Mandarin Chinese Language suggestions? Anyone?

[samba2nite]

Is anyone teaching their children mandarin chinese? I'm interested in taking this on and starting this summer. I can speak two year old baby mandarin but would love to become more fluent as well as have my yahoos speak it. Not sure where to start.

[Laura Corin]

I'd recommend finding a native speaker to teach, at least at the beginning. As you probably found out, getting the tones right at the beginning is crucial.

Best wishes

Laura

[Makita]

My daughter (now 6) expressed interest in learning Mandarin a couple of years ago. We struggled for about 6 months (using DVDs from the library, online sources, etc.) until we found a class for 4-6 year olds. She goes 2x week for 1 hr. Not much but she is getting the basics and building a foundation. The other students are younger and not as motivated however (an important life skill in itself), so after this current session (each is 6 weeks) we will be working with the instructor independantly (private tutoring). Finding someone that speaks Mandarin, I think, is crucial.

Over the past year, I have also begun to compile resources in a Squidoo lens. Feel free to visit and explore some of the links:

http://www.squidoo.com/FunWithMandarin

[Kuovonne]

I guess that I'm still the lone dissenter here. Having a teacher who speaks the language would be nice, but what if you don't have such a teacher, but still want your child to learn Chinese?

For a long time my daughter didn't learn any Chinese because I didn't have a native speaker to teach her. Then I decided to teach her myself, even though I don't speak it. I know that I'm garbling the tones with her, but the alternative is for her to not learn Chinese at all.

I'm teaching my daughter Mandarin Chinese using "Er Tong Han Yu" (Chinese for Children), and I think that we are doing very well. After doing only about 5-10 minutes per day for two months, she can recognize 30+ words (simplified characters). She understands what the tones are, even if neither of us can produce them correctly. She can construct a simple sentence (within her vocabulary). She can ask and answer simple questions (within her vocabulary).

I've been to the Chinese Saturday school and even though it's a great school, if I sent her there, she wouldn't know nearly as many words, and she still wouldn't get the tones right. Plus, I would have a babysitting nightmare and it would cost a lot more.

[Hilary in MI]

While it would be great to have a tutor, if that's not an option, you can self-study any language. Here are my thoughts and recommendations about Mandarin (scroll down):
http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=29268

[plansrme]

We have a native tutor who comes for 2 hours every week. We found her through a local Chinese church. We found her predecessor through Craigslist.
I am mainly posting, though, to give you a head's up about Saturday Chinese schools. A lot of people may suggest them, and your local options may be different, but keep in mind that these are often the schools to which many native Chinese send their kids for instruction in reading and writing. Accordingly, they're taught almost exclusively for kids who speak Chinese at home. My kids would have been so very lost.

Terri

[Laura Corin]

There are going to be different thoughts on this, but personally I would choose a non-tonal language if I didn't have access to a native speaker. YMMV.

Laura

[Hilary in MI]

We also use Rosetta Stone, with a microphone and headset, which the children love and which helps a great deal with pronounciation.

[Kuovonne]

I can understand how many families would be better off learning a non-tonal language if they don't have access to a native speaker. However, some families have compelling personal reasons to learn Chinese, despite lack of access to a native speaking teacher. We are one of those families. I suspect that the original poster is too.

I posted about how I am teaching my five year old daughter Chinese in my blog.

http://lettersandcorrespondence.blogspot.com/2009/02/chinese-for-children.html

[lovelearnandlive]

I took two semesters of Conversational Mandarin at my city's "adult" school (they teach cooking, language, and computer classes, among others). It was enough for me to get the tones down okay and to have a working grasp of the pinyin system. I would encourage you to take a course yourself before you begin teaching, if there is one available in your area - maybe a community college or recreation department?

I just bought the Better Chinese curriculum to use with my dd. It teaches pinyin as well as the characters. The books come with an audio CD so you can hear correct pronunciation. I highly recommend their set of playing cards - they are basically just flash cards that can be used in a variety of different games, but are great for building vocabulary that will be used in each lesson.

We have a Chinese school in our area that dd attends once a week for two hours. It's very relaxed at this age - they play bingo using Chinese words, color, learn some vocabulary, etc. So far she has learned a few children's songs, numbers 1-10, colors, animals, and now we are working on family members. She just learned how to say "I love my papa (mommy, little sister)." :001_smile:

Here (http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=76594&highlight=mandarin)is a link to a post I did a while back that has some free resources and places to buy curriculum/videos/books/etc.

We have had great fun learning so far, I hope you do too!

[LunaLee]

Samba,

I know there is a Chinese weekend school in Davis (at least there was a few years ago). Maybe you could contact them for help.