Family of 3

My son (3) goes to a nursery in Singapore where they "learn" Mandarin i.e. they sing songs and hear stories in Mandarin for about 1/2 hour per day. I don't know how much he knows (since I don't know it myself) but his teacher says he's starting to understand a bit of what's happening.

We'll be moving to Perth at the end of the year and it'd be good if he carry on with this. I'm not expecting fluency, and I want it to be fun rather than a chore, but it'd be good if he could speak a few words when he's an adult.

His teacher suggested I look into Chinese Speech and Drama classes - anyone come across any? (NOR if possible, near Joondalup ideally).

Thanks.

Mipik

Every major city in Australia has a number of Saturday schools that teach Mandarin Chinese.

Google it.

On a more sobering note these are for kids of school age (and above, adults included).

All of the are sponsored by Chinese government so costs are close to nothing.

Amazulu

My son's school, Guildford Grammar, teaches Chinese as a subject.

Fly Away

My daughter's junior school in Adelaide teaches Chinese (Mandarin) too. I think if you look around a lot of Australian schools teach Mandarin.

HelenTD

Hi, try Chung Wah Association:

http://www.chungwah.org.au/courses.html

Lingo (but may be very little info on Perth):

http://www.lingo.org.au/about-2/

Bilingual Families Perth (might be able to point you in right direction):

http://www.bilingualfamilies.net/pages/en/home.php

Or there's DVDs:

http://www.language-tree.com/mandari...FQTDbwoduFe7-g

You could also contact the Education Dept to find out which schools teach Mandarin, but it might have to be one of those out-of-school activities that your child does. At our school, I have found the foreign language teaching to be incredibly poor, but primary schools vary a lot. Don't worry about the Mandarin lessons, and remember that here it's more important that your child has swimming and surf safety lessons (parents too).

lapin_windstar

I recognise that this is a choice for every parent but I am not sure that this is a great way to phrase it IMVHO. Obviously lifelong skills are useless to a child if they die from drowning before they get to use them, but there is a huge underappreciation of foreign language knowledge in Australia and a huge overappreciation of sport.

Monolingual graduates now have a hard enough time getting into international business positions - in 20 years it'll be practically impossible. Not everyone wants to work for big international companies (and maybe in 20 years they won't exist) but it would be nice to have the option, wouldn't it?

HelenTD

I actually do believe that it's more important to learn to swim (sport, exercise and safety) than to learn a foreign language. LOTE teaching is shocking here, but then English teaching isn't so good either. Our son's high school, which he starts next year, has told us that they pretty much start teaching the LOTE from scratch, as the standard of teaching in primary schools is often low. Our son has no interest in learning language for a future business life but enjoys learning French, but his friend going to the same high school is opting for Mandarin as he is interested in business.

My Australian OH never studied a foreign language at school, so he's hopeless travelling, can't even manage schoolboy French, German or anything else. It is important for a child to learn another language and culture, but it's up to each parent to decide priorities. For us it's been more important to be sure that their physical coordination, fine and gross motors skills are A1, because if these don't work it messes up everyday life. Not being able to speak Mandarin, Indonesian, French or Spanish does not. Monitoring of early childhood development in Perth is lacking.

Just as you would enrol your child in swimming lessons outside school, then enrolling them in LOTE classes would also be the best way for them to learn. However, children are very expensive little creatures, and time-consuming, and most parents have financial and time limits. I also think that kids can get fed up with activities after school or at the weekend.

I am a fan of LOTE and studied 3 at high school, 2 to 'A' level and 1 post-'A' level, even using it in the workplace. However, these languages are no use to me living in Australia, but being able to swim properly would be bloody fantastic. It's on my long list of things to do.

Family of 3

LOL, don't worry I want him to learn to swim too, and I'll be asking about piano and football lessons soon enough. I'm not planning to push him into anything too rigid, just what would be good to maintain those skills he's starting to develop in a fun way.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Surf safety? Is this advanced swimming lessons? I think I could do with that.