Brief Experience on Parent-child Interaction in Chinese Teaching Activities

Fei Wang

With the rising status of China in the world pattern, Chinese is playing a more and more important role in the cultural messenging, and learning Chinese reaches a new high. Thus all kinds of Chinese teaching methods have become a popular topic among oversea Chinese education researchers. How to promote the Chinese culture which has thounsands year history in other countries is a brand new topic. A long last question that every Chinese language school facing is that how to make local American kids become interested in learning Chinese so that they would stay. This has become the bottle neck of Chinese education. Starting from fall, 2009, KKCS established a class for American kids and their parents. I was very lucky to be selected as the teacher of this class. I gave it a interesting name, "Family General Mobilization for Learning Chinese." This is a new trial for me in teaching American kids Chinese. This success is also a breaking point for combining traditional Chinese culture and modern western civilization. "Family General Mobilization for Learning Chinese," as stated in the name, parents and kids study Chinese together in the same classroom, so that they could learn Chinese through parent-child interactive activities. This way, kids from American family could also review Chinese after class with their parents. It also meets the needs of the parents who are long to learn Chinese. This class can help kids from American family to master Chinese easily.

Looking back to the teaching in this period, I have following feelings and thoughts about how to pay attention to students' individual characteristics, their different family background, how to explore the educational reforms to make the teaching more similar to real life so that the kids can master Chinese easily and apply them to their daily life:

1. Keep the characteristics of Chinese traditional culture; teach the students Chinese culture to fit them into Chinese learning background.

Many oversea Chinese teachers crave in western teaching method, ie. teaching with fun, letting the kids learn through games. However, "Family General Mobilization for Learning Chinese" carries out exactly the opposite method. It utilizes the traditional Chinese educational method which focuses on education. This introduces western kids and their families the strict discipline and rigorousness of a traditional Chinese classroom. Due to the open thinking mode of western families, it is especially important to catch the attention of the parents and kids in the class. Rigorous class discipline plays an important role in controlling the sloppy studying habits. It makes the kids and parents realize that learning Chinese is important and meaningful. So the kids will have a stronger will to learn Chinese, which will help to reach our teaching goals.

2. According to the text in the book, help the kids to aplly Chinese language and culture to their daily life.

I tried to finish the content on the textbook; at the same time, let Chinese go into real life. I gave Chinese names to each kid, and asked them to use Chinese to make daily conversations in class. I also asked parents to talk to their kids in Chinese whenever possible in their daily life. This helps to motivate the kids to learn Chinese, and make this difficult and strange language vivid to them.

3. Parent-child interation makes the classroom more spirited.

When American kids come to a Chinese class for the first time, they always wish that their parents could stay with them. I fully utilized this characteristic of parent-child interation; let parents join the class, and asked them to find out who can study faster and better to make the class more interesting. Also, under the guidance of the parents, even the most active kids could calm down. They wanted to compete with their parents and see who can learn better, too.

After some time, some kids seemed to prefer their parents not to join the class anymore, because they were confident that they could be the teacher of their parents when they went back home. Of course, the parents still come to the class with much interest, and they were very grateful that KKCS offered such a free Chinese language and culture learning opportunity. Through parent-child interactive activities, they had a better family relationship while learning new knowledge and growing up with their kids. This semester is going to end soon, some of the parents enrolled their kids to our summer program, continuing their Chinese study. Others are looking forward to the fall semester. All the kids are going to stay for the fall semester, moreover, some of them are bringing their friends to KKCS, too. This is really interesting, and make me feel fulfilled.

Chinese has a saying, "Ten year to establish a tree, hundred years to establish a person," I truly hope that traditional Chinese culture will make parent-child interaction more fun. I hope the Chinese education at KKCS,  a Chinese School with such a long history, will grow better and better, and our "Family General Mobilization for Learning Chinese" will become a brillient scenery line.