How I help my daughter learn Mandarin during circuit breaker

The coronavirus pandemic and circuit breaker have disrupted our lives in many ways. Given that more than two-thirds of Singaporean families with children do not speak their mother tongues at home, our children’s learning of the mother tongue is interrupted during this period, save for home-based learning and online tuition (if any).

To maintain our eight-year old daughter’s momentum of learning the Chinese language, my husband and I tried various methods during the circuit breaker, with varying ease of execution and attendant benefits to the child.

Some of these methods are not new to us, but working and studying from home have given us the chance to increase their intensity and frequency. We also tried out a new idea.

After six weeks of putting them into action, we find that our daughter has widened her Mandarin vocabulary range a little, and more importantly, become more confident in expressing herself in Mandarin.

I hope that you would find these ideas to be helpful too.

(A) Speaking to the child in Mandarin

• Frequency: Daily (At least 50 per cent of our conversations, up from the usual 20 per cent)
• Ease of execution: 1/5
• Benefits to the child: 5/5

Speaking to the child in the mother tongue (Mandarin) on a daily basis has got to be one of the most common yet most difficult ideas to be executed by Singaporean parents.

In our case, to avoid fatigue, we pace ourselves by starting with giving everyday instructions to our daughter in Mandarin.

For instance: “This is our schedule for the day. After breakfast, you are to practise the piano.” “这是今天的时间表。吃完早餐后，就是练琴时间。”

Whenever our daughter shares an anecdote with us in English, we encourage her to do the same in Mandarin. This is to enhance the child’s metalinguistic ability, especially word and syntactic awareness, by comparing across both languages.

(B) Consuming media content in Mandarin only

• Frequency: Thrice a week (about 40 minutes per session, up from once or twice per month)
• Ease of execution: 5/5
• Benefits to the child: 2/5

The principle here is to increase the child’s exposure to Mandarin by tapping content that the child is naturally interested in.

For example, if she would like to watch a movie, we would put on a Stephen Chow movie in Mandarin. If the Mandarin dialogue is too complex for her to enjoy the movie, we would put on Chinese, or at times English, subtitles.

If she wants to watch cartoons on Netflix, they would be in Mandarin. She has been enjoying the American animated series, We Bare Bears, in Mandarin, which comes with occasional Hokkien terms.

(C) Chinese past year papers

• Frequency: Twice a week (1.5 hours (test time) + 0.5 hour (after test guidance) per paper, up from once every two months)
• Ease of execution: 2/5
• Benefits to the child: 4/5

This controversial method is both exhorted and vilified. The key is in its nuanced application focus.

From the child’s perspective, if the Chinese language is the most difficult subject to be tackled, her first instinct is to reject having to deal with the subject more, and certainly not to sit through its tests voluntarily.

Any bad experiences with a Chinese test/examination would add to the child’s distaste for the language.

There are two parts to taking any test/examination.

In addition to being familiar with the test content/syllabus, being conversant with the test/examination format, instructions, answer techniques and checking of answers are all just as essential.

Unless the child has an assiduous one-to-one Chinese language tutor, the child will need help with the latter essential component of test/examination-taking.

As such, apart from testing our daughter's grasp of the Chinese language syllabus, we use the past year papers to boost her confidence and competence in answering the Chinese test/examination questions by guiding her through the format, instructions as well as test and answer techniques.

(D) Show and tell on Zoom in Mandarin (new idea)

• Frequency: Once a week 
• Ease of execution: 2/5
• Benefits to the child: 5/5

My daughter has been having weekly playdates with a group of her Primary 2 classmates on Zoom during the circuit breaker.

To avoid a situation where the girls merely shouted over one another for an hour, they were asked to kick off each playdate with a show and tell segment, where each girl would do a presentation on a topic of her choice.

In the first two weeks of the circuit breaker, the girls casually showed and told their friends about their favourite toys, books, pets and sister.

They naturally did that in English. By the third week, the segment became more polished, with some girls putting up Powerpoint/Keynote presentations on topics such as the Vikings, hybrid animals and the Japanese Occupation of Singapore.

By the fifth week, the girls became more confident and excited about their presentations. They started to conduct their presentations in Mandarin.

Despite having varying commands of Mandarin, the girls successfully spoke about a range of topics, ranging from their pets to popular toys/candies of the world, Norwegian National Day, the love of writing letters, near-extinct and extinct animals, visiting a theme park and making Konnyaku jelly.

It is especially encouraging for the girls (and parents) to watch their friends, whose parents are non-Chinese and/or non-Mandarin speakers, give the presentation in Mandarin.

While the child’s conscientiousness about studying the Chinese language is important, her confidence is essential for speaking it.

The majority of our children are shy to speak in Mandarin because they believe that they do not speak well in terms of range of expressions and pronunciation.

As they develop higher degrees of self-awareness over the years, this shyness becomes an even bigger obstacle to their mastery of the Chinese language.

The Mandarin show and tell experience highlights how we (parents) are best-placed to help our children to build the confidence to speak in Mandarin, even if we do not speak it well, or at all.

This method requires parental involvement of at least a few hours per week to research on and prepare the presentation and script, practise the presentation with the child, and provide emotional and technical support during the presentation.

This virtual playdate amongst close friends is the safe sandbox, where the children can shed their inhibitions and practise speaking in Mandarin to a familiar and friendly audience.

With the circuit breaker ending in 10 days, we look forward to reverting our lives to some normalcy.

However, we will remember the invaluable lessons that we have serendipitously learnt during this unique period and apply them going forward.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Lee Hsin is a PhD student in Public Policy at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. Despite having been raised in a Mandarin-only home environment and attended a Special Assistance Plan school, she struggles to provide a similar Mandarin-speaking home environment for her eight-year-old daughter.