In this lesson, there is an exercise for you to search for the traditional and simplified Chinese characters of what we learned. It is also the perfect time to discuss this topic.
I was taught traditional Chinese since day 1 at school. Like many languages in the world, Chinese writing evolved throughout the years until it became what it is nowadays. Traditional Chinese characters have more than thousands of years of history. However, simplified Chinese words are less than a century old. It was an attempt to increase the literacy in China after the PRC was formed.
Please don't get me wrong. I am NOT against simplified Chinese. In fact, THANKS to these simplified Chinese characters. I took a lot of advantages of writing it since year 10 in high school, especially on my exam papers. Without simplified Chinese, I most probably would not complete the exams on time.
However, in my opinion, we have the responsibility to teach our children to learn the basic and their heritage. Just like playing music, if you start out playing piano and classical guitar, you will pick up electronic keyboard and electronic guitar in no time.
As you may have already known, there is occasionally a Chinese symbol inside the parentheses in the previous published exercises[ ( ) ]. Those are the traditional Chinese writing. I highly encourage you to revise these traditional Chinese symbols with your child(ren) as well. In the long run, he/she is the one benefit from it.
Click here to download the activity sheet and start writing Chinese, kid(s):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxJnXu3nperheldpOFJ3R1J3Vk0/edit?usp=sharing
If you can't open the file, click here to download the (FREE software) Adobe Reader:
http://get.adobe.com/reader/
