Kids Project: How to teach your kid mandarin when you are NOT a mandarin literate...

We have hired 2 mandarin tutors previously.

The 1st one is quite good but our schedule was quite pack and with her, we can only do it at night time. So that makes it so susah as DS usually penat and demotivated to do the exercise, or even to learn.


The 2nd one is good also. But DS's result in chinese is worst than before he has the tutor. So I decided that maybe she is lack of something. She might not focus on the right way to tutoring the kid.


For eg, focus on topics, do more practice on soalan tubi and identify his weaknesses (in DS's case is the writing) and focus on strengthening it.


So I decided that we should not continue with her and I think I should do this as I know DS better. Not in terms of "teaching him how to contruct sentences in chinese" but on how to study effectively and how to answer those questions correctly and diligently. Nevertheless, I still think he needs a mandarin tutor to enhance his skill and knowledge.



But for now, I practice with him and even though we made mistakes along the way at least I can see that he picked up faster and he has "initiative" now on "trying". So I am successful in a waylah. Dulu, cuba pun tak mau. Tak ada confidence langsung. And he always thinks he will fail. Dahsyatkan? How I have neglected my kids' progress in education huhu....


Another way that I tried is to let him practice with the exercise book and for any questions that he doesn't know to check the answer and learnt from it. Some mothers took away the answers, but I teach them to read the answer, but ONLY on questions that they are not sure. As you know from my experience as a student, if we tried to answer wrongly, our mind could not remember the correct answers. So to me, I need to ONLY know the right answers.

But depending on circumstances, there are exercises that I need them to try first before they could look into the answers. Hmm.. am I contradicting? No. It is called, MOTHER'S INSTINCT :P.


So, let's wait till they get the results before we assume that my methods works. It works for DS on his last exam kat sekolah lama. But NOT tremendously. So let's see.