Balancing writing skill development to keep motivation alive - Summaries v. Creative Writing

Recently, during parent-teacher conferences, I had a discussion with my child's Chinese teacher about her writing development. For quite some time, the kids have been plowing through short books and expected to summarize or write a book report on a weekly basis. Some kids, being far ahead, are being enticed with the possibility of writing on a topic of their own choice. This has been great progress, plus it's great when your kid actually wants to write (in Chinese) something to express their own view or a story they've made up.

While my kid did this, however, I felt like there was a dip in her sentence quality. So I talked to the teacher about my concern. I wanted my child to go back to reading books and doing summaries, because this is an important way in which she will acquire vocabulary about different subjects and learn from the book (which has been written by a professional, not me) a much more improved way of saying something.

Without being fully immersed in a Mandarin-speaking world, let alone being fully immersed in a Mandarin-speaking world of very well-educated people, then how would my child - or anyone, for that matter - ever learn quality language, i.e., quality vocabulary and quality sentence structure, both spoken and written expressions? Not easy.

The books are a critical part of that process. And while it is fantastic that my child wanted to write about something that she, herself, was really excited to write about, the reality is that she doesn't have enough vocabulary to think it through, or even the attention span and editing and re-editing endurance built up yet, in order to develop a high quality piece. She can't do it on her own. When I've worked with her on such a project before, it has taken a lot of time and attention. We've done it. But it takes time and effort. Writing takes effort. Thinking takes effort. Also, you don't want to get in the way of that budding independence. But you also have to guide it. And in a sea of 20 kids, the teacher cannot devote as much attention as you would think.

The teacher and I concluded that we would switch on and off. My kid needs to spend some time doing summaries, again, before she can do another creative piece. This has worked out great. I am satisfied that skills and vocabulary are progressing as modeled after the book. My child is motivated to get through them, knowing that her reward will be to write something of her own choosing.