Terok Chinese Pt 1

I have been trying to let Ace keep up with his Chinese learning here in Dubai. I try to get him to read his chinese textbooks, do chinese homework, read chinese story books but alas, I don't always have the chance to consistently drill him on all these items.. plus.. I still tend to speak english to him and we still prefers to watch ang moh cartoons and shows...

So while I know that his chinese is not too good, I had no idea how bad it was UNTIL I tried to test him the other day by having a game with him.

First, we played the "Name The Item In English" game.. where I will name an item in mandarin and Ace has to name it in English. He didn't do too badly in this but I realize that he is still not quite able to express himself and since he tends to think he english first, I decided to play another game with him... the "Name the item in CHINESE" game...

In this new game, I now name an item in ENGLISH and Ace had to name it in MANDARIN. Boy, it was then I realized that his deng lang is dam terok lor! He couldnt even name simple things like windows and even everyday items like TV or handphone.. he could only name them after thinking for more than 10 seconds!

As a result, I decided to speak to him in Chinese more often and also play this game with him more often.

The other day, we were in the car with Max and started playing this game. Because Ace was starting to get tired of it, Max decided to spice it up by offering to match item for item in hokkien since his hokkien sucks...

The theme I decided upon was COLOURS... And so our test started...

Me: Red
Ace: 红色
Max：Ang sek
Me: Black!
Ace:黑色
Max: Orh Sek
Me: Brown!
Ace: erm... erm... I dunno
Max: erm.. erm... erm... Sai sek!
Me: Like that also can???

But as I also did not know what is brown in hokkien, I let it pass.. and explained to Ace that brown is 褐色..


Me: Orange
Ace: Errr... 我不懂
Max：Errrrr... Oleng!
Me: FAINTZ!

Ace took more than seconds to tell me what is yellow, green and blue... And he totally CMI when it came to gold and silver. Not that Max could name those colours in hokkien as well :) wahahahah...  It dawned on me that my son's chinese is really terok and he is going to have a hard time learning mandarin when we do go back to Singapore....

So I made an effort to speak to Ace more in Mandarin.. and he also very 配合and try his best to speak to me in mandarin whenever possible because I told him language is a matter of practice... I hope our two months back in SGP will also help him catch up a little since he will be exposed to channel 8 programmes and will be forced to speak mandarin to his grandparents... :)

PS: That was posted when I was still in Dubai. Today finally have TIME to post it up... hehehe.. I am happy to say tat after some weeks in Singapore, his response is much faster.. meaning all the chinese programs that he has been watching and all the conversations he is having with his grandparents is helping! :)

Previous Post: Master Of Self Entertainment