Let’s get this out of the way first. I don’t speak Chinese. I don’t read it. And I don’t write it. But still I help my son, Jay, with his Chinese homework. How? We’ll get to that in a minute.
But first some background. Here in Singapore it’s compulsory for children to study their Mother Tongue, which is based on what the Father speaks (don’t ask me, I didn’t write the rules). So even though my wife, SO, is Chinese, we could’ve chosen a different language for Jay to study as his mother tongue since I’m just a white guy who has English as my native language.
The three languages available (if my brain isn’t failing me again) are Chinese (Mandarin), Malay, and Tamil. English is the main language for teaching so that’s not an option. As foreigners we could’ve applied for none (an exemption) or chosen another language altogether, but he would’ve had to study that outside of school, and the chances of approval are supposedly very low.
Since SO is ethnically Chinese (she’s Indonesian by nationality) we decided to choose Chinese. The thing is, her Chinese isn’t that good. Oh, she can speak Mandarin and Hokkien well enough to get by and have conversations in. But her reading and writing aren’t that good.
And, as for me? I know maybe somewhere between 10 and 20 words. Mostly family related, such as addressing brothers or sisters as “ke” or “jie”.
So how do we manage his Chinese education? First line of attack are extra Saturday classes, where he gets an extra 3 hours of lessons at a private tuition centre where they follow the school’s curriculum and reinforce what he learns during the week at school. Which works really well, but leaves the problem of his day to day homework. He can’t leave that till the weekend and ask his tutor for help.
So what do we do? Most of the time my wife helps with the Chinese homework, whilst I take the English, cause I is a good English talker, and she is fluent enough in Chinese. Which works most of the time.
Unfortunately, we sometimes end up having weeks like this last week, where my wife has had late meetings/functions to attend, and couldn’t be home to do the homework with Jay. So, after a period of panicking and trying to hide from him, it’s up to me to try and help him with his homework. Fortunately, he’s doing well enough that he can do most of it with me only encouraging him, and keeping him focused.
He does have weekly spelling tests though (for both English and Chinese, but the English is simple and doesn’t need commenting on (so why did I just comment on it?)), and to help him I need to read the words out for him so he can practice writing them. Fortunately the spelling lists mostly come with the pinyin version of the character. And when they don’t, we’ve found that Google Translate works really well. The problem though is that my pronunciation isn’t the best (in fact it’s terrible), and so, Jay has to go through the words with me before I start reading them to him. Otherwise he has no idea what I’m saying, although when I do get one right the first time he will give me a high five, which happens only once or twice for every list of ten words, but it’s nice to get a reward every now and then. So far, this is working well. And to be honest, I think it actually helps him by reviewing the words in a way that doesn’t seem like it’s him learning, rather it’s him teaching me, so he enjoys it and feels like he’s the smart one (okay, maybe he is the smart one).
Overall, his Chinese is going pretty well, and after his first year he was placed in the top 30% of his year. And considering a lot of those students he beat are native Chinese speakers, I think he’s doing fairly well. I won’t take any credit for it though, he is very smart and has a great memory, so whatever I do to help is only minimal. But I do have to say I’m very proud of him and all he’s accomplished, and maybe, just maybe, what little I do, is enough to help him in some small way.
