Singapore Expats

Mandarin Tutors

Discuss the various enrichment courses that interests your child. It can be tuition classes to robotics courses.
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clk
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Post by clk » Tue, 24 Mar 2009 11:24 am

can i ask if anyone has experience on when is a good age to start learning Mandarin? I sent my 2year old to Julia Gabriel's mandarin class for a whole term, and she wasn't interested at all! She's always moving around doing her own things and cannot seem to relate to the teacher. I thought it is because Mandarin is a whole new language to her and perhaps I should wait a while more.

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sundaymorningstaple
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Post by sundaymorningstaple » Tue, 24 Mar 2009 1:51 pm

Well, I can't speak for today's hothousing methods as when my children were small Montessori hadn't even arrived on these shores. However, I started using a Shanghai tutor here when my daughter started kindergarten I didn't use a preschool as I figured play was more important at that point.

My daughter had the tutor for 3 years and when she hit primary one she was way ahead of all of her peers. This was a bit funny as she was the only non-Chinese in her class at CHIJ-Toa Payoh. There were not any Mandarin or Dialect speakers in our family at all so her only exposure those years were in Kindergarten and the tutor. I don't suppose it hurt her too much but today? I don't know, but I do feel structured lessons at that age might be a bit much.
SOME PEOPLE TRY TO TURN BACK THEIR ODOMETERS. NOT ME. I WANT PEOPLE TO KNOW WHY I LOOK THIS WAY. I'VE TRAVELED A LONG WAY, AND SOME OF THE ROADS WEREN'T PAVED. ~ Will Rogers

Maria K
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Mandarin schools

Post by Maria K » Mon, 25 May 2009 6:00 am

Hello Carolyn W
I just read your post written in March and wondered how you got on with Mandarin at Berries? I took my son there for a trial - he had just turned 4.5 years. The set up/building was nice - modern and spacious. The staff were also fine. I also found out about Berries on this Expat site. I phoned Berries before arriving to arrange a trial and also told them that our son was bilingual German/English and did NOT speak Mandarin. But he was not afraid of the language because he had had a native Mandarin speaking Au-pair for a year before we came to Singapore. After being rather insistent I was allowed to sit in on the trial for 15 minutes or so. There were two teachers and I found the teachers and method quite fun for the young kids. However, to my surprise there were hardly any expats - I think they were actually all Chinese. What followed after the trial was a slightly tense conversation between the administrator and the leading teacher. The administrator was trying to persuade the teacher to accept our son but the teacher was not happy about doing this because our son did not understand much and so could not take part so much. (they did not realise I understood what they were saying although I am not a Mandarin speaker). Our son was finally offered a place but we did not take it in the end for two reasons. Firstly, it was a bit baffling why they put him in a group where the other children were Chinese and already knew so much when I had told them our son did not speak Mandarin. Secondly, the teacher said to me that I should go through what he had learnt in class at home, "homework" so to speak. This was not possible because I do not read Chinese either. Our son was put in the group appropriate for his age.

Carolyn, I hope you had a better experience with Berries.

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