Hey guys American here with a 6 month old baby. What is the best way to go about making sure the child hears enough English as it continues to get older?
All of my wife’s family are constantly talking to the baby in Chinese 24/7 and it only ever hears English from me. I’m really starting to get worried that it’s going to grow up speaking broken English and that I won’t be able to understand my own kid.
Is it something as simple as playing some English music for the baby often? Any tips would greatly be appreciated
As long as you are always speaking English to the baby and ensure that, one day, when baby begins talking, that all responses made to you are strictly in English, all will be well.
I had a similar problem at home.
The way we improved was to change some things in our kids routine:
They would frequently watch educative cartoons in my mother language, not necessarily daily, and also not more than 1 hour each day.
We use songs in my mother language to help them wake up every day. We sing before eating and before sleeping too.
My wife can also speak my mother language. Hence, now the main rule is “if Daddy’s at home, everybody speaks Daddy’s language!”
Even then, you have to accept that their mother language will be Mandarin, no matter what you do. They are living here and all their environment is in Mandarin. You will have to push hard for their second language, but they still can get good at it.
Speak a lot to your children, let them watch shows in your mother tongue and get them interested in reading.
I was worried about the same things but my kids are doing okay. They are definitely much better (and more comfortable) in Chinese but they’re English is pretty good and they can converse with me and my family without too much difficulty–although sometimes they are searching for the correct word to use.
With over two decades of teaching experience my advice is exposure to songs, films and literature if you want to achieve a high standard of bilingualism etc.
YouTube has great teaching materials including nursery rhymes, songs, etc.
Read to your child in English or Chinese or any other language from now til at least 7/8 years of age anytime and especially daily before bed as bedtime story. Your child will start reading on his/er own after this age.
Show your child lots of animation films including stories with the present trendy characters such as McQueen, Hello Kitty etc and Disney classics such as Bambi, Snow White, etc.
The only instances I’ve ever come across when the child hasn’t naturally acquired English (speaking and listening) is when the native English speaking parent has for some reason decided to speak Chinese to the kid. Then there are major problems.
Reading and writing are a different issue. I’ve met so many bilingual children in speaking and listening, but I can’t think of one in reading and writing in both languages. That takes a lot more work and requires formal training.
Yes, music and cartoons are all well and good but reading from a young age is really key to developing good language skills, even for English speakers in an English-speaking environment. If you don’t read a lot, you cannot even hope to write well.
And there’s really no excuse since it’s easier to become functionally literate in English versus Chinese.
Read, read, read!!! Less screen time, more book time.
Yeah I hear ya…I’ve been getting English children books from the local library and I’m trying to read every night. I also try to throw on some cartoons or play some music just so there is some English background noise
My kids read a lot–they even try to take their books when we’re going to the park to play.
We load up on books at the used book store every time we go home for a visit since they’re much cheaper than buying new in Taiwan. We also bought English workbooks for the various grade levels–it takes them about a year to get through one book. You can actually see similar books at Costco but we wanted ones with a Canadian focus.
We don’t give them word lists or anything like that because I’ve always felt they were boring and it was too hard to learn words out of context. I much prefer them to pick up a vocabulary through reading, doing the workbook and watching cartoons.
Well, they don’t have to be out of context, maybe draw from whatever book you’re reading together that week, or whatever has recently captured their interest, etc.
I think it’s important to consciously do some English vocab/spelling with kids. Especially since the spelling conventions are…horrible and not always consistent.
I do. I don’t want to take away from their love of reading by turning it into work or a chore. As it stands now, I never have to tell them to pick up a book and read–they do it completely on their own. I want them to read just because they love to read.
I also have my kids read to me (when I have time). We have a book of short stories and they take turns reading a page. The person who is not reading has to listen and then tell me what is happening in the story (on that page).
They do get some spelling from the workbook and they need to learn to spell words to answer the questions.
Reading is the foundation of an education. Literacy can only be achieved by nurturing a reading habit.
According to research, English is in the domain of the left brain while Chinese tones are registered in the right so a child who is proficient or fluent in both languages exercises both brains. You can google the benefits of bilingual/trilingual/multilingual brains.
I thought about where to put this, and this is still the most applicable thread I think.
My daughter is now almost 2 years old. We are an exclusively English and Taigi household and she gets all the Mandarin at her day care center. For the past couple of weeks it seems like she is making an effort to express herself in full sentences, even if it’s usually full sentences of gibberish.
Although this milestone is on track with what I read online, it seems like kids from monolingual households are usually further ahead, and are capable of saying short sentences pretty clearly by this point.
She seems to be able to understand instructions in all 3 languages, and I’ve heard her count in all 3 languages. Although in English she seems to be able to count all the way up to 10, and her counting usually stops around 4 or 5 in Taigi and Mandarin.
There are still things she gets wrong though. If she sees a photo of herself, she would point and say “you~~.” I guess it’s because I used to point and say “look, that’s you.” I try to correct her now by telling her “you should say ‘that’s me.’” I wonder how long it would take her to realize she’s saying it wrong.
There are words where she prefers to use one language to express over the other. For example, the notion of no is reserved exclusively for English. She prefers to say tse for this. The thing she definitely learned from her teachers is saying xiexie all the time. She seems to use xiexie as an alternative for ‘gimme’. So far, she has switched to saying thank you to me twice or thrice. She also said “I don’t know” and “I want that” to me once. It’s the only 2 complete sentences I’ve heard so far, complete with SVO.
I was a bit worried about whether she would learn all three languages a couple of months ago. Now I’m pretty optimistic she would be able to communicate in all 3 languages. I guess I’ll see when she starts speaking intelligible sentences.
Yes, that’s usually the case.
My kids had a similar evolution, although the younger ones started to speak earlier. I guess is due to the influence of the older kids.
Mixing the languages is very common and nothing to worry about. It doesn’t mean you don’t need to correct them but don’t be too strict or they may decide to not speak in that language to avoid being corrected.
My eldest sometimes still adds “ma” (as in 嗎) at the end of a question when speaking Portuguese!
So, yeah, bilingual kids take longer to speak but they’ll get there. And once they do, I’m sure you will feel proud of their development!
It doesn’t mean you don’t need to correct them but don’t be too strict or they may decide to not speak in that language to avoid being corrected.
