Every overseas Chinese family has a common question: How can we keep our children’s interest in Chinese learning while living abroad? With the changing environment of overseas life, Chinese language learning faces new challenges. The shift in language environment impacts their Chinese learning. In over 30 years of teaching Chinese overseas, we have found that children encounter bottlenecks in their progress after mastering the basic knowledge and skills of Chinese. How can we maintain children’s interest in learning Chinese and improve their Chinese proficiency in our teaching?
In our Chinese summer camp in 2023, we adopted “Stories of the Chinese Idioms” as the theme. In the traditional Chinese culture of more than five thousand years, idioms are the treasures of the Chinese language, the core of the traditional Chinese culture, and the essence of the Chinese language. In just a few words, they are concise, vivid, and rich in meaning, encapsulating rich and profound ideological content. Therefore, learning the idioms plays a significant role in understanding the traditional Chinese culture and learning Chinese effectively.
Each classroom teacher prepared lessons on Chinese idioms with relevant stories and the needed supporting vocabularies for the appropriate grade levels. We have selected numerous versions of the Chinese Idioms for teachers to choose from with the sole purpose of differentiation. Based on the language proficiency levels of students, teachers developed student readers with adaptations of these texts that are appropriate for language levels of students. All student readers had the basic level and advanced level, including two levels of language difficulties. Each student was assigned a language proficiency level based on the initial placement assessment at the beginning of the camp.
相信每个海外华裔家庭都有一个共同疑问：如何让孩子们在异国他乡保持对中文的浓厚兴趣？随着海外生活环境的改变，孩子们的中文学习面临新的挑战，语言环境的转变，影响了孩子们学习中文能力的发挥。在三十多年海外汉语教学实践中, 我们发现海外中小学生在掌握最基本的汉语知识和技能之后，中文学习遇到了进步过程中的瓶颈，我们在教学中如何保持孩子们对学中文的兴趣，同时提高孩子们的汉语水平？
我们2023年的中文夏令营选择“中国成语故事” 作为夏令营的主题。在中华民族五千年的传统文化中，成语是汉语中的璀璨明珠，是中华传统文化的瑰宝，是汉语语言的精华。它精练、形象，言简义丰，短短几个字包含着丰富、深刻的思想内容。因此，学习成语对于了解中华传统文化以及汉语学习都会起到事倍功半的积极作用。
每位老师都准备了成语的教学计划，配以相关故事和适合不同年级所需的词汇。我们为老师提供了多个版本的成语故事，以供选择，旨在实现差异化教学。根据学生的语言水平，老师们开发了适合学生语言水平的文本改编版。所有学生读本都包括基础水平和高级水平，分为两个语言难度级别。根据开营时的语言评估， 每个学生都加入到一个适合他们自己语言能力水平的班级。
