Primary 5 new Chinese textbook 2019 preview 欢乐伙伴

In 2019, New primary 5 Chinese textbooks are in now. (No 5B textbook yet, most properly will be available in Jun 2019)

Whats the Different between the new Chinese textbook and the old ones?

1) New Chinese Textbook are more systematic in its approach to skill acquisition.

You will see some sections are on conversation, some on composition (you start sentence making in Primary 3, then paragraphs (like diary writing etc) in Primary 4 and now Primary 5 is focus on composition structure and writing methods.)  There is a section  with video and you describe the video (4 pictures) with a sharing of the events that happened in the video. Regarding comprehension skills, the new textbook tried to explain a storyline using Data structure, its nice.

2) New textbook have a different background color for special sentence structure like how I highlight good sentences, and only some more advanced words have Hanyu Pinyin.

3) New Chinese Textbook 5A has only one less chapter than the Higher Chinese Textbook. This is quite different from the 3-4 more chapters in the Old Higher Chinese Textbook.
(* Chapter 5 in Higher Chinese Textbook is not in the Chinese Textbook.)

The New Textbook is more lively as it has letters, poems, interesting articles about whales (like learning how to say big numbers in perspective.)
                                           
As usual, this is the MOE reading and studying site which can take your children into a new world of Chinese Study.
MOE XueLe website

MOE Approved Mother Tongue E-Dictionary List
2019 approved E-dictionary
1) Besta All Pass 2 or 3
2) HansVision PX2131
3) ZZ.New-A+
4) HansVision PX2201
5) HansVision PX2181

So Thank you for Reading

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大前研一谈两个儿子及教育的理念。

Get your child ready for PSLE Chinese 2019 now!

The 3 things to do to get the A you deserve in your PSLE Chinese.

PSLE is a milestone for your child to achieve something and they deserve better scores, don't they?

Well, results are the things you see when your child has put in effort to do something everyday to get it.......and mindset is the key to getting those results. So :

Result<----------daily effort="" mindset="" p="">
1) In order to get the A your child deserve, they must first Setup their mindset correctly, setup their values correctly.

Objective, step by step, daily work, hardworking, focus on work first then play.......these are the needed value and views for a successful student and CEO (in their future).

2) Then you need to analyse the tasks, prioritise them and break them down to daily tasks. This job may not be easy as you need to know the examination format inside out.

3) The child need to make sure they do their task daily and focused. To study, one needs to understand and repeat. "Boring" or "busy" are not words for successful people.

To supervise your child is very hard but necessary, but to take step 2 would need someone who really knows the examination requirements.

I have written "Just practice for PSLE" (2nd Edition) and have dig into the syllable by SEAB to complete this task. I have guided children since 2017 in PSLE and have extensive knowledge in this subject. I have a facebook group which set out to help parents:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/SGPSLEChineseSupport/

One child this year is very active and tends to talk about every topic unrelated to Chinese. He scored 60-70 in SA1 which is quite good but his parents thinks he can do better as he had scored high 80s for all his other subjects. When I take him up for lessons, I did a goal setting session to help him understand what is his current situation and find out his ambitions. So I plotted a path for him to do and mapped his study, I even point out to him what is the best way to study Chinese and What to focus his attention on.

The child quickly saw the need to score in Chinese and got to know how to best study for it. He worked hard and recently got 80+ overall for his Chinese prelims. that's a jump of 1 grade and his parents are very pleased.

Every child is different but I want to work with parents who are determined to let their child be successful in PSLE Chinese, and children who wants to get the best score they can in PSLE Chinese and invests in their future.

and lets get money out of the way......so that I can help you child score higher.

I charge $500 for 2 hours consultation prepaid. This is where I will talk to your child, determine their objective and their level of commitment. Their passion and their vision, their future. I will guide them so they can see their vision. I will clear their mental negativity as needed so they don't fall under negative environment. I will help them map out the path to success from now to 2019 PSLE (by the way its less than 12 months now).



Thank you for reading

Copyrighted by Tan Liep Ming (c) Oct 2018-2023.

Habits will make or break you, so create good habits and foster good value to win your life

six science based study methods for studying examinations

What Not to bring to Trips!!!!!

This is First week of June Holidays, most of us should be either in a holiday or planning some holiday trips.

So I will just go on with What Not to bring to Trips:

1) Homework: this is very obvious but most miss the point. If you are going for a trip, why would you bring your homework? to study overseas! I think you can bring a book but bringing homework for holiday is like you bring work home to work on it and later found that home is really not a productive place and you end up bring work to work again on Monday.

2) Study materials: as point 1 mentioned, you are on a trip, take the break and enjoy the trip, those material will be just a burden. At most just bring a book to enjoy.

PS, Oh you can enjoy your homework overseas with SLS(Singapore Learning Space for all schools), ezhishi or some on-line portal with your hand phone so no reason to bring work to play!

So have you enjoyed the post.

some online works that you can bring to trips......just joking!

Student Learning Space (SLS)

https://vle.learning.moe.edu.sg/login

MC online

https://www.mconline.sg/LEAD/login/lms_login.aspx

Ezhishi

https://www.ezhishi.net/Contents/index.html

wawayaya

http://www.wawayaya.net

Xuele (textbook all in one)

https://xuele.moe.edu.sg/xuele/MOE_web/main.html

google classroom

classroom.google.com

dudu town

https://go.dudu.town/cos/o.x?c=/ca4_dd/user&func=login

Eoracye

https://oracyeland.moe.edu.sg/eland/slot/u212/index.html

Iflashbook

http://game.iflashbook.com/

AsknLearn

https://lms.asknlearn.com/LMS/Login_main.aspx

The 3 steps to scoring in PSLE Chinese?

The 3 steps to scoring in PSLE Chinese?

1) Do something Chinese everyday!

Study 3 words, know their word formation, its hanyu pinyin, its word pair (aka 配词), and how to use them in sentences via 造句. This helps in the overall word recognition and builds vocabulary necessary for all papers. best if you read the words 7 times and write them 7 times. 7 is the magic number to remember things and repeat it enough times for long term memory.

2) Read a good paragraph everyday and try to memorize them. Reading is not a good way to study, memorizing and dictation is better. But memorizing and applying them in compo is even better! Application of knowledge can help make boring things interesting.

(hint: write a paragraph everyday.)

3) read aloud the textbook passages everyday, this exercise builds a sense of language which is lacking in most students.

So good day for all and hope you learn something - do something Chinese Everyday will help you improve your grades.....REALLY!

From Posts in my Facebook Group

How to make chinese lessons interesting? For those who don’t like chinese.

1) Words wise, play with the parts(偏旁) and the sides(部首). You can create new meanings with them, string them in a short story and make sure the story is funny. The traditional ones is the
一个日本人，拿着一把刀，站在大门口，砍了四个人。It is the word zhao 照 which means shining. I could create something like there is a Sun (日) which shore lights rays like (刀)on the mouth (口) and the mouth dropped 4 saliva (四个点). Visual stories tend to be remembered better than non logical ones.

2) Let them play with Chinese words and phrases. Play creates good memories and enhances learning. using parts and sides, let pupils go into text book and find as many words based on parts or sides. let them compete for best finders' award. (good for primary schools) find word pairs, find cheng yu that started with certain words etc, make sure the process is fun.

3) Do with a time limit
Pupils loved a challenge and certainly loved timed challenges. I tried "find a word in dictionary in 12 seconds", "Read a paragraph in 2 minutes" or "read all spelling words in 5 minutes". Show them the clock, demo once for them and time your try. Ask them if they can win you by doing it using less time or do more for same time. Encourage good try, let them win a few times (innocently) to enhance their interest. (even if the improvement is 0.01 seconds, to pupils its means a lot to praise that improvement.) At conclusion show that they have improved would inspire them.

4) coach with the objective in mind and their obstacles in sight.
Set their objective straight and know their hardship.
Common hardship:-
a) lack of vocabulary
b) unable to read words apart from spelling lists.
c) unable to pronounce words correctly
d) lack of knowledge on grammar and sentence structure.
e) lack of motivation to study
f) lack of focus and willingness
etc

Some common objectives of our young ones and a common reason for it:
a) wanted to be a star/k-pop star/actor(ess)/sports star/youtuber/muser/popular blogger/instagram star etc. (why study so hard if I can earn more?)
b) wanted to ignore Chinese and score in PSLE.( I'm hoping for an exemption from Chinese etc)
c) wanted an A in Chinese (but plays game like crazy and in every situation)
d) don't know what I want????? (because I really have no idea about my future)

Just like a doctor, look for symptoms and discover the obstacles and prescript medicine to cure. Most obstacles are just symptoms of bad habits, bad manners and bad thinking processes; alter their habits and their results will show.

Now this is in request of a reader on how to make Chinese interesting, hope you like it.

Reasons why Chinese tuition can help your children?

Chinese language is your mother tongue so we can teach them, we can reverse engineer the school test papers and ask our children to test again so that they can improve. and there is a lot of assessment papers and books to let our children do it. so why do we need tuition?

The reasons of Chinese tuition could be one of the three, as I understand,
Firstly, The syllables are changing and you need the tutor to catch up with times. 2017, we just saw the first batch of graduates from PSLE Chinese using the new format Chinese examination format with Video for oral and new format for both the higher Chinese and Chinese papers. To the students taking the papers, the changes in the papers are very important things to know. Of course you can take 2016 and 2017 papers and compare them item by item, but how many of you have the patient to do that?

When I was writing the assessment for PSLE Chinese and its second edition, I have gone through all the changes in the new format compared to the old and I have simplified it to be

Paper      Changes
1              Pictures are not so linked and you need to have a complete picture before writing
2              more marks for language knowledge, less questions for comprehension and a new note writing which do not need pupil's to remember the format. New comprehension questions are more higher order thinking ones.
3              LC has 2 new questions with graphical answer and both are not direct questions, rest are similar to last year questions.
4              recitation is the same, video portion requires students to know about topics relevant to their life and students to be able to cook real life stories.

Secondly, tuition promotes structured learning which helps students by building habits and gaining new skills every lessons. Students often get into bad habits like doing work last or not revising at all and gain some bad attitude from friends which will lead to suffering results. Tuition can help reverse that by building new habits with a new environment.

Thirdly, Tuition that sets goal and build schedules to catch up and win will win as it is build students' attitude in life. Yes attitude determines one's achievements.

In conclusion, Tuition is like the emperor asking a well learnt teacher to coach his princes, you should be looking at academic knowledge, structured learning and goal setting. And as parents you need to reinforce habits and goals so that children benefit from Chinese tuition.

PSLE is just part of a larger road map people travel in their life, lets not forget what matters most!

Today, in fact last week, I was touched by this video circulating in the web and lets enjoy what matter most.

My friend once told me, what matter most is if your child feels the love and that you loved them in PSLE. The T score do not actually stop them from become the best if you loved them anyway.

How to train a child's composition and comprehension skills

How to train a child's composition and comprehension skills

Composition no longer needs to be flowery, you just need to write as if you had a story to tell and you could score. knowing a lot of good terms and phrases will be useful if you used them correctly and appropriately.

Comprehension requires one to ask fundamental questions like who, when, where, what, why and how? So thinking through the story and analyzing the story line for answers is a required skill. Copying answers are not encouraged if you are taking Higher Chinese.

1) Read to understand.
A) Read all the chapters and reading materials from the text book
.
Xuele could help a lot.
https://xuele.moe.edu.sg/xuele/slot/u107/index.html

B) get a book with very good composition or comprehension passages

Firstly pupil have to read one sentence by one sentence, after a few days, read paragraphs and after a few months the whole essay.
Reading makes sure they "read" the words and pronounces the words.

c) Ask them the who,where,when,what,how and why questions.

d) ask them what does each line meant?

2) Write every day.
A story always has 4 elements;- Who, when, where, and what. and every short story should have a very clearcut story line.

3) bring e-dictionary every day and check it every time.
.

Chinese PSLE: How to avoid Number 1 mistake in Composition - wrongly spelled words

Chinese PSLE is stressful and students still suffer from numerous misspelled words like English. So students really need to study their mistake and avoid this number one mistake, misspelled words quickly.

Students often assumed they have written correctly and did not even think of the possibility that they may be wrong.I observed that most students just turn a blind eye on their mistake in the hope that the mistake is overlooked by the teachers, yet they do not know that teachers have a pair of very keen and sharp eyes which are trained to catch error faster than a leopard running.

Despite the years of training, Students tend to be very careless and sometimes arrogant as not only that they do not check their work, they do not even read their compositions after it was given back for corrections, they simply do the correction and forgotten to study their mistakes. 

Those mistakes would prevail composition after composition and their composition results will suffer. So how to avoid this number one mistake in composition?

1) Use a notebook to write down all the misspelled words in an orderly manner and study them everyday.
Taking notes has been very effective in helping students realize their mistakes and reinforcing their memory. 
The key point is to scan through last years compositions and record all your mistakes in the note book.
Then you need to add more mistakes made by scanning for them in the compositions that are handled to students in the future.
Lastly students need to revise the note book eveyday.

2) Use mnemonics
Mnemonic devices turn words into a picture, a story, a sentence or anything that makes memorizing them easier.
For example,

a) 照: one japanese (日) standing with a sword (刀) at the door (口) and killed four people (灬)

b) 明: one sun(日) and one moon(月) makes the skies bright(明).

c) 赢: dead(亡) mouth(口)moon(月)seashell(贝)common(凡).

3) know your radicals
Radicals are the smaller components of a character, 

Simple character are just one radical like 火、木、水、言、金etc. 

Compound characters are made out of 2 or more radicals such as 炎、 林、淼、警、鑫etc.

Each Radical may carry meaning while some radicals carries the hanyu pinyin (sound) of the character. some radicals do change form like a transformer in a character like 土becomes地,火becomes煮（the 灬means火fire).

Radicals that provides sound are like 青, you know the sound when you see 请、清、情、晴、氰、蜻. 

Radicals can be a category of things like 金 are like an element and you see words like 银(silver)、铜(copper)、铁(metal)、锡(tin)、铝(aluminum). 

Here is a list of 100 common radicals to start your journey into Chinese characters.
http://www.hackingchinese.com/media/100-radicals-peter.pdf

4) Check the dictionary
Dictionary is your friend, use them well and learn the hanyu pinyin well too.
a) fuzzy check using 汉语拼音
You can check for two character words with hanyu pinyin like this:-
gaoxing 高兴
shangxin 伤心

You can check for certain phrases like chengyu and common phrases using the following method.
bgsqesy 不管三七二十一

b) strokes check 比划
normal if you see a word and you know how to count strokes correctly, then use this method would be fast for one word.
- count the strokes for radicals
- count the strokes for the rest of the character.
-choose a word.

c)  writing check with a stylus.
change mode of checking (shu ru fa 输入法）to 书写.
then write the word on the screen.
(note: do not click on the screen as its not a responsive screen!)
wait a while for dictionary to recognize your writing.
choose the word.

Notes on the usage of dictionary in examinations, these are common advise by teachers:-
A) learn hanyu pinyin well.
B) write hanyu pinyin on the part where you do not know the writing of the word first.
C) check through all the blank words with the hanyu pinyin provided.

In practice, most students do not follow the above advise so they spent a lot of time on checking the dictionary and less time on the content and the flow of the story.

So I required all my students to be able to check dictionary in 15 seconds. Yes do not spend more than 15 seconds on checking dictionary, spent them on the content and the flow of the story.

5) Draw a picture of the word like 

6) guess a chengyu by looking at the picture.

答案：1 断章取义 2长话短说 3不三不四 4七上八下 5无中生有 6 7开门见山 8话中有话 9网开一面 10 鱼死网破11僧多粥少 12可圈可点13一五一十 14点到为止 15虎皮羊质

And the last one is to get all spelling 100 marks every time. Do spelling every day, start with 3-5 words a day to 200-500 words a semester. 

So start on the quest to stop misspellings now and hope your compositions will improve very quickly.

What is your goal in PSLE 2018?

People and students often tell me what happened in their holidays and their dream school. I am glad that life is well for them.
However, staying in the comfort zone will not lead to better results, Its determination and persistant effort to improve everyday that creates better result.
Are you satisfied with your results, if no then
what is your goal for PSLE 2018?
Goals help one find out what they want, and from there you find out how to get there.

Last year I forgotten to reveal the one little thing about success, that success leaves a trail and a mentor would be best for students to get the success they want.

A mentor could be your parents, your friends or even your teachers. So aside from setting a goal, get a mentor to lead you the path with less struggle.
There is 3 kinds of knowledge:
1) those that you know,
2) those that you know you need to learn and 
3) those that you do not know.

Of the 3 types of knowledge, its the knowledge that you do not that will help you the most as those knowledge are some thing that you will never discover if not your mentor.

A mentor had gone the path you want to success in and had success with it, They can tell you something that you do not know and help you avoid the traps and harness your hidden talents.

“

One of the greatest values of mentors is the ability to see ahead what others cannot see and to help them navigate a course to their destination.      

John C. Maxwell

So in conclusion, you see scientist had great mentors, artists had great mentors, even great thinker had mentors. for example, Warren Buffet the greatest investors in US learnt from Benjamin Graham.
"Benjamin Graham, the father of value investing and one of Buffett's professors at Columbia Business School. "Ben Graham was certainly the man who set me on the course that's worked now for a good many years," Buffett says." CNBCSep 29, 2017 

How about Albert Einstein? He credits his mentor Konstantinos Karathodoris,
"We all know about Albert Einstein, the founder of the theory of relativity but how about the person who taught him and showed him the way to a bright scientific journey which would change the world? That was his teacher, Konstantinos Karathodoris. During one of his last pubic appearance Albert Einstein said, “You ask me to answer to all sorts of questions, but no one has ever wanted to know who was my teacher, who showed me the way to the higher mathematical science, thought and research. I simply say that my teacher was the unrivaled Greek Konstantinos Karatheodoris, to who we owe everything…” Indeed, it was a Greek from Thrace. He has not only been in touch with Einstein but has also helped him to complete the theory of relativity. "

In Chinese saying, the teacher leads the way to the door, whether the student is successful depends on each student. 

One way to be successful in PSLE 2018 is to find out and put 7 habits into your life. Good luck!