Choose Right Chinese Learning Materials for Children

Before purchasing, we recommend you read the following general guidelines first to avoid waste your time and money.

1. Good Chinese materials, whether books or videos, should be designed according to children’s familiar and interested topics and be better if they are funny story-centered.

2. We strongly recommend those lessons based on conversational situation, which introduces your kids to a real life communication. Those materials can help children to build the confidence to communicate with others in Chinese.

3. Sound supporting materials, such as CD, videos or tapes attached with the text-book help your children learn the correct pronunciation effectively.

Serious Learning Courses

If you are seriously teaching your children Chinese language, you may consider a comprehensive set of learning material. Besides above general criteria, a good serial material should adopt the spiral approach and review. For example, new Chinese characters or words are introduced in a learned sentence pattern and new sentence pattern are introduced with learned words. This way, it is easier for children to keep all in mind and build a strong Chinese language foundation. Since children’s Chinese is a relative niche area, there are not many choices for you.

My First Chinese Words by Better Chinese is top one. This set of 36 books and audio CD is specially designed for young children of non-native Chinese families or those living in non-Chinese speaking communities. This primary set contains all the most basic, beginning Chinese characters and sentence patterns, which were chosen and compiled by highly experienced Chinese teachers at the International School of Beijing. Both simplified Chinese character and traditional Chinese character versions are available.

Chinese For Children by Liu Xun is another popular one. This set includes three books and three tapes. The books are colorful and well illustrated. After complete the whole material, your kids may grasp the pronunciation system of mandarin Chinese, basic Chinese characters and simple sentence patterns.

Casual Learning Books

If your kids are younger than eight or you only want them have a taste of Chinese language, some casual books are more suitable. Huy Voun Lee’s serial Chinese character learning books is a good choice. This serial contains In the Snow, At the Beach, In the Leaves, 1, 2, 3, Go!. Each book will teach you about ten selected Chinese characters through a themed interesting story.

DVD and CD

It is the best way for children to learn Chinese. The audio product is a perfect combination of pictures and sounds. Some materials teach simple Chinese through songs. Songs always bring kids happiness. Simple words in the song will be easily absorbed and children will start to sing with it soon. They are, however, not for all. No songs will be loved by every kid, especially those older. Another challenge is sometimes Chinese words are not that clear with the accompanying music. The popular serials in this category include Learn Chinese with Billy and Benboo by Ana Leung, Follow Jade! Learn Chinese: Let's Go To Market in China, Follow Jade! Learn Chinese: Let's Visit Chinese Kindergarten, and Play and Learn Chinese with Mei Mei.