Your kids: What will their language of eloquence be?

I had some thoughts about the discussion between maoman and sjcma, nothing to do with eloquence, more about maoman’s concern with education in Taiwan.

Is it Taiwan public education, or the private schools in Taiwan that may not be up to par? I thought public schools in Taiwan were fairly good. My husband went to public school and he and his classmates are all knowlegeable, well-rounded, articluate gentlemen whom I would describe as successful in life, both business and social. Meeting that group gave me faith in Taiwan’s public schools. My SIL teaches in private school and she is hoping her children get into public school.

I also have a different view on local people’s interest and knowledge in the area of the arts (music, literature). I went to a NZ public school. We had no foreign-language classes, no ancient history classes… our English teacher did teach us Shakespeare but I think maybe three of us paid any attention. At university, it was hard to find people interested in much other than rugby and beer. Here in Taiwan, I found many people who have an amazing knowledge of music, literature, and religion. My group of friends here are much more interested in talking aboiut these things than my friends back home, and their knowledge of both Eastern and Western arts impressed me. My work with the Red Cross brought me into another group, I guess we could call some of those people “working class”, and their general knowledge seems far superior to people of a simliar “background” back home. They also have much better manners.

I hope knowledge of the bible is not an indication of understanding/eloquence in the West. We tried to read it once, my father read the first paragraph to us at bedtime four nights in a row then we gave it up. I’m fairly well-read but the bible just doesn’t appeal. (Through daily life with my Taiwanese family, I probably know more about Taiwenese folk religion than church rituals, it’s from life experience rather than explicit education.)

Like sjcma, I have my own concerns about education in Taiwan (but also about at home, too). Mine is more the long days and the potential pressure to attend buxiban after school from a young age, and all the homework. I haven’t done much research into the actual curriculum here, but I don’t worry so much about what children learn in school as how much time it eats up, not leaving much room for other interests, healthy sleeping habits and so on.

allow me to share my personal example:

I am half Taiwanese and half American. I grew up without my father and spoke only Taiwanese until i went to a Mandarin speaking Kindergarten . Where I felt totally alienated with the language. After six months my mother transferred me to an English kindergarten with mostly WHITE kids. Was THAT ever a shock. I thought I was transported to another world. I could not communicate with anyone, teacher or students and not surprisingly FLUNKED kindergarten !! I repeated kindergarten and this time my teacher would spend an extra hour or two after school alone with me. After a year with her I finally caught up with the others when i started first grade.

Since I never thought in Taiwanese, as I was too young to have a thought process as yet, English essentially has always been my first language of THOUGHT and education, etc etc. It was not the very first language I uttered or was exposed to , but for all intents and purposes has been and still is my lingua franca.

MY mother being educated in an English school system has always been able to speak english fluently and I converse with her in english mixed with Taiwanese. I didnt start to even learn to speak Mandarin until i graduated from Taipei American School. And it took me at least five years before I could understand a TV news broadcast.

I still cant read or write any Mandarin, but can speak it fluently to at least a high school level.

I guess if you want your children to think in english , its best to have them attend an English speaking school. But perhaps its better to start with a Mandarin kindergarten and grade school and then transfer to an English speaking school from middle school. This way, written fluency in Mandarin as well as spoken fluency can be assured.

And for sure, speak to them from the beginning in both Mandarin and English at home.

hope this helps someone ?

Just found this good thread.

If it would only be english and mandarin, I wouldn’t worry so much. In our case (six month old son), the father (me) speaks German, the mother speaks Mandarin, the parents communicate in English, and now we are going to move to Shanghai (which shouldn’t add more complications for now, since writing is still far away and for the kids there won’t be much exposure to Shanghainese, except maybe Ayi)!

Except the scientific interesting view of our son’s case I’m really worried he ever will be eloquent in any language. However, since I don’t know better, I’ve decided, that I only can focus in teaching him German as best as possible, while his mother does the same in Chinese. Basically, we don’t focus on English, since we both cannot teach him a gramatically good english anyway. He need to adjust his parents english mistakes in school later…

Poor little guy, however, if everything goes fine, he will be trilingual…
One question I’m still struggling is: Should we get him to learn simplified chinese or traditional chinese writing…

[quote=“Shiner”]Just found this good thread.

If it would only be English and Mandarin, I wouldn’t worry so much. In our case (six month old son), the father (me) speaks German, the mother speaks Mandarin, the parents communicate in English, and now we are going to move to Shanghai (which shouldn’t add more complications for now, since writing is still far away and for the kids there won’t be much exposure to Shanghainese, except maybe Ayi)!

Except the scientific interesting view of our son’s case I’m really worried he ever will be eloquent in any language. However, since I don’t know better, I’ve decided, that I only can focus in teaching him German as best as possible, while his mother does the same in Chinese. Basically, we don’t focus on English, since we both cannot teach him a gramatically good English anyway. He need to adjust his parents English mistakes in school later…

Poor little guy, however, if everything goes fine, he will be trilingual…
One question I’m still struggling is: Should we get him to learn simplified chinese or traditional chinese writing…[/quote]

probably better to teach him the simplified chinese as more people in the world use that system.

Well, if you can send him to a Taiwanese expat school, maybe he can learn traditional characters. Given that he will be in China, he’ll just pick up simplified from the environment. If you send him to a Chinese school, he’ll learn simplified. It’s harder although by no means impossible to go from simplified to tradtional. Most educated Chinese can do it. If you send him to a foreign school and try to teach him at home, he probably won’t learn either (and may hate you for forcing hime to learn). YMMV

I sure hope so since you married the guy. :smiley:

asiababy, thanks for your point of view. While there are many things that are laudable about a western education, it by no means guarantees one a good education. I like to think that I had received a fairly decent western education in the public school system (despite having never read Plato nor Hemmingway), but that’s not the case for everyone. Here’s a quote from a news article today regarding the American public school system.

[quote=“Washing Post Article”]During a visit in March to an honors sophomore English class in an impoverished area of Connecticut, Robyn R. Jackson heard the teacher declare proudly that her students were reading difficult texts. But Jackson noticed that their only review of those books was a set of work sheets that required little thought or analysis.

Jackson, an educational consultant and former Gaithersburg High School English teacher, sought an explanation from a school district official. He sighed and told her, “We have a lot of work to do to help teachers understand what true rigor is.”

Grade inflation is a well-known issue. Many critics of public schools contend that students nowadays get better grades for less achievement than they used to. Experts also worry about courses that promise mastery in a subject but fail to follow through. Call it course-label inflation.

U.S. Education Department senior researcher Clifford Adelman, the government’s leading authority on the links between high school programs and college completion, said some high school transcripts apply the label “pre-calculus” to any math course before calculus. Some students who had taken “pre-calculus,” according to the transcripts he inspected, had skills so rudimentary that they were forced to take basic algebra in their first year of college.

"The principal tells the teacher, ‘You’re teaching algebra 2.’ The teacher responds, ‘But our tests show these kids haven’t mastered one-fourth plus one-half, let alone algebra 1.’ The principal responds, ‘Well, we need to offer them algebra 2 because it helps on their college transcripts.’ "[/quote]

Just read this thread

Outside of the education system discussion, I think it comes down alot to the teachers you have. Maybe teachers and the education system can teach you this, get you to read this, but its another thing to get you curious and inquisitive about things.

I really don’t know how to do this, but I think if you can trigger/ignite a kid to be curious about everything, and give them the fundamentals of reading, writing and arithmetic then the odds are good that they will tend to educate themselves overtime.

Then education also include things like discipline and values which are taught at school and at home, and by friends and by people you associate with.

Me, I had a standard Irish education. Don’t know how that compares to Taiwan. But I had a few good teachers ( 3 in total) that (I think) opened my world to things and ideas beyond what was in the syllabus.

Am I fluent in the language? Yes me thinks. Am I eloquent? I guess that depends on the audience/person I am conversing with and the subject being discussed.

Your kids will never have the exact same experience, same education, same influences. You can try and guide them in a direction, but setting a goal with demands and requirements may end up in you being disappointed and them rejecting all of it and you

I want my Tadpole to be fluent in English, Chinese, and Taiwanese if possible as that’s his mother’s culture. He has a right to grow up multilingual and feeling comfortable in both Taiwanese and Western cultures, and when he comes of age he has a right to choose which one should become his primary one.

But I want him to be eloquent in English. There’s absolutely no question about it. He’s got to be able to read, think and present opinions in English. The (English) writing ability of most Taiwanese is appalling, to be honest, and it’s not a matter of language. Their vocabulary is ok, their grammar is forgivable, but the thinking is horrific. The paragraphs are unstructured, the thinking is unclear, arguments are unjustified and unsupported, and circular arguments are common. I truly feel for the poor students who spend their school lives studying from dawn to dusk, going to cram schools, dealing with mountains of homework, and then cram for the TOEFL test because it’s just one more test in a lifetime of multi-choice tests, and then go to Stanford to do a Masters. Good grief, for many of them they didn’t learn what paragraphs where until 2nd year uni, and the largest piece of coursework was 200 words.

No. No. No way is that going to happen to my son.

So sure, he’s going to learn Chinese and how to write Chinese characters, because that kind of learning is far easier at an earlier age, but when he’s at school age he’s going to be reading classics like “One flew over a cuckoo’s nest,” “Three Cups of Tea” and “Good Omens.” He’s going to learn to think, and to hell with learning facts.

Our son is presently four, soon turning five years old.

He is fluent in spoken English and Mandarin according to his average age’s ability. He can recognise a small variety of Chinese text, but is incredibly fluent in reading English, already almost at high school level. He attends the European school in Taipei, but that isn’t the reason for his reading ability as he was already able at age two, before he attended any school.
At this time he suffers no disadvantage in the local system for not being in a Mandarin environment, although can occasionally mix Chinese grammar with English.
A few years ago it would have been my intent to have him study at a local school, but since understanding the local system better, of which my wife is an expert in the field, there is basically no way in hell as long as I can afford to stay out of it, that I will ever allow him to attend.
Taiwan generally doesn’t teach or at least emphasise on free thought, to question, to appreciate, geography, history, culture, art, music, manual skills, or much else that I believe are valuable as all round useful skills and knowledge for life. Even a recent survey of childless Taiwanese couples asked why they had chosen to remain childless, and the response was about 35% not believing in the Taiwanese education system.

Above all, I desire happiness for my daughter. Her achieving eloquence in one or more languages may play a part, but is it a prerequisite? I think not. Her achieving eloquence, if she does, will be the result of many factors, including her attitude towards the particular language, her ability to process information and form an argument, and the size of her vocabulary. Her achieving eloquence is not something I can engineer, but I can lay some foundations: I take her to the library; I read to her as much as she wants me to; I listen when she wants to open up a storybook and invent her own story; she sees me reading; I let her stay up a bit too late when my native English speaking friends are over; I try to give her a variety of experiences so she’s got something worth being eloquent about; and she’ll be getting the box set of YouTube links to Winnie’s complete speeches for her fifth birthday (no, not Winnie the Pooh, though come to think of it, as a model of eloquence and succinctness, he’s pretty hard to beat).

The great hope is for English, French, Mandarin and Taiwanese

In the real world? I agree with Maoman. We’ll see. Kiddo - whom I hope has two eloquent parents! - will probably end up fully fluent if not eloquent in 2 of the 4 (English and Mandarin), the other two are far less a certainty

Resurrecting an old thread…

My wife and I are now discussing about how to best educate our children so they can learn and be comfortable with speaking any language.

My wife has Mandarin as native language and mine is Portuguese, but we can communicate in both of them and also English.

What it the best way to educate them? Should each parent speak only one language and let the school teach the third one? Should we both speak all of them anytime? Maybe Mandarin in odd days, Portuguese in even days and English on weekends?

Does anyone had similar experience and would like to share?

I’ve discussed this with a linguist before my kids where born… His advice was that each had parent speaks his or her mother tongue only with the kids and the parents can speak a common tongue (English) with each other… The kids will first pick up the two main languages and learn the third language almost unnoticeable… No matter what as a Pardo not mix the languages yourself and if the kid answers in the wrong language (which with mine actually never happens) pretend not to understand. My oldest came to Taiwan when she was 6 years old started at elementary school and won the Chinese story telling competition of her school and later of the district in her first year in Taiwan… Later on when she started having English classes at school she has also won the English story telling competition…

Just my personal experience though…

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Well not from a parent perspective. But from a child who grew up in a multilingual family. My dad and his side of the family speak mandarin and often Taiwanese. My mom is from Korea and speaks Korean. I just picked up mandarin from going to school here and listening To my dad and everyone else speak mandarin to me. I picked up Korean by having my mom pretty much speak Korean to me. I picked up English later and eventually Spanish because the US education system requires a 2nd language. Appeartly learning English as basically my 4th language is not enough. They got to confuse me with Spanish as well at the same time.
So I just learned to speak a combination with my parents. My mom is the most impressive. She speaks, writes and reads Korean, English and Chinese at a fluent if not native level.

So like @raymon75 said. You can speak to your kids in your native tongues respectively. And they will pick it up and a 3rd pretty easily. I wouldn’t worry about confusing them. Kids are basically information absorbing machines from a young age. Especially when it comes to languages and learning how to read peoples body languages, facial expressions. It’s their most useful tool for survival.

I think that’s why human babies develop relatively slowly compared to other animals babies in terms of just being able to function?

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One related reason is that brain development has to finish outside the womb, or the head would be too big to make it out during childbirth.

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most people say its better to speak your native language with your child. i started out with that intention but it is not as simple as i imagined. because we tend to mix the two languages , chinese and english, and the little guy makes his own decisions about what he is speaking. not sure how its going to go but its mostly chinese now…

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OP’s kids are already teenagers, presumably eloquent ones who say things like “yo” and “fo shizzy.”

2004 called, they want their slang back.

That’s what we thought initially. What worries us is the exposure the kids will have to each language. Since I work full time and my wife works from home, she spends relatively more time with them. Adding that to the fact that we are living in Taiwan, they will have much more contact with Mandarin, and will hear Portuguese from me only…

Would that be enough? We wish they could speak both languages as native, but we don’t want to make them slow learners because of that.

I suggest letting them watch some children programs in Portuguese or stories on cd’s etc to increase exposure, Skype calls with relatives could also help

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