Summer, our interpreter and the school's English teacher, explained to us how Chinese children learn to read and write the language. We were very surprised by what she told us!
The Chinese characters that we associate with Chinese language are actually the third step in the process of acquiring and using the Chinese language.
First children must learn the Chinese alphabet. Here are the letters in the Chinese alphabet (in the order that they introduce them to the children): a o e I u u b p m f d t n l g k h j q x z c s zh ch sh r y w ai ei ui ao ou iu Ie ue er an en in un un ang eng ing ong
As you can see, in Chinese the 'hunks and chunks' of phonics are included as a part of their alphabet. You can think of this as the pronunciation alphabet.
Second, children learn to blend these sounds into words. For example, the word for pencil is qian bi and the word for spider is zhi zhu. Young children in primary school (1st grade) work to master this.
Finally, children learn the characters that are associated with the blends and words. For example, pencil is qian bi and is written 鉛筆 and spider is pronounced zhi zhu and is written 蜘蛛. It is important that students don't miss the sounds into words step, because this is how they know which characters to write.
The Chinese children have a whole extra level in learning to read and write in Chinese compared to most other languages because there alphabet is different then their written language. It is so similar to the English alphabet so they do not start learning English until 4th grade, when their Chinese is proficient, to prevent confusion between the two.
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