Interesting article - Does NCLB Promote Monolingualism? - Education Week.

The problem I see is there is not enough true bilingualism being taught in schools, where students are expected to be fluent in both languages.

Problems I have seen in Chinese Schools:

1. All they learn is Characters, and they can't hold a conversation in Chinese.
2. It's more like baby sitting for after school and in the summer.
3. They teacher just goes over the same thing, over and over again never moving forward.

Some Chinese programs are much better than others. Having a good Chinese curriculum helps. As well as letting the students know and understand why are they Learning Chinese.

Labels: learn chinese

Vancouver's own not-so-quiet revolution - The Vancouver Sun.

Good article. I am surprised at the extent of Chinese classes in Edmonton with 13 schools in a 50/50 for Chinese and English instruction. Wow!

Labels: canada, learn chinese

Resolutions are traditionally made in the New Year on what your going to do for the coming year. A great resolution, as the Frugal Traveler made at the NY Times is to Learn Chinese. Or if your already Learning Chinese, keep on improving!

It's easy to make resolutions, the challenge is how do you make it so you actually keep them. An old saying is talk is cheap. So what actions are you going to take in the coming year for Learning Chinese?

Per the NY Times article ,Findings - The Psychology Behind Putting Off What Can Be Enjoyed Now, it's important to have to have short term deadlines.

Some Suggestions:

1. Do a New Years Resolution for Learning Chinese. Yes, a New Years resolution only has a 19% chance of being still being followed in 2 years, but by making one you have a 10X chance of accomplishing it! Good article - A Cheat Sheet for Keeping Resolutions

2. Create a plan to avoid the issue of procrastination. Spread it over time. Excellent article in the WSJ on this - Blame It on the Brain The latest neuroscience research suggests spreading resolutions out over time is the best approach. Think of the tortoise and the hare, where the tortoise that went slow, but steady won the race. You want your Learning to be like this. So create a plan on what you are going to do for Learning Chinese. It may be buying some Chinese Textbooks, CD's, starting a class, or even traveling to China. Good intentions are just that, until they become work.

2. Track what your are doing. If your going to get serious in an area, track what your doing. If your going to set the goal of studying Chinese 5 hours a week, keep a notebook that you update every time you do.

3. Set short term goals (daily) for what you are going to do for Learning Chinese. It may be as simple as listening to a CD for Learning Chinese when you get in the car during your morning commute. The average commute is 24 minutes in the US, which give you 48 minutes a day you can use for Learning Chinese!

4. Reward your self when you meet your goals!

5. Make Learning Chinese a habit. It takes a while to create a habit, but once you do your learning will become so much easier. Study Chinese at the same time everyday, in the same place. This will make scheduling easier, especially if your teaching your kids Chinese. Creating the habit may take 30 days as you get used to your new routine.

6. Set up a support network! This is somebody, hopefully who made the same resolution, who you can talk to about how your doing and keep you honest on achieving your goal. It's much easier to lie to yourself (I"ll work on learning Chinese tomorrow, but tomorrow never comes as Annie sang).

7. Publish your intentions on your facebook, my space, etc site to your friends!

8. Identify potential barriers to Learning Chinese and find solutions!

9. Make a list of Why you want to Learn Chinese. When you get discourage, read it again. Perhaps read it out loud to yourself! It's OK to copy my list of Why Learn Chinese :-)

10. Set reasonable expectations! Life is often 2 steps forward and a step back. What matters is you are constantly working on going ahead! So don't give up!

Labels: learn chinese

I agree 100% that Mandarin is huge, where Cantonese is becoming a much smaller market in the US. NY Times article today states that - In Chinatown, Sound of the Future Is Mandarin

Which is why my Learning Chinese Material is in Mandarin. I do get calls from time to time on Cantonese and I refer them to two physical bookstores I know that have Cantonese Material.

Labels: Cantonese, learn chinese

Learning Chinese is a journey full of mistakes, so how do you take the sting out of giving feedback so a student can learn from their mistakes and improve?

A NY Times article For Best Results, Take the Sting Out of Criticism has a lot of great ideas and is meant for business, but should have been written for teaching.

1. Understanding a person's background when issuing feedback is critical. One person's yelling is another person's usual way of communication.

2. American Culture can view criticism as a personal attack, where a person from Taiwan would view it as caring by giving valuable feedback. And if you get defensive on it, they reply "but it's true" justifying their comments.

3. It's important to make a person understand they are OK, even if they made a mistake, and the important part is learning from the mistake and moving on.

4. When receiving feedback, do not argue or defend yourself, but ask questions to understand the feedback better. The goal is to Learn Chinese, not get into an argument.

5. For Chinese Teachers, do not make fun of your students mistake. If they mispronounce a word, do not ask them to keep on repeating it wrongly, and keep on laughing every time they do so.

6. Excellent quote from the article - way to avoid criticism is to “do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.”

Labels: learn chinese

Here's a related video news piece on the ChildBook blog post last August 10, "Learning Chinese Optional for Getting a Job in China?"

Optional or not, it's easier to get around a place other than your own if you know the local language, so learning Mandarin Chinese is always a good idea.

This video is from CNN last August 19, reported by Emily Chang:

Labels: career preparation, foreign language jobs, learn chinese

There are a lots of benefits of Learning Chinese, but I pretty much can summarize it into two big points for our dear customers.

It is getting to be accepted worldwide that trading with the Chinese are now hot. It seems it will stay that way for a long time too, so parents are preparing their kids for that not-so-distant future that their kid's career may be able to use the Chinese language. Therefore, one benefit of learning Chinese is that kids will somehow be able to use it in their future vocation, whether in business or in government.

Another big benefit that kids get from learning Chinese is for their personal development. Learning any language somehow yields to kids' better creativity and higher intelligence. This helps with schoolwork. Somehow, research has found that bilingual or multilingual kids do better in school than monolinguals. Specifically learning Chinese is special because the Chinese culture has been around for a considerable time and kids will be fascinated with China's thousands-year old culture. Learning Chinese will not benefit a child's intelligence, but also empathy and compassion for a culture totally benefit. Of course, being able to communicate with a family and community speaking a different language is also worth mentioning, as this helps mold a child's character as well.

Those are the 2 biggest benefits of learning Chinese, in my opinion. There are more benefits but the others can be grouped under the big 2 I've mentioned.

There is also a pdf document in our main site about the Top 10 Reasons to Learning Chinese and we hope you'll check it out.

Labels: learn chinese

Since Summer is fast arriving and school is letting out, I thought it's time to help find something for those poor kids to do this summer, such as Learning Chinese! A few suggested items in my Weekly Sale! One of the items on sale, Long as a Dragon is just a great book with so many projects possible!

				Long Is A Dragon - Chinese Writing for Kids by Peggy Goldstein
				Our Price: $17.95 Sale Price: $16.95 You Save $1.00!
				Pictures provide wonderful introduction to Chinese characters Kids find characters easy to remember Great teaching tool for parents and teachers Features 75 Chinese characters Plus evolution of character strokes One of my most popular books and one of my favorites.

Labels: learn chinese

Chinese picture dictionaries help make learning Chinese easier for children.

Kids with picture dictionaries can become familiar with the dictionary’s content through the pictures. Chinese words can be worked on later.

Most picture dictionaries already have colored pictures. You may be interested in some Chinese word books that double as coloring books. Children are more likely to remember pictures they themselves colored.

If you are thinking of getting your child a Chinese picture dictionary, here are some reminders to maximize its use:

1. Choose if you're getting a Simplified Chinese or Traditional Chinese picture dictionary for your child.
2. Pick whether your child will like a colored dictionary, or those with pictures that can be colored.
3. Chinese picture dictionaries have more or less the following features:

· Pictures. Check the quality of the drawings if they appeal to your child.

· English word

· Chinese character

· Pinyin equivalent

· Use the word in a sentence

4. Let your child become familiar with the pictures.
   
5. You can sit with your child and point out pictures in the dictionary and the Chinese words for these.
6. Encourage your child to open the Chinese picture dictionary when ever the child is interested in anything in daily life. For example, your child becomes excited a bird is in the house. You can ask them to get the dictionary after the excitement has gone down and you can both look over the Chinese word for bird. You can also look at the sentence provided if the dictionary has it.
   

If you want to encourage your child to remember more words, Chinese flash cards can be of great help to repeat and practice Chinese words already learned.

Labels: ChildBook products, learn chinese, Spend Time with kids learning Chinese

I just added a a video preview! Great video with a lot of content. Highly recommended.

				Global Toddlers: Adventures in Mexico. Chinese, English, Spanish, French
				Our Price: $19.99
				Kids love the puppet and children scenes, animation, and live footage and still photos of real animals, fish, plants and landscapes of Mexico. Awarded DVD of the Year by Creative Child Magazine for 2008 (Educational DVDs for babies, toddlers, and kids category)”. 115+ spoken and written words for children in Chinese Mandarin (with Pinyin), English, French, and Spanish

Labels: bilingual babies, learn chinese

Simplified Chinese Flash Cards and Traditional Flash Cards have been revised and I fixed the products that are attached to each category.

Labels: learn chinese

Learning Chinese one tone at a time - nice story about a Learning Chinese class in San Diego, that mentions Pacific Ridge School, a private school, that requires all students to Learn Chinese.

Labels: learn chinese

I have 20 books now that are in Simplified, Pinyin, and English that are illustrated! There has been a lot of requests for this type of book.

I am also adding more of the DVD's, that have sub-titles in Simplified Chinese, Pinyin, and English. I am very excited about them. They also have sub-titles in Traditional Characters. DVD has English and Mandarin Chinese sound tracks.

Labels: learn chinese, new products

NY Times Article - Learning From a Native Speaker, Without Leaving Home about online services you can use to Learn Chinese and other languages. I am surprised at the amount of users they get each month.

Labels: learn chinese

Chinese Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes has nothing to do with Mother Goose, but is a collection of Forty One Traditional Chinese Children Nursery Rhymes ( verses, riddles, and game rhymes) in a bilingual format including ones on lady bugs, kites, and bumps on the head. Also includes the rhymes in Chinese traditional characters. The collection of Chinese Children poems, lullabies, counting rhymes, and songs from the Chinese oral tradition is complemented by illustrations inspired by classic Chinese art (meant for kids, so a bit cartoonish). Reviews by customers of the book have overall been positive, even if some of the Chinese words used are a bit higher level than you would expect in a children's book. Paperback. Children's - Grade 2-3, Age 7-8.

Why the name Chinese Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes, to communicate the idea these 41 nursery rhymes are comparable to the European Mother Goose. So in this book you will not find a translation of Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. Peck is a term of measurement for a 1/4 a bushel or 8 dry quarts that my daughter actually saw in one of her classes.

Labels: learn chinese