Chineasy
Improving Chinese eloquence of ethnic minority children.
We participated in a voluntary homework tutorial session for ethnic minority students, and we were appalled by the fact that most of the students' Chinese proficiency was nowhere near what was demanded of them to complete their Chinese homework. They also generally held negative opinions towards learning Chinese, which made us reflect on the predicament suffered by the ethnic minorities in Hong Kong. Therefore, we would like to develop a set of pedagogues that would be useful in consolidating Chinese knowledge and in arousing the interest of learning Chinese amongst ethnic minority children.
1. Most ethnic minority students that we had met (including primary and kindergarten students) have negative views towards learning Chinese. They may be hardworking, but they are often discouraged from learning Chinese due to a lack of exposure and a huge existing gap between them and local students.
2. Most of the ethnic minority primary school students that we met do not have a complete comprehension of their Chinese homework or textbooks.
3. Most ethnic minority students suffer academically (including internal test results and university application) due to their lack of proficiency in Chinese, which may potentially contribute to a vicious cycle of inter-generational poverty.
Our Project:
We are a project team of four Hong Kong students working under a program called C-for-Chinese@JC organised by the Hong Kong Christian Service (HKCS). The four of us are fluent Cantonese speakers and we share the same goal of enhancing Chinese proficiency of culturally diverse kindergarten children in our local community. Working with the aforementioned organization, we conduct weekly classes with a group of kindergarten students. During the process, we aim to develop games that can attract the students to learn Chinese with the inclusion of testing variables (such as the addition of music, format of the lesson etc) that will help with their learning. After the completion of our project, we will send our study outcome (including the list and evaluation of games that we designed, some general features of the learning done by the ethnic minority kindergarten students, and elements that help with the learning of Chinese) to all children who are interested.
Get involved:
You can follow our instagram account for weekly updates on Chinese knowledge and our progress; as well as direct message our account to apply to join our program :) Click here for our Instagram!