Details
Target Audience(Age): Preschool, Primary School
"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.
TheTextbook plays an important role in helping students gain knowledge of theChinese language needed to develop their communicative competence. The Workbooktakes a supporting role, providing various age-appropriate and interestingexercises and activities that serve as meaningful practice and reinforcement.
Besides Textbook and Workbook, the series also includes Exercise book for writing,PowerPoint slides, word cards, picture flashcards, as well as digitalresources, etc.
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.
■ Eachsimple 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.
■ Theradical 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.
■ Newwords 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.
■ Literacyis 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.
■ Developingchildren’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.
■ Developingstudents’ 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.
■ Writingbegins 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.
■ Writingdown 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:
■ Pinyinis not taught in the second edition any more as children have the ability toacquire pronunciation naturally.
■ Inthe 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.
■ Inthe second edition, listening skills are no longer practiced separately, butcombined with various speaking exercises.
■ The second edition puts more emphasis on the integrationof language learning with other subjects in primary school. For example, mathsis a compulsory subject for primary school students and memorizing the timestable is the secret of learning maths well. Learning and memorizing the timestable can not only help students master the usage of numbers in Chinese, butalso enable them to learn multiplication with more ease. This is killing twobirds with one stone and getting twice the result with half the effort.
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 both secondaryand university levels in Shanghai (China), Hong Kong (China) and Kingston(Canada) for over 10 years and has taught Chinese at primary and secondarylevels in Hong Kong (China) for more than 20 years. Ms. Ma has been the Head ofthe Chinese Department in Island School (located in Hong Kong, China) for overtwo decades and has taught IGCSE, AS/A-Levels and IB Language B courses.
Editorial Review
Thecourse is designed by incorporating relevant theories of cognitive psychologyand second/foreign language teaching and learning. It adopts the “spiralcurriculum” principles, emphasizes the learning of characters and words, andtakes advantage of rules of Chinese word formation. It is designed scientificallyand logically to enable students to learn and acquire Chinese systematically.
Thecourse is designed with reference to the preschool and primary school educationguidelines of China and other countries. It covers five themes: health,language, society, science and art. There are five units in each book: numbers,me and my family, school life, daily life, and home and community. The contentsof the five themes are naturally integrated into the five units of each book.Chinese culture, such as traditional festivals, customs, etc. is introduced throughoutthe course. In addition, while teaching Chinese, this course strives to promotethe development of students’ emotion, attitude, ability, knowledge, skills,etc.
The course consists of two parts: teaching language knowledge and cultivatingstudents’ communicative competence. One cannot learn Chinese without learning Chinesecharacters. As the core of this series, Chinese character teaching dominatesthe whole course design. The teaching of Chinese characters requires studentsto recognize and write simple characters from memory, and to recognise, traceand write compound characters. After completing this course, students are ableto write a reasonable number of radicals, simple characters and shortsentences. The course also focuses on the development of students’ listening,speaking and reading skills, and in particular students’ ability to communicatesmoothly and effectively in real-life situations using the Chinese they havelearned.
Thethemes and topics of the course have been carefully selected, and the unitshave been planned holistically. The content setting of this course addressesthe same themes and topics within each of the four books, but each withincreasing complexity, depth and constant expansion in terms of the scope ofvocabulary, content and cultural elements involved. This ensures that studentslearn new knowledge and skills on the basis of mastering the old.
The course progresses gradually with the difficultylevel of each book being carefully controlled but challenging enough. Each bookis naturally connected and transitions smoothly to ensure the steadyimprovement of students’ Chinese level.
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.
Course progress:
As the content of this series is continuous and ongoing, teachers can use any book in this series as a starting point based on students’ Chinese proficiency level, 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.
