Date:  Apr 17, 2016

Learning Chinese for the new generations is always a challenge.

The kid can be good in Math and English and Science, but when it comes to learning Chinese, the kid can suddenly lost all the confidence and stuck there for loving time.  Hahahaha

I cannot remember how we learn language when we were young.  But some how, the environment has guided us to pick up Chinese fast.  Given that I am a Malaysian and we have to learn Malay, Chinese and English at the same time.  How did we do it?  I tried very hard to recall how I picked up all three languages at the same time.  But failed.  I cannot say I watch a lot of TV at that time, because there isn’t a lot of Chinese TV shows in Malaysia at that time.  May be are those Lim Feng Jiao, Ling Qing Xie Taiwanese love movie that my mom took me too in Chow Kit? ?

Anyway, SA1 is coming, so, that means it is time to prepare for the exam again.  The most scariest is the composition for both Chinese and English.  As these two paper tends to lose a lot of marks.

 From last week, I have started to prepare Jay for his Chinese composition exam which will happen about 3 weeks later.  I hope it is enough practice for him.  Hopefully the picture it comes out is easy topic.

 
So, I continue my previous method with some enhancement.

1) Use the iPhone/iPad dictation function to write the composition by speaking into it.  It will then transcribed into the words.  The reason why I need to do this is because, it is the faster way to conceptualize the 4 pictures.  And it also helped in their oral.  So that they have enough practice to speak correctly with proper pronunciation.  If your pronunciation is bad, the dictation program cannot transcribe.  Speaking correctly is important, because the chances of getting the Han Yu Pin Yin correct is depending on how accurate you pronounce the word.  And that will certainly help the oral exam too.

2) After the skeleton has come out, we will review together the first draft.  Then, I will start asking questions.  This is where the 6 “W’s” comes up.  For example, in this week composition, Jay started the sentence with “The mid-term exam is coming soon.  Xiao Ming started to review his school work.”.  By reviewing the draft, we discuss in depth, how to improve the composition.  I corrected it to “The mid-term exam is coming soon.  Xiao Ming has already begun to review his school work 2 weeks earlier.”  I explained to Jay why it is important to “Tell Story”, instead of to “write sentence.”  To tell story, you need to know why, when, and others.  So, you know exam is coming, of course, by nature, every one will study and do the review.  So the questions I wanted him to ask is, When?  When did Xiao Ming started to review his work?  Two weeks or one month ago?  Then, why he needs to do that?  The more time you have to review, the better result you will get.  That is the end result you wanted to write.  Without the timing info given, we do not know when Xiao Ming started to do the review, and hence the story is somewhat not complete and will not explain the result we get.

3) As I am using the assessment book, there usually will provide the modal answers to the composition.  I will then ask him to READ the modal answer.  To see how different it compares to what he wrote.  Since it is the same subject, he will learn and benefit by learning new words, new sentence, new way to open and close the passage, etc.  It is very useful.

4) Starting from P4, I did something that is not done before in P3.  I asked him to write on a piece of paper again as if he is doing a composition in class, without iPhone dictation aid, and with the digital dictionary approved by MOE.  Like this, we can see and review how well he has learned to write the composition.  It is quite effective.  It also can practice the writing no speed up a little.

This is the short composition he done last week.  Since he got the tendency of writing conversations in a non-conversational situation.  So, I encourage for him to do the double quotes “” thing so that he can actually write the conversation as if he is the one speaking.  It is not so perfect  yet, but I am happy with it.  I am sure the teacher’s expectation is much higher, but I am ok with Jay with a slower pace of learning.  At least he started to write in a nice sentence.  You should see his last year composition, and this one shows great improvement.

  
Yesterday, he did another one.  Talking about how a student help younger students to get home during a heavy rain session.  This is his draft.  But it is quite OK.  Although there are some mis-spelled words, but not a bad efforts.

 
We are going for a short vacation during the labour day long weekend, so, I am going to do more composition with him whenever I got the time.  So that he is well prepare for the exam.  Which is on the first week of May.  Good luck Jay and hopefully our efforts work and can score you some points this time.