Easy Steps to Chinese for Kids (2nd Edition) is especially designed for non-Chinese background students, who
are learning Chinese as a second/foreign language. The series is suitable for
preschool children and first to fourth graders in primary school.
This
series aims to help students lay a solid foundation in Chinese in terms of
characters, especially simple characters, words, and short sentences through
natural and gradual integration of language, themes and culture. The
simultaneous development of listening, speaking and reading skills, and character
writing as well as the ability to write short sentences in Chinese, is
emphasized. The ultimate aim is to help students develop communication skills
in a hope that they can use simple Chinese to communicate smoothly and
effectively in real-life situations.
The
Textbook plays an important role in helping students gain knowledge of the
Chinese language needed to develop their communicative competence. The Workbook
takes a supporting role, providing various age-appropriate and interesting
exercises 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 digital
resources, etc.
Features
of Easy Steps to Chinese for Kids (2nd Edition):
■ Pinyin
is not specifically taught at this stage, but it always appears on top of the
characters.
■ Each
simple character appears in the form of “shape, sound and meaning” and is
accompanied with a vivid illustration, in a hope that students have a full
understanding of the character learned.
■ Strokes,
stroke order and the structures of characters are not formally taught, but
specially designed exercises are provided in both the Textbook and the
Workbook. Each simple character is marked with a stroke order, and students can
learn about the structure of a compound character through specifically designed
exercises.
■ The
radical is an important component of most compound characters, and mastering
radicals is very helpful for learning Chinese characters. Teaching experiments
indicate that it is difficult to teach radicals in lower grades, therefore
radicals are introduced starting Book 3. In this way, students can learn new
compound characters more easily while reviewing the ones learned in Books 1 and
2.
■ New
words in each lesson do not appear in the form of a “new word list”. Each new
word is introduced with Pinyin and English explanations, while some are
accompanied with illustrations.
■ Literacy
is one of the focuses of this series. When learning the written form of a
language, children learn to read first and then write words from memory later.
This is how children learn written language. In this series, the learning of
new characters, the recurrence of new words and the repetitive exercises are thus
designed accordingly.
■ Developing
children’s listening and speaking skills is of paramount importance when
teaching Chinese to children. Although children can acquire pronunciation
naturally, 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 various
exercises are provided in both the Textbook and Workbook. There is also a short
story with vivid illustrations in every lesson of the workbook. Reading
materials in various forms help students accumulate characters, words and short
sentences gradually before understanding a text fully.
■ Writing
begins with writing simple characters, which have fewer strokes, and are easy
to write. When learning to write compound characters, tracing them first will
increase students’ confidence when writing them later independently.
■ Writing
down what one says is the primary stage for beginners developing writing
skills. Students learn to write words and short sentences before writing
continued 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 to
acquire pronunciation naturally.
■ In
the second edition, 61 simple characters are formally taught, compared to 28
simple characters in the first edition. Learning simple characters is the
“stepping stone” for learning Chinese characters. Once a certain number of
simple characters are mastered, students will learn compound characters more
easily and confidently. The teacher should encourage students to memorize the
pronunciation, shape and meaning of each simple character.
■ In
the second edition, listening skills are no longer practiced separately, but
combined with various speaking exercises.
■ The second edition puts more emphasis on the integration
of language learning with other subjects in primary school. For example, maths
is a compulsory subject for primary school students and memorizing the times
table is the secret of learning maths well. Learning and memorizing the times
table can not only help students master the usage of numbers in Chinese, but
also enable them to learn multiplication with more ease. This is killing two
birds with one stone and getting twice the result with half the effort.
Ms. Yamin Ma has an M.Ed. in Curriculum Design and
Instruction from Queen’s University, Canada. She used to teach English at both secondary
and university levels in Shanghai (China), Hong Kong (China) and Kingston
(Canada) for over 10 years and has taught Chinese at primary and secondary
levels in Hong Kong (China) for more than 20 years. Ms. Ma has been the 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 B courses.
The
course is designed by incorporating relevant theories of cognitive psychology
and second/foreign language teaching and learning. It adopts the “spiral
curriculum” principles, emphasizes the learning of characters and words, and
takes advantage of rules of Chinese word formation. It is designed scientifically
and logically to enable students to learn and acquire Chinese systematically.
The
course is designed with reference to the preschool and primary school education
guidelines 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 contents
of the five themes are naturally integrated into the five units of each book.
Chinese culture, such as traditional festivals, customs, etc. is introduced throughout
the course. In addition, while teaching Chinese, this course strives to promote
the development of students’ emotion, attitude, ability, knowledge, skills,
etc.
The
course consists of two parts: teaching language knowledge and cultivating
students’ communicative competence. One cannot learn Chinese without learning Chinese
characters. As the core of this series, Chinese character teaching dominates
the whole course design. The teaching of Chinese characters requires students
to recognize and write simple characters from memory, and to recognise, trace
and write compound characters. After completing this course, students are able
to write a reasonable number of radicals, simple characters and short
sentences. The course also focuses on the development of students’ listening,
speaking and reading skills, and in particular students’ ability to communicate
smoothly and effectively in real-life situations using the Chinese they have
learned.
The
themes and topics of the course have been carefully selected, and the units
have been planned holistically. The content setting of this course addresses
the same themes and topics within each of the four books, but each with
increasing complexity, depth and constant expansion in terms of the scope of
vocabulary, content and cultural elements involved. This ensures that students
learn new knowledge and skills on the basis of mastering the old.
The course progresses gradually with the difficulty
level of each book being carefully controlled but challenging enough. Each book
is naturally connected and transitions smoothly to ensure the steady
improvement of students’ Chinese level.
Stage
1 (Books 1 and 2): The focus is to help students lay a good foundation of
Chinese characters by learning simple characters, while cultivating students’
interest in learning Chinese. At the end of this stage, students are expected
to use the words and short sentences they have learned to carry out simple
communications on topics covered.
Stage 2 (Books 3 and 4): The focus is to learn
radicals and more compound characters. With more words and short sentences
learned, students will be able to use simple Chinese to communicate smoothly
and 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.