A conducive learning environment? A flexibly paced curriculum? Instant communication with experienced tutors? Yes please!

Amid the pandemic and the revolution in technology, more tuition classes than ever before are moving online, allowing students to cut down on tuition fees and travel time. As such, with the possibility of attending tuition opened to more students, more parents are looking at signing their children up for online private tuition in Singapore.

Some parents are understandably still on the fence. Well, just what are the benefits of opting for online primary school Chinese tuition instead of going for a face-to-face class?

Save on Time

One of the biggest advantages of attending an online tuition class is cutting down on the time required to get ready for a physical class and travel to and fro. Altogether, this can take up a good hour or two – or even more if you live far away from your tuition location. Many students end up attending tuition centers close to their schools and staying back at school after hours to wait for tuition classes to begin. On the other hand, with an online class, no traveling time is required. Online tuition classes can be conducted virtually anywhere – allowing students to attend their lessons in bed, on the bus, or while waiting in line. Instead of finding time in that busy schedule to squeeze in lesson time and travelling time, you can simply have your child stay at home and view their lessons.

Enjoy a Comfortable Environment

Away from the harsh drab of a classroom, your child can get comfortable at home while attending their lessons. Sitting at their own desk at home can do wonders for students who may be struggling with social anxiety or shyness. Coupled with the experience of learning a second language, students who are more averse to learning Chinese can be coaxed into getting more comfortable with the language so that it comes to them naturally. Having tuition at home also enables you to be more involved in your child’s learning journey – you will be able to supervise your child and sit with them through the lesson.

Learn at Your Own Pace

In a physical class, teachers often must deal with the varying paces of students. Some students are quicker to pick up new vocabulary and concepts, while others may not have a similar aptitude. Yet more students may be motivated to learn, while others may find the class boring. Online classes that are held in groups may still have to deal with these problems, but at least students are typically able to re-watch lessons they are unsure about. Additionally, students may find their teachers more reachable through messages for any doubts or inquiries, rather than trying to get a hold of them before or after class.

Great for Quieter Students

Most students who excel in physical classes tend to be the loud and outspoken types, while quieter students may not take to the learning environment so well. However, the online world empowers different types of students. Many students find themselves more comfortable interacting with their tutors and peers through a virtual classroom instead of in-person, enabling them to participate in discussions more. In fact, students may even gain more confidence in their Chinese skills if they are more comfortable attending and participating in an online classroom than in the more daunting environment of a physical classroom.

Access a Wider Variety of Teachers

Not all experienced teachers are able or willing to relocate to Singapore just to teach Chinese to students. Fortunately, technology brings the world closer than ever before, allowing people from all over the world to meet online. This enables native Chinese speakers to tutor students in Singapore from the comfort of their homes, expanding the variety of teachers available to us. In turn, these foreign teachers are also able to expose our students to their own cultures. A problem that many students struggle with when it comes to learning Chinese is a lack of interest in the subject. Students who find the language difficult may wonder why they have to learn it, or they may simply feel bored of it. Teachers living right in the heart of Chinese culture can afford their students a glimpse into the modern world of the country, language and culture, which can help inspire students to put their hearts into learning Chinese.

Online or Physical? Your Choice

All in all, the jury is still out on whether online or physical classes trump Chinese tuition. We believe it all comes down to each student’s learning style and individual preference. Some students thrive in a physical classroom, while others may feel more comfortable taking their lessons at their own time at home. The key is to try different types of lesson styles and find which one your child prefers.

The desire to learn mandarin is growing rapidly worldwide. Recently, Duolingo reported that mandarin is the 8th most popular language on its app. It is clear that people are increasingly looking for ways to learn the Chinese language because of its numerous benefits.

With the rise of China’s influence on the world’s economy, knowing how to speak Mandarin can open up numerous travel, business, and even educational opportunities. It will inevitably become a valuable asset and important communication tool in a globalised world.

In Singapore schools, the Chinese language is an established part of the curriculum, given that bilingualism is a cornerstone of our education system. Over the years, the Chinese syllabus has evolved to move away from the rote memorisation of characters and phrases to cultivate proficient language usage in daily life.

Despite obvious advantages, getting your child’s interest in the Chinese language can be challenging. If your child is not enthusiastic about the language, here are some reasons.

Why is Your Child Not Interested in the Chinese Language?

Not seeing the value in learning the Chinese language.

Often, children don’t understand why they need to learn Chinese. It is especially true in Singapore, where English is the predominant language that one can still go about their essential activities, such as purchasing food and getting directions, without knowing Mandarin. There is little or no inconvenience caused if someone cannot read or speak the language.

They would not find interest in the Chinese Language if they cannot articulate the importance and benefits of learning it.

The Chinese language can be seen as complex and challenging to learn

Most languages use a romanised lettering system that is easy to learn and recall. Chinese characters, however, are symbols and characters that may be hard to memorise and recall. Writing Chinese characters requires a specific stroke sequence, making writing more complex.

Added to this are the complex tones used in Mandarin, which can be challenging for young children to keep up with. All these challenges can demoralise your child’s interest in the Chinese Language. Perhaps that’s why parents turn to private tutors who simplify the process and make Mandarin more fun through online or physical tuition lessons.

No role models

Children are good “copy-cats” and often look to their parents or other adults for inspiration. If your child does not have someone in the family who speaks mandarin, likely, they won’t even put in the effort to try and learn it.

Not receiving enough encouragement.

If a child feels overwhelmed or lacks confidence in their ability to learn Chinese without receiving support from a parent or teacher, they might lose motivation to study the language. This effect is particularly pronounced when students are taught the language through rote memorisation without engagement.

Ways to increase your child’s interest in the Chinese Language

Now that we understand the potential roadblocks standing in the way of your child’s interest in the Chinese Language, here are some suggestions on how to increase your child’s motivation and interest in the language.

Unlock your child’s Chinese language learning potential with technology.

With the advent of technology, there are more and more ways to make learning Mandarin fun, engaging and interactive.

There are a variety of apps and websites available that are specifically designed to help children learn Chinese. Some examples include Wayaya Reader and Hello Chinese, but there are many more. These apps are often engaging and interactive, featuring animations, games, and sounds to make learning more fun. Additionally, they often feature native speakers pronouncing words and phrases correctly, which can be especially helpful for parents who may not be fluent in Chinese.

If your child is a video enthusiast, YouTube offers a wealth of Chinese-language videos, including songs, animated nursery rhymes and classics such as Little Red Riding Hood. If your child already enjoys one of these stories in English, try finding a mandarin version for them to watch. This makes it easier for them to follow the plot since they are already familiar with the storyline. They may even pick up some vocabulary words along the way!

Enrich your child’s learning of the Chinese language with interesting cultural exploration

Don’t just focus on teaching your child how to memorise Chinese characters. Why not make learning Chinese a meaningful experience by introducing him or her to the beauty of Chinese culture?

Start with traditional Chinese festivals your child already celebrates, such as the Chinese New Year or Mid-autumn Festival. Introduce the history, myths and traditions behind these festivals through resources such as books, videos or games to help nurture your child’s interest in the Chinese language.

Take your children to cultural exhibitions or activities organised by the Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre; the centre often provides exhibitions, talks, story-telling sessions and other resources that nurture an appreciation of Chinese culture. Embark on field trips to the Chinese Heritage Centre or other attractions such as Chinatown Heritage Centre. Take advantage of such opportunities to discover the richness of Chinese culture as a family!

Hire an engaging Chinese home tuition teacher

Some Singapore parents may enrol their children in highly sought-after “branded” group Chinese tuition classes with long waiting lists. However, this choice may not be the best option since the materials used may be too advanced for some students or too standardised for all learners, regardless of their abilities. As a result, it could quell the student’s enthusiasm and interest in the subject.

This is why hiring an experienced, engaging Chinese home tutor is more suitable for children struggling to keep up in class or requiring extra assistance with the language.

The tutor can customise the lessons according to the child’s level of understanding and interest, encouraging your child to learn at their own pace without feeling stressed. With a good tutor’s help, your child can pick up the language faster and develop a genuine enthusiasm for it.

Conclusion

Though it may seem like an uphill battle to stimulate your child’s interest in the Chinese language, don’t give up. Make sure to speak Mandarin at home as much as possible to show its importance in your family life.

Is your child struggling with creative writing? Getting your child to excel in creative writing is definitely not a walk in the park, especially if his English standard is just not at that level yet. Regardless, creative writing is going to be a necessary assessment for your child, so here are some hacks you may try on him.

Collect a Notebook of Nice Phrases

We all know that nice phrases work great in any piece of writing. The expression “a walk in the park” gains extra bonus points for your child’s writing if it can be used in place of just “easy”. However, it is important to use this expression correctly. If your child were to write – “Going to school by myself is like walking to the park”; he no longer makes sense. This, however, is a very common mistake among Primary school students. If he can’t use his expressions correctly, sometimes it’s better that he doesn’t use them at all.

You can buy a book of nice phrases if you can find one around. However, to memorize phrases from a book is just downright boring. Moreover, he won’t know exactly how to use these phrases properly in his writing. Therefore, the better method would be to get him to read widely and start collecting nice phrases in his notebook. If you come across any nice phrase yourself, you may show it to him in its original context so that he knows how the expression can fit into the sentence. After that, get him to practice writing more, with his notebook by his side. The more he uses these phrases correctly, the more he remembers them. He won’t need to put in much effort memorizing them.

[Read: 6 Ways To Improve Your Writing Skills]

Train his Creative Thinking

It is very common to experience mental block when doing a creative writing exercise or assessment. You can help your child overcome his problems with mental block by training him to think creatively! It may help if he is exposed to various medium of storytelling – theatre productions, TV shows, books, etc. On top of these exposure, creative conversations help too. For example, if you are shopping with your child at the mall and you pass by a busker, you may start a conversation with your child about the busker – “who do you think he is?”; “why do you think he is doing this?”; “what do you think he will do with the money in the box”, etc. All these questions start your child thinking up scenarios. The more he is used to thinking up fictitious scenarios, the easier his creative juice can flow comes assessment time.

Use Proper Conversational English

If you have not started by now, it is time to check on your own conversational English. Are you speaking to your child with proper grammar? This is extremely important. Children who are not used to using proper grammar in his conversational English will struggle with putting properly phrased words down on paper. Likely, his creative writing piece would be peppered with far too many grammar mistakes. These are points-losing mistakes that are totally unnecessary! You can drill your child through long hours of grammar homework, but the best thing to do now is to make sure your child is using proper grammar in his sentence structures while talking to you. If your child talks to you in proper English, there is no need to worry about his grammar in his creative writing.

Insert Humor

No kidding, but humor works. Everywhere! Humor softens hearts, eases awkward situations; makes people laugh. And laughter is medicine! Your examiner is a fellow human, and wouldn’t mind a bit of laughter to get through an entire stack of papers to mark and sleepless nights. Teach your child to be as human, and as humorous in his writing. If your child can insert some elements of humor in his writing, some of his unintended grammatical or spelling mistakes may even be overlooked. No one told you this? Try it!

Conclusion

In conclusion, creative writing can’t be forced. If your child doesn’t have a humorous side in him, don’t force it. You can help him think of funny scenarios, and slowly feed him ideas of how to make his story funny. However, by the end of the day, every child is different in his strengths. Find out your child’s strength and work on it. If he is doing very well in his collection of nice phrases, it’s best to work on that to excel in his creative writing. If, at this point in time your child is turned off by any hint of practicing writing, just start more conversations with him! Don’t force your child to write because it will only make him hate it more. Alternatively, you may hire an English tutor to motivate your child to write well.

Literature is commonly perceived to be a difficult subject to score for exams. For one, exams answers are all in essay format. If you are already struggling with producing a grammatically correct piece of writing, you are on the losing end. On top of writing well, this subject also requires a decent level of passion in reading. Without an interest to read, you will hate this subject too much to excel in it. However, if you are determined as steel to do well in Literature, here is some good advice you can use to excel in the books-based portions of the subject (plays and novels).

Read Intensively

Before your school term begins, you should have read your Lit book at least twice. By the time you are halfway through school term, you should have read it at least 5 times. The first time you read the book, you should aim to have a reasonable understanding of what happened in the play or the novel. The second time you read the novel, you should pick up details you missed from the first read. Every time you read the book again, it must be done much slower than the previous time. This is because you are consciously picking up details from the book. The 3^rd time you read the book on your own should be when your teacher is done going through the book, and hopefully given you some good notes with a good guide on how to approach possible exams questions for this book. This time, you should be dissecting details from the book. These details largely belong to 2 major categories: Themes and Character Studies. 

Explore Themes and Characters

If you are reading this article, there’s a high chance that you are not doing very well in this subject without help. It means that you are not someone who intuitively picks up themes from books and understands characters’ personalities that are significant enough to mention. You probably don’t even know if you need to dramatize certain aspects of the book or to downplay some details you spotted. You are not alone, and totally normal. Therefore, we are thankful for Google. The shortcut to Literature studies is simply to Google your book. For example, if you are currently reading “To Kill a Mockingbird” for your Lit text, it will benefit you greatly if you would Google “To Kill a Mockingbird themes”. You will find so many sites with valuable pointers for you to note down.

The exploration of themes and characters is an extremely important aspect in Literature studies – and guaranteed to appear in exams questions. Therefore, you should not fully rely on your Literature teacher to provide you with the pointers. Some teachers are more equipped than others, and you don’t know about yours. By doing more research online and reading sample essays, you will be more prepared to face your exams questions. Keep a notebook of all the themes and character traits of the main characters. Memorize them all.

Memorize Quotes

Memorize exact quotes from your book – as many as possible that are significant. This will help you beef up your essay. When you can back your point up with a quote you memorized from the book, you are more likely to impress the marker. Sometimes, you can even begin your essay with a suitable quote! This makes a great first impression for your marker. If you do not know which parts of the book to memorize, the shortcut would be to read essays about your book online and write down the quotes mentioned in those essays. These would be a safer bet than if you pick your quotes randomly.

Use Literature Jargons

Not all Literature jargons apply to the book you are studying. Very likely, your teacher would introduce some jargons to you. Do not dismiss them as merely difficult words to avoid, but put in some effort to know them and understand why they are significant to your book. These jargons can help you jump a grade or two! Some of these jargons would be: allusion, analogy, anti climax, antithesis, imagery, irony, juxtaposition, metaphor, oxymoron, paradox, personification, pun, and satire. If any of the above jargons stand out to you because your teacher has mentioned them before, write them down and figure out their meaning. Again, read commentaries about the book you are reading and look out for such jargons. Write them down, especially the way they are phrased in the commentaries. Make sure you know how to use these jargons.

Read Commentaries of the Book Extensively

If you have found a comprehensive guidebook for your text, read it at least 20 times. No exaggerations here. Read essays written about your text online again and again. Get really familiar with all kinds of essays written before, so familiar that when you see your exams questions you are certain you read parts of the answers written by others before. A text with a political theme can’t have a question on swimming. You get the drift. There is a limit to how creative your exams questions can be for your Lit text. Whatever you will be tested on have been written before by someone. Therefore, read all kinds of essays on your text extensively. You will get so inspired during your exams that all you need to do is to try to organize your pointers into a reasonable essay format.

Another benefit that comes from reading all kinds of essays written by others about your text is that it influences your written language in a positive way. Perhaps, your command of English is already not very good to begin with and this puts you on the losing end. However, by reading good essays, your written English can improve as you follow the styles of those exemplary essays.

Conclusion

It is not impossible to score an A1 for Literature if you are diligent to follow the above pointers. Compared to other subjects like Science, Literature may be an easier subject to manage because there are limitations to the exams questions. However, do take note not to commit the mistake of plagiarism. As you read online sources extensively, do not memorize essays in chunks! Get inspired by the pointers and jargons used, and then phrase them in your own way when you answer the same questions. Good luck to you!