I’ve been doing some research of late about Mandarin classes to decide just how far we want to equip Tee with the language. I have investigated Skylace, BaoBei, Kuen Cheng and talked to people who studied the language at various levels.

Tee has had a full time Mandarin teacher in class ever since she started playschool, which means she has had exposure to the language for about six months. She can now grasp the basics of the language and happily speaks to her Kong-Kong and her teachers at school in simple Mandarin. Her favourite phrase? “Wor PU-YOW!!!” But she wouldn’t speak if we asked her to. I think she only speaks to those who refuse to converse in English with her.

Skylace offers classes up to 3 times a week for older kids and equips the child with a very wide range of Chinese character recognition. You can also send your child once a week but of course, he learns less words then. They learn a lot more characters at Skylace than at Kuen Cheng but at Kuen Cheng, they also learn how to write the words. So this means the child only has a vocabulary of one third or less, but he can write every character he learns. BaoBei guarantees that your child can recognise a thousand Chinese characters by the time he is three!!! So you see…..the 26 letter English alphabet is really nothing by comparison.

People who took Mandarin classes up to 16 years old (in the 80s) still have problems speaking and reading today. It is in their own interest to keep speaking the language to refresh their fluency, and they complain that they cannot read because the characters have been simplified now. To me, that is a waste of so many hours spent at Mandarin classes. Not to mention the fees.

I think that if you are considering sending your child to a full time Chinese medium primary school, then sending him for extra classes now will be useful. However, we doubt that Tee will be attending a Chinese school (although anything is possible!) so we will not put our concerted efforts into ensuring she excels in the language. As long as she is exposed to it, can understand and speak basic conversation, we’re more than happy.

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