How we teach & how your child learns Mandarin with us

Mandarin Chinese (Huáyǔ 华语/華語, Guóyǔ 國語, Pǔtōnghuà 普通话) has traditionally been taught in an academic style due to cultural or societal expectations and norms, but this does not suit every child or every family. Ni Hao Children’s Community can offer your child something different to the academic style!

We also do not use class time to work on art & craft activities or colouring-in pages – unless we are specifically teaching art and craft vocabulary. Class time is precious and time is better spent on talking, active learning and social interactions, rather than a child quietly colouring in a cartoon picture.

Our teachers

Being able to teach a language well to children takes much more than just knowing how to speak a language. Most importantly, the teachers must have a passion for teaching children and enjoy being around them! Our teachers have teaching qualifications, or are currently undertaking a qualification, and also relevant teaching experience.

All teachers have undergone police vetting and have a NZ first aid qualification. For classes that are held on site at schools, police vetting results of the teacher are required to be confidentially shared with the school for their records.

Getting feedback about your child’s learning

Please feel free to contact your child’s teacher during term time. Please ask questions and provide feedback to the teachers during the term itself, so that we can address things promptly. We’re happy to chat about your child’s progress, listen to feedback and consider what adjustments can be practically made for the classes and programme.

You can catch up with Qiubo and Lizzie before or after classes, or contact Lizzie during the week as Qiubo is on limited hours (busy attending university during the weekdays).

You can also contact Li Ling directly by phone or via email. She’s also usually around at classes on fortnightly Saturdays. Please note that she is helping with this in her after hours, so there will usually be delay in responding.

Our guidelines for planning and evaluating lessons

Practical

What we learn has to be useful in everyday life. We focus on teaching common, high frequency vocabulary and grammar structures – not something you’ll never use again in a normal conversation.

Fun

Our lessons are song and games-based, active, using real items and materials familiar to the children, hands on, and stimulate the senses. We’re also inspired by the Montessori philosophy – learning by doing (and exploring), finding joy in learning and self-discovery 🙂

Relevant to age/stage

What do the children like at that age/stage? We also include pop culture e.g. popular songs, dance, a “coolness” factor.

Involvement

Everyone is part of the class, and has something relevant to do. We don’t want you to just be waiting around.

Teachers are ready to get right into it with the children

Our teachers are expected to perform for the children, be close in, at the children’s eye levels, engaging, and maintain eye contact as much as possible (we don’t want teachers’ backs turned to the children). Our teachers are prepared to have fun and not worried about feeling silly around the children 😉

Opportunity for the child to speak

The children are able to attempt to speak, practise the language, ask questions or make comments. It is a two-way class, not a one way from teacher-to-child.

Focus

Children participate meaningfully and while the class can be a little crazy fun, it will not be overhyped to the point where the learning opportunity becomes lost.

Full Immersion

For many children and families, this will be the main time of the week where they are hearing Mandarin, so it is best for everyone’s learning to spend the class time fully immersed in Mandarin. The teachers will be talking in Mandarin only, and strongly encouraging children to do so as well (subject to learning levels etc too of course!).

Easy to explain and understand

With our full immersion style of classes, our teachers’ body language, eye contact, facial expressions and showing by doing are vital for foreign language learners. Our teachers will not be rattling off instructions . A good test is if the (non-fluent) Community Manager looks clueless listening to them speak, they need to rethink how they communicate 🙂

No material rewards

No stickers or sweets or other material rewards are given because we seek to celebrate the children’s language growth and achievements by verbal acknowledgement. This keeps the focus on learning the language for the sake of the class and learning process, not for the sticker or sweet at the end of it.

Written Chinese characters are correctly taught

We teach the written characters using the correct order of strokes, not by drawing pictures or making them look like something they shouldn’t be.

Acknowledging that Chinese culture means different things to different people

It’s easy to generalise “Chinese” as it’s such a broad term, but being Chinese means many different things to different people. There are similarities AND differences in Chinese culture, traditions & language between Chinese people from China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, Cambodia, Indonesia, Hong Kong, America, 1st/2nd+ generation New Zealanders with Chinese heritage, etc. We wish to acknowledge and appreciate all of these similarities and differences, and help children and families gain a wider Asia awareness.