What Kids Need to Learn in Chinese Language -- in China

I was looking for some measuring sticks on learning Chinese when I found that a new Curriculum Standard for Chinese is being implemented in China in the last few years. The standard spells out the goals of Chinese language education during the 9-year (K-9) compulsory education period.

The goals are a mixture of political and cultural aptitudes, general reading and writing skills, and some quantified measurements. These are further divided into four periods: Grades 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, and 7-9. Although my daughter is currently in the 3rd grade, her Chinese level would probably fall into the first period, i.e., for Grades 1-2.

According to the Standard, the goals for Grades 1-2 are:

• Learning the Chinese characters:

1. Able to enjoy learning characters
2. Able to recognize 1600 to 1800 commonly-used characters; able to write 800 to 1000 of them
3. Knowing the basic strokes, writing with the correct stroke order and spacing; able to appreciate the beauty of a character's shape
   
4. Having a good posture and habit while writing; writing neatly
   
5. Complete the learning of Pinyin: able to correctly pronounce the initials, finals, and tones; able to write them correctly
6. Able to pronounce new characters by their Pinyin, able to look up new characters in a dictionary by their Pinyin and/or strokes
   

• Reading

1. Able to enjoy reading
2. Able to read correctly and smoothly with the standard Mandarin
3. Able to read silently, without the help of voice or finger tracing
4. Able to read with the help of pictures
5. Able to understand phrases with the help of their context
6. Able to read simple fairy tales, fables, and stories
7. Able to read children's poems and other simple poems, enjoy the beauty of language
   
8. Knowing the common punctuations and their usage in different expressions
9. Able to recite 50 poems or proses, read more than 50,000 character's worth of books outside of the classroom
10. Love books and take good care of books
    

• Writing

1. Interested in writing sentences and writing down one's own words, imaginations and feelings
2. Enjoy using new words when writing sentences
3. Able to use punctuations correctly