Learning Chinese Mandarin Online For Kids

I can't recommend this quite enough. I started with a normal dictionary. It took me ages to find a chinese character. I had to find a dictionary that had allowed me to search in pinyin. That may be good if you know chinese pinyin. It may also be good for a starter learner but beyond that I think you need a good talking electronic dictionary to supplement your child's learning. In later Chinese learning, your child will need to know the order of strokes in a Chinese character and look for words that way. It took me a long time to search for words by order of strokes or by first checking Chinese radicals followed by the order of strokes.

I persuaded my husband to buy an e-dict or electronic talking bilingual dictionary in Chinese and English and I am very happy with my birthday gift. My children who are 7 and 9 use it daily. It is simple enough for them to use and best of all, it helps in the child's learning because most electronic dictionary shows the order of strokes for chinese character and talking dictionaries help in pronounciation. Get the best that you can afford. I was given a free gift along with my electronic dictionary. It was a similar dictionary to the one my husband bought for me, only it did not support character drawing input (which is very important) and it was smaller and in black and white. We hardly use it as it is not very useful to us.

To recap:
1. Get a bilingual electronic dictionary
2, Get a talking dictionary so your child can learn pronounciation
3. Get the best that you can afford
4. Get a dictionary that supports handwritten character input
5. If it is in colour and with animation, then it is even better to support children's learning

Check out my next module: Chinese Learning for Kids Online Resources. Nciku.com is an online dictionary that allows handwriting input. You can check it out to see how an electronic dictionary feels like. Only, an e-dict is lighter, smaller and more portable. :)

Here are the top 3 things I looked for when buying an electronic dictionary or an e-dict in short. In this case, I am referring to a bilingual English-Chinese-English E-Dictionary.

1. Make sure the dictionary has a handwriting input function. This function is priceless. You can copy and Chinese character. It does not matter even if you get the strokes wrong or your Chinese character looks a bit odd, the dictionary will be able to recognise it if you get it about 70% right.

2. Make sure the dictionary has a "talking" function. Again, this function is very useful for learning pronounciation. Some dictionaries even allow you to repeat after it and record your own voice to see if you have got it right. The kids love this function.

3. Find out what dictionaries are loaded in the electronic dictionary. The electronic dictionary has the space and capability to load dozens of dictionaries in it. Make sure they are good quality ones like Oxford, Brittania, Cambridge, etc. Make sure you have an English to Chinese as well as a Chinese to English Dictionary PLUS standalone dictionaries for English and for Chinese. For Chinese, you will want a Comprehensive Dictionary so you can search for phrases, idioms and proverbs.

It does not matter whether you learned Engish but have to teach your kids Chinese. You can use the same concept and principals of learning a language to teach kids in a different language.

I learned English in school but I now used the same concept for learning English to teach my kids Chinese and Malay too! Basically, when you learn a new language, the concepts and principals behind it are more and less the same with a few unique difference for each new language. You can apply the same concept in learning a new language. They just call it by a different name that is all.

However, it all starts with the same building blocks. Check out my post on how I teach my kids 3 different languages here:Learning Different Languages.

Read! Read! Read! Get your child to read bilingual English Chinese Storybooks for a start. If they have pinyin, even better! You can read them to your child as well. The bilingual explanation really hellps. Don't worry about the pronounciation at first. Work on the word recognition to improve your child's Chinese Vocabulary.

I didn't know any Chinese myself. So I went to the bookstore and selected a few bilingual English Chinese Storybooks. Armed with my simple knowledge of basic Chinese characters and a little knowledge of pinyin, I was able to tell the stories to my children and soon we began to recognise the Chinese characters as well.