Mandarin Curriculum

[Runningmom80]

(Besides Duolingo)

 

My twins are going to school! 🙂/😰

Their school is IB and they do Mandarin once a week. Since it's only weekly, I don't think my kids will have trouble catching up, and I'd like them to study the language more than weekly. I'm not coming up with much in the search results, any recommendations?

Thanks!

[maize]

What age/grade?

[Runningmom80]

16 hours ago, maize said:

What age/grade?

 

8 year old third graders

[chocolate-chip chooky]

I read the title as 'mandolin curriculum' and I was thinking  'hmm, niche' 😄 

[SoCal_Bear]

We've been using Lingobus (Immersion) this year and it's been great. It's the first time EVER in years of doing Chinese where he looks forward to it and doesn't complain about it. His spoken fluency has greatly improved which has been our problem since his written and reading is pretty good. I also have used Better Chinese and Sage Books. However, having a live teacher one on one has really improved his Chinese. If you want to get a couple of free classes, you can use my referral code K9ADVJ https://www.lingobus.com/study. Schedule is very flexible. Teachers are random in the beginning until you start to get one a few times in a row then it shows up in your frequently used teachers. You can see 3 of those and their schedule seperate from the general schedule. Cancel classes up to 24 hours in advance with no penalty.

They do offer sibling classes so you can probably save doing that. They offer a free demo class for you to try. Not sure if you can squeeze in a demo quick enough, but they are running a 50% off class bundles sale for Black Friday. For a solo class it gets the cost down to about $10 if you do the biggest bundle. Sibling classes are a little more.

Edited November 21, 2018 by calbear
added info

[Runningmom80]

Thanks Cal! Tomorrow on my laptop I’ll sign us up for a trial with your link!

 

i would much rather them do live classes, as I’ve seen how well

my oldest has done with HSA these past couple of years.

[SoCal_Bear]

Runningmom80,

I'm hearing that there is currently a flood of new students so the current time availlability of teachers is not reflective of what I've seen of normal availability. Also, time slots will open up when if other families end up having to cancel their slot. If you are on FB, do join the LIngobus (Parents Only) group. It's a good place to get reviews of various teachers.

 

[Runningmom80]

Well, I can tell I typed that response at 2 am! haha!

 

Thank you for understanding that haiku like response. (And thanks for the tip on the FB group.)

Edited November 28, 2018 by Runningmom80

[gracefamilydoc]

A live tutor is best.  However, if that isn't in your price range and your child is alreadyin a class setting, perhaps the app Chinese Skill would be an ok supplement.  I think it is probably better for spoken than written Chinese and I haven't stumbled on any totally inappropriate content (though there may be a unit on "relationships" further on).  Hello Chinese is similar, but there are fewer free lessons with that.  Not ok as a stand alone curric, though definitely better than Duolingo.  If they are advanced, you might also try some of the material from Xuele (Ministry of Education, Singapore), however that is all in Mandarin, even the instructions.  If you want to use it, you may have to understand some minimal amount of Chinese yourself, depending on how much they understand.  I like the videos.  They are kid friendly and good for listening skills.