What Should Parents Do If Children Can’t Pay Attention to Their Teacher in Chinese Class?

We often find that when children are in class, they can’t sit still and have the urge to fidget. Teachers get a headache after seeing them. At home, homework is a struggle as the stool seems to grow nails. He doesn’t care if you are in a rage. He still looks around. Sound familiar? If so you might be asking yourself “What are some ways in which parents can change this situation?”.

After our research, we found that the reasons for students’ inattention are as follows.

The first is the lack of understanding of the purpose and significance of learning. The lack of learning responsibility and initiative, learning purpose is not clear, seriously affects the development of students’ intentional attention.

The second is the lack of self-discipline and poor anti-interference ability. Especially vulnerable to the influence of the surrounding environment, often look left and right, love to meddle in “business”, seemingly learning, the actual learning effect is very poor.
The third is the fear of learning difficulties, there is no certain perseverance. He refused to use his head to think, but he died.
Fourth, the stability and persistence of attention are poor, and the scope of attention is narrow.
Therefore, the following solutions are provided:

1. Speak Chinese aloud
Parents should let their children understand the importance of learning, and insist on reading with their children for 30 minutes every day. Speaking Chinese aloud is conducive to training their children’s attention, which is a process of coordinating their mouth, eyes, and brain. When reading, their attention must be highly concentrated. As long as we stick to it, the child will naturally grow into a patient and thoughtful child.

2. Quantitative Chinese learning plan
To help children plan so that they can complete learning tasks in a prescribed time. If the child can finish the task regularly and quantitatively, the parents should give the child some encouragement. We interviewed the parents of Nora, an 8-year-old student with Online eChineselearning School, who shared such weekly Chinese learning plans with us: Nora has made great progress in Chinese learning. From the beginning, she could only speak several new words but now she can express words in Chinese completely and have a Chinese dialogue with the teacher in class.

Reading:
1). Maintain a specific amount of reading every day to at least one hour, focus, and consciously memorize sentences.
2). In daily thinking, we often try to think in Chinese, think about problems, and cultivate a sense of language.

Listening:
1). Start with HSK. Practice dictation every day. It’s necessary for success
2). Watch a Chinese cartoon every week.
3). Learn new concepts in Chinese and recite the text.
Vocabulary:
Learn five words every day since vocabulary is the most important and must never be ignored.

Oral language:
Insist on speaking more than one sentence of Chinese every day including basic communication such as greetings.

Grammar:
It’s beneficial for grammar and vocabulary to write in Chinese. Of course, it’s also advantageous to have a grammar book.

3. Cultivate children’s self-confidence.
Parents should learn to praise their children. Imagine hearing “You are the best and I love you so much” as your caretaker looks into your eyes with warm eyes and hug. Children will build a correct understanding of themselves from the recognition of their parents. Also, it is very important to gain peer recognition in building self-confidence. Children’s self-confidence will gradually increase through peer recognition.

Even after the most basic self-confidence is established we should continue to praise them throughout the process of Chinese learning. When encountering encouraging behaviors or when encountering difficulties in Chinese learning, we should work with children to solve existing problems and give them a sense of security. We must not criticize and reprimand them. Praise and encourage children more to make them feel successful, so as to improve their self-confidence.

4. Extend children’s concentration time through small game interaction
Games are also a good way to extend children’s attention time such as a building blocks game called, “one, two, three wooden people” and so on. “One two three wooden man” is a traditional group game, that is played by, children moving their feet carefully when parents say “one two three”. When the head of the family calls “wooden man”, the child immediately stands still. Children over the age of four can play well, and they can also become 123 robots, 123 sleeping beauties, etc. When you play games such as these with your child at home it lets them practice controlling their body as well as staying still for a period of time.

I hope these useful methods can help your children’s Chinese learning. In the face of children’s problems, no matter what measures are taken, persistence is the most important. The challenge is not only the children but also family cooperation and parents’ persistence in the classroom!

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