Little joys along our Chinese language journey

K has been attending KidStartNow since K2, and it was her first enrichment class of any sort. (It remains her only one for now.) We are glad we embarked on it for Chinese, since her kindy only had 45 mins of Chinese lessons everyday, and it took a lot of effort for us to speak it at home.

(A friend once wisely said, Chinese enrichment doesn’t count as tuition, it’s necessary weekly exposure for those who don’t speak it at home! Haha.)

Fast forward to P2. K is now very comfortable with the Chinese language, and counts it as one of her favourite subjects! This is a great relief to me, since her lack of daily exposure to it was my initial concern.

Sometimes, she even initiates 听写 revision, which I suppose is a combination of her personality as quite a responsible firstborn, and her interest in the subject.

K’s primary school does not have sky-high standards when it comes to Chinese, since it’s not a SAP school. They didn’t even have a full paper for SA2 last year, and I only recall a couple of Chinese ‘tests’ scattered throughout Terms 3 and 4. These were either 1-2 page exercises, listening comprehension, or an Oral passage.

On the other hand, KidStartNow takes its responsibility of nurturing a child’s competency in the language very seriously. Although K has yet to have a full Chinese test in school (in the sense of having at least 4 sections, including comprehension passages), she has had one at KidStartNow.

We were very proud that she did her best in it (without us preparing her for it, because I didn’t quite know one was coming up, oops) and emerged the top-scorer in class!  KidStartNow was so encouraging in awarding her with a $5 voucher for this. We appreciate that a lot!

It’s really not so much the ‘prize’ per se, but the gesture that means a lot. It’s her first ‘prize’ of sorts, so recently, we went shopping with it! She didn’t know what to buy initially, but I recalled that she was quite fascinated by her friend’s erasable highlighter (purchased from the school bookshop, no less), so we went in search of one.

Popular only sells it in sets, and we managed to find a set of 3 for only $3.55, heh. So she bought that and had money to spare! We topped up a bit and bought her a sheaf of paper for drawing.

We are really quite glad that K enjoys going to the centre, and gets good exposure to the language through classes there, with her dedicated teacher 红梅老师.

Chinese class requirements in school are also increasing this year, with the kids having to memorise their Show & Tell passages. It was not easy helping K practice that, but with patience and perseverance (for me as much as her, I tell you), she finally managed to memorise and deliver the passage confidently. That’s a milestone for us!

I’m glad she gets regular practice with comprehension and writing with KidStartNow, so I don’t have to help out too much on those. It seems almost magical how her vocabulary has increased so much since K2. I certainly don’t remember recognising or being able to write so many words at her age.

Anyway, KidStartNow is running their usual popular Chinese Camps in June again, and registration has started, so do call them (6481-1932 / 9820-7272) if you’d like to find out more!