Tips for PSLE Chinese Oral Exams
Acing the PSLE Chinese Oral exams isn’t just a matter of language fluency. This post lists out a few practical tips to prepare wholesomely for your child’s Chinese oral assessments, without trying to sell you a tuition class to solve the problem! How you ever noticed that if you google ‘Tips for PSLE Chinese oral…
Vitamin M: practicing for PSLE Chinese Oral in Singapore
Not sure how to preparing for PSLE Chinese oral? Here is a review of a great practice tool to ace exams with sample Chinese oral video questions.
Skritter review: app to learn Chinese characters and tingxie
Skritter is the BEST way we’ve discovered to practice tingxie. Spaced repetition, customised wordlists, and effortless progress tracking. It includes pronunciation, tones, and much more.
Geniebook Chinese review
Geniebook Chinese app review – it is worth the price? Here’s our opinion of their live online classes and AI-powered assessment sheets for learning MOE Syllabus Chinese.
Who said primary school in Singapore is stressful?
I’ve come to the conclusion that to have a balanced childhood, is it is almost mutually exclusive of being in the top 5% of any Singaporean school’s student cohort. I feel it’s near impossible to achieve this level of perfection without compromising on either sleep, recreation, or family time. Of course, everyone has different priorities…
App comparison: iHuman Hongen Chinese (洪恩识字) versus Wukong Literacy (悟空识字) for learning Chinese characters
Our favourite Chinese literacy apps are iHuman Chinese Hong En Literacy (洪恩识字) and Wukong Literacy (悟空数学). Both of iHuman app and Wukong Literacy app are designed for children who have a sound spoken understanding of Mandarin, and are starting to learn characters/words in Simplified Chinese form. These are great apps for learning Chinese characters. This review…
Parent review: LingoAce online Chinese class
This is a detailed and genuine review of LingoAce, an online Chinese learning service. In this post, I’ve tried to compare the differences between the various LingoAce offerings, and also make comparison to other online learning platforms that we have tried, to allow you to make an informed decision of the best fit for your…
My bilingual parenting mistakes, and resolutions for 2021
(above graphic is modified list from Bilingual Kidspot) As the year draws to an end, it marks my one-year anniversary of blogging about Chinese home learning. In an otherwise-really-bizarre-year for the whole planet, it’s been a haven to be able to write and learn together with so many amazing parents trying to do the Chinese-English…
Review: Bilin Academy – online classes in Chinese art, chess and more!
Bilin Academy is an online platform offering immersive extracurricular classes for children in Chinese, which cleverly integrate content and language learning in a fun package. Thanks to the recommendation of a like-minded parent in Singapore, we started online art classes with Bilin Academy in mid-2020, and have continued since then. My kids have enjoyed Bilin…
Is reaching Chinese fluency a realistic goal for non-native children?
This post compares the different schooling approaches to learning Chinese in Singapore (local school vs bilingual immersion), and how this translates into learning outcomes from a native-speaking perspective. It also lists good bridging books to encourage bilingualism and biliteracy.
What we love about Luka robot apart from reading
This post covers our favourite things to use Luka Hero for (apart from the obvious book reading function), such as games, night light, dictionary, podcasts and trivia.
Review: VIP Peilian for online piano practice
Online one-to-one music lessons in Chinese and English, at a fraction of the cost of usual classes! See how we use it for piano.
How to teach a child to read Chinese (when you can’t speak it yourself)
How I taught my eldest daughter to read 1300+ Chinese characters within 6 months, as non-Chinese speaking parents.
Surviving P1 Chinese for the clueless parent
Learning Chinese at primary school level as a mother tongue is not the same as in pre-school. It quickly goes from being a fun and immersive approach, into an academic structure – but there are some very simple ways which we found to help stay on top of this.
Reading Pen Review: eTutor Education Star
The eTutor pen can read popular children’s Chinese magazines and fortnightly publications which many Singaporean primary schools subscribe to, such as 好朋友 (Hao Peng You), 知识报 (Zhi Shi Bao), 知识画报 (Zhi Shi Hua Bao), 新朋友 (New Friends), 新天地 (New World) and 新列车 (New Express), etc. For us, this was the main reason we bought the…
Cultivating a love for Chinese when it’s not spoken in the home
It’s hard to encourage a child to love and speak a language which the parents don’t speak – but it’s possible, and rewarding. And living in Singapore is a great opportunity for this to take place!
Here are my top tips on how to increase Chinese exposure for non-Chinese speaking families, and also how to cope in a Chinese schooling system for non-Chinese speaking families.
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