I’m also a new Dad in Kaohsiung and worry a little about this too. Has your baby started talking yet?
Kind of labour-intensive, but it works
ETA: Ooops, sorry, on rereading I see that Ms. @Misskyky doesn’t really say there’s two languages going on at home, so the link may not specifically apply
My daughter is six and she’s native speaker in both languages. I’m lucky in that my work schedule allows me two weekdays off, so at least one day a week we have an ‘Annie and Daddy day’ where we go hiking, visit the zoo whatever. We have never once spoken Chinese to each other. She goes to a Chinese only kindy, and this September she will go to a public elementary school. No bilingual crap. I read to her every night. She watches cartoons on the Disney Channel in English. Her favourite is Phineas and Ferb, which is nice because it’s actually really funny for me too.
Downsides? I think her reading is on the lower end of the spectrum for a 6yo native English speaker. She can read books like Fox in Socks to me using a combination of memorization and guessing through context. For example, she says that she looks at the first and last letter of a word and then guesses it. However, I think this is much better than any phonics nonsense. At least she always knows what the word means. I have probably read Fox in Socks to her around 1000 times. She’s still getting irregular past tense verbs wrong - logically using the -ed ending. I don’t think many native English speakers would still be doing this at 6. I never correct her, just repeat her sentence in several different ways using the correct verb form.
She sometimes stutters when she can’t find a word quickly enough. I guess this is down to less input than a native English speaker would be getting. Also, she uses adult vocabulary because I’m her main source of input. I don’t care about her Americanisms - that’s cool.
All in all I’m really pleased. However, I have been very fortunate to have a work schedule that has allowed me to maximize the amount of time I can play and speak English with her. Other people may have to compromise more.
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She says “Mama”, “Dada”, “Baba”, “Daddy”, and just last week “bye bye”. She also signs a little to express herself. 16 months. Yours?
I wouldn’t write off the bilingual schools myself, I would write off the phonics though. My little fella is four and in the middle of his first trip home, realising that the English thing isn’t just Daddy. My 12 year old French niece here, native English and French but educated in French only. She taught herself to write in English, and she writes very well, with the odd French spelling or miss spelling but I think that she will fix that.
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I’m not suggesting I’m right, but bilingual schools in Taiwan are a bit of a bugbear of mine. If they can be avoided, of course. Sometimes they are the only solution for parents with heavy work schedules. It’s the formal teaching of language that I dislike, if a natural acquisition is available.
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Yea I hate the formal carp too, always have, its boring and extremely ineffective. I have not learned several languages that way myself… My kid is starting in a bilingual school in September and from reports of other parents their native English kids are getting on well there, love it, etc. I think the quality and approach is not the same in every school.
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If she did, she’d be a genius. She’s two months old.
Aw, congrats! Enjoy! They’re only so little for so long. I still remember how tiny and precious this little one used to be.
Hi there. I am Taiwanese student in Taipei. My family can’t speak English and I don’t have English environment.
So I just study by myself. I think if your kid wants to speak English, he (she) will does it by himself (herself). Don’t worry. : )
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Hi,
just happened on your post and would like to my story with you.
I am a father of two boys, both were born in Taiwan. I was born in Poland, educated and worked in England but have been living in Taiwan for the past ten years.
My kids are six and eight and they have attended local kindergarten and a local elementary school.
I speak English, Polish and enough Chinese to get by.
I had a similar dilemma just before my first kid was born. I remember asking on every possible forum if my kids will be bilingual or even multilingual. I remember receiving comments that were useful and a lot that were just crappy.
One thing, however, stuck in my mind. Myself, being a certified teacher of English as a foreign language, I did a lot of research and read a number of stories from multilingual families. They all had one thing in common - OPOL.
Basically, it stands for One Parent One Language. Each parent should use One language only to address their kid. If your spouse happens to come from another country, he/she should speak in their mother tongue, too. It may seem unnatural or too demanding for the kid, but believe me, they will pick up all the languages with ease.
I speak English with my kids, my wife speaks Chinese. Their grandmother speaks Polish and every summer we send them back to my mother’s to practice.
They are now proficient in Chinese and English and speak and understand enough Polish.
It is true, their English or Polish may not match their Chinese level but that’s natural. Their exposure to English is just you and other English speaking folks around you. They can watch TV, DVDs etc, but that doesn’t mean their accents will get better. For that, they need to hear and use it.
I see a lot of my concerns in your post. I believe I felt the same way before my kids came along. My word of advice is, speak to your kid in English, let him/her pick us Chinese from his school and peers but be consistent. Persevere even if you think your kid doesn’t understand you. They do understand and there’s nothing better than having your kid say their first word in English and conversing with you.
Another bright side of it is you don’t have to spend a fortune sending your kid to a cram school to learn.
Take care,
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I’ll never understand why foreigners would want their kids to go through primary schools here to learn Mandarin Chinese, aka an overhyped, useless language, when English is like a billion times more useful and important. Going to school here means that their English proficiency would be severely hindered, and using English in exchange of Chinese is just not worth it.
If I ever had a kid with a foreigner (not that it’s ever gonna happen) I wouldn’t even speak Chinese to them.
Well, for one thing, if they live in Taiwan it might just be useful to be fluent in the language spoken here. Just a thought.
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For another thing, it might be due to a financial reason.
Thank your for sharing your experience!
But I’m curious… Couldn’t both parents speak both languages with the kid? Maybe even adding a third one in the daily conversions?
Kids usually are much smarter than what we think, so maybe parents child try to push a bit further.
I didn’t mean those who have kids here, I mean those who have kids abroad and insist on sending kids here for the sake of a language that has no real leverage on academics, science, cultural distribution, and doesn’t even sound pretty.
Even in that case, coming here to learn Mandarin can enable them to communicate with their Taiwanese relatives (the ones who don’t speak English). A lot of ABTs come to Taiwan on their own initiative as adults to learn Mandarin and gain a better understanding of the culture. Apparently, the urge to connect with that part of their heritage is strong in many people. It’s not all about getting ahead and “sounding pretty.”
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Yeah, I was thinking along such lines. I didn’t do it myself, but I’ve known several people who went to Taiwan as adults/college students to learn or improve their Mandarin for multiple reasons including connecting to their heritage.
Gain - are you referring to situations where parents send their non-Taiwanese born kids to Taiwan to learn Chinese through attending regular schools and such? Or through summer camps or other temporary programs? I know people who have done the latter, but not the former. I appreciate and enjoy the Chinese language (and I think it can sound nice, but there is no point in debating something so subjective). I would agree that English is far more useful, especially if you are living outside of Taiwan or any other place that primarily speaks Chinese. But with kids born outside of Taiwan, don’t they usually already speak English (or whatever other primary language of their domicile) well, and they just want to add some Chinese knowledge to supplement (not replace) their primary language? As an Asian American living in California, I’d love if I (or my son) could speak better Chinese but . . . I’d never pick Chinese in place of English.
When each parent speaks their own language, the kids automatically creates
that distinction which language to use with which parent. If each parent
speaks different languages with the kid, the kids may have problems
deciding which language to use. Additionally, you may hear the kid creating
sentences that contain both languages. Young kids are smart but they can’t
distinguish languages, it’s an abstract idea for them. It’s only a tool to
exist and interact with the environment.
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I’ve heard that happening so often with all my friends who had kids with foreigners, it’s quite hilarious xD But they get used to it fairly quickly.
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