TOMSK, January 8 – RIA Tomsk. Confucius's Institute at Tomsk State University (TSU) started Chinese courses for kids of three years as an experiment, the director of the Institute Irina Shvedova reported to RIA Tomsk.
"We carried out monitoring of need for the city and found out that there is a demand for such courses for children from three and up to six years. We gathered already two test groups on which tested a technique since September, 2016", – she told.
Shvedova specified that children are broken into groups: from three to five years and from five to seven. The most part of parents choose Chinese courses already as second foreign language – usually children learn English in parallel.
"Many parents know that Chinese can already be chosen in the USE now, and think of the future of the children. The second moment is that now the relations of Russia and China develop very well, and people see prospects in it. And the third is that Chinese differs from Russian very much, and helps to develop imagination, motility and so forth", – the interlocutor of the agency explained.According to her, occupations are conducted by two teachers: from the People's Republic of China and Russia. The classes last half an hour and are carried out in a playful way. At the same time children not just learn language, but also learn about culture of China – for example, celebrate national holidays.
Shvedova noted that it is important to teach kids phonetics at the first stage (a pronunciation of sounds is very important in Chinese – the word meaning depends on it). At the same time it is easier to master difficult tone phonetics of Chinese for small children who perceive the world differently, than adults.