Dear iwc,
I would like to share with you my views on primary education in CKY School.
Instead of comparing the syllabus of CKY with that of the traditional school, I would like to point out that for some of the CKY parents, primary education should concentrate more on reading, listening and don't forget communication which includes "speaking, discussing, replying, presenting, sharing, arguing and interacting" as well instead of grammar and dictation alone. Writing is useful as long as it does not discourage students from learning.
As a Chinese student in learning English as a second language, it is utmost important to create a suitable English learning environment for our kids to "emerge" into it and to cultivate their interest in learning that language too. Also, we must not forget that learning a language is to communicate. To stress too much importance on memorizing a lot of word spellings and grammatical rules will do kids a disservice rather than enhancing their English language skills.
The best alternative will definitely be a curious kid who has the genuine interest in reading, in writing, in presenting and in discussing his ideas, his dreams and his way of thinking with his classmates and to reconsider his own viewpoints in the light of the feedback received in English. This is why I like the thematic approach in learning English including the reading a lot of related reading materials, the searching for information in library or through the internet, the sharing of views through presentation and discussion, and the developing of writing skills through creative writing and project writing in CKY.
My kid is studying P.4 now. Though his written language is not as good as his spoken language, I have the confidence in supporting the CKY way in cultivating students’ interests in learning English. In learning the topic “castle”, we borrow books from the public library and he has every interest to know what will be the life in the medieval world and what happen to the ordinary people besides the lord, the knight, the page and the squire. In the creative writing session, his class teacher gives him a story line or two and he has to complete the whole story by making use of his own imagination.
I remember that evening my kid demonstrated his passion in finishing the story for more than 4 pages till 11 p.m. though he knew it crystal clear that the class teacher would only mark the story up to 4 pages only. I must say that there were a lot of grammatical mistakes throughout the story but I am sure that this could be improved in time and I did not want to interfere him on what he should or should not write at that moment. Rather I would appreciate his willingness, his creativity and imagination to write for more than 4 pages of English with good plot and an interesting story. If language learning is about communicating ideas and messages, surely he has a rich reservoir of a variety of interesting topics and reading materials to tell his class teacher and this is a good start for him. This is the strength of CKY in interesting learning for learning sake and for the development of a life-long learning attitude for our kids.
WILL
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