About Me

A Singaporean born Mummy, living and working in the UK, trying to raise my children trilingual. We speak Cantonese at home, and I have only just started introducing Mandarin to my 3 year old.

Our language goals

English - to be able to speak, read and write at Native/Higher levels
Mandarin - to be able to speak conversationally and read simple Mandarin books 
Cantonese - to be able to converse fluently with Natives

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Starting a new language at 3 years old? Is it possible?

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Hi there, And welcome to my blog! I've recently decided to start teaching my 3 year old a whole new language, Mandarin, and I'm not sure what the journey will be like. Many people have expressed doubt at what I'll be able to achieve, but I just want to give it a go and see how far we can go.  A little background - we have a 3 year old who is very fluent in English. We've been speaking to her a mix of English and Cantonese at home since birth. She understands both well, but most definitely prefers speaking English. She can be made to reply in Cantonese, but it does sound pretty accented and sentences are constructed simply.  Over the last one year, I have been teaching her to read English at home. It has been a really rewarding journey and she is improving so quickly that I think she might be getting a little too far ahead. So I decided to try teaching her Chinese words.  However, I can't read in Cantonese, and don't know Traditional Chinese, so am in a position ...
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Early Thoughts - Basic Chinese 500 Beginner Set (Sagebooks Hong Kong)

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Two graded reader sets that I've ordered have just arrived! So I'm going to post some early thoughts I've had since having a look at both readers sets. Basic Chinese 500 Beginner Set (by Sagebooks Hong Kong), Simplified Chinese Version 基础汉字500 启蒙级珍藏套裝 This seems like the most recommended option when searching online, especially from families home schooling their children. This set of graded readers uses the premise of teaching one unique character per lesson, then getting the children to read 3 sentences using words they have previously learnt and the new character. The entire course is meant to teach a total 500 words, and this is divided into 5 book sets (Beginner, Budding, Building, Confident and Fluent Readers). I have just purchased the first set, the Beginner Reader Set. It teaches 100 words and this is again divided into 5 books (each book teaches 20 characters). Their suggestion is to teach one new lesson per day, and repeat up to 4 previous lessons prior to startin...
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How it's going - Month 3-4

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