Primary One: Chinese Compositions

I am blessed because in my circle of friends, I have many educators whom I am able to reach out to, to clarify and seek for advice / opinions. Though I was a part time tutor years back, there have been many changes to the Primary school syllabus over the years. I even had to do "investigative" work to understand the Stellar system and learn about the English curriculum again.

Importantly, there has also been a total change in the Chinese syllabus where the course materials have been updated and the focus is now on communication/oracy skills. (I have previously shared a post on helping your child to prepare for Show and Tell.) While working with the kiddo on Chinese oracy (will share in another post), one other thing that came up was composition.

To be able to write, it must mean that the children need to be able to string sentences together, have the right vocabulary and write the right words. Hence I reached out to a friend (a current Chinese teacher) to ask more about Chinese compositions in Primary schools.   

Q: Based on the current system with the change in P1 syllabus, which year is Compo needed?

A: Currently schools are doing 4-picture compositions from Primary 3, and 6-picture compositions from Primary 5. For some schools, they may start earlier with a 4-picture composition; these all vary slightly from school to school. 

Q: How do we support our children in writing? There seems to be a jump from just "fill in the blanks" (Tian Chong) to suddenly needing to produce a piece of work?

A: Basically, activities like Tian Chong in Paper 2 test on the pupils' reading and comprehension ability. To do so, they need understanding of vocabulary which is taught via textbook. Of course the new textbook teaches beyond vocabulary. Since at the moment, with the new syllabus, we only have P1 textbook, I would say that for P1, focus of the textbook is really more on oral and listening interactive skills.

Q: In terms of flow / content, is there a suggested format? (Say for lower primary?) Are there specific areas to watch out for?

A: Writing at young age is more about writing sentence or short story - 写句／写话. Importantly good sentence structure is very important for the Chinese language: 句式练习. The progression should be in this manner: 从字、词、短语、句、段、篇.

I engage my child (who is in lower primary) through the making small books (小书). I also use picture books to build up my child’s comprehension and inference skills. Hence, my child is very quick in Q&A sessions after being read a book.

With the picture books we read, I will then encourage my child to work on writing. To start off, it can be something that is related to the book we just read but progressively, my child has started to work on writing which is not related to the books we read.

To elaborate, for e.g. after reading 我爸爸，you can design the small book in the form of a大嘴书 to express what your child wants to say to his/her father. Also, for this book, there are many repeated sentences that begin with 我爸爸真的很棒，他像什么一样。So in my child’s small book, the same sentence structure (句式) was adopted. You can build up slowly – at first my child only started with drawing, then I guided on the writing slowly.

You can also do thematic topics too, like festivals or special days. Here’s one we did on National Day. 

(Above sample provided by "interviewee")

(If you like to know more about this approach, I adopted it from a Taiwanese master teacher, 林美琴, in her book: 从阅读到写作).

As for Primary 3 to 6 picture composition format, many schools train their pupils in having 开头，内容，结句，结尾.

结局 is the ending of the story, as in what happen to the character(s) in the end, but 结尾 is commonly expected in Chinese compositions when character reflects on the lesson learnt from the incident.

An example:

“怎么了？”林老师好奇地问。小美把事情的经过一五一十地告诉老师。林老师听到了，马上跟小美跑回课室。林老师一看到天明和大山打架，马上大声地喊他们，要他们立刻住手。林老师狠狠地把两人骂了一顿。大山和天明知道错了，马上跟对方道歉。林老师要他们握手言和。最后，这场风波就这样平息了。（结局）

俗话说：“经一事，长一智”，这件事让大山和天明上了人生宝贵的一课，他们从此做什么事情之前都会三思而后行。（结尾）

However, with so many model compositions available in the market, I feel that this has also led to pupils (even for Higher Chinese pupils) writing only in this genre/way. To write about life experiences, however it requires a different skill set. 

This will require parents to read to and read with your children and engaging them in meaningful conversations so that they are sharing their thoughts and views. Through small books, children can then write whatever that is on their mind or apply their experiences into these stories.

This is an ongoing series on documenting my learning and Dumpling's Primary one journey. 

Disclaimer: the article is a sharing based on my friend’s observations and it does not represent the teaching fraternity / education system.

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