Date: Oct 2, 2022

This is how I teach Kay to learn Chinese Compo.

Look at the points systems.

• Compo – 60%
• Chinese Usage & Comprehension – 70%
• Oral Communications – 50%
• Listening Comprehension – 20%

That means, speaking in Chinese at home is very very important. So that the kids won’t felt akward when speaking to the teacher during exam. And usually can get more close to full marks if do it properly. So as the listening comprehension. It is a grand total of 35% of the exam (out of 100%).

So, Compo is the next thing to focus. Get the story right so you have good contents. And then next how to describe the look, the action, the conversation, and etc.

But there is only very few days left, how to teach the kid compo in such a short time?

Well, my simple method is to use the dictation on the smart phone to do it. Open the Notepad, and then press the “microphone” icon at the bottom right. Then, start speaking Chinese to your smart phone.

• It is fast, so instead of typing Hanyu Pinyin, by dictation you can get your story correctly (almost) written. Like in this following passage, when I say “yi Ming” they cannot correctly identify the name. When I say “ling ling ling”, it gives me “零零零” instead. Well, this will try the kid how to correct his own mistake lor. This is a bit like quick prototyping in Engineering lor.
• When the kid do so (i.e. dictation) they are actually speaking Chinese. And when iPhone does not understand the kid’s chinese, that means, his pronounciation is wrong. So, it is funny when you hear Kay keep saying “what the…” “what the…” in the room while recording his Chinese Compo. This is one of the way to make sure he speak chinese. Practice makes perfect.
• The idea is to get the story right. He can make changes to his story. And then, by doing so, he is actually kick starting his Chinese thoughts engine. This makes him think. And of course, parent has to do our job to correct it.

Here is the question. Before I read this exam question, I thought writing a person is easy. As you just need to describe. So, you look at Q5, write your mother. I look at the question I also blur. I don’t know where to start. Hahaha… So, I end up correctly our strategies. Go for situation writing. Answer Q4 and Q5.

I don’t like this first passage. It is too PSLE. means too simple. There is no 人物描写，no 动作描写，no 语言描写 and no 思想描写at all, so how to score points??

So, you have to very patiently teach him why you need to describe in details so many things.

The second passage is much better. Because got length. No longer so short. Got a lot of contents. And got a lot of descriptions too.

After the writing practice. Let’s play game. Relax relax.