Yes. An English-speaking home changes the route, and your child has a lot of company on it: in the 2020 Census, 78% of Chinese pupils in Singapore's primary schools spoke English most often at home. That's about 4 in 5.
What these children miss is hearing and using the words outside class. School teaches them; nobody at home brings them back.
So the fix is specific: let your child hear each word often, get them to recall it every day for 10-15 minutes, and have them write the characters they must write by hand. None of that needs a parent who speaks Chinese.
For most of our kids, Mandarin is a school subject closer to a foreign language than a "mother tongue", and the 听写 drills, the worksheets and the homework all quietly assume someone at home speaks it fluently.
I'm Joshua. We speak English at home. When my daughter started Primary 1, Chinese was a struggle: worksheets weren't sticking, and drilling was making her dread the subject. I felt the guilt every English-speaking parent feels: I should be able to help, but I can't read the word list.
If you're there now, you're the majority. Below is what an English-speaking home changes, and what makes up the difference.
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What's in the sample
- Lessons 1 to 3 of your child's level, Standard Chinese, as an Anki deck: 2024 syllabus for P1 to P3, old syllabus for P4 to P6.
- Each full level has Standard and Higher Chinese. P1 to P3 come in both the old and the 2024 syllabus.
- Open it in Anki on your phone, tablet or computer. Anki is free on Android, Mac and Windows.
What an English-speaking home changes
A child who hears Mandarin at home arrives in class already knowing how many words sound and what they mean. For them, a lesson is mostly about reading and writing the characters.
A child from an English-speaking home learns the sound, the meaning and the character at the same time, from the textbook. That's three things to keep instead of one, so forgetting hits harder. It's a bigger memory job, and memory jobs respond well to the right routine.
The gap is real. A child who hears Mandarin at dinner meets each new word for the second or third time in class. Your child meets it for the first time, learns its sound, meaning and shape together, and then has no one to hear it from until next week's lesson.
That's why Friday's 听写 can go well and the words still vanish two weeks later. The words were learnt once and never came back.
Most of these homes aren't English-only, either. Of the pupils who speak English most often at home, 87% named Mandarin as their second home language. A grandparent, a cousin or a few Mandarin songs in the car all count.
Three things that make up the difference
- Hear every word, often. A recording of each word and of a sentence using it does what a Mandarin-speaking parent does at dinner. Your accent doesn't have to be right if the audio is.
- Recall it every day, a little. Short daily tests beat long weekend sessions, and each word should come back just before it would be forgotten. How to help your child with Chinese has the five steps.
- Write by hand. Reading Chinese leans on writing it. In a 2005 study of Beijing primary pupils, how well children could copy characters by hand predicted how well they read, and their sense of sounds added little once writing was counted.
What I'd skip
I'd skip switching the family to Mandarin overnight if you're not fluent. It's hard to keep up, and a recording is a better model for tones than a nervous parent (me included).
I'd also skip the guilt. What your child needs is for the words to come back at the right time, and you can run that in English.
It's tempting to try to become the Chinese speaker in the house. I'd skip that if you're not fluent: it's hard to keep up, and a recording gets the tones right every time.
The role that fits an English-speaking parent is keeping time. Your child does the remembering; you make sure the reviews happen, 10-15 minutes a day.
Where the deck fits
I built the MOE Chinese Anki Deck for families like ours.
- Every word in the MOE syllabus, P1 to P6, lesson by lesson to match school, Standard and Higher Chinese, old and 2024 syllabus.
- Natural Mandarin audio on every card, 13 voices including a Singaporean one, with pinyin and English so you can follow along without reading Chinese.
- Characters your child must read get a Recognition card and a Sentence card; characters they must write also get a Writing card with stroke order.
- Spaced repetition brings each word back just before it would be forgotten, 10-15 minutes a day. Within 4 months, my daughter could read and recognise every P1 word.
- The free sample is lessons 1 to 3 of your child's level, Standard Chinese. A full level is SGD 199 (all six SGD 599), with a 60-day money-back guarantee.
More for parents: How to help your child with Chinese · Child struggling with Chinese? · 听写 practice at home · How to remember Chinese characters
Sources
- 78% and 87%: Department of Statistics Singapore, Census of Population 2020, resident students aged 5 years and over by language most and second most frequently spoken at home, level of education attending (Chinese). Primary: 129,960 of 166,552 pupils speak English most often at home; 113,001 of those 129,960 speak Mandarin second.
- Writing and reading: Tan, L. H., Spinks, J. A., Eden, G. F., Perfetti, C. A., & Siok, W. T. (2005). Reading depends on writing, in Chinese. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 102(24). 131 pupils aged 7 to 10 at a Beijing primary school.
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