On Spelling and 听写

I don't do such tests with my 5 y.o. at home and he doesn't get them in his kindergarten this year either. I think they are useless exercises unless a child appreciates the usage of the words and can form proper sentences with them. 

With the English language, instead of the repetitive copy writing of the same word (the very old-fashioned way that I grew up with) or spelling tests, I prefer to focus on reading and exposure to words through the trans-disciplinary thematic learning approach and lapbooking.

Once the child has been exposed to the words enough, he will naturally be able to spell. M is already writing a fair bit daily, as he spins stories to accompany his drawings. Once or twice a week, he writes with me as part of our lapbooking activities.

I do the same with the Chinese language. Guided by the approach of '听说读写', I focus on the listening, articulating and speaking, followed by reading and word recognition. The writing segment isn't as important at this point. There is plenty of time to practise writing next year.

In addition to word recognition, we work on 造句 －forming sentences with a set of given words. 

My 5 y.o. is learning to express a lot more now with his growing Chinese vocabulary and gaining understanding in forming proper sentences. 

This approach has worked pretty well so far. I just need to increase our time spent on this. 

A quick chat with his Chinese teacher last week about his progress and I am happy enough for now. In this kindy, there are many new entrants at K1 level, like him, who come from predominantly English-speaking families. His teacher said his Chinese standard is among the best in this group. But there are some weaknesses, which I have also noticed. So those areas will be the focus in the next few months.