Dear Hazel,
Do you have any plans to release a Traditional Chinese version of Wink to Learn?
OK, so as a complete moron when it comes to Chinese, should I have my kids learn simplified Chinese, as I’m told that’s what they use in China. Is simplified chinese simplified characters or spoken words or both? And what is BO PO MO?
Dear Aangeles,
Thank you very much for your enquiry. 
I am very happy to inform you that we are launching our traditional Chinese version by the end of 2009. Please register your kind self as a WINKtoLEARN.com member as we will notify to all our members once the new program is ready for the market.
Best Regards,
Hazel
Customer Service
www.WINKtoLEARN.com
Dear Nikita,
This is a good question. It has been a long debate over traditional Chinese or simplified Chinese. Traditional Chinese is primarily used in Hongkong and Taiwan. The whole of China and South East Asia is generally using simplified Chinese. At the end of the day, there is no clear answer to your choice.
My suggestion is simple. If you want to prepare your child for China immersion, then simplified Chinese is sufficient. However, if you are more inclined towards Hongkong or Taiwan, I would suggest you to take up traditional Chinese instead. What we are discussing here is purely the font type. When it comes to pronunciation, both Chinese versions share the same pronunciation in general.
Bo Po Mo is the traditional Chinese way of input. Simplified Chinese uses mainly Hanyu Pinyin phonetic input.
I strongly encourage you to start your child on this language at early age. So much research has proven that young children’s brains are a lot more plastic and absorbent compared to adults’. Linguistic abilities is a right-brain function whereby a young child’s right brain is typically stronger and more open compared to his/her left brain. However, over time, the right brain will start to decline and submit to the left brain. This is why adults have more difficulties learning new languages compared to kids. This is what Dr. Makata Shichida has researched into over his life-time.
Cheers!
Hazel
Customer Service
www.WINKtoLEARN.com
Hazel,
That is good news! I have already registered at winktolearn.com and will definitely be one of the first to order it when it becomes available.
Thanks for the suggestions. I find the website http://so.youku.com/ very interesting and useful, especially in teaching chinese words, it even teach kids to write with the proper strokes. From the animated images, it shows us the root of the chinese charater and where does it comes from.
U may download youtube downloader or realplayer downloader or many other freeware to save all these clips in your computer. (Provided they are not locked by the author). The file format is in flv, may download another converter software to convert to avi-files, so as to play in dvd player.
Hi
Hazel of Wink to Learn,
Glad to hear that there will be improvement and look forward to the new version.
Some questions on the Wink to Learn Chinese program:
- What is the rational of the colour coded radicals?
It does not follow any rule/ or reasoning which i am trying to figure out.
Breaking up the characters is a good aid for the learners to decoding, however the same radical seems to be in diff colours as it appears in different words.
- Any plan to increase interactivity of the program?
No matter how gd a dvd, putting a child long hours in the front of the TV simply flashing a few hundreds of words and pictures do not guarantee the absorption of the materials. It would be another baby-sitting program which give the parents a piece of mind cos it boasts a huge volume of educational content.
- Rapid flashing with distorted voices
Is this issue being tackled as well?
I may be in no position to scrutinize but it does not need a PhD educator or language instructor to point out these observations.
I really appreaciate your remarkable effort in putting up a great dvd to benefit our children and many others who have great interest in Chinese language.
Thank you very much.
Dear Hazel,
I know you are currently working at posting the translation or script for the Sing to Learn Chinese dvdS, any idea when will they be posted?
Thanks a million
Gloria
Dear Gloria,
We are happy to inform you that we had received the translation for SING to LEARN Chinese Vol. 1 today. It should be uploaded into our website on Monday. Once the file is posted in our website, we will notify you immediately.
As for Vol. 2 and 3, the translations will be submitted to us in the next two weeks. Once ready, we will post it in our website as well.
Wishing you a wonderful weekend ahead!
Hazel
Customer Service
Dear Jinjl,
Thank you very much for your helpful queries on our programs. Indeed these are worthy questions to be addressed in the forum. Please permit me to help you through with the questions one at a time.
- What is the rational of the colour coded radicals?
WINKtoLEARN adopts multiple color-coding and fuse this helpful learning technique into her flashcards. Colors are able to help our brain to tag and remember things better. In Singapore, some reputable schools use colors to aid students in remember mathematical equations a lot faster and better.
We are mindful during the process of color-coding. For English, we use color to help children to differentiate syllables or sub-words. For Chinese, the colors are prescribed to help children in differentiating the different radicals within each word. During the process of learning, the child’s mind will pick up subtlely the similiarities between words esp. in terms of radicals or different segments within each word.
Chinese is indeed a lot more complicated compared to English as it consists more than 5000 strokes. Because of this, it’s not possible for us to categorize each radical using different colors. Esp. in this case, we have a certain spectrum of colors prescribed by experts for us to follow.
- Any plan to increase interactivity of the program?
Unfortunately WINKtoLEARN’s flashcard DVD programs are not meant to be baby sitting programs for parents. We always informed our parents that these DVDs are effectively like real flashcard sessions. Meaning to say, we always encourage parents to prescribe only 1-2 lessons a day for their child. For all our online orders, we also give away a free parents’ guide to inform parents’ about the curriculum and usage pattern. For non-Chinese speaking parents, this parents’ guide is a wonderful help to them as we had translated every single word/phrase and sentence to English. This way, they would be able to be 100% sure about the entire syllabus.
Because it’s a flashcard DVD program, the child will not spend more than 10 - 15 mins a day watching our programs. The critical success factor is the consistency of playing the programs. We would need parents to play each level for 1 month and hence move on to the next. There are a total of 6 levels and we had also included revision lessons within each level to help the child to have a quick revision on those words/phrases/sentences that they are learnt previously.
- Rapid flashing with distorted voices
Our normal DVD flashcard speed is 2 second for the normal lessons. Rapid flashing lessons is only one lesson per DVD and the speed is around 1 second per flash. We encourage our parents to play the normal lessons for their child for better results. The rapid flashing is a bonus lesson per DVD for some customers who are keen about higher speed.
As the rapid flashing lessons are only a total of 6 lessons for the entire 6-DVDs, our key focus is on the 48 normal lessons for both Chinese and English. We might be putting more resources in improving on these 6 lessons.
Last but not least, we are in the midst of creating a new series of DVDs for young minds. The limelight of these DVDs is wildlife/animals. Through them, we are able to reach out to children in English and Chinese language acquisition.
For those who are interested in our new series, please feel free to register yourselves with www.WINKtoLEARN.com as members. Once the programs are launched, we will notify you immediately. Of course, there will be some benefits for online purchases as well.
With this, I wish you a wonderful weekend rest ahead!
Hazel
Customer Service
Dear Hazel again Thank you for such fast reply and extended explanations to our questions! it is a pleasure doing business with you!
I can not wait for the songs translations as you well explained it, the translations help us (parents who do not speak the language) to make sure our kids get all the information accurately) - thanks for that.
One more time these are the features the separate you from any competition, but above anything thank you for listening and respecting your customers concerns!
Good luck in your business !!
Respectfully
Gloria
Jinjl
I like the playlist and how the characters were built. I tried to get to website www.qnt.ys168.com to buy it but the website is all in Chinese and I don’t know Chinese. Do they sell the series there you know please?
thanks.
Hi Hafam
They got a contact no for ordering. I believe is only for mainland China customers and not available internationally.
U can try using google translate the webpage but some translations may not make sense.
There is a free download section for episodes 1-8 in this website:
- the 7th folder in the main index 下载区：全脑通å…费下载（1-8集)
- a trial version of the software 全脑通识å—.rar 3,803KB â†ç‚¹å‡»ä¸‹è½½ å…费试用版
If i don rem wrongly, KL is based in Hong Kong and wonder if Brillkids is interested to get them as the product partner since the responses are good.
I am interested to get a set myself too.
KL, pls assist! Thks Thks!
Dear Gloria,
I am very happy to inform you that the translation for SING to LEARN Chinese Vol. 1 is posted in our website for your kind printout. Here is the weblink for your easy reference: http://www.winktolearn.com/all-about-wink-to-learn-dvds/free-printables/75-printables-sing-to-learn-chinese-dvds-lyrics
Have a great weekend ahead!
Cheers!
Hazel
Customer Service
www.WINKtoLEARN.com
Thanks a million Hazel - Very much appreciatted.
Question : if it is not too much to ask - will it be possible that you could consider adding the pying in the future; this is the way I can look up words in the dictionary - I am teaching my daughter chinese symbols as well as the pying.
Will start trying to figure out the pying myself for now but in the past I run into the problem that when I try to find the meaning of one character I get many many meanings (also different meaning according to the tone which we can not pick up from the symbol itself) also If I type the english word i get the same thing many possibilities depending on the context; but if I type the pying there is typically just one meaning for that combination of letters.
I believe it is very important when teaching chinese to teach the pying as well, my daughter does not seem to get confused at all and I understand it is advisable and wise to do it this way.
Thanks for the translation - it looks great. I am very gratefull for that anyway and we will appreciate very much if you could consider adding the pying as well.
Regards,
Gloria
Dear Gloria,
Thank you very much for your kind suggestion. We definitely want to help more families with an easier start with learning Chinese. The pinyin translation for all the three volumes will be posted on our website by tomorrow or even earlier.
Have fun!
OMG this is too much !! thanks for spoinling us !! thank you !! thank you !! thank you !! thank you !! thank you !! thank you !! thank you !! thank you !! thank you !!
:biggrin:
It’s indeed our pleasure to serve you, Gloria. lol
Please let us know if you need any further assistance from our end in the future!
Have a beautiful week ahead!
This is really useful! Thank you! :biggrin: I am teaching my boys Mandarin, 6 and 8 years old. We have been learning as a family for about 5 years and have had a lot of fun lol and at times some frustration! :wacko: Thanks so much for these valuable points!
Find me at Bainings Big Chinese Challenge! The challenge of getting something foreighn into those darling brains and getting it to stay there!
http://mandarinkids.wordpress.com/