Need a new Mandarin curriculum for ds who has finished Boya Chinese 1

[lewelma]

My ds has been studying Mandarin with a tutor for just over a year. For the past 9 months he has been working through Boya Chinese book 1. Although he has liked Boya because of the clean, simple, mature look, he might be interested in switching books because Boya is about University students and their lives. I assume that switching texts will be difficult because the 600 words that he has learned in Boya will not be the same as if he had worked through another program. In addition, his tutors have not focused on writing, so he can only write about 20 characters from memory, and those he learned in the past 2 weeks.

 

So what program should he switch to? And at what level should he enter? I was thinking of a first or second-year high school program. He has looked at Better Chinese "Discovering" book 1 and disliked the cartoons and felt insulted because he already knew all the vocabulary.

 

I have also talked to him about another alternative. He is very concerned that he will have to start at the beginning with a different program, which he thinks would be boring. He likes Boya enough that he is happy to do Boya book 2 and augment it with 1) graded readers and 2) a writing-specific program. Does anyone have any suggestions for this option?

 

Thanks!

 

Ruth in NZ

Edited May 19, 2012 by lewelma

[JadeOrchidSong]

You could also try Integrated Chinese, which is widely used in American high schools and colleges. You can chech it out on Amazon. It has been around for a while and there are good materials to go along with the main textbook. Just an idea.

[HejKatt]

Hi aomom, Ruth also cross-posted it on the Advanced Learner board.

https://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=381886

 

In that thread, she explained a couple more factors about her son's rate of learning, and the conclusion was that he could continue with Boya 2.

 

Thanks for the knowledgeable recommendation, I think you could start a thread on Chinese curricula you have seen or evaluated and it would be very popular. :001_smile:

[JadeOrchidSong]

Yeewah, I left several posts under that thread:001_smile: including info about Ma Liping Chinese and Singapre Chinese.

When my state public schools started incorporating Chinese as a FL, I was on the committee of reviewing Chinese curricula as well as writing up the teaching standards. Now many k-12 schools have CFL and my state has one of the top numbers of Chinese immersion schools, several of which use Singapore Chinese.

Yeewah, I am indebted to you for your kindness for Singapore Chinese! You have inspired me to be generous and kind to people around me.

J