Unless he chooses to.
I think you misread my postā¦ or I was unclear.
What I mean is that my boy has a good base in Chinese that he can improve on because he acquired that base as a child, and while his English is a bit behind his Chinese, he will be able to improve on that as well as he has a good base there also and he is still young.
By contrast, I never studied Chinese until I was 22 years old. I have no good base in Chinese on which to improve. Its all a struggle for me. But, even if I had started Chinese earlier, say in high school, I would still have struggledā¦ because Chinese requires rote memorization to learn characters and tones are best learned in infancy and early childhood. English differs dramatically in this regard and thus is easier to learn or perfect at a later ageā¦ again, I advocate teaching all languages at an early ageā¦ Iām only saying that it is extremely difficult to learn Chinese (written and spoken) at a later age.
[quote=āTravellerā]
At the end of the day though, it is the child, even if done subconciously that will decide what language if any that they will become eloquent inā¦[/quote]I disagree. The environment is what makes your thought process either English or Chinese. If you are immersed in Chinese, you will think Chinese, and the same goes for English. Without an active thought process in any given language, there can be no eloquence.
I never made a choice to think in English. My surroundings slowly imposed it on me. In fact, for a year or so I wanted to move back to Quebec because I was very annoyed with being unable to think properly. By that I mean that in my own head, my thoughts would stall because I did now know how to say what I was thinking. After a year or so, maybe two years, I gained the necessary vocabulary and grammar I needed to have a constant and smooth thought process. Itās still far from eloquence, but at least I didnāt have to grind my teeth in frustration due to constantly looking for words in order to just talk to myself.
The same thing happens to me nowadays when I think in French. It doesnāt work anymore because I am not exposed to French anymore. And itās my first language!
I think Tigermanās son is a good example of what some of you guys can expect from your kids. Despite many efforts put forth to maintain fluency(nevermind eloquence), Tigermanās son is still more efficient in Chinese. Did he have a choice? I donāt think so. It just happens naturally when 90% of what you hear and read is Chinese.
Hence the importance of having an English only environment at home. No one does it though, and as posted by a few parents who live in Taiwan, children always do better in Chinese. While the majority of opinions here negate the benefits of unilingual families, the results prove them wrong. Get your kid to think in English, however, and things could be different. In fact, I think that the dominant opinion I am herein disagreeing with really underestimates the ability that children have to learn languages. Kids will pick up on the Chinese parentās mistakes at a very young age. Itās common sense to me.
[quote=āTigermanā]I advocate teaching all languages at an early ageā¦ [/quote]So do I, and immersion is the best way to be taught a language. That leaves English to worry about if you live in Taiwan. I think sending your son overseas to finalise his education is a very smart move. Not everyone can afford that, though. Your son is one lucky young man.
Well, he will live with his grandparents and attend the same public high school that I attended. Thus, it will be MUCH MUCH less expensive than sending him to one of the international schools here in Taiwan.
Well, he will live with his grandparents and attend the same public high school that I attended. Thus, it will be MUCH MUCH less expensive than sending him to one of the international schools here in Taiwan.[/quote] And FAR FAR more beneficial in terms of language acquisition. (If the chosen language of eloquence chosen by the parents is English, of course) Iām suprised that itās cheaper, but I trust your findings.
Why are you surprised itās cheaper, Bobepine? Surely Tigermanās only costs would be travel and any living allowance paid to his grandparents?
I heartily agree with you about your suggested approach to raising a bilingual child. What you describe is known as the mL@H (minority language at home) strategy: obviously both parents have to be reasonably fluent in the other language for it to work. In its most rigorous implementation, the family speaks mL (English, for most of us here) exclusively within their own four walls, and ML (the majority language, Chinese) the instant they step out the door.
The other main approach is known as OPOL (one parent, one language), and the other posters (except you and maybe Jive Turkey) appear to have all come down in favour of this, on the grounds that the poorer English skills of the Taiwanese parent will be communicated to the child.
The truth is that the child is exposed to all manner of false starts, ungrammatical utterances, incomplete sentences and interruptions, even when being brought up in an ordinary monolingual household. Through the seemingly magical process that is language acquisition, the child filters out the dodgy inputs and builds a correct grammar of the language being learned.
That grammar only gets built if thereās enough input, though. And with input in one of the languages from only one person, it would take real parental dedication and non-stop jabbering for the child to attain fluency, never mind āeloquenceā. There are two reasons OPOL works for English in Taiwan. First, the couple probably speak English to each other, in earshot of the child, and this source is just as important as speech directly addressed to the child (note that it, too, will include non-native speaker errors). Second, there is plenty of English out there in the community anyway, in the media and education, and there will generally be English speaking family friends.
Perhaps the most compelling disadvantage of mL@H is that if you move to the other country, you have to change the language your family speaks. Not insuperable, but certainly difficult to convince the kids itās necessary!
Another problem with a strict application of OPOL is that itās all very well when one parent is talking to the child. But what about when the other parent joins in, and it becomes a family conversation with everyone talking to everyone else? In our household I think most conversation is like that, and communication would just break down if we had to stick rigidly to our assigned languages!
Actually we donāt really have a proper system. We āsort of knowā we should be using only English in the home, but my Taiwanese wife only occasionally remembers not to use Chinese! I only ever use English with our 7 year old (unless Iām helping with his homework or he doesnāt know what something means), but the 2 year oldās English comprehension is not yet sufficient for me to be able to say everything I need to say in English. Iāll build it up gradually, like I did with gege.
It would be interesting to hear from posters who speak a foreign language other than English, which is not known to their partner. What progress are their children making in Chinese, English (which of course might still be the language used between the parents) and the other language?
Iām not entirely clear, still, on the distinction OP is drawing between fluency (balanced bilingualism, that is) and āeloquenceā. It is such a rarefied wordā¦ articulate, but with a posh edge to it, or one from some other era? Assuming native-like fluency is a prerequisite for eloquence, and everyone is it seems, I would be inclined to put the horse first. Balanced bilingualism is absolutely not a given, you will need a strategy. After the baby is born, and you have taken care of feeding and changing and zuo yuezi and a million and nine other matters, you will probably start to consider what that strategy might be.
You canāt make firm plans for your childās upbringing and education until you know what the child is like (and ā not meaning to patronize ā what being a parent is like). In bilingualism, as in all matters, we donāt really know how things will pan out. But like Piwackit, I canāt wait to find out!
Thatās right.
Not only the poor English of my wifeā¦ but also my poor Chinese.
Yes, my boy has been subjected to much of my poor Englishā¦ but, even my poorest English is better than my wifeās best Englishā¦ and my English, even with its mistakes, is what we use where I come from. I guess Iād rather have my boy able to communicate ālike a nativeā, with native mistakes and all, rather than communicate like someone who has learned the language as a second language, even if more grammatically correct on occassion.
Absolutely.
Not necessarilyā¦ in fact, it may be that the couple speaks more Chineseā¦ depends on the couple, obviouslyā¦ but, many foreign nationals here with local spouses came here to learn Chinese and married locals who speak little English.
Yes to all of the above to the extent that it applies.
This has never been a problem in our home. My comprehension of Chinese is sufficient such that when my wife speaks to my son in Chinese I also understand and can continue the discussion in English. Likewise, my wife understands English, but is more comfortable speaking in Chinese. Our boy is comfortable answering or addressing us in our respective native languages.
Of course. I endeavor to speak only English to my boyā¦ but, certainly in his 14 years I have spoken some Chinese to him. He usually laughs at my Chinese, however, and at my wifeās Englishā¦ its actually a source of much amusement for all of us.
Me too. Its been interestingā¦ fascinatingā¦ we probably could have done betterā¦ but, things are going fairly well.
I think bobepine assumed that Tigermanās son will also enrol in private school in the UK.
[quote=āsmithsgjā]What you describe is known as the mL@H (minority language at home) strategy: obviously both parents have to be reasonably fluent in the other language for it to work. In its most rigorous implementation, the family speaks mL (English, for most of us here) exclusively within their own four walls, and ML (the majority language, Chinese) the instant they step out the door.
The other main approach is known as OPOL (one parent, one language), and the other posters (except you and maybe Jive Turkey) appear to have all come down in favour of this, on the grounds that the poorer English skills of the Taiwanese parent will be communicated to the child.
ā¦
It would be interesting to hear from posters who speak a foreign language other than English, which is not known to their partner. What progress are their children making in Chinese, English (which of course might still be the language used between the parents) and the other language?[/quote]
Being a trilingual family, I think I can comment on this. We live in Canada, so ML=English. Right now, the strategy that is currently being deployed (which came together in an adhoc fashion) in our household is to use both mL@H and OPOL simultaneously. I speak Mandarin to my kids almost exclusively (except when I really really need to make my point, then itās Cantonese). My wife speaks exclusively Cantonese to the kids. Us adults speak Cantonese to each other. The older kid (age 4) is immersed in English when he attends kindergarten. The kids also have a 15-30 min session of Chinese reading (Chinese character learning, in Mandarin only) each day.
The result? Iāll only report on the 4 year old since the 2 year old is still too young to know. My son speaks excellent Cantonese with native pronounciation. This is not surprising since he spends most of his time with mom. He speaks pretty good Mandarin with pretty good pronounciation. He speaks almost no English despite having spent 2 previous years in a half-day English Montessori (heās shy, so a Montessori environment is not the best place to pick up a foreign language given his personality, imoh). The little English he does speak is heavily accented. He can readily switch between Cantonese and Mandarin and knows that when he talks to mom or dad, itās Cantonese or Mandarin only respectively.
We really are not worried long term about his English. But not wanting him to feel totally isolated in kindergarten, we had to slightly alter our game plan to inject English into the household. The plan is that once heās comfortable with English, weāll then cut it out of the house again. What we currently do is to do the entire bedtime routine in English, including the bedtime story. If he replies in Mandarin to me, Iāll translate it into English and ask him to repeat after me. Itās tedious, but hey, no one said itās supposed to be easy.
The result. In May of this year, he would refuse to use English at all except to say to his teacher āI need to go to the potty.ā Since adding that little bit of English into the household, heās now confident enough to speak to adults about simple things āI need waterā, āWhereās your car?ā. He still refuses to speak English to kids his age though.
On the reading side, he can read almost 300 characters. I did try doing phonics with him but without a decent knowledge base in English, it just isnāt very effective at this moment. However, he seems to gobble up bopomofo with no problem.
Being in Canada, the kindy also teaches French. Poor kid. 
Iāve known more than a few kids that grew up in a OPOL home and had to go into ESL when they entered grade 1. Now, most of them are not even close to fluent in their first language. I think because most parents understand the ML, they do not demand that their children speak the mL in the home once they hit a certain age. In order to keep the mL alive in their children, it is absolutely imperative, imoh, that the parents become draconian rulers in this regard and demand that the ML be kept out of the house.
If I ever move to Taiwan, Iāll probably switch and speak to my kids solely in English. Iām sure itāll confuse the hell out of them initially, but in the words of my better half: too bad so sad.
I would like my kids to study as many languages as possible. I find now that languages, in a global environment, counts for a lot, not just careerwise, but the Enhanced ability to appreciate other cultures and make friends from all over the world.
I also, like others here, read that each parent (of different backgrounds) must stick to one language when communicating with the child, at least when young. Consistency is key here. This is why my asian dialects are so messed up, as my parents had a bad habit of switching from dialect to dialect in a conversation, and throwing in a smattering of English. Grandparents and relatives do help while growing up too, as well as family friends and their children.
I appreciate my education in Canada a lot. It allowed me to acquire English and French (if your school has a good program that is, I highly recommend an immersion school. there is a public school in BC with this program at Churchill where my friend went, and regrettably I did not). I would also encourage my child to continue this in college in minoring in at least one language.
good luck!
US. Iām a Yankā¦ :America: And itāll be a public school, for certain.
US. Iām a Yankā¦ :America: And itāll be a public school, for certain.[/quote]
Oopsy daisies. Well, S is the second letter from the left on the keyboard and K is the second letter from the right. So it was just a typo. Thatās my story and Iām sticking to it. 
[quote=āTigermanā]
Not only the poor English of my wifeā¦ but also my poor Chinese. .[/quote]
No, the mL@H strategy, which I presented as the main alternative, would not involve you speaking Chinese at home. Most families I think extend āhomeā to include whenever the family is together, majority language input coming from school.
[quote=āTigermanā]
Yes, my boy has been subjected to much of my poor Englishā¦ but, even my poorest English is better than my wifeās best Englishā¦ and my English, even with its mistakes, is what we use where I come from. I guess Iād rather have my boy able to communicate ālike a nativeā, with native mistakes and all, rather than communicate like someone who has learned the language as a second language, even if more grammatically correct on occassion.[/quote]
Thatās not quite what I meant. It doesnāt matter if you speak with a regional accent or have grammatical usages that are different from the BBC! The point is that you are a native speaker, and to all intents and purposes speak the language perfectly, whereas your wife does not (to the extent that maybe she sometimes uses hypercorrect, textbook forms which would never be used by a native speaker, and are therefore wrong). Your variety of English is precisely the one that we hope your kids will eventually acquire!
But even native speech contains disfluencies and slips of the tongue, just as non-native speech contains those and grammatical errors. But in language acquisition, kids sift through the dross and basically pick up only the good stuff. Theyāll learn āI never done itā if thatās part of your grammar and therefore well-formed in your dialect. They wonāt learn āI have ever been to Englandā (even though my wife makes this mistake constantly) because that isnāt part of any native speakerās grammar, and isnāt provided for in that neurological programming that we know next to nothing about.
[quote=āTigermanā]
Not necessarilyā¦ in fact, it may be that the couple speaks more Chineseā¦ depends on the couple, obviouslyā¦ but, many foreign nationals here with local spouses came here to learn Chinese and married locals who speak little English.[/quote]
In such a situation, I expect OPOL would not work. Anyone got personal experience?
Maybe I am not understanding youā¦ but, in our experience, OPOL has worked quite well. I speak OK mandarin at work and out on the street, and with my wife, who speaks little English. Our boy speaks native-speaker level Mandarin and near native-speaker level English. He just turned 14ā¦ and just entered an international school where the language of instruction is English. I expect his English proficiency to quickly improve to native-speaker level.
Maybe I am not understanding youā¦ but, in our experience, OPOL has worked quite well. I speak OK Mandarin at work and out on the street, and with my wife, who speaks little English. Our boy speaks native-speaker level Mandarin and near native-speaker level English. He just turned 14ā¦ and just entered an international school where the language of instruction is English. I expect his English proficiency to quickly improve to native-speaker level.[/quote]
Itās bound tooā¦ sounds like things have indeed worked out well in your family. I suppose you must have spent a lot of time coaching your son in English reading and writing? I just canāt get my older son interestedā¦
But yeah if you and your wife speak nearly all Chinese to each other, and OPOL did work for you, then I stand corrected! But Iām still convinced one of the reasons for your success is the unique status of English in Taiwan and in the world. If like sjcma you were hoping for your child to acquire Mandarin in Canada (or maybe Danish in Taiwan?), there might well be a case for ākeeping ML out of the houseā.
Well, just to clarify, we have sent our boy home every summer to live with my parents and spend time with his cousins and to have lots of interaction with American kids his age.
I think that this has been veryā¦ very important in the success weāve had.
āCorrectedā may be too strong a word considering my remarks above.
Perhaps, but, I think the summers my boy spent back in the US had more of an impact on his English than the status of English in Taiwan.
The only thing that seems fairly certain to me at this point is that a variety of approaches may be necessary.
OPOL worked for usā¦ but, that is very likely because we also sent our boy to the US for summers with the grandparents and cousinsā¦
Excellent contributions to the discussion from Smithsgj. I also find sjmca and Tigermanās descriptions of their family situations interesting.
My wife and I plan to do OPOL as far as is possible, but some people here seem to have some misconceptions about how it works and what is good about it. The good thing about OPOL is that the child will consistently have one strong language model for each language. OPOL does not mean that non-native inputs-ie TMās Chinese or his wifeās English-are something to avoid like the plague. Actually, it would be unwise to do so.
The amount of language a child can learn from monologue is limited. They can learn words this way, and they may learn to collocate those words to form sentence fragments, but they do not learn to produce truly interacive language just by hearing mom or dadās monologue. They donāt learn to form questions or answers to those questions by hearing monologue, nor do they learn to manipulate language to respond to unpredictable situations by listening to input from just one parent. Children acquire much more by hearing natural, interactive discourse between two or more speakers. You may think that they donāt understand a lot of what you and your spouse say to each other, and they donāt, but they follow adult interactions well enough to learn the functional grammar that they could never learn from just hearing monologue. This being the case, it is probably better for a child to hear interaction between a native and a non-native rather than just āperfectā native quality language spoken as monologue or in simple exchanges with the child. The one-to-one interaction (when the other parent is not participating) in which the parent speaks his or her first language serves as the ballast. This interaction makes it pretty obvious to the child that mom is stronger in Chinese and only speaks English when necessary and that dad is stronger in English and only speaks Chinese when necessary. Whole family interaction that crosses back and forth between languages is not really a bad thing so long as each parent is able to provide a critical mass of their first langauge as input.
Cantonese will likely be my childās strongest langauge for the first few years. I plan to speak English with him, and my wife and I will usually speak English to each other around the house, but the boy will likely spend part or all of the day at grandmaās. Heāll hear mostly Cantonese there, and when Iām around, heāll hear a fair amount of Putonghua since thatās what the in-laws and I use to communicate. That will probably throw him for a loop because I am not going to speak Putonghua with him; heāll just hear enough of it everyday when I drop him and pick him up at grandmaās to wonder what the hell dad is saying. My spoken Chinese is good, so if he slowly starts to pick a bit up, thatās not a problem. I plan to avoid speaking it to him, though.
[quote=āJive Turkeyā]Excellent contributions to the discussion from Smithsgj. I also find sjmca and Tigermanās descriptions of their family situations interesting.[/quote]I second that. Thanks to Smithsgj for sharing his knowledge on this subect, and for expressing my opinion with eloquence. 
Think about the kids in Taiwan who are raised by two native English speakers. Them kids are fluent in both languages by the time they are 10 years old, and their Chinese ability surpasses that of their parents by the age of 6 years old. Why is that? ML@H is the answer. If one parent is taiwanese, and isnāt fully fluent in English, add a year or two to this language acquisition process for the same result. Not to mention that by then, the Taiwanese parent will also be much closer to fluency. I look at it as the narrow path to take, but with the best pay off.
It canāt be easy for the Taiwanese parent to not speak Chinese, and I think thatās why ML@H is not frequently practiced unless both parents are native speakers of the ML.
In Tigermanās case, one of the big reasons why OPOL worked out well so far, is because his son was immersed in English periodically. I meanā¦ I have a Taiwanese student who just spent a month in the US and heās going around saying things like āWhatās up dude?ā 
Iām sure Tigerman also noticed steep improvements in his sonās English ability everytime his son came back from the USA. Hence why it makes sense to him to send his son back to the US to further his education. This said however, I think that if Tigermanās son had been raised with the ML@H strategy, his sonās English would be a lot better. Would his Chinese be worse? I doubt it. Immersion is too implicating in that regard.
Yes. There certainly were improvements when he returned from the US.
Yes.
I donāt know, really. Each family is different. My wife does speak English, but mostly only in connection with her business. Anyway, had we utilized a ML@H strategy, we still would have sent our boy to the US for the summers, and I think that had the most impact on his learning.
Also, he was never limited to speaking English only with me in Taiwan. I frequently take my boy with me when I go to Carnegieās (on weekend days) and other places and events. My boy has been able to speak and interact for several years with the likes of Maoman, Dr. Evil, Comrade Stalin, JDSmith, Durins Bane, Lord Lucan, BroonAle, Stray Dog, sandman, smell the glove, Alleycat, HGC and a host of other English-speaking characters. So, while the environment here has been primarily a Chinese environment, I have made certain that my boy has had as much interaction with English speakers other than myself as possible. These opportunities to speak English and to participate in conversations with native English speakers from all over the English-speaking world have been very helpful.
At the same time, I suppose we encouraged our boy to speak Mandarin with native speakers of Mandarin. Thus, when out camping with Forumosan couples, he spoke English with redwagon while speaking Mandarin with Mrs. redwagon.
This, IMO, is what OPOL really means.
I donāt know about this either. You may be correct. However, it was helpful, I think, to have his mother speak Chinese with him and to help with his Chinese homework from school. My wife taught Mandarin at Fu Jen and at Chinese Cultural Uni and also at Berlitz when they first opened here in Taipei. I think her help at home might have been influential.
But, its impossible to know whether or not a different approach would have yielded different results.
Hmmā¦How many kids do you know who fit this description? I didnāt know any kids like that when I lived in Taiwan. I knew a few whose parents were non-native Chinese speakers and who spoke their L1 at home and sent the child to a local school from early on. Some of those kids were in real trouble at school; I donāt think any of them were dong very well. I know or know of a whole lot more of such cases here in HK. These kids learn Chinese, but nearly all of them remain far behind their local peers until they leave school.
IMO, the reason these kids donāt acquire native like skills for their age is because their is no CSL program in the schools to help them catch up. Minority L@H is more likely to work out well if there is a second language program available. A lot of immigrant kids in the US need special attention for their language needs when they go to the first year of primary school. This is even true for some kids who have been to English kindergartens. These kids donāt need to spend much time at all in ESL lessons, but they do need that little bit of extra help that will catch them up. And then there are plenty of kids who are borderline as far as needing ESL help when they enter primary school but who are able to catch up without it because class sizes for regular lessons are small.
Minority language at home seems more likely to work for immigrants in the west. Their kids are likely to have access to professional ESL remediation and their children are likely to get more individual attention in regular lessons because class sizes are smaller than in Taiwan. In contrast, an immigrant kid in Taiwan or HK is up shit creek if he is much at all behind his peers when he begins primary one. There is no CSL curriculum, no training for primary CSL teachers and the class sizes are large. Most kids like this slowly sink rather than swim. It is agonizing to watch them try to get through the education system here in HK. Only about 1 percent of non-Chinese kids who take A-levels in HK get a spot in a local uni. That only counts the kids who take A-levels. A whole lot more quit at Form 5 or before.
Tigerman said it best. There is no one right way. What works for some families in one context may not work well at all for others.
[quote=āJack Burtonā] I appreciate my education in Canada a lot. It allowed me to acquire English and French (if your school has a good program that is, I highly recommend an immersion school. there is a public school in BC with this program at Churchill where my friend went, and regrettably I did not). I would also encourage my child to continue this in college in minoring in at least one language.
[/quote]
As far as immersion is concerned, the Canadians are in charge. When we were all set to go to Calgary for my work, last year, one of our concerns was keeping the kidsā Mandarin up to scratch. It didnāt come off, because the visa bureaucrats in JobCanada (or whatever itās called) didnāt get their act together, but we actually found a Chinese immersion programme in Cowtown, and signed gege up for itā¦ I bet the nationās experience with indigenous bilingualism is what leads the government and councils to promote this kind of programme for other languages.
Iām grateful that my earlier contribution was appreciated! Iād like to continue that discussion, but for now Iām off to bed!