Comparing Chinese Enrichment (Primary/Preschool)

[Irene66]

Hi, I am hesitant as to which to send my girl, who is 4 yrs old this yr. She can speak little Mandarin and I hope she can learn through fun.


I called up Eduplus just now and the teacher at Toa Payoh Safra sounded very nice, from her speech, guess she must be a Chinese National. However, they only have one Sunday class for age 4.

Berries is another of my option as it is nearer to home and they have more time slots to choose from.

From the past thread, ChiefKS has suggested Berries for age 3 onwards as it is more fun. Anyone else has advice which one to choose?

[Ros]

I think you should let her do a trial class at both Eduplus and Berries, and see what one she like, and you can also assess the teachers. The quality of teachers varies from class to class, centre to centre.


My girl (6 yrs old) is now at Eduplus (Ghim Moh) and all the teachers are Chinese nationals. She seems to be enjoying her classes.

ChiefKiasu, I've seen from previous thread that your kids enjoyed Yuquan classes on Chinese idioms and Zijing. I'm thinking if I should let my girl try that? Her Chinese is very poor (can't read), as we have just returned from overseas. But I am wondering what's the point of being able to recite 548#8re89% when she doesn't know much of of the basics? I spoke to Ms Soh from Yuquan and she sounds very convincing that that Zijing is the equvialent of \"I can read\". Do you agree? Thanks for your comment.

[ChiefKiasu]

Ros:

...ChiefKiasu, I've seen from previous thread that your kids enjoyed Yuquan classes on Chinese idioms and Zijing. I'm thinking if I should let my girl try that? Her Chinese is very poor (can't read), as we have just returned from overseas. But I am wondering what's the point of being able to recite 548#8re89% when she doesn't know much of of the basics? I spoke to Ms Soh from Yuquan and she sounds very convincing that that Zijing is the equvialent of \"I can read\". Do you agree? Thanks for your comment.

I wouldn't say that ZiJing is totally similar to I Can Read. The purpose of I Can Read is to introduce phonics concepts to the child so that the child can start to recognize and read words independently. Zijing is more to wire the auditory senses of the child to the Chinese language in relation to a story. Think of it as nursery rhymes. In general, the child may only understand a small percentage of the words of ZiJing itself, but will fully understand the story behind it. Depending on how it is taught, Zijing can also improve character recognition. I suppose this is why Yuquan is promoting it as the \"Chinese equivalent\" of I Can Read.

That said, I feel that Yuquan's idiom classes give better bang for the buck, simply because they can be directly applied to primary school work. I started my son in June this year, and he has definitely improved in his use of the Chinese language. More amazingly, he actually begged me to let him continue with the next modules. Given his initial dislike for the language, I must say this comes as a total surpise for myself.

[Ros]

Thank you ChiefKiasu. Is there any program for Chinese that would be a close equivalent to "I Can Read" for the English? I find it so hard to teach my girl to read Chinese since very character is different, unlike English where reading can be taught with phonics.

Given that my child is only 6 years old, is that too young for Yuquan’s idioms class since she wouldn’t be using much in school?
Thank you for your comments.

[googaga]

MMM:

Hi which time slot are you in? My girl is on monday 4.45pm i think.

hi mmm, i'm new here n have been reading all the posts on chinese enrichment and glad that you've shared so much on Molin : )

i've just placed my son, N2 on Molin's Wed class, 4.45pm. But there's currently only 1 student for that slot : ( was hoping they'll be able to open up the class then at least i dun haf to walk there twice!! i've another boy k2 also same day, slot timing.

We've been attending Berries for this whole year and only lately thinking of switching to either Jiang education (too far n no N2 class) or Molin (at least nearer)..

After reading your post, i feel more at ease placing them there.. really worry their level of chinese cannot fit into primary la..

[jedamum]

googaga:

We've been attending Berries for this whole year and only lately thinking of switching to either Jiang education (too far n no N2 class) or Molin (at least nearer)..

hi...any reason why you are dropping Berries?

[Belle]

My daughter is in nursery now.


Lately, her chinese teacher has commented that she needs to improve her chinese. Well, she can speak relatively well but not too good in recognising the chinese characters. I wonder whether I should enrol her for chinese enrichment class?

She is attending music class and I have considered enrolling her for english speech and drama class a few months ago. If I enrol her for any mandarin class, I am sure if it is too much for her.

Just out of curiosity… How many of you gals/guys send your child to more than 2 enrichment classes at this age??

[googaga]

hi jedamum, actually berries is not bad. I sent my elder boy only start of this year (k1) and younger one(N1) too. I realised i start my elder one too late on chinese enrichment n initially was quite tough for him. Cos a lot of very basic words which my N1 can read but he couldn’t cos most were already taught at N1 level. But thankfully, the elder one still manage to catch up. So far i like berries cos it makes it fun for them, some of the stuff they do to help the kids understand the words are rather creative and my younger one esp enjoys his lessons very much. But not all teachers at berries are from northern china, so pronunciation-wise might not be as good. Hence, the tot of switching to Molin cos all teachers are fm northern china.

[jedamum]

Belle:

Just out of curiosity... How many of you gals/guys send your child to more than 2 enrichment classes at this age??

what would be the reason for you to consider speech and drama? is it to build up confidence level or for english? if it is the former, maybe you can consider mandarin speech and drama? My boy had no enrichment during Nursery....guess i'm a pretty laid back mum. :oops:

hi googaga,
My boy joined Berries when he was in K1 too. I almost fainted when I learnt of what his pcf teachers taught him in class. During my enquiry visit to Berries, I nearly fainted when I see the words in the 'small book'. I was actually prepared for my boy to join the Nursery class as he can't recognise any basic chinese words and speak limited chinese back then. But luckily he also manage to catch up (with home reinforcement). He loves the teacher....they are all pretty young....pretty and young too. :lol:

[Belle]

Thanks, jedamum for the idea.


So do you know of any good mandarin speech and drama class?

I find it quite difficult to coach chinese. Noted that the words the school thought were quite tough these days. Words with so many strokes. Not like the simple words we learnt in our young days.... :oops: How to make it easy for our children to remember?