Better Chinese

Hannah has been learning Mandarin Chinese at school in her billingual class.

To begin with she didn't like the immersion method because she didn't understand what the teachers were saying.   But she liked learning Chinese songs.

When we asked for takehome reading the teacher surprised us by giving Hannah Chinese books for us to read together.   This was quite a challenge as we don't speak Chinese and pronunciation is important.  But I had a lot of fun trying to decipher the books and reading them with Hannah in a 'chinese' accent!

It turns out that the books were from an American course for 3-4 year olds called 'Better Chinese'.  I looked it up on the web and found that they produce CDs and online materials we could order.   In fact, they also have a Hong Kong Office on Leighton Road near Hannah's ballet class which also offers classes.

The course immediately appealed to me because the first sentence of the first book is "I love my Dad"!  Anyway we ordered the books and online course and now try to do the units a few times each week.  

Note that the granny ('nai nai') in the video is doing tai chi.  Cool granny!

Hannah now often asks if she can 'do better chinese' togethr.   She enjoys reading the books online and watching the animations, and of course we can hear and copy the correct pronunciation this way.   I also loaded the audio of the books to my Iphone so we can play this when we read the books together in bed.    So it is much more effective than just tying to read the books.

Another thing I'm trying to do to encourage Hannah to be interested in Chinese is to play games with flashcards with Chinese Characters,  and also write characters using real brushes and ink.    I think this effort has helped Hannah to enjoy learning Chinese.    And in any case I've learnt a lot.  

And of course we are also trying to read to Hannah in English and Japanese.