Our group classes provide an immersive and interactive Chinese learning experience through a storytelling method combined with project-based and experiential learning. Designed for small groups of 4-6 students, these classes cater to various ages, learning styles, and proficiency levels across four engaging themes. The focus is on enhancing comprehension, communication, and presentation skills, along with introducing Chinese character strokes, handwriting and typing, enabling students to effectively use Chinese in group settings.
$45-$50 per hour
Class Details
- Small and Intimate Learning Groups: Smaller class sizes foster personalized attention, essential for this age group’s developing communication skills.
- Storytelling: Engaging stories with simple language and vivid imagery help young learners build listening comprehension and vocabulary. Use books with repetitive patterns and familiar themes, like animals or daily routines.
- Music and Movement: Incorporating songs with actions promotes language rhythm and pronunciation. Simple nursery rhymes in Chinese can help learners pick up phonetic patterns and new vocabulary.
- Role-playing: Interactive role-playing activities encourage imagination and real-life language usage in an immersive environment. Children can act out everyday activities such as shopping or visiting a park to reinforce basic conversational phrases.
- Visual Aids: Use flashcards, pictures, and videos to reinforce the meaning of new words and characters.
- Language Goals: Focus on introducing basic vocabulary, sentence structures, and beginning character recognition.
- Games and Group Work: Fun language games (like matching characters with pictures) and collaborative projects engage students while reinforcing vocabulary and sentence structure.
- Phonics and Character Recognition: Introduce Chinese pinyin for phonetic support and focus on character formation. Begin teaching stroke order and basic radicals to build a foundation in reading and writing.
- Repetitive Practice with Songs and Rhymes: Continue using music to help with retention and pronunciation. Repetition helps solidify new vocabulary and grammar patterns.
- Story-Based Learning: Use stories with more complex plots and language to introduce new characters and sentence patterns. Encourage students to retell stories in their own words.
- Kinesthetic Learning: Incorporate physical activities that align with Chinese words or characters (e.g., using body movements to “write” characters in the air).
- Language Goals: Expand vocabulary and basic conversation skills, introduce pinyin as a tool for reading, and begin writing simple characters.
- Project-Based Learning: Incorporate thematic projects that align with language goals, such as creating a simple storybook, puppet show, or group presentation in Chinese. This engages students’ creativity and deepens their understanding of sentence structures.
- Reading Simple Stories Independently: Introduce short passages, stories, or dialogues for students to read on their own or in groups. Focus on recognizing high-frequency characters.
- Explicit Grammar Instruction: Teach basic sentence structures explicitly, such as subject-verb-object and question forms. Use sentence-building exercises to reinforce these structures.
- Games for Character Recognition: Introduce games like “Character Bingo” or “Matching” to help students recognize and recall more complex characters.
- Interactive Technology: Use language apps, videos, or online games that integrate listening, reading, and writing skills.
- Language Goals: Focus on building sentence structure proficiency, introduce more characters and their meanings, and strengthen reading comprehension.
- Structured Writing Practice: Encourage students to write short essays or journals, integrating characters and vocabulary they’ve learned. Provide feedback on grammar and structure.
- Role-Playing and Simulations: Use more advanced role-playing scenarios, such as mock interviews, ordering in a restaurant, or describing a trip, to practice conversational fluency and context-specific vocabulary.
- Character Study and Etymology: Dive deeper into the structure of characters, focusing on radicals, components, and character families. This helps with recognizing patterns in new characters.
- Group Discussions and Debates: Facilitate group discussions on simple topics (e.g., favorite hobbies, recent experiences) to promote spontaneous use of language.
- Authentic Reading Materials: Introduce real-life texts such as menus, signs, short articles, and children’s books to practice reading comprehension.
- Language Goals: Strengthen reading and writing fluency, introduce more complex grammatical structures, and promote confident speaking in different contexts.
- Cultural Exploration Activities: Whether your child is a heritage speaker or new to advanced conversational skills, this class uses storybooks and interactive activities to enhance speaking abilities.
- Interactive Dialogue Practice: Role-playing activities simulate real-life scenarios, such as family gatherings and cultural celebrations, helping students practice and reinforce their language skills in authentic conversations.
- Vocabulary Expansion: Introduce basic vocabulary related to cultural themes, such as holidays, traditions, and foods, to enhance students’ expressive abilities.
- Listening and Comprehension Exercises: Utilize audio and video resources featuring native speakers discussing cultural topics, followed by discussions and comprehension questions to improve listening skills.
- Peer Sharing and Feedback: Encourage students to present culturally relevant items or traditions, promoting public speaking skills and peer learning.
- Language Goals: Improve oral expression, enhance cultural understanding, and build students’ confidence in using language across various contexts.
- Project-Based Learning: For advanced heritage speakers, this class explores topics like geography and history through project-based learning, focusing on deepening communication, reading, and writing skills with dynamic materials and activities.
- Advanced Writing Assignments: Encourage students to write essays or reports on cultural themes, integrating complex vocabulary and sentence structures.
- Debate and Discussion Sessions: Organize debates on relevant cultural topics, allowing students to express their viewpoints in a structured manner while using persuasive language.
- Character Study and Structure Exploration: Dive deeper into culturally significant characters, studying their radicals and components to help students understand character formation and meaning.
- Authentic Literary Analysis: Introduce Chinese literature, poetry, or articles to develop students’ reading comprehension skills and deepen their cultural understanding.
- Collaborative Research Projects: Encourage students to engage in group research projects exploring cultural traditions, culminating in presentations of their findings, enhancing teamwork and expressive abilities.
- Language Goals: Strengthen students’ reading, writing, and speaking skills while fostering confidence in language use within diverse cultural contexts.
Sneak Peak at Our Class
Book a Trail Class to kick start your child’s learning journey
The best way to find the “right” learning group and ensure your child enjoys it before committing is through a trial class! We provide all necessary learning materials and include your child in our lesson planning and learning community.
After the trial class, we will share our observations of your child’s Chinese level and learning needs/styles to help you find the perfect fit for them! The trail class will be refunded if you sign up for the semester.
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IMF Families
Let us help you raise the future global citizens. As part of the IMF education allowance, your children are eligible for a language tutoring reimbursement (75% of the cost of tutoring to a maximum of $1000 per academic year).
If you are from an IMF family, please feel free to contact us to apply for it.
Get in Touch
We’re here to discuss your child’s Chinese learning journey.