Details
Target Audience(Age): Primary School
“Chinese Character Writing Book” is an accessory product ofthe series
Easy Steps to Chinese for Kids(2nd Edition).
■ This character writing book is designed to help students laya solid foundation in learning Chinese characters, as repetitive writing can enhancememory retention.
■ Students are expected to write the strokes of each Chinesecharacter following the stroke order, thus developing the good habit of writingChinese characters accurately and neatly from the very beginning.
■ Students are encouraged to sound the characters and wordsout while writing, and remember the meaning of these characters and words atthe same time.
■ This characterwriting book includes the new characters and words in each lesson. As for characterswith many strokes, it is not necessary to require all students to copy them,but teachers can encourage capable students to complete the tracing and trywriting them.
About the Author
Ms. Yamin Ma has an M.Ed. in Curriculum Design andInstruction from Queen’s University, Canada. She used to teach English at bothsecondary and university levels in Shanghai (China), Hong Kong (China) andKingston (Canada) for over 10 years and has taught Chinese at primary andsecondary levels in Hong Kong (China) for more than 20 years. Ms. Ma has beenthe Head of the Chinese Department in Island School (located in Hong Kong,China) for over two decades and has taught IGCSE, AS/A-Levels and IB Language Bcourses.
Editorial Review
Easy Steps to Chinese for Kids (2nd Edition) is especially designed for non-Chinese background students, whoare learning Chinese as a second/foreign language. The series is suitable forpreschool children and first to fourth graders in primary school.
This series aims to help students lay a solid foundation in Chinese in terms ofcharacters, especially simple characters, words, and short sentences throughnatural and gradual integration of language, themes and culture. Thesimultaneous development of listening, speaking and reading skills, and characterwriting as well as the ability to write short sentences in Chinese, isemphasized. The ultimate aim is to help students develop communication skillsin a hope that they can use simple Chinese to communicate smoothly andeffectively in real-life situations.
Features of Easy Steps to Chinese for Kids (2nd Edition):
Pinyinis not specifically taught at this stage, but it always appears on top of thecharacters.
Each simple character appears in the form of “shape, sound and meaning” and isaccompanied with a vivid illustration, in a hope that students have a fullunderstanding of the character learned.
Strokes,stroke order and the structures of characters are not formally taught, butspecially designed exercises are provided in both the Textbook and theWorkbook. Each simple character is marked with a stroke order, and students canlearn about the structure of a compound character through specifically designedexercises.
The radical is an important component of most compound characters, and masteringradicals is very helpful for learning Chinese characters. Teaching experimentsindicate that it is difficult to teach radicals in lower grades, thereforeradicals are introduced starting Book 3. In this way, students can learn newcompound characters more easily while reviewing the ones learned in Books 1 and2.
New words in each lesson do not appear in the form of a “new word list”. Each newword is introduced with Pinyin and English explanations, while some areaccompanied with illustrations.
Literacy is one of the focuses of this series. When learning the written form of alanguage, children learn to read first and then write words from memory later.This is how children learn written language. In this series, the learning ofnew characters, the recurrence of new words and the repetitive exercises are thusdesigned accordingly.
Developing children’s listening and speaking skills is of paramount importance whenteaching Chinese to children. Although children can acquire pronunciationnaturally, teachers should ensure students speak with accurate pronunciation.
Developing students’ reading skills is an important feature of the second edition.Carefully designed conversations, rhymes, different forms of text and variousexercises are provided in both the Textbook and Workbook. There is also a shortstory with vivid illustrations in every lesson of the workbook. Readingmaterials in various forms help students accumulate characters, words and shortsentences gradually before understanding a text fully.
Writing begins with writing simple characters, which have fewer strokes, and are easyto write. When learning to write compound characters, tracing them first willincrease students’ confidence when writing them later independently.
Writing down what one says is the primary stage for beginners developing writingskills. Students learn to write words and short sentences before writingcontinued sentences.
Some major differences between the first and second editions:
Pinyin is not taught in the second edition any more as children have the ability toacquire pronunciation naturally.
In the second edition, 61 simple characters are formally taught, compared to 28simple characters in the first edition. Learning simple characters is the“stepping stone” for learning Chinese characters. Once a certain number ofsimple characters are mastered, students will learn compound characters moreeasily and confidently. The teacher should encourage students to memorize thepronunciation, shape and meaning of each simple character.
In the second edition, listening skills are no longer practiced separately, butcombined with various speaking exercises.
The second edition puts more emphasis on the integration of language learning withother subjects in primary school. For example, maths is a compulsory subjectfor primary school students and memorizing the times table is the secret of learningmaths well. Learning and memorizing the times table can not only help studentsmaster the usage of numbers in Chinese, but also enable them to learnmultiplication with more ease. This is killing two birds with one stone andgetting twice the result with half the effort.
Suggestion
The series consists of four books in two stages:
Stage1 (Books 1 and 2): The focus is to help students lay a good foundation ofChinese characters by learning simple characters, while cultivating students’interest in learning Chinese. At the end of this stage, students are expectedto use the words and short sentences they have learned to carry out simplecommunications on topics covered.
Stage 2 (Books 3 and 4): The focus is to learnradicals and more compound characters. With more words and short sentenceslearned, students will be able to use simple Chinese to communicate smoothlyand effectively on topics covered.
As the content of this series is continuous and ongoing, teachers can use any bookin this series as a starting point based on students’ Chinese proficiencylevel, and adjust the teaching progress accordingly. Generally speaking, with one Chinese lesson daily,most students will be able to complete one book (i.e. the Textbook and the Workbook)within one academic year.
