level and preferences.
I must emphasize two points here. First, when children know a new word, it is very necessary to form words and sentences. It can better help children understand the meaning of words and learn how to use them. Parents must consciously guide their children to form words and sentences.
Second, let children touch some fonts and get used to recognizing different fonts, such as italics and song styles. Establish the concept of font as soon as possible to lay the foundation for future reading and writing.
Make cartoons to stimulate children's interest in literacy.
Many parents understand that to stimulate their children's interest in learning Chinese characters, it is necessary to combine Chinese characters with stories, but how to do it specifically is a big problem for most parents.
But I believe that this masterpiece I recommend can perfectly solve the literacy needs of most overseas Chinese parents. It is an animated film "Mars Baby Learn Chinese Characters" released in 2005. The whole film was produced by the "Care for the Next Generation Work Committee" under the Ministry of Education. At that time, it was well received by many parents and children, and it was in the Chinese learning memory of many children born after 1995 in China.
The whole cartoon is unfolded in the background beyond time and space. The film is divided into 52 episodes. Each episode will combine history and celebrity stories to explain a Chinese character or word, and will take the children to make sentences and use them at the end.
In the process of watching cartoons, let children know Chinese characters deeply. Through the cognition and memory of 350 basic Chinese characters, mastering more than 1000 phrases and expanding the literacy of 3,500 commonly used Chinese characters is definitely a "magic weapon artifact" for teaching children to learn Chinese characters. At the same time, in the whole cartoon, the combination of the background of characters with sci-fi color and a large number of traditional historical stories can help children develop their intelligence and understand the traditional culture of China, killing two birds with one stone, saving effort and worry!
Finally, I want to say that children's imagination is very rich and they have all kinds of whimsy. Sometimes it's not that children think wrong, but that they think illogically. What our parents and teachers should do is to let their children know that what they say must be done, and every word should be used appropriately and in line with the situation.
Every child has a different personality. When teaching their children by themselves, parents must hold their breath and constantly adjust their education methods to leave a certain freshness for their children. Don't just "fill the duck".
It will come naturally when the time comes!
I'm Amy, the teacher of Lingxi Chinese. If overseas children have any questions about learning Chinese, please contact me for consultation and exchange ~