Do you want your children to learn Mandarin Chinese? In case, you have made up your mind to get them admitted in a mandarin class for children then they will also become a part of over one billion people in the world who speak it as a primary or a secondary language. Thus, you are all set to take a big leap towards making your litter ones global citizens who may get a yearly head start in the future employment market and will also become smarter.

But though there are several merits of learning the Chinese language, making your kids interested in it can really be quite a struggle. It is specifically true in the beginning of your child’s language journey. The initial adaptation process can be frustrating for the kids as it is not easy for them to realize and appreciate the real benefits of picking up Chinese.

However, you should not feel disappointed since there are various interesting ways that will make sure that your children get interested in learning the language. In fact, you will soon find your kids will look forward to attaining proficiency in this language,

Cooking with your kid

Is your kid interested in practical activities? If that is the case, cooking is an excellent method for learning as well as maintaining their interest in the Chinese language. So, how about planning a session on cooking with your kids soon? However, you need to ensure that you get the instructions and the recipe printed in the Chinese language. Tell the kids to read out the recipe while you are in the process of assembling the dish. You can also teach your child important nouns and verbs while both of you cook together.

Chinese magazines/books

It is a globally-connected society today and many popular books in the category of both non-fiction and fiction have been translated into various other languages. When you get Chinese versions of some of the popular books for your kids, it is a fantastic and innovative way of getting them interested in the Mandarin Chinese language. In fact, you should look out for Chinese versions of some of the best-selling works, which are specifically written for teens and kids and hand them over to the little ones. While they read these books, they will start getting interested in the story plots and would definitely want to pick up more vocabulary in Chinese so that they are able to understand more and read these books even faster.

Travel

It can be a short trip to your nearest Chinatown to savor some delicious and authentic dumplings or a bowl of a Chinese soup to get your kids interested in the Chinese culture. Alternatively, you can also go for a relaxed family holiday to the sea beaches and towns of China. If you travel to a Chinese-speaking place with your children, they will be more curious and it can also trigger their interest to learn Chinese. At various occasions, it is not an easy job to inspire your kids to learn Chinese. It is specifically true when they are being brought up in an English-speaking ambiance ever since they were born. You can tell the kids some days before the trip that they should speak in Chinese to communicate with the local people. Now that means using the language to order their food, querying for directions and finding out the restrooms. When your kids understand that learning the Chinese language is a requirement and not a nice to know skill during the trip, they will definitely get motivated to learn Chinese either complete dedication.

Learning the language does not necessarily have to be memorizing the notes or solving worksheets in their character books. The above-mentioned ideas can really make learning the Chinese language a fun and exciting experience. Finally, your complete support is very crucial to improve the Chinese speaking skill of your child. You should spare some time from your hectic schedule to read with them, travel with them, participate in fun activities, which interest them and cook together while you expose them to the Chinese language.

Children are very intuitive and intelligent and you will realize that they adapt to learning a new language like fish to water. Once you start with teaching your children Chinese, you will realize that children are far more advanced in understanding daily conversations than they are in recognizing Chinese characters. This is very common and one should create a learning environment for the children to develop listening skills and speaking skills through daily conversation.

How do I teach my children to read Chinese?

It is very important to have a very solid grasp on Chinese characters no matter at what age a child starts to learn Chinese. This is important to develop good reading skills. Children are very easily bored by the complexities involved in going from a phonogram-based language (English), to a logogram-based language (Chinese). It is the job of a teacher to make the child feel confident right at the start of their Mandarin-learning journey. This will help them to naturally sustain their enthusiasm and maintain their interest in the subject.

How should I prepare a younger child to learn Chinese?

For younger kids it s very easy to learn if you associate physical objects to the characters. What you can do is print out Chinese characters in a large font with their pinyin and stick it around the house and put these flashcards on the objects. This will help kids learn faster and they can also relate to the character much more and make Chinese characters seem much more approachable and fun.

Create a game and make Learning fun

You can make learning Chinese great fun for kids by creating a game out of it. You can start by asking your children to match Mandarin Chinese character flashcards to the objects in the house. All you need to do is prepare a host of flashcards and run around the house to stick the correct flashcard to the correct object. Slowly expand the game to the outdoors as well and match flashcards to items in the supermarket.

Buy Basic Level Chinese Books

For older kids when they attain a certain level proficiency, you can buy them Children’s books in Chinese. These Chinese children’s books are very child friendly and written with pinyin next to the characters. This is to help sound out the phonetics and can be a good confidence builder and be a very good resource to help expand your children’s vocabulary. For older kids it is very important to retain their excitement and maintain their interest in the subject. In order to that one must invest in the variety of books available on the market today. These books cover a variety of topics such as cooking, nature and comic books.

How do I teach My Child to Write Chinese Characters?

Apart from enrolling your kids in a Chinese speech and drama class, writing Chinese characters can be pretty daunting for a child for the first few times and the child might feel it pretty difficult, but the key is perseverance and this needs to be taught to the child. Towards the beginning the child might feel it is doing rout memorization but their skills definitely improve over a period of time and the important thing is not give up. Practice makes perfect and eventually your kids will be able to write structured sentences in Mandarin Chinese. It is very important that you make the child understand that Chinese needs to be written by hand and you can introduce rewards to encourage the same.

These are some of the basic tips to help your child read and write Chinese. As already mentioned, perseverance is key in this regard.