Reading Chinese – and indeed the entire idea of memorizing thousands of characters – is often cited to be one of the most intimidating aspect of learning Chinese. However, I have always thought that learning to read Chinese should be easier than learning to read English for a child – there is no logic involved, there are no phonics – and young children can actually be really great at memorization. After all, my 3 year old son has memorized probably dozens of names of dinosaurs.
The experience of Chinese immigrant parents doesn’t really support my hypothesis though. Many ABC kids are able to speak and understand conversational Chinese but struggle to read. I think this comes down to two factors:
- Lack of opportunities to use the skill, i.e. once a week at Chinese school, and
- Difficulty of reading in Chinese compared to reading in English
I see both of these factors in play in my own life. At 5 years old, living in China, I was reading fluently at probably a 5th grade level. Once I came to the US, the amount of time I spent reading Chinese was down to a couple of hours a week due to lack of access to reading materials (we had no Internet back then!) By age 8, I was reading fluently in English and I never read in Chinese for pleasure again. Why struggle through a simple story in Chinese when I could blitz through a novel in English? Struggle isn’t fun.
Since I want to give my kids the best shot at being able to read Chinese when they’re older, I’m trying to address both these points in my strategy:
- Provide plenty of interesting reading material
- Start early, so the struggle to read Chinese and English are about the same.
The last few months, my son has started learning to recognize some letters in daycare. I took this to mean that he is now developmentally able to recognize symbols and ready to start learning some Chinese characters. However, he doesn’t have the patience (or interest) in doing book work, so I started searching for an app, specifically something with the following criteria:
- Designed for toddlers that already speak Chinese
- Focused on learning characters from simple (一, 人, etc.) to complex, rather than starting with “Hello”.
- Includes tracing characters with stroke order
The app I picked was iHuman Chinese (洪恩识字). Here’s what I like so far.
iHuman Chinese App Review so far
- Toddler friendly interface. The animations and characters are engaging without being overstimulating.
- Short, focused, non-gamified learning segments.
- Characters must be written with correct stroke order
- Exposure to native Chinese speaking. This is an app for Chinese parents, so all instructions and narration are in Chinese.
- Every new day starts with a game reviewing what you’ve learned – it’s not optional.
- No penalties for getting things wrong, but the exercise is repeated.
- Reminders to take a break after playing for a certain amount of time, and enforced breaks (parents can allow skip)
- Short stories that include only the already learned characters, as few as 10!
- There is paid content, but it is free to start. We are going slowly so we haven’t hit a paywall yet about 15 characters in. I will update when we do.
We are wary of giving our kids too much screen time, so this is my son’s first phone “game”. For the first week he was still struggling with the mechanics of using a phone, but now he is very comfortable with it. He asks to learn Chinese almost daily, maybe too much. He finds the games fun and not at all frustrating, since there is no penalty for getting anything wrong.
Usually I am sitting next to him while he uses the app, but I try not to interfere except to maybe explain a new game. I do find that when parents are pressuring a kid to learn something, it becomes a lot less fun. Often he is picking the wrong answer on purpose to see the characters’ reaction. I try not to insist that he picks the right answer, though I have to actively stop myself from doing so! I also let him pick which game (character) he wants to play. He regularly goes back to old favorite games instead of picking new characters. After a few weeks, we have maybe seen 15-16 characters total.
So if he’s just playing, is he learning? Definitely. The app does a great job with giving the kids moments where they do have to focus on the character being taught, such as when tracing the character. It’s been a few weeks and there are a handful that he really has learned: 一, 大, 小, and 山. When we are reading, I will ask him to point to where he sees 小 on the page, and he can consistently do it.
That being said, I don’t think any app can be a complete package when it comes to learning. I do plan to introduce book work when he’s a bit older when he already knows some characters so it’s not so intimidating. We will also continue reading our many Chinese picture books at home. It’s just the beginning, but I’m glad to have found a way to make learning to read Chinese fun enough that he is the one initiating it.
Etymology Adventures 