Igniting a love for the Chinese Language, Ms Liu Cuixian

Step into Ms Liu Cuixian’s classroom, and you would immediately hear children’s laughter and sense their joy of learning. As Ms Liu often uses songs, stories, games and dramatisation to engage the young minds, it is no wonder that even the shyest child will be drawn out and want to participate.

Ms Liu joined MOE Kindergarten @ Blangah Rise in 2016 and has over 18 years of experience teaching Chinese Language to children of different age groups. Her rich teaching experience has allowed her to be able to work well with different children who come from diverse family backgrounds. Ms Liu makes concerted efforts to build strong relationships with parents, so that they understand and play a role in developing the children’s love for the language. Parents have confidence in her teaching as their children have made improvements and developed a love for the Chinese language under her close guidance and engaging lesson activities. Mr Tan, the parent of 6-year-old Charlotte, shared how his child had benefitted from Ms Liu’s lessons. “My daughter was able to relate to me what she had learnt in school. She had also begun to read Chinese storybooks and learnt to recognise many new vocabulary words.”

Another parent, Mr Mak, shared that he has seen great improvement in his child’s language learning with Ms Liu’s teaching and guidance. “Andrea is now able to converse in Mandarin with her sister and has shown a keener interest in learning Chinese.”

Ms Liu uses tiered approaches in her teaching to cater to the different learning needs of the children. She creates a lively and vibrant learning environment. The children in her class remain attentive and participate actively during her lessons through fun games and activities. She may use puppets to tell a story and is also creative in designing games so that children can learn through play. The children in her class are regularly exposed to different hands-on activities, where vocabulary words are learnt in a fun manner. She also seeks to inculcate good learning dispositions in children through her nurturing and patient approach.

Ms Liu believes in lifelong learning and seeks opportunities to improve her teaching knowledge and pedagogy. She is self-motivated and finds joy in seeing the children under her improve and speak the language fluently. “Seeing the children in class enjoy my lesson and speak Mandarin with their friends helps me to see that I have taught them well. It encourages me to continue to work hard in my role as a Chinese Language teacher. I am also heartened to be able to work with parents who are receptive to feedback and support their children at home.”

Ms Liu attained the Outstanding Preschool Mother Tongue Language Teachers’ Award 2019 (Merit). She was lauded for her fluency in the language and the ability to instill the love of learning the Chinese Language in the children. Her warm and encouraging disposition in class motivates the weaker students to sustain their interest in learning.

Ms Liu also seeks to guide other Chinese Language teachers in their teaching. Her sharing of ideas and feedback encourages others to learn and grow. Newer teachers have found that her constructive comments allow them to understand their own teaching better and they are encouraged to improve in their classroom practices. In addition, her tireless passion and enthusiasm in class sets the model for other teachers to follow.