I grew up in Taiwan, and my husband is from South Korea. We have been living in Australia for over ten years now, and our children were born and raised here. Looking back, I realize that I didn’t fully understand the importance of early language input at the time, which led to insufficient exposure for our eldest son (Note 1). As the primary Chinese speaker at home, I was the one who talked to him the most, while my husband (a Korean speaker) spoke to him less often. His progress in Chinese was very slow, and his Korean, unsurprisingly, lagged even further behind. I remember that he could only say a few words by the age of two, and it wasn’t until he turned four that I could truly understand what he was trying to express. At that time, both my husband and I were busy with work, and we had no family nearby to support us. We didn’t know about the importance of reading to our children, and we didn’t even own a single Chinese book. Although we engaged in many fun activities and traveled a lot as a family, for some reason, reading to him never crossed my mind. Because of this, I had no idea that I should have started teaching him to read early (Note 2).

Maybe it’s because my husband and I are both very conservative and traditional people to a certain extent? We have always believed that it is very important to retain our mother tongue, so we insist on only having Chinese + Korean input at home. My eldest son didn’t start learning English until he went to school when he was four and a half years old. Before that, his English environment was going to playgroup every week and when he was outside. He has a very cheerful personality. Although he doesn't speak much English, he goes to school every day to chat with his classmates.

The first year of preschool only goes to school 2 days a week and 3 days every other week. In fact, I have not felt that his English progress will pose a threat to his future learning of Chinese reading. In the second year of preschool, he went to school five days a week. Suddenly I discovered that his Chinese brain had switched to English brain. When he was playing by himself, he used to speak all Chinese, but now he started talking to himself in English, and even started to reply to me. All in English. This year I have really worked hard to encourage him to learn Chinese in various ways. Fortunately, I persisted and encouraged him in a way that he didn't resist. Now the two of us maintain a relationship where "speaking Chinese is natural and should be done." If I speak English to him, he will look at me like "Why are you talking to me in English?" But at this stage, we still haven’t read together, and we don’t know that it’s already dangerous and we need to learn literacy skills as soon as possible! (I really want to go back in time and wake myself up with a pot, haha!)

(At the beginning, I used Lele in the wrong way to teach my eldest son, and his expression was obviously unhappy)

Around this time, I started a weekly Chinese gathering with a group of Chinese mothers. Each week, one of us would take turns teaching the children Chinese, focusing on 5–6 words, telling a story, and singing a song. We didn’t use any special teaching materials, just simplified Chinese characters. The class lasted about 40 minutes. Afterward, the kids would run around on the grass, have a picnic, and enjoy some snacks while we mothers chatted and watched them burn off their energy. When the children played together, they would speak entirely in English. No matter how much we reminded them to use Chinese, they could only manage one sentence before switching back to English. At the time, I felt frustrated but didn’t realize how natural this process was. After a few months, as everyone’s priorities shifted, the number of participants in the group dwindled, and eventually, the Chinese class came to an end. Not long after that, my focus on Chinese and literacy faded as I became busy preparing for the arrival of my third child. For more than half a year, Chinese learning took a back seat in our lives.

Looking back now, it feels like I’ve been stumbling my way through this journey. Like every family, I simply want to find the best approach that works for us. Whenever I come across a good idea, I’m eager to try it. Unfortunately, I’ve realized that much of the time, I was approaching things from an “adult” perspective. Slowly, I’ve learned the importance of viewing things through a “child’s” lens. Once I started doing that, everything began to feel smoother and more natural.

When my eldest son was over six years old, our daughter was two, and our third child was about to be born, I discovered BETTY’s CHALK ACADEMY website. I was amazed! Watching BETTY use so many simple and engaging methods to help her children improve their Chinese skills was truly inspiring. It was even more relatable because her family also spoke Korean, which made me feel an instant connection. With renewed determination, I embarked on the journey of literacy again with my eldest son.

Watching BETTY’s sharing, I gradually noticed more and more overseas families adopting similar methods and working together to support their children’s language learning.

But it actually didn’t go well at the beginning. I think I had too many deep-rooted thoughts, which caused my eldest son to have a bad connection with learning Chinese.

This was the method I learned as a child. Every day after school, my homework involved writing countless repetitive Chinese characters, often so many that I couldn’t finish them. I assumed that if my children practiced writing repeatedly, they would naturally memorize the characters. However, at the time, my son couldn’t even write English letters properly, and his drawings were still just straight lines. Forcing him to write Chinese characters this way only planted the seeds for his dislike of writing them.

It’s not enough when children lack their own motivation to speak and learn the language! I always told them that they needed to learn Mandarin because I’m Taiwanese and our family in Taiwan speaks it. However, my child couldn’t grasp the deeper meaning behind this. Over time, he just grew annoyed, feeling that it didn’t matter to him—he only wanted to play.

Literacy books or textbooks are usually organized one lesson at a time. We are all accustomed to starting from the first lesson, but it may not be relevant to the day's life.

In fact, it seems that we should start with writing, so I think words should be taught one by one. Only after you have learned a few hundred words can you read story books.

This method is really painful, and my son will run away as soon as he sees me taking out a bunch of cards, leaving only the sad and dumbfounded mother behind.

When I was a child, I went to school and the class was only one hour per class, so I felt that when it was time to study, I had to do it for one hour at a time, otherwise it would not be effective.

What should I do? He will run away now when he sees that I am coming to "accompany" him. I can't force him and make him cry and learn, right?

In short, I was confused for a while, and I tried many methods but still couldn't arouse my interest.

And I didn’t know that these unreasonable expectations for children were actually slowly destroying our parent-child relationship.

Until Lele Book came to our home, it was really the beginning of a transformation.

At this time, my brother was 6 and a half years old, and my sister was 2 and a half years old. They read together with books every day, and they were so happy reading.

This kind of picture is what I have been looking forward to for a long time, but I never knew how to do it!

Through this, I got to know the author, Teacher Yao, and gradually learned a lot about children's literacy methods from Teacher Yao.

Summarize the following key points:

Teaching children to read can start from a very young age. Writing requires many other abilities. You should seize the time to learn to read as early as possible. It will be easier to learn to write after you can read.

According to the children's preferences, help them make connections and find their own reasons for learning Chinese.

Our eldest son is very interested in the cultural relics of the Forbidden City. He also learned that if he can read and understand more relevant information, he can acquire more knowledge he wants to know. This is why he is willing to spend time to increase his knowledge. amount of literacy.

When preparing literacy materials, they need to be related to what is happening at the moment, so that there will be a strong connection and be interesting to the children.

For example, when cooking together, you can simply write out the steps. In the process of repeated reading, a connection will be made. In this way, the child will feel that it is related to me, and he will naturally learn well.

A Chinese character sometimes has many sounds and different meanings. It is a very arduous process to learn each "character" and then read it. But take advantage of the stage when children like to reread, and reread a large number of sentences that are meaningful to the child. It may seem that they are memorizing them at first. Repeating this process, even if they memorize many sentences, will also increase the number of them and the word. of contact.

Spread the learning out, 2 minutes at a time for

So within 10 minutes at a time, do it several times a day, and do it every day is the key.

To be honest, it is not really useful for me to implement and understand these key points as soon as Teacher Yao told me about them.

During this period, I kept having doubts, changing my approach, or asking Teacher Yao for help.

So I am really grateful to Teacher Yao for his tireless support along the way.

Ha, believe me, I will see that you here are definitely not alone. Self-doubt is a normal process.

But believe in yourself, believe in your children, believe that this method is feasible, and persisting is the only way!

Looking back at this journey of children’s literacy, although it is still in progress~

There are a few more key points that I’ve only recently realized:

Although adults know more than children, they may not necessarily know the best way to teach children.

First understand that we are not teachers, so we do not teach. We are people who accompany children to learn and provide assistance.

Let them develop the habit of studying on their own, using a reading pen or any device that can provide a sound source, in conjunction with books.

I believe that the best way to give children confidence is to give them opportunities to show off, or even give them the opportunity to teach others what they know. Encourage children to share what they have learned, either through video recording, online meetings, or sharing with classmates in playgroups or school classes. Because you need to prepare before sharing, you have the opportunity to practice. You can practice it on stage once. After the performance, you can chat to see how to do better next time. By doing these things repeatedly, children will become more confident and love learning Chinese even more.

Not long ago, my eldest son couldn't even read Lele's Red Book well. He was almost eight years old at that time. I felt like I was as anxious as an ant on a hot pot. I was really afraid that I would miss him. Opportunities to learn literacy. I am very grateful to have met some Lele families. We started Lele’s online reading together. He saw that many four-year-old children could read the Green Book very well. So I spent time every day reading with Lele Pen. When I read together online, I gained a lot of confidence because of my little progress. Read the yellow and green books soon.

I used to think that children can read only when they learn one word at a time. I once wanted to know how many words and what words they knew, and I wanted to record them. But I found that this was an infinite frustration for me and my eldest son!

Because using this method, he often still can't remember words that he has reviewed thousands of times.

I once wondered whether he was less intelligent? But I didn't know that I didn't understand the method of language learning.

After using the method of reading and literacy, we don’t look at what words he can read and what words he can’t. We use that time to read more books he wants to read and establish a relationship to let him know the words he can’t pronounce. I know how to make it up, otherwise I can read it with a reading pen or listen to it with a CD. As he continues to read, his brain will slowly decode these Chinese characters. So if you ask me what words he knows and how many words he knows, I really can't answer. But he can understand the books he wants to read and enjoys reading, and that's enough!

After the yellow book and the green book ended, we found a lot of simple picture books at home. At that time, our eldest son was obsessed with Zorro and Pleasant Goat. In addition to reading time with me, he spent a lot of time reading Zorro and Pleasant Goat every day. Luo Li (Tuduo's Bridge book) and Pleasant Goat (comics). I think these two sets of books helped him decode a lot of words, and it was also his literacy that snowballed after reading the yellow and green books. Therefore, it is really important to help children find suitable reading materials at the right stage (not based on age).

Most of the books in our home are from Taiwan, so many of them have phonetic notation. When I searched for most clubs and methods of teaching literacy and reading, I found that almost 99% of them discussed teaching and practicing phonetic notation to children, so that children can read independently as soon as possible.

In fact, it is not difficult to learn the 37 symbols of phonetic notation. The difficulty is to match them together, which requires a lot of practice. Secondly, if a child is used to seeing words with phonetic notation, his eyes will naturally be attracted to look at the phonetic notation. Of course, if you read too much, your literacy will gradually increase, but it actually takes a lot more time. If you don't know how to do it at all, you won't have this trouble. This is the main reason why my eldest son can make progress like a snowball all of a sudden. Because I don’t know phonetic notation, I won’t rely on phonetic notation, and I don’t have to spend time learning phonetic notation. It saves me the trouble of not having to look for books without phonetic notation for him to read.

Note 1 - Sufficient language input - let the child listen more, and he must be able to listen more before he can speak. In addition to listening to CDs and stories, in daily life, if parents can tell more details of life to their children, they can provide enough language input. Multilingual children will have language delays compared to ordinary children due to insufficient language input in a single language. Therefore, if parents can do it, they should explain the details several times in each language.

Note 2-Using reading literacy and direct literacy methods, the fastest age for children to learn is 2-5 years old. Children also like to read certain books "repeatedly", which makes the mother go crazy by repeating them 100 times. stage. When children enter the next stage and want to read a variety of books, the chances of repeating words are low, and it will be difficult. Therefore, the ideal situation is to allow children to develop the ability to read independently in the "love to read and repeat stage", so that when they enter the next stage, they can read a variety of books on their own. (PS: Even though my children can read independently now, we still do parent-child reading every day. We read together, whether I read, they read, and we read together. This is a special time for us to enhance our parent-child relationship, just like saying "I" every day. Loving you is as important as hugging you)