Teaching Text for Teenager? (not beginner)

[chinabush]

Our 13 year old daughter's oral Chinese is pretty good (we live in China), but her vocabulary is quite limited, and her day to day interaction with other locals is not really gaining her that much anymore.

 

Can anyone recommend a curriculum or text that we could use (with a good local tutor) to help her move on?  Oral and reading,

 

We've seen the "Ni Hao" series (published out of Australia) and this is a possibility, but before we commit and dive in, we're trying to explore our options.

 

Thanks for any advice!

[gato]

Does she go to an English-language based school in China? How about getting her to read more Chinese novels and magazines?

[chinabush]

Thanks, Gato.  She is home-schooled in English.  While she can recognize maybe up to a 100 characters, she's not able to read at that level yet.

[chinabush]

Anyone know anything about 国际少儿汉语 ?

[chinabush]

or "Huanying", high school level, published by Cheng & Tsui?

[Meng Lelan]

Ni Hao is a really good series. I know the materials can be expensive, but the curriculum is well designed for ages 10 through 16 - not babyish like Discovering Chinese and not college-ish like the New Practical Chinese Readers. Meizhou Huayu is available in both simp and trad, you would need a Chinese tutor to guide through that curriculum but the vocabulary building in Meizhou Huayu is very age appropriate and very relevant. I know very very few teachers use Huanying. 

[chinabush]

Thanks so much, Meng Lelan.

 

I haven't seen Meizhou Huayu before - I'll certainly look closer!

 

Any thoughts about why so few use Huanying?  It seems to be very well written and presented as well as age appropriate for middle/high schoolers (as you note with Ni Hao).  I've been impressed with reviewing the PDF samples and many resources available -  would love to be aware of any 'cons' to this series..

[Meng Lelan]

The site for Meizhou is

 

 

http://www.mzchinese.org/Services/Services-English.html

 

 

It was written by Taiwan focused Chinese language schools in the US but you can choose simp, trad, pinyin, bopomofo. Comes with audio too. Of course I teach my kids at home so I get to choose what I want to use. If you don't know Chinese then you will have to engage a Chinese tutor to teach this text. Very very very little English(which is precisely why I picked it). 

 

I don't know why Huanying never really took hold except that it came late to the high school Chinese teaching scene. When it first came out the schools had already established what they wanted to teach. Most public schools will go for New Practical Chinese Reader or sometimes teachers will write their own curriculum based on NPCR because sometimes NPCR gets too geared to college kids with romances, wine, etc. not appropriate for a 13 year old.