100% Improvement For Chinese

The last time I updated, Ace scored something like 24.5 out of 100 marks for his Chinese test.

So well, it was a rather bad failure.

Because of that, he sort of lost some confidence and kept telling me that his Chinese is the worst in class.

Just so he is not that stressed, I told him, we must at least aim to improve himself by 100% and score at least 50 out of 100 for his end of the year exam. But of course, our final aim is that he improves so much till he is on par with his classmates. But for this exam, we shall only aim for the passing mark or more.

Today, Ace came home and told me that he scored 24.5 out of 50 for a chinese diagnostic test in school.. which works out to be roughly 49 out of 100.

Wow.. I told him is good try. Cos he improved by 100%.

BUT.. it is still a failing mark and he is only 1 point away from passing... But I told him, it means that the 50 passing mark is a very very possible outcome! He just needs to keep working on his chinese and continue to put in little bit of effort everyday. At this point, he gave me a happy grin and I know he gained a teeny bit more confidence for his Chinese now.

These days, I am trying my best to encourage Ace along because I know screaming at him doesnt work at all. And so I try my best to encourage him and I explain to him that I keep trying to talk to him about exams and the desire to do better because I want to encourage him and help him score better in this coming exam and that we can do it together!

I read the other day that there are two types of children in this world. The type who believe that people do well in things because of their inborn talents. And the other type who believe that all talents can be acquired or learnt. I asked Ace to guess which group of children tend to fare better in tests.

Ace says he doesnt know.. but he knows that he belongs to the first category.

So I explained to Ace that the studies show that children in the latter group tend to do better in their studies in long run. That is because, for children in the first group, because of their limiting belief that people are defined by their natural talents, they will tend to give up easily because if they meet something they are not good in, they will think, "No point working hard since I will never be good in it anyway..."

But children in the latter group will think, "No problem. As long as I learn, I can get better at this!" And so they improve and eventually score better overall.

I asked Ace now that he knows this, which group does he want to belong to?

He says he prefers to adopt the second thinking. And I told him because he already believed the first thinking for some time, it will take a constant awareness and willingness to think differently for him to  change this mindset and attitude since many of our thoughts are also "habits".

I reminded him that he is good today in Science and English.. not because he is merely "talented" in it. He did not used to be good in science, he got better because he got interested and read more about it and put in more effort for it.

I certainly hope to see that he can score a 70 or more in the near future for his Chinese. Ganbate ne, Ace!

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