Once during my time as a tuition teacher, a parent - the mother - approached me and asked why her daughter's Mandarin results are still so bad.
I told her that I personally thinks tuition once a week for 2 hours is not enough for someone to learn a language... particularly when her daughter has no interest in it. Why the lack of interest? Well, it's mainly because her foundation of the language are not well-established.
In fact, her daughter is in standard 2 when she can't even read, or write on her own, words that Kindergarten kids will know.
I told the parent that languages are unlike other subjects - they require constant use and not merely memorization, especially for kids. If you don't use them often, languages can be very hard to learn.
If she had asked me more, I would have told her that I would recommend her to buy some very simple chinese storybooks (short ones, for kids) and read them to her daughter every night before bed. But gradually, she should stop at the cliffhanger and help her daughter finish reading the story on her own. Most kids I know love stories and will be more than eager to find out what happened (this is another tuition anecdote for another day).
Anyway, she did pursue the topic any longer. I did help her daughter as best as I could and i had thought her daughter slightly improved - the girl told me herself that she knew what the word meant and not ting-tong-tiang. I wanted to encourage her to work on her Mandarin, so I believed her and congratulated her for a job well done. Guess, the girl might not have improved after all.
I had another kid in my class as well and she was just learning Mandarin. Her Indian parents wanted her to learn and me having to juggle standard 1 to 3 kids all in the same class, I couldn't afford her too much attention. Since she looks fine on her own, I left her to her own devices and told her to ask me if she got any problems. Eventually, after her book was completed, I made a simple test, testing her on the words, she has learned. I told her to go study again the words and we'll see how she fare.
I was expecting older words to be forgotten while hoping that for more recent ones, she'll remember. To my surprise, she can't do any of the questions at all. She wasn't learning as I thought she was doing - she was merely copying how the words are written with no knowledge whatsoever whatt he words mean even though there's a picture associated with it. I think she thought the mandarin words she are writing are scribbles.
Tuition classes are NOT the best way for someone to learn a new language, seriously. From that experience, I know that the girl doesn't understand the lines and strokes that she was writing. The book that I was given to teach her on are practically useless.
But her English is okay, so I tried another method. I associate mandarin words with the English words that she knows. Hopefully, by writing and pronouncing the words, she can learn that these two words mean the same thing but in different languages.
Unfortunately, somehow she got phobia to come to tuition... which according to her mum, is not because of her "fierce" Mandarin tuition teacher as she said she wanted to come to my classes only lol (she had other classes with other teachers too)... but for some other reasons that she refused to say.
Anyway, those are my experiences. Hopefully my thoughts are written down in a coherent enough manner this time :P Have fun!
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