All About Your Child

None of my nieces had tests during Primary One. Even though there were mock tests, none of the results from the mock tests were taken into consideration at the year end examination. But not Keatkeat’s school.

Keatkeat’s school which was my Primary School too, decided to initiate a new system of assessment. Its back to the good old days. *wink*

Seriously, it does not matter to me, but what nudged me to write this post was the CHINESE TESTS AND MATHS TESTS both fall on the SAME DAY! *faint*

Man! Keatkeat’s stress level rose when he marked it down on his calendar. “Huh? 2 Tests on the same day? Then no time to play!” was his immediate response.

A little update on his progress. His Maths is Awesome so long as he stops being over-confident of himself and starts making silly mistakes. How silly are his mistakes? Here is an example:

He did all the sums right, but he copied the letters wrongly! *faint*

Silly Enough? No? Look at the next one:-

He forgot to write the letter “m” for monkeys and “b” for bananas!!! *Double faint*

And that was how he could not get Full Marks for his maths exercises. What a waste! *pout*

So 11th March is the ‘deadly day’. Both Maths and Chinese Test. I call these two subjects his “A” subjects. Why? Well, his Maths is Awesome and his Chinese is Awful!

His Chinese is so bad that his dad is seriously considering to get him into a tuition center. *eyes rolled* To me, nahhh…. its expected and I can accept that fact, but not his beloved Papa.

Oh well, we shall see his performance after the Tests on 11th March first, before his Papa takes any actions.

Alright, I did my post on Keatkeat’s very first experience with English Spelling. Its time for his Chinese Spelling drama! *laugh*

This was what he got for his VERY FIRST Chinese Spelling *huge laugh*:

I was impressed with his result because WE DID NOT KNOW THERE WAS CHINESE SPELLING!!! Hey, without learning from home, he got 2 correct!! That’s awesome! *laugh*

Growing up in a COMPLETELY English-speaking family was really hard for me. It affected my results for my Chinese language badly. My father speaks English, Cantonese and Melayu. My mother speaks English, Cantonese and Hainanese.

So I am expecting the same for Keatkeat. Because of my poor Chinese, and I had embarrassed myself globally with this post, I am not having any expectation from Keatkeat that he will excel in this language either. That is why I can ‘celebrate‘ such results.

How come we did not know there was Chinese Spelling?

Well, the teacher gave out this sheet of paper. Told the children to write the Chinese Words and the Hanyu Pinyin 3 times each.

Allan and I thought this was just another Chinese homework. We completely missed out the word “Ting Xie”, which is Spelling for Chinese.

Keatkeat came back sulking with that 2/10 score.

1 day BEFORE the next Ting Xie, Keatkeat’s Chinese teacher called me up and said these “Your boy is very attentive in class. Whenever I ask the class to read aloud, he would too. If he does not understand anything, he would ask as well. But errrr…. may I know why did he do so badly for his Ting Xie?”

I laughed so loud. I think I scared the teacher a little! *huge laugh* I explained that it was our error and it will not happen again. I asked if my boy needs to learn both the Chinese Words and the Hanyu Pinyin, she said “No, we will just test him on the Hanyu Pinyin.”

2nd Ting Xie:

Yippee! So much better. Then I saw Chinese words. And Keatkeat was unhappy that he could not write the Chinese Characters correctly. (Teacher circled no. 10 “didi”)

As I had mentioned in the English spelling post, Keatkeat, being a perfectionist, he does not like to see crosses and now, he does not like to see circles on his book either. He was upset and so was I.

Why does he need to write the Chinese characters when its not tested on? Worse,  if he gets it wrong, he needs to do correction like the 2nd picture for his First Ting Xie (scroll all the way up to the top of the post). For correction, he needs to write both the Hanyu Pinyin and the Chinese characters 3 times!

Allan spoke with the Chinese teacher. This time she said a different thing, “We will test them on Hanyu Pinyin just for the first 3 months. Thereafter, it will be Hanyu Pinyin and Chinese characters. So we want them to Try writing both now, to get used to it.”

*Faint*

So every week becomes 30 spelling words to learn!!!! 10 English words. 10 Chinese characters. 10 Hanyu Pinyin!

Keatkeat does not like to do correction. Oh well, who does?! *eyes rolled* So now, though the teacher still gives points for correct Hanyu Pinyin with wrong Chinese characters, my boy does not want to get the Chinese characters wrong either, so that he can skip doing correction.

*sigh*

3rd Ting Xie:

He got it all correct for Hanyu Pinyin, but was still penalised for the wrong Chinese Characters. *sigh*

Keatkeat was unhappy again.

But you know what?! I am sooooooo proud of him. Someone who has no interest in Chinese at all can make such amazing effort in pushing himself…. *Kudos*

So now, Keatkeat is working hard for his Ting Xie because English Spelling has become a breeze for him! Whoo-hoo! *wink*

Jiayou Keatkeat!!! I know you can master learning both Hanyu Pinyin and Chinese Characters BEFORE the 3months ‘probation’ period. *Grin*

Cos after 3 months, the scores will be affected, if he gets the Chinese Characters wrong and THAT is the last thing he wants…..