Learning to read

Ever since Miss 4 went to childcare, she's had a lot more exposure and opportunities to sing, read, write and learn about the English language.

Over the last 1.5 yrs, her English vocabulary has increased by leaps and bounds, which led me to believe that it is not necessary to teach my children English as they can pick it up very quickly when with peers.

Maybe this one is just a high-achiever, but she has a very good memory for learning new things. And when it comes to languages, she just needs to hear it a few times, practice it and it's perfect. Teaching her to read her Chinese characters were easy too. As Chinese characters stem from drawings in the early days, I draw out words and that helped her to remember the meaning and the word.

She now has a word count of over 80 Chinese characters, much less than her asian counterparts, but it's not important to me. She enjoys learning new words and will not hesitate to ask how to read a new word and its meaning.

I have not been teaching her English and all her English words and recognition came from childcare. They are learning some phonics and she comes back asking how to sound a letter. I took the opportunity to teach her the sounds of the letter in both English and Mandarin. Surprisingly, it does not confuse her. It would have confused me as an adult, but I suppose children have no pre-conception of languages and just take in whatever is taught to them.

So, Miss 4 is progressing well in her language skills, both reading and speaking. I've not pushed her to write in Chinese, so she really can't write. Probably time to put in more effort on my part.

And now with Korean and Japanese dramas going crazy around the house, she has picked up quite a few phrases and enjoying it. Who knows, we might have a linguist in the future! Sphere: Related Content