Wa Si Teochew Kia—My First 120 Teochew Expressions is a set of multimedia flashcards developed by The Teochew Store for children under the age of three to learn the Teochew language together with their parents. Experts have recognised early childhood as a golden window for language learning and our educational flashcards and videos are specially designed to tailor to the learning behaviours of babies and toddlers.
Wa Si Teochew Kia—My First 120 Teochew Expressions consists of three boxes of 40 educational flashcards each and ten simple animated videos, each corresponding to a topic.
Our use of flashcards and videos as the media of teaching conforms to this by combining images and sound, and at the same time satisfying the requirement for repetition. Moreover, flashcards are known to promote cognitive and memory development in several ways, while repetition-based learning is acknowledged to help children build their confidence.
To meet the need for context, as well as to cater to the developmental stage of younger children, we created a dedicated vocabulary list of 120 Teochew expressions drawn from ten topics that either relate to the daily care routine of the young child or support his self-discovery, namely:
Because these expressions relate intimately to the child's everyday life and development, they can easily include in regular conversations between parents and the child, thus reinforcing what have been learned.
These are the special features of our flashcards and videos:
我们的早教图卡和视频还有这些亮点:
Brightly-coloured and lively pictures can draw the attention and learning interest of children.
色彩鲜艳、活泼的图画可以吸引幼儿的注意力和学习兴趣。
Our Teochew expressions will be represented by drawings illustrated by two up-and-coming artists from China. Their artwork will include distinctive elements of Teochew culture, as seen in the examples below of grandfather holding a Teochew-style teacup and grandmother’s hair bun, as well as their traditional clothing:
There is a common misperception of Teochew as a spoken language without writing. The truth is that Chinese linguistic scholars have identified the Teochew language as a "living fossil" of Middle Chinese, which was the standard form of written Chinese used during the height of the Chinese civilisation between the Tang (618 to 907) and Song (960 to 1279) dynasties.
The reverse side of each of our 120 physical flashcards will display the written form of its Teochew expression using traditional Chinese characters. Various 19th-century and modern Teochew language dictionaries and handbooks were consulted to ensure the use of correct written characters.
The Teochew text will be accompanied by translations in English as well as Mandarin (in simplified Chinese characters). In this way, the flashcards can also be useful to the child when he learns to read and write in these languages.
卡片也会印上华语(简体字)和英文翻译。等孩子长大一些的时候,可以继续学识字。
Our videos will contain audio readings in both Teochew and English languages for every expression. This bilingual approach will enrich the learning experience and at the same time give a sense of familiarity to children growing up in English-speaking environments.
The way Teochew is spoken varies from place to place. Our Teochew readings will teach expressions commonly spoken both in China and Southeast Asia. They will be recorded by a native of Swatow now living in Singapore. Although there is no standard accent for speaking Teochew, the Swatow variant is readily understood both in China and overseas.
To watch the full set of videos on YouTube, please scan the QR code that is found at the back of our flashcard boxes.
若想在YouTube上观看全套视频,请扫描早教图卡包装盒背面的二维码
For child safety and health, we will use high-quality durable paper and vegetable oil-based ink.
卡片将选用高品质、耐用的纸张及安全的植物油墨印刷。
Keeping in mind parental concerns about screen time, as well as the short attention span of children, the length of our videos will be kept to within three and a half minutes. The videos will also contain simple animation and fun children’s music to make them more entertaining.
With some creativity, flashcards can easily be adapted for games to instantly turn learning sessions into precious parent-child bonding time. Grandparents can also watch the videos together with children and thereby sow the seeds for tomorrow’s Teochew conversations at home.
These cards are a good source for learning basic primary Teochew words. Illustrations are nice. They're fun to look at and images are cute. I would have to say, as a heritage Teochew speaker, and if I don't know how to say the action of the card in Teochew, it's a little difficult as I don't read or write mandarin. It would be nice to have pinyin. I know there are videos but there isn't an index to find it.. o would have to go through the videos.
Overall, it's a resource and I like that it's available. It's hard to find resources for learning Teochew to begin with and then add on for kids. So this is a win.
Dear Cyanthia,
Many thanks for giving us your support. We'll certainly take your feedback and suggestion into account.
A
Adrien
Great learning videos
The cards are of good quality with a cute design.
The videos are well made with clear pronunciations, which I think is the most important part of the learning.
The only cons is that it's missing pronounceable writings on card like Pinyin for foreign speakers, which forces to use the videos as reference.
Dear Adrien,
We appreciate your support and feedback. This will help us to make a better product in the foture.
K
Katherine
I meant to put 4 stars
I give it 4 stars for missing the Pe̍h-ōe-jī on the cards
K
Katherine
Great but missing one thing...
I love these cards, but I wish they include romanized pronunciation - Pe̍h-ōe-jī for example, instead of only the characters, somewhere in the materials, because for me the spoken is the most important, and I can't really be fussed about having the Mandarin + Teochew + English writing on the card. If I see a card and don't know how to say it, looking at the back isn't exactly going to help me in that regard.
Dear Katherine,
Thank you for your valuable feedback. We will take this into mind, and hope in the meanwhile our videos can help you with the pronunciation.
J
Julia Soh
Learning Teochew as a family
This is a great resource kit for my family to learn Teochew together. My children enjoys learning teochew with the videos and flashcards.
Dear Julia,
Thank you for letting us know. We are very happy that your children have found our videos and flashcards to be useful and fun!