WORRIED English-speaking parents are sending their pre-school children for Chinese lessons at private schools to give them a foundation in the language.

The main draw of these enrichment classes is that they are usually taught by teachers from China, so children are exposed to a very fluent and polished brand of Mandarin.

Communications manager Florence Sim, for example, sent her son, Joshua Ng at age four to the Chinese International School in Dunearn Road for lessons at kindergarten level.

Thanks to bilingual activities and at least six hours of lessons a week, her son, now six, has mastered enough Chinese over two years to hold a conversation in Mandarin 'in that funny qiang (accent)', says Ms Sim, 35.

His acquired accent is a hybrid of Anglo-American and Beijing Mandarin, as her son's playmates are from different parts of the world. The kindergarten has 55 pupils from more than 20 countries, including six from Singapore.

Another parent, human resource manager Wee Siew Kheem, sent her two children to Kids Express Learning Centre in Jurong West, where they learnt to recognise and read Chinese characters through games and rhymes from the age of four.

Now, her 11-year-old daughter and six-year-old son speak to their grandmother in Mandarin and use both English and Mandarin with their parents.

Ms Wee, 37, says the enrichment classes gave her daughter a head start in her first three years of primary school.
'Unfortunately, she didn't seek to improve. She uses English more regularly and reads more English than Chinese books,' she adds.

At least eight Chinese language schools, including Berries World Of Learning and Eduplus Language Centre, offer pre-school Chinese language classes to this growing niche market.

Kids Express is run by two Beijingers who are Singapore permanent residents: information technology professional Yuan Rong and his Chinese teacher wife.

Mr Yuan says the market is burgeoning because 'Chinese is a second language here and people don't quite know what techniques to use to teach it'.

His school uses a modified syllabus taken from kindergartens in China. 'We see our niche as building a foundation in reading and character recognition.'

This article was first published in The Straits Times on September 13, 2008.

For more The Straits Times stories, click here.