Chinese Reading Program

Chinese Idioms Literacy COOL is the first rhythmic dictionary of Chinese idioms. It is a combined Chinese language teaching material in terms of basic characters learning, learning of idioms, comprehension training and essay writing. While the students are learning Chinese idioms at an incredible pace, they can also master the commonly used Chinese characters that appear in those Chinese idioms at the same time. In addition, the books also incorporate those Chinese idioms into various levels of reading and comprehension exercises, from the easiest to the advanced level and of course essay exercises. Hence, the entire learning system is comprehensive, systematic and most importantly, to enable students to master Chinese idioms and new Chinese characters effectively within a shortest period of time.

In Chinese Idioms Literacy COOL， we had chosen the most commonly used idioms in daily life. In every two idioms, the last character of the first idiom has a similar sound as the first character of the second idiom. Every four idioms are bundled into one group of same rhythm and the entire text is structured in a rhythmic style, easier for reading aloud and that facilitates memorization. Among those idioms, there will be one unfamiliar new character with average difficulty level in every three characters. The learning and revision of those characters are reinforced in the comprehension exercises and combined assessment. In the comprehension exercises, the training is focused on extensive reading and application of the Chinese idioms. As for the combined assessment training, the questions are set in various styles. This is to ensure that the students can apply the usage of Chinese idioms fluently in both verbal communication and writing. Not to bore the students, the overall learning is structured in a unique and fun way.

Chinese Idioms Literacy COOL textbooks adopts 800 commonly used idioms. Among which, those marked with ** are 60 compulsory idioms to be learnt at Primary school levels, and those marked with * are 250 compulsory idioms to be learnt at Secondary school levels, as instructed by the Ministry of Education, Singapore. In the textbooks, there are 1125 commonly used Chinese characters to be learnt with meanings, phonetics, synonyms, antonyms and sentence samples. The comprehension exercises consist of 62 famous Chinese ancient anecdotes where those idioms originated from, 23 fairy tales, 22 Chinese proverbs & sayings, 32 stories for the children and 22 knowledge of Science. There are altogether 60,000 Chinese characters. The combined assessment contains creative and interesting exercises to train the students from various angles, and make them reach all aspects of training effectively.

The contents of Chinese Idioms Literacy COOL books are very meaningful. All the 3200 Chinese characters of the whole text are entirely made up of Chinese classic idioms. Usually, a student can identify the meaning from the literal meaning of the four characters making up each idiom. In the combined assessment training, the student will be able to further understand the origin of idioms. The moment the student recalls the four new characters, he or she will automatically remember the Chinese idiom which are made up by that four particular characters. To make learning even easier and more straightforward, the fourth character of the previous idioms will enable the students to recall the next idioms. By memorizing every four Chinese idioms, the student can grasp the rhythmic style of the whole text. This process goes on and on to form a “chain reaction” memorization process. As a result, the student will remember a large number of idioms, usually up to a few hundred by using this technique. So learning idioms is fun!