This is for families who have Chinese learners (K-8) at home. Topics: • Why is learning Chinese beneficial? • What are the barriers in learning Chinese? • What is the best teaching approach? • How to best support your child’s learning? Author: Dr. Wenling Li is a Professor and Program Director of the Ph.D. Program in Educational Leadership at Trident University. Dr. Li holds her Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology in Beijing Normal University and had Post doc in Dept of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Dr. Li was senior research scientist at the Center for the Study of Reading (UIUC) prior to Trident. Her primary research interests are reading, writing and instructional approach in K-12, and school leadership and administration. She has authored five books and numerous articles on dynamic issues in children’s learning and language mastery. She currently serves as an academic consultant to QD Learning.

1. How to Break the Barriers
in Learning Chinese?
Dr. Wenling Li

2. Agenda
• Why is learning Chinese beneficial?
• What are the barriers in learning Chinese ?
• What is the best teaching approach?
• How to best support your child’s learning?

3. Why is learning Chinese beneficial ?
• The economics grows in China
• Globalization
• Neuroscience
• Alphabetic and non-alphabetic language processing

4. What are the Barriers in Learning Chinese ?
Chinese is non-alphabetic language
• English is alphabetic language- Grapheme-Phoneme rule
• Chinese is non-alphabetic language- Grapheme-Morpheme rule
• Chinese character structure
• Single character: 人，日，月
• Combined character: 河，湖，海

5. Chinese Language
• Simplified Chinese: mainland China
春节
• Traditional Chinese: Taiwan, Hong Kong
春節
• Pinyin: onset, final and tone, for example: Nǐ hǎo/ 你好/Hello

6. What is the Best Teaching Approach?

7. What are critical in Chinese Language
learning?
• 1. Morphological Awareness
• Orthographic awareness (structure of Chinese character)
• Morphological awareness (radical awareness)
• 2. Tone Awareness
• Four tone distinguish

8. Culture Introduce the culture background
Shared Reading
Prediction, Shared Reading, Story
retelling
New Words
Learning new characters, words with
games
Group Learning Group Reading, comprehension
Pinyin Learning Pinyin
Morphological
Awareness
Understanding the grapheme-morpheme
rule
Fun Writing Learning how to writing Chinese
Activities
Hands on activities, performance,
conversation

9. How to Best Support Your Child’s Learning?
• Motivate your child
• Let your kid as your teacher
• Retell the story in Chinese
• Use student’s activity book
• Community activities—summer/winter camp
• Visit China

10. Multimedia support in class room
Chinese Songs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnQ6kycjs1k
Chinese Character Story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlVEqA73Kv4