Crocodile Mandarin School
Who knew Mandarin learning could be so fun?
Immersion
Class
Immersion
Description: Will immersion be too challenging for my child, who has no Mandarin speaking background? How does my child communicate with teachers without speaking English? Will my child get discouraged because he/she doesn’t understand what to do in class? Is immersion a better way to proficiency than a play-based class that includes English? What is the best age to start this program?
As parents, we often ask these questions when it comes to making a decision on whether or not to enroll our child into an immersion-style learning program. As a language teacher with 20+ years of teaching experience, I would say it’s not easy, but every student has their own way of getting to the top of this mountain of challenges. Through these years of teaching and involving myself into different learning methods, this is how I would describe the immersion program - A Gentle Giant! It is helpful, powerful, full of skills, yet has a mild and tender nature.
Long story short, our main goal is to increase student interest, confidence and ability to use Mandarin effectively in their daily lives.
How do we achieve this? In each lesson, we start it with introducing the weekly vocabulary and sentence structures through reading a well-known story book. Who doesn’t like a good story, right? Then we relate these target vocabulary and sentence structures with variety of interesting and meaningful activities kids love to do in their daily lives, such as crafting, cooking, singing, science projects and so on.
What if my child doesn’t understand what the teacher says during the activities? Do you remember how I described immersion? That’s right! A gentle giant. We approach students with natural and easy-accepting methods, such as guiding them through each step with a clear, appropriate speaking pace, lots of repetition, creative gestures, visual cues, facial expressions and frequent checks to make sure every student is on board. However, there will be moments when students feel their thoughts are jumbled. It is normal, totally expected and will be just temporary. As their language skills get stronger, all the puzzle pieces will naturally fall into the right place. Research also has demonstrated that students in an immersion program increase their cognitive abilities to understand complex and abstract concepts.
Once again, an immersion language program may seem like a “mountain of challenges,” but each student will be taught to form their own ways to conquer these obstacles. And just think of the reward in store when they get to the other side.
Offered at:
South Burnaby only.
What ages are best for this class?
Recommended for students age 4-9.
What previous language abilities are needed?
No prior Mandarin experience is required.
Price: $267 for a 11-week term (Early Bird Price)
This class is one hour.
A 20% discount applies when another Crocodile Class is taken at the same time. If you register two kids living at the same address, a 10% sibling discount applies.
Prices rise and discounts disappear two weeks prior to the term.
