Kong Kids Talk・Happy Chinese Learning

Kong Kids Talk is a language learning application designed for supporting children's early Chinese literacy through the classroom and home reading. This application is suitable for preschool  (K1 to K3) and school-age children (Primary 1)  in Hong Kong.

Young children will explore more than 48 short audio stories and collect stickers with a cast of adorable characters. Each audio story comes with colorful pictures, animated cartoons, and a controlled vocabulary set. Young children can customize their reading experience and cultivate their interest in Chinese.

Overview

In recent years, the Education Bureau (EDB) has continued to provide learning and teaching resources to cater to the needs of young children; however, there is a lack of language learning tools for young children to study and practice Chinese characters at home or in the classrooms. They often recognize Chinese characters by writing and rewriting characters until they are committed to memory. Young children are rarely engaged and motivated in the writing-based learning. In accordance with Education Curriculum Guide (2017), EBD has imposed “learning through play” as the central pedagogy for pre-primary education, aiming to stimulate their interest and motivation in language learning. Young children love listening to stories and reading books. They can learn Chinese better and more effectively through storytelling.

Chinese characters are vastly different from English words. Chinese characters consisted of three main parts: semantic meaning, pronunciation, and written form. The writing system is complex. The written symbols are unable to spell out like alphabetic words. The repetitive writing and dictation make Chinese learning very uninteresting, and stressful, which presents a significant challenge to young children in developing Chinese reading and writing literacy.

To promote early Chinese literacy in Hong Kong, we are committed to research and develop a Cantonese learning application. This educational application is designed based on the principles of the Chinese writing system. Young children can learn the formation of Chinese characters and build their literacy skills (such as character recognition, pronunciation, and phrase construction) through the simple and fun reading journey.

Funds pledged will be used in the application research and development process. We hope to create a child-oriented platform where Hong Kong parents can access a range of fun reading resources and Chinese learning tips; hence, facilitating young children’s Chinese reading and writing skills.

Our Vision

• Ensure equal opportunities in learning Chinese for Cantonese-speaking and non-Cantonese speaking children.

• Provide parents with fun and educational resources to support young children's Chinese literacy development

• Raise the awareness of the importance of early Chinese learning in Hong Kong

Our Mission

• Offer a collection of fun games for vocabulary building and Chinese character recognition

• Assist young children to notice the basic structure of Chinese characters such as strokes, stroke order, radicals, and semantic-phonetic components

• Create a diverse Chinese learning environment to cater to the needs of Non-Cantonese speaking children, and build up their sensitivity towards Chinese characters

• Provide appropriate support to young children with difficulties in reading and writing Chinese

Target Audience

Product Features

Kong Kids Talk consists of four difficulty levels: Level 1 (3 to 4 years old), Level 2 (4 to 5 years old), Level 3 (5 to 6 years old), and Level 4 (6 to 7 years old). 

Each level offers 12 themed stories closely related to children’s daily life experiences. Young children can choose a character for themselves and start the reading journey with lovely characters in different story series. Each story includes a colorful illustration and the auto-read feature. All text is clearly narrated, which highlights high-frequency words in the sentence, to improve young children’s listening and reading skills as well as the ability to retell stories with a built-in recording feature. Parents can correct their children’s pronunciation when they get it wrong. Each story offers checkpoints where test children’s knowledge in word pronunciation, word recognition, sentence construction, and sentence frames.

Kong Kids Talk includes various text types such as narrative, information, descriptive and expository. Young children can learn more than 600 Chinese words and phrases in 48 themed stories. We are committed to providing young children with a safe and fun learning environment. Kong Kids Talk is 100% kid-safe. The application is ads-free, and no pop-up will cause parents’ worries.

Product Development Process

Five phases of Kong Kids Talk development process:

Project Schedule

Kong Kids Talk is in the initial stage (concept stage). Phase 2 of the project will be activated in Q1 2022 and completed within 18 months when sufficient funds are collected.

Budget Plan

Funding Goal

Our goal is to pledge about HK$20, 000 in 2021/22 to support the application development of our literacy application, and more importantly, to promote early Chinese literacy learning in family and community. The pledged fund will contribute to the prototype development.

Rewards to Supporters

We appreciate every dollar you donate. Your kind support helps us promote the awareness of children's Chinese literacy development in Hong Kong.

About Us

We are a group of volunteers united by the goal to promote the awareness of early childhood literacy.