How to Teach Writing in Chinese Immersion Classrooms?

As Mandarin Chinese immersion schools are getting increasingly popular around the world, Chinese teachers are in need of more research-based and teacher-created resources. Having your students talk to each other in Mandarin Chinese every day may not be a challenging task, but how about getting them to start writing Chinese characters and sentences in Chinese?

Here are some resources for Chinese teachers to help their students develop writing skills. We have used them in our Chinese immersion and Dual Language classrooms, and our little Chinese learners benefit from these resources!

Writing Posters

Get your students to start with routines! No matter which age group you work with, it’s always great to create a flow of writing for them. This set of Writing Process posters will create the perfect visual support on the bulletin board for your students. It explains each step of the writing process: brainstorming, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. Teach students about these 5 writing process in the beginning of the year, so you can always refer back to each process when giving feedbacks to their writing.

The writing posters are available in Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese.

2. Writing Papers

Always give your students paper choices, especially your young learners.

It’s a way to differentiate, make writing more engaging and fun, and encourage your young writers to be more independent! Start your lesson by teaching students to find the “just-right“ writing papers. Maybe some of them need the boxes with lines to make sure they put each Chinese character in the center of the box, and some of your advanced writers may prefer to write their sentences on lines. Your students will get excited to choose the paper they will be using to write their stories in Chinese!

Click here to purchase the set of writing papers at multiple levels.

3. Picture Dictionary in Chinese

The Chinese picture dictionary is a wonderful tool for your Chinese language learners to expand their vocabulary and become independent writers. This set of word bank is categorized by themes, so it’s easy for students to navigate if they are unsure of how to write a word in Chinese. As you introduce more words to your Chinese learners, you can put more pages inside students’ folders using sheet protectors.
The picture dictionaries are available in **Traditional Chinese** and **Simplified Chinese**.

4. Practice Makes Perfect.

My first graders wrote about how they celebrated Halloween. Check out their published pieces!

Most importantly, your students need LOTS OF practice! We recommend you start your writing lessons by writing personal narratives, stories about their life. Personal narrative writing is a great starting point for any language learners because it allows writers to share their experiences and memories with others, and readers can make connections to their life as well. Your students will have a lot of ideas to share when writing stories about themselves. You can incorporate sequence words and feeling words in this type of writing, too. Last but not the least, it can be seasonal and tied into different holidays and themes.