The main reason why I set up this blog Wenjunior is because I want to help my children, other children, and beginners to learn Mandarin Chinese in an easy fun way.
Time flies, 4 years passed. In this post, I would like to give some updates about my children’s Mandarin Chinese learning progress. If you could find some helpful tips or feel inspired, it will be great.
As I mentioned before, I try to speak Mandarin at home most of time but speak both English and Mandarin when my children don’t understand me.
When my children were a little older, they started to be resistant to learn Chinese. In order to have them be interested in learning Chinese, I did something extra.
In the post “Why I Set Up a Mandarin Chinese Moms Club“, I mentioned I set up a Chinese family WeChat group to have my children hang out with other Chinese speaking families.
If you wish learn more about how to learn Mandarin Chinese through playdates, please read this post “How to Set Up a Playdate for Learning Mandarin Chinese“.
I taught Big Wen Chinese at home for some time, for more information about homeschooling, please read the post “How to Homeschool Mandarin Chinese“. Later, I decided to send him to a Chinese weekend school to have some kind of Chinese school experience.
Big Wen did a good job even though he needed consistent reminders to finish his Chinese homework. Big Wen learned to read most of Chinese characters, however, he needs to go over these characters to enforce the memory.
Now Big Wen self study Chinese by reading Chinese books and other materials such as newspapers at home.
Little Wen doesn’t like going to Chinese school. In this post ” My Child Says No to Mandarin Chinese Learning“, you might get some ideas.
As I planned, I started to send Little Wen to a Chinese weekend school when he was in second grade. I am not surprised that Little Wen didn’t like the Chinese school at all.I decided to have Little Wen learn Chinese at home.
Currently, Big Wen and Little Wen need read Chinese learning materials 3-5 times a week and watch videos I created sometimes. I am happy to see they start to make progress slowly.
Big Wen now can communicate with me in Chinese most of time. Sometimes he mixes Chinese and English, I have to correct him to teach the new Chinese words he doesn’t know.
When we visited China again in 2019, Big Wen had no problems to communicate in Chinese with other Chinese people. Because of his good Chinese speaking, he received a lot of praises from my family in China.
Little Wen was lost when we were in China. He was silent most of time because he didn’t know how to speak in Chinese. My family joked about his poor Chinese.
I believe this China trip motivated Little Wen a lot to learn Chinese. Now he started to speak Chinese more and more. I am very happy for his progress.
If you try to help your children learn Mandarin Chinese but feel discouraged sometimes, you are not alone. I was there. Even now I still have to keep pushing them.
Be patient. Don’t give up easily. As I mentioned in the post “Your Child Doesn’t Want to Learn Mandarin Chinese? Read This“, as a parent, what you can do is planting a seed. One day, this seed will grow at the right timing. Keep the faith.