This is an inspiring story about Thinaah Muralitharan, a Malaysian female badminton player in the 2024 Paris Olympics. Despite never attending a Chinese school, Thinaah can fluently communicate in Mandarin, a skill she acquired through self-study. Remarkably, Thinaah has never received formal Chinese education. Most of her classmates at Bukit Jalil Sports School were of Chinese descent, presenting her with numerous challenges. To help Thinaah adapt, her father suggested that she learn one Chinese word every day, which turned out to be quite effective with all these small efforts combined.
After learning new words, Thinaah would construct sentences using them, which helped her track her progress. She primarily used Mandarin to communicate with her teammates in the badminton team. Her fluency in Mandarin significantly improved her ability to communicate effectively with her peers.
Thinaah’s story shows that self-learning Mandarin is possible. However it’s important for children to have a Chinese-speaking environment. If there are many people around who can speak Mandarin, children can practice by conversing with them during weekdays or weekends.
However, if there are no Mandarin speakers available, self-learning can be challenging. In such cases, it’s beneficial to find a professional Mandarin teacher to teach the basics and the structure of the language. Teachers from eChineseLearning, with over 18 years of experience, can tailor a specific teaching method based on your child’s learning progress. They use a structured and professional approach to build a personalized Mandarin learning method for your child.
Thinaah’s rapid progress was mostly due to her immersion in a Chinese-speaking environment. Therefore, parents should seek out opportunities for their children to interact with native Mandarin speakers if possible.
For those without a Chinese-speaking environment, enrolling children in Mandarin classes from a young age can be very beneficial. Structured learning can help build a strong foundation and learning strategies. Once children develop their own effective learning methods, acquiring new vocabulary, making sentences, and self-assessing become much easier.
If you are interested in having your kid learn Chinese, sign up for a free trial class via the form on this page, and we will be happy to help.