reply on: Parent’s Corner: my son, the trilingual preschooler \ stacker news ~alter

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54 sats \ 7 replies \ @stack_harder 10 Mar \ on: Parent’s Corner: my son, the trilingual preschooler alter_native

how long does it take kids to read with Chinese characters? hard enough teaching my youngest basic ABC and i quite often soothe myself by thinking 'thank fuck this isn't Chinese!'

0 sats \ 6 replies \ @cryotosensei OP 8h

I don’t think my son reads English very well yet haha. Especially so because I focus all my energy on Chinese with him. As for Chinese, I think he started recognising characters when he was 5. This year, I made a concerted effort to sit down beside him to read Chinese characters. Duolingo also helps

24 sats \ 5 replies \ @stack_harder 8h

what was your experience with (Chinese) literacy when you were a kid? like it must take a lot longer to read even a basic story when you need to have memorised thousands of characters?

compared to just memorizing like 30 letters and then being able to sound things out etc

i bet learning so many characters is very good brain development though

0 sats \ 4 replies \ @cryotosensei OP 8h

I think it’s like Peter and Jane or Ladybird series. Those books use mainly sight words, which are easy for beginning readers. My son can read those Beginners’ Readers reasonably fluently under my guidance.

I think the main thing that boosted my proficiency in Chinese was music. I used to read a weekly student newspaper back then. Its last page came with the lyrics of a popular song. I would devour the lyrics to sing it during karaoke. That’s how my Chinese ability got elevated

24 sats \ 2 replies \ @stack_harder 8h

this is quite fascinating from a dad and language-learner perspective.

Does it make it easier that Chinese characters are not phonetic and kind of separate from the spoke language?

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @cryotosensei OP 7h

Hmm I won’t say it makes it easier because young people these days keep complaining how Chinese is tough. But for me, because I was exposed to the radicals and gained familiarity wrt them, I could make an intelligent guess in regard to the pronunciation when I encountered a foreign word. Sometimes, my guess would work out haha. So it’s another way to remember how characters are read.