Simplification

So we've scaled back enormously in our Chinese efforts.  I've gone down to zero (although I did spend 2 hours listening to Chinese during my walk yesterday - a rather nice book / CD called "Rapid Literacy in Chinese" which is quite a meaty book as far as text and recording is concerned), my kids have gone down from about 27 hours a week to about 2.5.  And in fact, my son has also gone down to zero from this term, as the school decided they wanted to use his language time in order to consolidate his mother tongue which had already had too much interference and confusion from Chinese.  I am absolutely fascinated how a second (or in our case third) language can create so much confusion and disruption on one child while have minimal effect (on L1 at least) in another child.

Anyway, in contrast to my son, my daughter has been struggling with the fact that her current level is way below what she needs to sustain her chinese, let alone enhance it.  We knew this would be the case and chose there current school for reasons which had nothing to do with Chinese.  I had advised her (and myself) to go softly softly in getting her what she needed.  Finally yesterday, after a few hints from myself to her chinese teacher that she really needed more of a challenge, and a few emails to the school asking what could be done further - aside from me taking her to a horrid tutoring school after school hours, she announced that she and one other child in her grade were receiving 1:2 tutoring in chinese during one of their language classes a week.  BUT, they still had to do the regular homework of the rest of the class (which was a joke she added).  Small steps.  I asked her about the level now, and she said it was good, but she was still struggling with getting fluency in Simplified Characters.  I asked if anyone had given her any help in that.  Nope.

I have to state here that I have little Miss Independence in my home.  It is a good trait in the sense that she just soldiers on on her own and doesn't give up easily and has an enormous amount of perseverance. It also frees me up to do the extra handwriting, extra maths, etc. with her brother.  But it's also not a good thing because sometimes a simple question or admission of struggling from her could mean things taking a lot less time.  I'm assuming she has this attitude at school as well, so if no-one has sat down with her to discuss how to get from traditional characters to simplified characters I can safely assume it is because she's probably not asked for that help.  I can probably also take a guess (having read the teacher's profiles) that they are probably not very versed in traditional characters themselves, and maybe wouldn't be able to help her anyway.

So now I, who am even less qualified in either traditional or simplified characters am trying to see how I can help her in her conversion process.  Let me add - she's been thoroughly brain-washed by the HK system to believe that simplified characters are gauche and undesirable.  Which may or may not be the case, but that kind of presumption can somewhat get in the way of learning.  This is not the time or place for ideological battles, the kid has to do what she has to do to succeed.  I've been googling around, and there is a pretty good wiki on the matter .  99.9% of the other sites around the simplification matter are computer tools to help one convert from the one to the other (so if that can be machinated it means there has to be an algorithm for it), and a couple of sites with the ideological debates and some to help one learn the one or the other form (like this one which looks pretty neat).

I think we need to strike a balance between her understanding how the conversion works and the common substitutions, and her just sitting down and learning / memorizing the new character set.  There are two aspects to this.  One is the reading, where she's frustrated since she can't read as quickly as she could before and stumbles on the most simple of characters - exactly what is to be expected as some characters have had all their meaning simplified out of them.  The other is the writing.  As blogged about previously, fMRI studies have shown that the writing aspect of chinese is very closely related to the motor part of the brain.  After 3 years of certain characters being engrained in her mind and hand and body as being written in a certain way, she has to go back and partially erase those paths, or at least create new parallel paths next to the old ones, both leading to the same meaning.

If anyone can help us with some tips or hints or suggestions on how to go about this - much appreciated.