Talk with Your Child in Mandarin Even When You are New to the Chinese Language
JJ is eager to help out his classmates when they work on their assignments in his Chinese class. Actually, many of his classmates would go to him for help.
No one in JJ’s family speaks Mandarin. He is learning Mandarin as a world language at school. He is in the FLES program, Foreign Language in the Elementary School. It is a course he attends 40 minutes a day. There is only one child in his class with native Chinese speaking parents. JJ said this friend of his knows a lot of Chinese.
JJ is seven years old. His family has no Chinese language background and no one speaks Mandarin at home. So, what has been leading him to want to learn more Mandarin?
It is how his parents engage him with the resources JJ has from his school and his weekly private Chinese lesson. Learning Mandarin has become a part of the family lifestyle.
His parents turn on the bilingual class audio recording for JJ and his younger sister on the way to school every day. They ask the kids to teach them new expressions. The kids are having fun sharing what they have learned with the parents.
Kids are great teachers. Children are motivated to know more when they can teach others and when they receive positive comments from peers and adults. This is not only working in class but at home.
Talk with your child in Mandarin even if you are acquiring the language yourself. When you are a part of the game your child sees it and it motivates her to keep learning. When you are just beginning a bilingual resource with audio is an ideal start.
Talk with your child in Mandarin with the selected expressions that you want to focus on each week. Repeat them every day. Start with the everyday expressions so it is relevant to what you and your child do together.
Also, you can involve more family members in trying out Mandarin. The more the merrier!
So, what are the three expressions in Mandarin you can use to talk with your child for the week? If you need some ideas you can consider the resource I have for you.
Resources that you can start with:
“Let’s Learn Mandarin Chinese with Miss Panda” on Amazon, iTunes, Spotify, and GooglePlay
PLAYFUL CHINESE podcast
Chinese Play School with Miss Panda
Online Dictionaries for Parents
Use Smart Speaker for Target Language
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Talk with Your Child in Mandarin Even When You are New to the Chinese Language