The Grade Divide: English vs. Chinese

Many parents I spoke to have a hard time getting their kids to read Chinese books. They often express that they’re kids were pretty good in Chinese pre-primary, but once they enter primary school, their Chinese grades take a nose dive.

This is not surprising if you take a good look at how school is conducted for primary school age kids.

Most lessons, and activities are conducted in English.

Kids can clearly see that English is the primary language, and Chinese is a language class for a different language that no one uses. In kindergarten, the distinction is not as clear as they see Chinese teachers probably as much as their English teachers; kids might do craft with their Chinese teachers, as Chinese lessons are often disguised as craft time to make learning more interesting.

Once kids get to primary schools, Chinese lessons become an isolated class. There are way more tools and opportunities to help kids learn to read English than Chinese.

On top of English lessons, other non-academic lessons are also conducted in English, i.e. a child learns English while learning Art, learns English while learning music, learns English while doing PE etc. You get the idea. Even Library programs are geared towards getting children to become English readers because let’s face it, you can get by reading poorly in Chinese, but you absolutely will tank your PSLE if you can’t read English.

Given this, parents might also unwittingly prioritise English reading over Chinese reading as 3 out of 4 subjects at PSLE depend on a child’s English proficiency to excel.

By the time a child hits Primary 4/Primary 5, their reading proficiency in Chinese lags behind and parents start asking: Where did it go wrong? What happened? I thought they were doing okay for Chinese, why do their results suddenly drop off the cliff?

The mystery is solved by understanding that English is a phonetic (syllabic) system but Chinese language uses the logographic (symbol) system. What this means is that for anyone to learn the English language, once you figure out the phonetic system, by and large you can read (even if you don’t understand the meanings of the word).

But for the Chinese language, because it relies on matching each symbol with a sound AND meaning, it becomes doubly hard to learn.

For any child who has at least 2-3 years in a primary school, they can read. They might not have the confidence to finish reading a chapter book, but if you open a book and ask them to sound out a sentence, they probably can do so, even if it is haltingly.

Then you figure in the learning environment they are put in, which is English dense, the smarter kids will be able to match the sounds they read, with what they heard in school, and figure out some meanings in the book. Over time, when they keep doing this repeatedly, you have a reader!

But you can’t duplicate this process to nurture Chinese readers. No matter how many years they have been in school, you can open a Chinese book and point to a sentence, and they may stare at it blankly, not knowing how to read.

This is because learning Chinese language is a cumulative process. You don’t just learn 26 alphabets + different phonetic combinations, and start to sound out words. For Chinese, you either can read the word, or you can’t read the word. You might be able to guess the meaning of the given word since they are all symbols (pictorial) but you definitely can’t read.

If you can’t even sound out a word, how can you guess it’s meaning by comparing it with words you have heard or spoken? This is why Chinese reading is mission impossible on its own. It really isn’t easy to read fluently in Chinese. It takes years of memorising thousands of individual characters, and its various pairings to adequately read a relatively simple story.

In order to attain functional literacy in the Chinese language, you need to know between 3000-4000 characters. To read about 97% of every day writing, you need to know about 2500 characters. To achieve 99% literacy for every day writing, you need to know about 3500 characters.

A primary school kid learns about 20 new Chinese characters/combination for each chapter of their school textbook. There’s about 16-20 chapters per year. So they are learning approximately 400 words each year (many are duplicates!). So if you assume that a kid knows every single word in their textbook, in 5 years, at primary five, they will barely have the ability to read about 90% of simple, every day writing.

Whereas, for English readers, by primary five, they can be reading a dense, fantasy story like Harry Potter – which is infinitely more exciting and engaging.

So don’t be too disappointed if your kid hates to read Chinese books. They will eventually get there. If you do the math, with consistent progress, they should be able to achieve basic functional literacy in Chinese language by secondary two!

The moral of this story is, don’t give up! Don’t feel disheartened! It really takes a very long time to master the Chinese language. And if you ask me, it’s so worth it.

There are some books which I will never read the English version, for example, any Japanese translated literature like Murakami. The Chinese translations are much closer to the original prose, and reading it in English loses more of its original flavour. I also don’t read martial arts novels or novels set in ancient China in English text. It just isn’t the same as reading the original.

Stay tuned! I’ll share more reading tips for Chinese Language next week.

Till then,
XOXO
Chief Book Elf