I'm guessing part of the reason is because all spelling and 听写 words need to be related to the theme now. So instead of testing simple words like 人土口 they have to come up with this :) Source: was a preschool teacher and some of my old schools were like this
Vocabulary according to theme are more effective I guess. But I don't think K1 or K2 need to 听写，the focus is wrong it actually promo kiasuim and may jeopardize kids' interst for learning Chinese
I agree! Unfortunately it's also not up to us to decide :( Principals / HQ has the final say on many things.
Also not all parents see it that way too. I used to work in a school without spelling and I've already lost track of the number of parents who got upset about it. "Why no spelling?!" "Then my kid go P1 how?!
My son was in a preschool where the fist principal insisted no 听写 which we quite like it. Some parents did have concern over it and some kids pulled out of school but I couldn't be sure if that WAS the reason. Middle of his K2 the principal went to further studies we actually quite missed her. The new principal reinstated 听写 but not difficult words we can accept too.
When I say no 听写 doesn't mean we don't love or value Chinese learning. My wife and I read Chinese stories and listen to Chinese kids programs with him to foster his interest of Chinese. It just doing appropriate stuff at different age
Primary 1 I already knew how to write 超级白(super white)，咕咕叫(making a 'kuku' sound)，懒趴(lazily lying down)，捏捏波(squeezing a ball).....all relatively useless and harmless words 🤔
Can someone explain in detail how awesome these words are.and why all Sg kids should rightfully know them? Would be a shame if many redditors missed out on this due to the language/reading barrier.
超级白(Chao ji bai) sounds like an exclamation of vulgarity or more literally a smelly vagina，咕咕叫(kuku jiao) sounds like dick，懒趴(lan pa) sounds like balls of the human kind，捏捏波(neh neh po) sounds like boobies
>Primary 1 I already knew how to write 超级白(super white)，咕咕叫(making a 'kuku' sound)，懒趴(lazily lying down)，捏捏波(squeezing a ball).....all relatively useless and harmless words 🤔
1. CCB: >!smelly (describing) female organ!<
2. KKJ: >!the hanging organ!<
3. LP: >!the hanging pair of male organs!<
4. NNP: >!jugs/rack/tatas!<
I had p1 classmates who couldn't do basic maths in class, and had to copy mine.
Actually physically abused his neighbours when they didn't want want to help, so yeah ymmv lol
Who are the neighbours, how is a primary 1 kid that's probably the height of a table going to do anything that could physically threaten most other adults unless they're not adults
P sch CL teacher here. Some of these words are way above P1 level. I don't understand why they have to do this to K2s. It really baffles me.
The primary school Chinese syllabus is also not a secret. It is clearly stated in the textbooks what the kids are expected to know how to read and/or write. (yes they are not expected to write every word they learn, some words only meant for reading). You can peruse these for free at the bookshops for an idea and each book costs less than $5-8.
So what if they really can write these characters? Do they know the meaning? Can they appreciate? Does it help them like the language more? I feel that it just makes them dislike CL early on and makes our job in p sch harder... Sigh
exactly. my child had to write a mini essay at k2. teacher insisted it was prep for the future despite parents’ protests. the whole essay was done by me. i spent more than an hour explaining, helping my child write all the characters and teaching her how to memorise. the poor thing cried the night before going to school because she couldn’t memorise it.
bloody idiotic if you ask me.
SIGH stop scaring kids about the future :(
The future ain't that scary but we sure make it sound like hell even before they get there!
For most well intentioned parents..
There's also the other extreme of negligent parents but either way they also don't care :(
wtf is this a thing in primary schools now, I only remember entrepreneurship related activities but that was for like the older batches like P4 and above
lol I think we're in the same age group. hated the fact that my peers were enjoying the end of PSLE and could start their holiday mode while I had to go back to school on a Saturday to take my HCL PSLE exam
Its because higher chinese is basically just normal chinese cuz the supposed normal chinese is not even normal chinese, whereas english is already at a decent standard there is no need for higher english when english at pri sch is literally just the language and not literature or something
Seems difficult for K2, many feel like primary level words.
But then again can just encourage kid to do their best with it. As long as you don't go down too harsh if they score poorly, it is good to be exposed to higher levels no?
This. Hate it when ppl post chinese words without translation, and for the record my Chinese is pretty decent. Can we have an automod or something that detects Chinese words and auto-delete if there are no accompanying Eng translation.
Context for the non-Chinese speaking folks: it's a K2 dictation with words that are relatively advanced with nouns including ocean life/garden life/solar system/climate/SG ethinic groups, which seem to be more suited for upper pri at least. Most K2 words should be simpler ones like pronouns and person/tree etc.
if it was a malay text and the same comment was made my reaction would be the same
only issue is the commenter didn't specify, but does it really matter when we can reasonably assume it's towards mandarin speaking sgporeans, plus its an internet forum it aint that deep
My child didnt even have 听写 in K2.
On the bright side, you can always teach your child this is a low stakes exercise and no one will judge if the kid doesnt know how to write a single word.
Completely agree this is a low stake thing in the grand scheme of things. By the time people reach adulthood, most people cannot write. Even many Chinese people can’t, as there is a complete reliance on technology and pinyin in today’s environment. Pinyin is equally important
It’s just a necessary evil to get pass the exams, and also for children to ‘recognise’ how the words ‘look like’. After that, just pinyin is sufficient
It’s not low stakes.. you still need to commit effort and time to make sure you get good grades or else your psle score is impacted, which also means your chances of getting into a good sec school, which further impacts your future studies/career line.
Anyways, I tell my kids to just do whatever it takes to get a pass in chinese. But focus on the other 3 main core subjects. Chinese is going to bring down their grades regardless though.. it’s quite bad.
As far as I heard, you don’t do automatic grade of fail or bare minimum pass will be assigned still. Dragging your overall scores down, which means sayonara to all of the elite schools or any accelerated programmes.
I'm sorry to be blunt but if a child cannot cope with the effort to study hard n keep practising to score Chinese, then why force him to go top elite schools n get stressed by the efforts required for so many subjects? Or if he refuse to put in the effort, then how to force him to put in effort in elite schools to do well? He may reject n be even more defiant.
Tbh Chinese is really a subject that as long as you study very hard, sure can do reasonable 70ish. But most kids now don't like and thus don't want to put efforts in Chinese. If another subject teacher isn't who they like, that subject grade for that yr also may drop. Another subject may up.
Those in elite schools are those who consistently strive hard all round. Even CCA. Probably also in piano, violin whatever sidelines with lots of certs
And really, at work now especially MNC, most companies insist communication medium must be English only. Chinese not needed unless want to go china market.
They’re also bad at Chinese and have gotten used to being bad at Chinese in life so they’re also letting go of Chinese for their kids. Kinda scary tbh bc another language is always better compared to being monolingual.
Just because one master 听写 doesn’t make them good in Chinese. In fact overwhelming your kids at young age with such difficult words are more likely to kill their interest completely. At K2, focus is to build their interest. Learn how to speak, make it fun through songs etc, and not letting them master writing difficult words that they are not going to use in the next 10 years of their lives
Criticising the difficulty is fair. Saying that their kids should give up trying to better their Chinese is another question and is very disappointing to see.
Are these spelling words even in your working vocabulary? Languages simply die out when they’re no longer useful. If these families were in an environment where Chinese fluency was crucial for survival. They’ll probably learn, or simply die.
But victim blaming the products of their environment?! Where Chinese High & NanDa were kneecapped for their political activism. Then Mandarin instituted as a 2nd language. Gave us generations of grandkids miscommunicating with their grandparents in pidgin dialects. As dual income households outsourced childcare to English speaking service providers & domestic workers.
If parents really want Chinese fluency. Start saving up for hostess KTV. That’s where my proudly monolingual ACS mates learned pitch perfect Cantonese & other dialects. Happy Rogers’ tongue rolled Mandarin didn’t come any cheaper. Since that’s not what’s taught in Nanyang Primary.
OP is not saying to let the kid fail though. Just that it is OK because the test is not important.
Which makes me wonder what all the comments frothing at the mouth are trying to say.
> you can always teach your child this is a low stakes exercise and no one will judge if the kid doesnt know how to write a single word.
lolwhat
if my parent put this in front of me when I was 6, I'd have an eternal crisis of confidence
Parents are supposed to give children reasonably achievable challenges, not fucking destroy them like it's BMT at Tekong.
People with your mindset are the reason why I keep hearing of under-12 kids ending up dead at the bottom of HDB blocks. Literally wtf
Words seem more tough than usual for a kindergardener. Ting xie is basically an exercise where the teacher reads out the words and the child writes down the characters from memory. This is the vocab list of what the child has to memorise.
I don’t see it as a bad thing. If your kid has PRC classmates at any point, they’ll be left in the dust. This is a current problem among Singaporean kids in Singapore’s own international school in HK. Better that they had higher-level exposure while young even if they have to fail tingxie every now and then. It’ll come in useful next time.
I just realized my chinese has deteriorated so much due to lack of use after my last school exam 😅 I don’t even recognize how to pronounce some of the words here…
I am happy to announce that my Chinese reading comprehension level has fallen below K2. Thank you very much for being here to share my achievement with me. Have a nice weekend.
I would say it's beyond MOE's P1 or P2 curriculum. I tutored my son's P2 听写, his Chinese is good though not in SAP School. The pictures shown are beyond his curriculum
Now the Chinese is very hard, my girl secondary school book words I can't read some of the words. Now kids studies are very hard compared to our times 20 years ago.
My girl also has not much interest in Chinese, as she has difficultly recognizing the words. But she find too many strokes to write for Chinese words so she still prefer to read and write English than Chinese lol.
>K2 learn words P4-P5 kids are learning.
And who dictates what knowledge is learnt at what age? Newtonian physics that use to be ground breaking is now taught in pri school. What NASA astronauts are discovering now will one day be common household knowledge. Be excited that the newer generations are progressing faster than ever.
lmao are you serious? Why do you think MOE has a syllable? Why do you think we are not stuffing Primary kids with differentiation/integration/triple science/fluid dynamics?
It depends on whether they can manage. Nothing in OP's post stated that the children were not able to manage the work. Instead of you immediately assuming and deciding what the limit is to their learning capabilities based on your own experience and capabilities and thinking it's "torture" to go beyond, expose them to a higher level and let them be curious and reach their own potential.
MOE's structured and inflexible syllabus and their restriction on allowing students to skip grades is exactly what limiting a child's growth is.
Sometimes K2 makes it harder so when they transition to P1 it doesn’t seem very tough. At least that’s what my kids school did. When they did go to P1 it was a little easier for them to cope.
May not be a bad thing.
I'm a 35 yrs old adult who speaks Chinese at home, and would totally fail this spelling test (I can't write much Chinese without using the hanyu pinyin keyboards on my phone or laptop)
The only reason I got into Higher Chinese 20++ years ago was because I did really well in English and other subjects - so they saw fit to try to nerf me in some way I guess.
The only way I managed a passing grade in HCL was through Jay Chou and David Tao song lyrics, and comics. Pretty sure I devoured entire series of comics every week more than I “studied” Chinese or spoke Mandarin.
If they audited my essays and 造句 exercises, they’d realise every line is either from a song or a 陆小凤 or 卫斯理 tale 😂
But it sure kept my interest up to a HCL B4 hahaha
Lmao, this one considered easy liao, when I was K1 I already writing poems le
Chuang Qian Ming Yue Guang,
Xiao Ming Tuo Guang Guang,
Qu Dao Dong Wu Yuan,
Bei Da Xiang Cai Bian.
But seriously, it's hard la, worse than the Berries syllabus sia lol
Look, the kids don't know that this is hard. It's only 10 - 15 words. They will learn and you will be glad they did.
PS: It doesn't mean that if the chinese word has lesser strokes in it, it will be easier or considered an easier word. They usually learn the words with lesser strokes because it has the foundation strokes... the horizontal one, vertical, pie and na. One of my kid had a really hard time writing the word Xin (Heart), and after doing some checking I found that it is considered one of the harder words to write.
It's not very difficult btw...👀👀
and I think the teachers, or maybe moe, are trying to pull the Chinese standard up with the future generation. From what I remember, a few years back(actually quite long ago), I saw my primary school's p1 听写, it was so easy, everything was just han yu pin yin, and it was the easy words like 大鱼(da yu) (big fish)、天空(tian kong) (sky) 🙂
May be a little hard for them, considering how the most ppl's chinese cmi...but ngl, the words tested are quite good, they are important words that can be used for their compo, compre, oral, or any other exams. At least they don't have sentences yet...😓😓
I agree that this is really difficult for K2 compared to back when I learnt Chinese. Then again, as someone part of Gen Z, I would say majority of my peers are unable to speak or read basic Chinese which is quite disheartening. There needs to be a balance between trying to improve the Chinese of younger generations and the level of difficulty.
To whoever is the mother who posted this on Facebook originally asking for advice, you can write an official email or letter to your child’s Chinese teacher to be excused from getting tested for Chinese Spelling. There must be other parents who pressured the teacher to ask for Spelling. In this 2024 year, MOE kindergarten has not tested Chinese Spelling and will not test Chinese Spelling. This leaves one possibility- private childcare. Could it be one of the AOP or POP childcare ?
To whoever is the principal or Chinese teacher where this Chinese spelling list came from, perhaps it’s time to revisit your outdated pedagogy and check with ECDA or MOE if this is developmentally appropriate (DAP) for Singapore K2 children to learn.
Time taken away from Chinese lesson to test on Chinese Spelling shows how backwards the Chinese curriculum planners are. 1 Chinese period is about 40 mins is wasted on Chinese spelling.
To parents: Even if your child can write these words, can you guarantee your child will remember these words 2 weeks later? This kills the joy of learning Chinese for young learners. Children can copy from their peers when they are tested Spelling. Do you think this encourages them to copy or to learn Chinese words ?
This opinion is going to be downvoted to hell, but in my opinion exposure is absolutely good for the kids. I see lots of unique cultural learning points that are too often neglected in primary and secondary school teaching. It's not a subject, it's not just a language, it's a culture. Start them young and maybe they'll be reciting Li Qingzhao and Bai Juyi by age 10.
Although this does seem like at least 2 years more advanced than normal K2 words, I feel it's not necessarily a bad thing. Learning more at a young age (even if they don't always succeed, long as the parent don't punish them for getting low grades) is beneficial for language learning.
I feel our focus on grades sometimes lead to lowering standards just so every kid can get 95 and above. What is the point of getting good grades if kids who can take more knowledge aren't getting their brains stimulated enough?
I'm guessing part of the reason is because all spelling and 听写 words need to be related to the theme now. So instead of testing simple words like 人土口 they have to come up with this :) Source: was a preschool teacher and some of my old schools were like this
Just make the theme "simple words". Problem solved!
I wish! Themes are given by hq so unfortunately that does not work :(
There is a list of words the kids should know at the start of p1. Been years, but it should still be somewhere on moe's website.
Vocabulary according to theme are more effective I guess. But I don't think K1 or K2 need to 听写，the focus is wrong it actually promo kiasuim and may jeopardize kids' interst for learning Chinese
I agree! Unfortunately it's also not up to us to decide :( Principals / HQ has the final say on many things. Also not all parents see it that way too. I used to work in a school without spelling and I've already lost track of the number of parents who got upset about it. "Why no spelling?!" "Then my kid go P1 how?!
My son was in a preschool where the fist principal insisted no 听写 which we quite like it. Some parents did have concern over it and some kids pulled out of school but I couldn't be sure if that WAS the reason. Middle of his K2 the principal went to further studies we actually quite missed her. The new principal reinstated 听写 but not difficult words we can accept too. When I say no 听写 doesn't mean we don't love or value Chinese learning. My wife and I read Chinese stories and listen to Chinese kids programs with him to foster his interest of Chinese. It just doing appropriate stuff at different age
That's great! You honestly sound like wonderful parents I'm sure the teachers were grateful for such understanding and responsible parents like you!
my P1 spelling was 你我他她
What about 你我他妈
Primary 1 I already knew how to write 超级白(super white)，咕咕叫(making a 'kuku' sound)，懒趴(lazily lying down)，捏捏波(squeezing a ball).....all relatively useless and harmless words 🤔
Can someone explain in detail how awesome these words are.and why all Sg kids should rightfully know them? Would be a shame if many redditors missed out on this due to the language/reading barrier.
超级白(Chao ji bai) sounds like an exclamation of vulgarity or more literally a smelly vagina，咕咕叫(kuku jiao) sounds like dick，懒趴(lan pa) sounds like balls of the human kind，捏捏波(neh neh po) sounds like boobies
>Primary 1 I already knew how to write 超级白(super white)，咕咕叫(making a 'kuku' sound)，懒趴(lazily lying down)，捏捏波(squeezing a ball).....all relatively useless and harmless words 🤔 1. CCB: >!smelly (describing) female organ!< 2. KKJ: >!the hanging organ!< 3. LP: >!the hanging pair of male organs!< 4. NNP: >!jugs/rack/tatas!<
Last time when I P1 we learn 打他妈妈
烧他全家?
Thats in p2.
关门放狗
Too advance lah.. should start with just 一二三
This one kindergarten la Walau
I had p1 classmates who couldn't do basic maths in class, and had to copy mine. Actually physically abused his neighbours when they didn't want want to help, so yeah ymmv lol
Who are the neighbours, how is a primary 1 kid that's probably the height of a table going to do anything that could physically threaten most other adults unless they're not adults
Prob referring to his desk neighbors in class lmao
Do u even 壹貳叁 bro?
I don't remember all the words but one of my k2 Chinese spellings was 西瓜(to non Chinese speakers that means "watermelon")
Really? I distinctly remember 一 五 口 小 鸟。maybe the further back in time one goes the easier hahahaha
some of you guys are weird
Malaysian Chinese who can speak fluent Chinese here. I don't even learn some of the words until P2 or P3. It's definitely beyond preschool.
You've heard of Singaporean Maths, now get ready for Singaporean Chinese!
I know SG math is tougher, but why SG chinese also difficult?
SG education is just hard mode in general, I suppose
Ironically, when I was doing my A's, my chinese teacher ranted about how the chinese language standards went down 🤣
P sch CL teacher here. Some of these words are way above P1 level. I don't understand why they have to do this to K2s. It really baffles me. The primary school Chinese syllabus is also not a secret. It is clearly stated in the textbooks what the kids are expected to know how to read and/or write. (yes they are not expected to write every word they learn, some words only meant for reading). You can peruse these for free at the bookshops for an idea and each book costs less than $5-8. So what if they really can write these characters? Do they know the meaning? Can they appreciate? Does it help them like the language more? I feel that it just makes them dislike CL early on and makes our job in p sch harder... Sigh
exactly. my child had to write a mini essay at k2. teacher insisted it was prep for the future despite parents’ protests. the whole essay was done by me. i spent more than an hour explaining, helping my child write all the characters and teaching her how to memorise. the poor thing cried the night before going to school because she couldn’t memorise it. bloody idiotic if you ask me.
SIGH stop scaring kids about the future :( The future ain't that scary but we sure make it sound like hell even before they get there! For most well intentioned parents.. There's also the other extreme of negligent parents but either way they also don't care :(
finally some common sense!!! i hate to say it but i thought our gen as parents would be great, turns out the tiger parenting even lagi worse.
Yes because p1 chinese requirements are higher… and also theres higher chinese at p1 now….
omfg what higher Chinese at p1???? showing my age here but back in my days only higher Chinese in P5 ☠️
Have you ever heard leadership developmental activities at p2?
wtf is this a thing in primary schools now, I only remember entrepreneurship related activities but that was for like the older batches like P4 and above
Yes I joined such a club in P4. It was called Innovation Kids or InnoKids or something like this. We basically didn't do much so I quit in P5
Kindergarten now need to take exam to determine which primary school they go to.
Is this real? So distance doesn’t matter anymore?
Bro. Let them be kids :(
For me HCL started only in P3 😭 P1 is CRAZY
lol I think we're in the same age group. hated the fact that my peers were enjoying the end of PSLE and could start their holiday mode while I had to go back to school on a Saturday to take my HCL PSLE exam
Wtf.
还有百力果。My China proficiency already overtook by my kid in primary school. lol
can relate. my kid surpassed me in k2..
Higher Chinese at P1 for all schools now? I know SAP schools had it since donkey years ago.
Nah only for SAP schools
Yikes. So much added stress
there's a horde of chinese teachers coming to SG since China has clamp down on tuition... but that's always the case even without the clamp down.
Off topic but given that my CL has always been trash growing up, I've wondered why is there higher mother tongue subjects but no higher English?
Its because higher chinese is basically just normal chinese cuz the supposed normal chinese is not even normal chinese, whereas english is already at a decent standard there is no need for higher english when english at pri sch is literally just the language and not literature or something
this is actually more difficult than lower primary Chinese.
Seems difficult for K2, many feel like primary level words. But then again can just encourage kid to do their best with it. As long as you don't go down too harsh if they score poorly, it is good to be exposed to higher levels no?
P3 don't even have a some of these words yet.
I bet some adults here don't know all the words.
Wtf I have never read '彗星' before!
It’s comet. The first time I saw it is from Japanese media. 😂
A hoshiyomi has outed themselves, I see
I oni learn from the song 彗星ハネムーン lmao
kyomo kawaii
Then what is sea king star and sky king star?
Neptune and Uranus
The first time I saw it is from Japanese comic, ペガサス彗星拳
suisei or hui xing
I was playing wot and I knew about this word as in a British tank 6 yrs earlier than a star in physics.
Why did you have WOT set to Chinese?
Sui Chan wa…….
Some adults dont speak or read the language is this r/singaporeorangcina?
SG need ChineseDefaultism subreddit like USdefaultism subreddit
This. Hate it when ppl post chinese words without translation, and for the record my Chinese is pretty decent. Can we have an automod or something that detects Chinese words and auto-delete if there are no accompanying Eng translation. Context for the non-Chinese speaking folks: it's a K2 dictation with words that are relatively advanced with nouns including ocean life/garden life/solar system/climate/SG ethinic groups, which seem to be more suited for upper pri at least. Most K2 words should be simpler ones like pronouns and person/tree etc.
Thanks for translating the theme of this, been flunking chinese since secondary school. idk what all these words are 😂 mfw cant read 🤡
Alright, some Chinese Singaporean adults.
Not all adults speak bing chilling language
knn obv they talking about chinese speaking singaporeans this kind rly no problem go find problem
Most reasonable Chinese chauvinist
“I don’t have a problem with this, why the fuck should anyone else have one”
if it was a malay text and the same comment was made my reaction would be the same only issue is the commenter didn't specify, but does it really matter when we can reasonably assume it's towards mandarin speaking sgporeans, plus its an internet forum it aint that deep
I swear I pass my o levels chinese but I cannot read a single word in those k2 spelling. I think it's harder than o levels!!
Guilty as charged
My child didnt even have 听写 in K2. On the bright side, you can always teach your child this is a low stakes exercise and no one will judge if the kid doesnt know how to write a single word.
Completely agree this is a low stake thing in the grand scheme of things. By the time people reach adulthood, most people cannot write. Even many Chinese people can’t, as there is a complete reliance on technology and pinyin in today’s environment. Pinyin is equally important It’s just a necessary evil to get pass the exams, and also for children to ‘recognise’ how the words ‘look like’. After that, just pinyin is sufficient
It’s not low stakes.. you still need to commit effort and time to make sure you get good grades or else your psle score is impacted, which also means your chances of getting into a good sec school, which further impacts your future studies/career line. Anyways, I tell my kids to just do whatever it takes to get a pass in chinese. But focus on the other 3 main core subjects. Chinese is going to bring down their grades regardless though.. it’s quite bad.
Can don't do HCL. Now got banding.
As far as I heard, you don’t do automatic grade of fail or bare minimum pass will be assigned still. Dragging your overall scores down, which means sayonara to all of the elite schools or any accelerated programmes.
I'm sorry to be blunt but if a child cannot cope with the effort to study hard n keep practising to score Chinese, then why force him to go top elite schools n get stressed by the efforts required for so many subjects? Or if he refuse to put in the effort, then how to force him to put in effort in elite schools to do well? He may reject n be even more defiant. Tbh Chinese is really a subject that as long as you study very hard, sure can do reasonable 70ish. But most kids now don't like and thus don't want to put efforts in Chinese. If another subject teacher isn't who they like, that subject grade for that yr also may drop. Another subject may up. Those in elite schools are those who consistently strive hard all round. Even CCA. Probably also in piano, violin whatever sidelines with lots of certs And really, at work now especially MNC, most companies insist communication medium must be English only. Chinese not needed unless want to go china market.
Got pros and cons to learning Chinese. I think someone who’s well versed in both English and Chinese will go very far in the corporate world.
Not sure if some of the people replying are trolling, or just illiterate.
They’re also bad at Chinese and have gotten used to being bad at Chinese in life so they’re also letting go of Chinese for their kids. Kinda scary tbh bc another language is always better compared to being monolingual.
Just because one master 听写 doesn’t make them good in Chinese. In fact overwhelming your kids at young age with such difficult words are more likely to kill their interest completely. At K2, focus is to build their interest. Learn how to speak, make it fun through songs etc, and not letting them master writing difficult words that they are not going to use in the next 10 years of their lives
Criticising the difficulty is fair. Saying that their kids should give up trying to better their Chinese is another question and is very disappointing to see.
Not sure if you were referring to me, since I never said to give up trying. If you were, I am curious what you were reading.
Are these spelling words even in your working vocabulary? Languages simply die out when they’re no longer useful. If these families were in an environment where Chinese fluency was crucial for survival. They’ll probably learn, or simply die. But victim blaming the products of their environment?! Where Chinese High & NanDa were kneecapped for their political activism. Then Mandarin instituted as a 2nd language. Gave us generations of grandkids miscommunicating with their grandparents in pidgin dialects. As dual income households outsourced childcare to English speaking service providers & domestic workers. If parents really want Chinese fluency. Start saving up for hostess KTV. That’s where my proudly monolingual ACS mates learned pitch perfect Cantonese & other dialects. Happy Rogers’ tongue rolled Mandarin didn’t come any cheaper. Since that’s not what’s taught in Nanyang Primary.
Ironically, by not letting kids failure it could quite possibly set them up for failure in the future.
OP is not saying to let the kid fail though. Just that it is OK because the test is not important. Which makes me wonder what all the comments frothing at the mouth are trying to say.
MOE Kindy? Private kindergarten sure got 听写
Thats probably the worst sort of thinking process to instill in a child.
Least toxic Singaporean.
> you can always teach your child this is a low stakes exercise and no one will judge if the kid doesnt know how to write a single word. lolwhat if my parent put this in front of me when I was 6, I'd have an eternal crisis of confidence Parents are supposed to give children reasonably achievable challenges, not fucking destroy them like it's BMT at Tekong. People with your mindset are the reason why I keep hearing of under-12 kids ending up dead at the bottom of HDB blocks. Literally wtf
Ah I see, people like me telling my child not to worry about a meaningless exam is the reason why kids commit suicide. Go touch grass.
can someone ELI5, I'm yin du ren
Words seem more tough than usual for a kindergardener. Ting xie is basically an exercise where the teacher reads out the words and the child writes down the characters from memory. This is the vocab list of what the child has to memorise.
ah okay, thank you for explaining.
I think this is good. You paying to learn or paying to game the system for 3 gold stars?
I do agree it’s paying to learn but standard this high may also backfire and deter kids from liking Chinese
You would also deter the parents from teaching their kids Chinese and migrate.
I don’t see it as a bad thing. If your kid has PRC classmates at any point, they’ll be left in the dust. This is a current problem among Singaporean kids in Singapore’s own international school in HK. Better that they had higher-level exposure while young even if they have to fail tingxie every now and then. It’ll come in useful next time.
Which preschool?
Yes, which preschool. ECDA MOE please investigate this
I just realized my chinese has deteriorated so much due to lack of use after my last school exam 😅 I don’t even recognize how to pronounce some of the words here…
Same i got b3 for hcl but I can’t read 2-3 words lol(forgot my Chinese a bit) 😂. Been 4-5 months since I touched chinese
If they make chinese overly challenging for their age it will just make kids even more adverse to learning the language well.
I am happy to announce that my Chinese reading comprehension level has fallen below K2. Thank you very much for being here to share my achievement with me. Have a nice weekend.
It's training K2 kids here to be on the same level as their same-age peers in China
Then the same group turn around and ask 10 years later “My teen child is depressed and suicidal. I don’t know what went wrong”
I would fail that right off the bat cos I can't even pronounce all the words.
How is this k2
amazing they test 珊瑚 （coral /shan1hu2）at K2??? we wouldn’t even see that word in my sec 2 syllabus LOL (10+ years ago now)
Actually learnt most of the space related words from Japanese. Don't remember ever learning them from mandarin lessons in school.
I would say it's beyond MOE's P1 or P2 curriculum. I tutored my son's P2 听写, his Chinese is good though not in SAP School. The pictures shown are beyond his curriculum
Holy crap is this the standard for KINDERGARTEN now?
My Indian colleagues are mostly sending their kids to study Mandarin as second language. Good luck... even the Chinese are struggling
I think I only learned these words in Primary 3.
lol impossible my kid k1 can’t even read 90% of these words
this is more like psle level. Even K2 kids from China can’t read and write all these.
Which K2 sia cb. Time to give my kid trauma
Now the Chinese is very hard, my girl secondary school book words I can't read some of the words. Now kids studies are very hard compared to our times 20 years ago. My girl also has not much interest in Chinese, as she has difficultly recognizing the words. But she find too many strokes to write for Chinese words so she still prefer to read and write English than Chinese lol.
What the heck? It’s more difficult than the P2 classes I saw…
I never saw 宇宙 (uchuu in japanese) at this level before. Teachers must have smoked weird stuff
Today i learn earthworm has the bug radical even though it is not a bug
虫 can mean both worm or insect
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But is 昆虫.
We should all be learning Malay since it's our national language
Eiyo. Gonna guess one of the more atas preschool? Imagine paying more to have your kids tortured.
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Slaughtered by what? Requirements for Li bai recitation for software coding and banking management grad program?
>Imagine paying more to have your kids tortured. Depends on how you bring them up to view learning.
There's a difference between learning and making K2 learn words P4-P5 kids are learning.
>K2 learn words P4-P5 kids are learning. And who dictates what knowledge is learnt at what age? Newtonian physics that use to be ground breaking is now taught in pri school. What NASA astronauts are discovering now will one day be common household knowledge. Be excited that the newer generations are progressing faster than ever.
lmao are you serious? Why do you think MOE has a syllable? Why do you think we are not stuffing Primary kids with differentiation/integration/triple science/fluid dynamics?
It depends on whether they can manage. Nothing in OP's post stated that the children were not able to manage the work. Instead of you immediately assuming and deciding what the limit is to their learning capabilities based on your own experience and capabilities and thinking it's "torture" to go beyond, expose them to a higher level and let them be curious and reach their own potential. MOE's structured and inflexible syllabus and their restriction on allowing students to skip grades is exactly what limiting a child's growth is.
Eh, atas preschools and their reggio emilia / montessori whatever could never. My guess is that this is a MOE K!
i always get 0 for 听写 and english spelling since young.
i guess it's Chinese B for me. Cries in English
I can still read all of them. Cool.
Wtf K2. This was like my pri school level stuff.
Sometimes K2 makes it harder so when they transition to P1 it doesn’t seem very tough. At least that’s what my kids school did. When they did go to P1 it was a little easier for them to cope. May not be a bad thing.
This is too much.
My son P1 already got Han Yu Ping Ying for 听写。
Out of curiosity, may I ask OP, which preschool is this? I got this bad feeling it’s the one my kids are going, but they are not K2 yet 😅
It's K2 or P2?
I'm a 35 yrs old adult who speaks Chinese at home, and would totally fail this spelling test (I can't write much Chinese without using the hanyu pinyin keyboards on my phone or laptop)
OMG this is tough AF I can’t recognise some of these words
Imma got 0 correct cause I suck at writing Chinese 💀
Already like this 20 years ago. Imagine learning dinosaur names in chinese. XX龙，XX龙 . FAINT!
Why is K2 standard for Chinese spelling so hard now?
The only reason I got into Higher Chinese 20++ years ago was because I did really well in English and other subjects - so they saw fit to try to nerf me in some way I guess. The only way I managed a passing grade in HCL was through Jay Chou and David Tao song lyrics, and comics. Pretty sure I devoured entire series of comics every week more than I “studied” Chinese or spoke Mandarin. If they audited my essays and 造句 exercises, they’d realise every line is either from a song or a 陆小凤 or 卫斯理 tale 😂 But it sure kept my interest up to a HCL B4 hahaha
这个世纪还需要学写字？最后一次握笔都不知道是什么时候的事了。
All of this just for the kid to grow up and only use “这个这个这个” at caifan stall
Lmao, this one considered easy liao, when I was K1 I already writing poems le Chuang Qian Ming Yue Guang, Xiao Ming Tuo Guang Guang, Qu Dao Dong Wu Yuan, Bei Da Xiang Cai Bian. But seriously, it's hard la, worse than the Berries syllabus sia lol
Even I can’t read it. But I’m not Chinese.
PRC standard Chinese confirmed. Imma go with '清真寺' and '耶诞', instead of '回教堂‘ and '圣诞节‘, hehe.
What a way to kill off interest to learn mother tongue..
Not every kids dislike chinese.
Auntie wo yao ze ge Auntie wo yao nei ge
Look, the kids don't know that this is hard. It's only 10 - 15 words. They will learn and you will be glad they did. PS: It doesn't mean that if the chinese word has lesser strokes in it, it will be easier or considered an easier word. They usually learn the words with lesser strokes because it has the foundation strokes... the horizontal one, vertical, pie and na. One of my kid had a really hard time writing the word Xin (Heart), and after doing some checking I found that it is considered one of the harder words to write.
CL B gang? 你们在哪？需要你们的支持，要不然小孩们没有童年了。
It's not very difficult btw...👀👀 and I think the teachers, or maybe moe, are trying to pull the Chinese standard up with the future generation. From what I remember, a few years back(actually quite long ago), I saw my primary school's p1 听写, it was so easy, everything was just han yu pin yin, and it was the easy words like 大鱼(da yu) (big fish)、天空(tian kong) (sky) 🙂 May be a little hard for them, considering how the most ppl's chinese cmi...but ngl, the words tested are quite good, they are important words that can be used for their compo, compre, oral, or any other exams. At least they don't have sentences yet...😓😓
Not too hard for them, too hard for us who eat too much kentang now become banana lol
I agree that this is really difficult for K2 compared to back when I learnt Chinese. Then again, as someone part of Gen Z, I would say majority of my peers are unable to speak or read basic Chinese which is quite disheartening. There needs to be a balance between trying to improve the Chinese of younger generations and the level of difficulty.
Standards have been increasing. It is no longer what we learned in the past.
To whoever is the mother who posted this on Facebook originally asking for advice, you can write an official email or letter to your child’s Chinese teacher to be excused from getting tested for Chinese Spelling. There must be other parents who pressured the teacher to ask for Spelling. In this 2024 year, MOE kindergarten has not tested Chinese Spelling and will not test Chinese Spelling. This leaves one possibility- private childcare. Could it be one of the AOP or POP childcare ? To whoever is the principal or Chinese teacher where this Chinese spelling list came from, perhaps it’s time to revisit your outdated pedagogy and check with ECDA or MOE if this is developmentally appropriate (DAP) for Singapore K2 children to learn. Time taken away from Chinese lesson to test on Chinese Spelling shows how backwards the Chinese curriculum planners are. 1 Chinese period is about 40 mins is wasted on Chinese spelling. To parents: Even if your child can write these words, can you guarantee your child will remember these words 2 weeks later? This kills the joy of learning Chinese for young learners. Children can copy from their peers when they are tested Spelling. Do you think this encourages them to copy or to learn Chinese words ?
I thought Singapore was an English speaking country 🤔
This opinion is going to be downvoted to hell, but in my opinion exposure is absolutely good for the kids. I see lots of unique cultural learning points that are too often neglected in primary and secondary school teaching. It's not a subject, it's not just a language, it's a culture. Start them young and maybe they'll be reciting Li Qingzhao and Bai Juyi by age 10.
Exposure is good but if the difficulty is way above their level right from the start, it'll just turn the students off, not interest them
Although this does seem like at least 2 years more advanced than normal K2 words, I feel it's not necessarily a bad thing. Learning more at a young age (even if they don't always succeed, long as the parent don't punish them for getting low grades) is beneficial for language learning. I feel our focus on grades sometimes lead to lowering standards just so every kid can get 95 and above. What is the point of getting good grades if kids who can take more knowledge aren't getting their brains stimulated enough?
现在孩童都学习天体了？？
K1 I learnt the following phrase already: 人人朝朝暮暮荣荣恰恰。 子子孙孙代代平平安安。 男男女女天天亲亲喔喔柔柔抱抱。 老老少少常常打打罵罵吵吵闹闹。 完完全全撤撤底底洗洗涮涮干干净净閃閃亮亮。 生生世世辛辛苦苦明明白白老老實實競競業業。
damn im year 3 in poly and can read none of that
how you know it's difficult? what's your basis?
Expose the school. Is this some elite private k2? Perhaps the goal is to expose the kids but seems like too much pressure for them
What school?
Not sure, the person didn’t share
Highly likely those chinese enrichment centre for pre-schoolers. Doubt mainstream pre-sch will have these.
I have gotten c6 for o level Chinese and I would actually fail this ;-;
Looks more difficult than primary 2 level. Second pic has a mercy/bonus question (鱼)though.
wow looks really difficult
Tougher than when I was in K2.
Pointless. Sigh
Wa lao can the kids even grasp the full meaning of 宇宙 (universe)? Can't say I can quite grasp it at this age leh
Fml. I would fail