Enrolling Older Foreign Children in Local Schools

Taiwan Parenting
21

God you don’t want to listen to me even though I spent 2.5 years two hours a day reading and writing it just to get anywhere with it. Chinese reading and writing is another level than other languages, especially writing. Maybe he can fudge his way through for years but you’d better give him support now so he doesn’t fall behind instead of catching up. Remember the other kids have native Chinese parents to help with the homework too. The teachers like to pile on homework here. You might have two things happening, some teachers will give up on your son as too much trouble, others will pile the pressure on him to perform at a level that is very difficult for him to do.

[quote]Reading and writing characters is no more difficult than reading and writing phonetic languages[/quote] This is patently wrong! Have you tried learning it yourself? I lived in Taiwan years before I went at learning reading/writing. I regret it now. I had already picked up basic Chinese conversational skills but they were stuck at a low level as I wasn’t getting the input from the written environment around me. Even though I could converse basically about most things I still could not figure out what most shops were selling quickly or what place was where. Using a Chinese version of Windows was a game of memory recall. Very frustrating. You can find old threads on here discussing this same issue, with people frustratingly asking why their Chinese did not improve as fast as when they learned French or Spanish for example.
A lot of characters have only minimal input to the meaning of the word (it is not simply a picture representation, far from it), and there are MANY similar characters to add to the confusion.

You can learn to read faster than writing (which takes a lot of repetition to get down), but the writing reinforces the reading. Your son may be able to get away with weaker writing through the use of pinyin input on a notebook computer, but this is Taiwan and their education system is decidedly 20th century. All I’m saying is I think you are an academic but you need to understand the reality of the school system here and the GENUINE unique challenges faced when learning Chinese.

22

I started learning characters at around 13 and did a year of high school in Japan at 16, with only two years of self-study under my belt. And it was ALL Japanese.

Characters aren’t really that hard. It sounds like you’re trying to overanalyse them and memorise them rather than just learning to recognise the shapes when you’re reading.

23

[quote=“headhonchoII”]God you don’t want to listen to me even though I spent 2.5 years two hours a day reading and writing it just to get anywhere with it. Chinese reading and writing is another level than other languages, especially writing. Maybe he can fudge his way through for years but you’d better give him support now so he doesn’t fall behind instead of catching up. Remember the other kids have native Chinese parents to help with the homework too. The teachers like to pile on homework here. You might have two things happening, some teachers will give up on your son as too much trouble, others will pile the pressure on him to perform at a level that is very difficult for him to do.

[quote]Reading and writing characters is no more difficult than reading and writing phonetic languages[/quote] This is patently wrong! Have you tried learning it yourself? I lived in Taiwan years before I went at learning reading/writing. I regret it now. I had already picked up basic Chinese conversational skills but they were stuck at a low level as I wasn’t getting the input from the written environment around me. Even though I could converse basically about most things I still could not figure out what most shops were selling quickly or what place was where. Very frustrating.
A lot of characters have only minimal input to the meaning of the word (it is not simply a picture representation, far from it), and there are MANY similar characters to add to the confusion.

You can learn to read faster than writing (which takes a lot of repetition to get down), but the writing reinforces the reading. Your son may be able to get away with weaker writing through the use of pinyin input on a notebook computer, but this is Taiwan and their education system is decidedly 20th century. All I’m saying is I think you are an academic but you need to understand the reality of the school system here.[/quote]

Headhancholl, I’m not trying to be argumentative, or do trivialize how hard it can be to learn Mandarin, or any other language, especially your own personal efforts. My point is simply that the human mind is hard programmed for language. The brain will naturally acquire language–if we let it. Any language can be acquired at almost any age, and the younger the learner, the better.

Yes, I do realize that Chinese characters aren’t simple picture representations of ideas; I didn’t mean it that way, but a character is a “pictograph”, literally a “picture word.” It is not more difficult for a child to learn to write characters than to spell out words in English. It may take more time and practice; rote memorization of hundreds or thousands of words isn’t as efficient as learning a few spelling “rules,” but it’s not more difficult than learning to write a phonetic language.

And yes, I have tried to learn it for myself (mostly before my son was born), and no I haven’t gotten far at all (but I don’t actively apply myself to this any more). Yes, I firmly believe that if a student can read in his/her first language, then he/she can handle reading in a second/other language. It’s a skill already possessed, and should be used to support further acquisition. Reading, in particular, is very important to vocabulary and fluency building in any language. And writing will further support reading, thus supporting all the rest. Indeed, there is a point, and it doesn’t take long to get there, when your functional illiteracy will become a hindrance to your continued growth in the language.

And I’m not arguing against supporting a child’s attempts to learn, but I AM for as natural an approach as possible. The older we get, the more we think about what we’re trying to do. The more we think about it, the more we have to think about it. Like trying to learn to dance, at some point you have to stop thinking and just start dancing. If not, you spend the entire night staring at your shoes! Judging by my own son, when you’re 8, you just don’t care a whole lot who’s watching when you start to dance. Me, I can only cut loose when I know no one is watching. The rest of the time, I need a teacher and a class full of other grown ups who really don’t want to move in front of one another.

24

[quote=“headhonchoII”]

Sorry, you are not correct about this. Have you tried teaching it yourself?

The latest experiments we are doing have shown that a group of children (11-18) who were FIRST led to acquire a small pool of Mandarin vocabulary and THEN asked to read it in characters read it right out the first day and wanted more. The reading they were given was all in characters and had nothing to do with the contexts in which the original words were taught, though it was illustrated in the manner of children’s books (i.e., with illustrations that really showed the meaning of each group of sentences.) The students were “dropped in” on the book with no instruction in Chinese characters at all. Teacher read it out loud with them with the book displayed on a large screen. By the third page, they were chiming in on their own – because they knew the language. After four days working with the text (shared reading, paired reading, reader’s theater) not only could the students write a (grammatically correct) story that was similar, they were also able to read a one-page passage in Chinese characters, unrelated to the story they’d been working with, with no illustrations. I have them on video doing this. Every single kid in the class was able to do it and correctly answer comprehension questions about the passage in English (questions were in English so there was no confusion about where a wrong answer was coming from, if one occurred).

Reading is just learning to recognize written representations of known language. What you experienced as an L2 learner was not that. L2 reading frequently is NOT that, but it should be. You do not learn reading through input. Reading is literacy, it’s not language. You must have the language first. The problem with most L2 programs is that language and literacy are lumped together as “language learning”, which sets off a constant cycle of struggle.

[quote[Even though I could converse basically about most things I still could not figure out what most shops were selling quickly or what place was where. Using a Chinese version of Windows was a game of memory recall. Very frustrating. You can find old threads on here discussing this same issue, with people frustratingly asking why their Chinese did not improve as fast as when they learned French or Spanish for example.
A lot of characters have only minimal input to the meaning of the word (it is not simply a picture representation, far from it), and there are MANY similar characters to add to the confusion.[/quote]

And all of them learned the same way – doing it all at once. Talk to some people who are separating the two and see what sort of response you get.

Evidence?? Writing reinforces writing, since writing involves the conscious application of rules. But reading doesn’t involve the conscious application of (very many) rules. It involves “just knowing” what the text means once the symbols are recognized.

He’s been in school for a week, fer Pete’s sake. Yes, there is much rote and very high expectations for memorization here. Those will need to be dealt with. Yes, it would be much better if the small Petrichor could obtain focused support for his language acquisition and his literacy struggles, and I think that can be worked out as well. There’s no need to assume he will be “behind” all his life if he takes a year to try a local school in Taiwan.

25

Just so people can get an idea of what goes on here in 3rd grade…

There’s a reading in Chinese; then…

  1. 金門縣金湖鎮瓊林里的居民，是為了方便家族成員相互照顧而居住在一起。*

(Jinmen County Jinmen Town Chong Ling Village residential people live together so it’s convenient for the family members to take care of each other.) True or False

That’s the first question of 9 on the first page of 115 in one of the 20 some books my daughter used in 3rd grade. They do have BoPoMoFo (phonetic symbols) beside almost everything, so I think that is your son’s best chance to follow along as early as possible.

The math for 3rd grade?
45mm + 85mm = ____cm
400 divided by ( ? ) = 8
768 divided by 7 = ?
I see some simple addition and subtraction of fractions…

There’s a book on Taiwanese, Social Studies, Nature, and a bunch of books that we’ve thrown out.

*Answer = O =Yes/True; (A big “X” equals No/False here)

It might be a good idea to teach your son “Paper Scissors Stone” (in Chinese) and Big Old Two (the most common card game that kids play). Little things like that might help him fit in.

26

Errmmm…sorry, didn’t mean to start an argument.

In response to some comments - one of the reasons I choose this school was because it isn’t a traditional Taiwanese school. The children are put under very little pressure to perform, according to what other parents have said. One couple I spoke to moved their child here because she was being given so much homework at her previous school. The atmosphere is very laid-back. I don’t want to go into too much detail because I don’t know if the school would object to my newcomer’s impression of it being spread over the web, but suffice to say that a - Taiwanese - father told me that he was surprised to find out that the school achieved very highly academically, because there is so little pressure on the kids; he assumed they must compete with each other or something. So, I’m not worried that my son will be made to feel inadequate by the teachers.

As to whether he will catch up or not, who knows? I’m not here to predict that what we’re doing will be a marvellous success. I’m here to detail our experiences in the hope that they may be of interest or use to others. As I’ve said, if we can see our son is clearly being damaged and there is no prospect for improvement, then we’ll stop what we’re doing. We’ll either send him to an international school, I’ll home tutor him, or we’ll go back to the UK.

I find the comments that it is cruel to allow my child to only cope and continuously be behind other children, rather strange. At any time there are individual children in any class who are only coping and who are permanently ‘behind’. Is this some kind of curse? People, and especially children, should be valued for who they are and what they can achieve, not be continuously compared to each other and judged according to their place in some narrow hierarchy of achievement. Failing to be the top of the class is the majority’s fate. No need to wring hands about it.

Having said that, I know from experience and from the testimonials of others that children do learn another language quite quickly and, with work, can reach a similar level of literacy as their peers. People on this thread even have said as much. I wouldn’t be trying it if there was no evidence that it is possible.

As to learning to read Chinese characters, my son learned to read by being read to. He learned through whole word recognition, not phonetically. This was very confusing for him as the British system had recently returned to teaching reading phonetically and he hadn’t a clue what was going on! So perhaps he’ll pick up characters in the same way. I know I am. I’ve given up on mnemonics and suchlike. I find I remember them through sheer familiarity.

Just today I arranged a tutor for him who will also help us with notes from the school. He has already started saying xie xie ni, and nihao of his own volition, so hopefully this is a good sign.

Many thanks for all your contributions.

I’ll try to provide updates as appropriate.

27

My point is not that learning to read and write Chinese is hard, it simply take a LOT of time, by some estimates 5X that of learning to read and write a second European language. It’s no secret that kids can acquire language easier than adults, that they acquire it in a natural way and that being in a school all day in a typical Taiwanese environment won’t do wonders for his language abilities. But written languages are constructs and traditional Chinese is the most complex written construct of language that I know of. It has very little phonetic connection to the spoken word. Luckily BoPoMoFo can help a bit in that regard. I understand there are also different ways to pick up Chinese, for instance I read the language phonetically first to get an idea of the syllables, that helped in my listening comprehension but it especially helped me in speaking more clearly (feng instead of fen, ming instead of min, Taiwan Guoyu speakers can confure the hell out of you!). Later on I learned with no pinyin ‘assistance’ and just memorised the characters and the context and the frequency without worrying too much, I guess that is what Housecat is talking about. So I myself utilised different strategies to learn Chinese at different times.

Anyway to get back to the point as the kid is in third grade he should just have time to catch up now to keep up with the level of other students without getting completely stressed out, getting the extra help right now will allow him to catch up quicker. Any older and it would be a big ask as they start to pile on more work. Of course the OP mentioned this school is different but I am a cynic on proclamations like this in Taiwan, who knows maybe it really is different. I have not met many holistic type teachers or organisations in Taiwan, I’m not sure if they really understand what that means or are just trying to imitate. Be careful of imitation. Depends how long he will stay in the school system here and what expectations there are.

Ironlady, I know you are an expert in Chinese learning but actually take the time to read and understand what I am saying before replying to something that I didn’t even write. I feel you just bounce off my post to let us know your feelings on teaching Chinese more than anything. Apart from the reading part which I don’t fully agree with but how can you seriously state that writing a Chinese ‘word’ is as easy as writing English ‘word’ for example. It’s not even in the same ball park. The majority of the Chinese speaking world doesn’t agree either!
Also what you are talking about is an idealised environment, not reality. You know that yourself having talked about it many times.

Zender nice contribution to show what a kid in 3rd grade deals with in class everyday. It’s good to know they have BoPoMoFo with almost everything, that’s very important. I see they get them started on the old ‘pick the only right answer’ early in life :unamused: .

Petrichor, I think people are concerned because yes there have been horror stories of foreign children thrown into the Taiwanese learning environment and not doing very well at all, you can see at least one testimonial on here of a kid who basically abandoned his Taiwan heritage, took on an English name and became British he was bullied so much. Times have moved on and hopefully things have improved somewhat and I see you have done your homework in this case. However you do come across as a bit academic at times and determined in your viewpoint so people were probably concerned that you might not get the reality of Taiwan. They were also concerned that you choose to put your child through this potentially cruel situation due to your own motivations, no bones about it. I think you have explained things much more clearly now however.

28

My :2cents:

I am a firm believer in motivation and the value of a positive emotional reinforcement for learning. Petrichor has found a true gem of a school that goes out of the track and as long as the kid’s affective filter is down, he will learn. Yes, kids will learn, yes, the level is a bit too high for him now, but as long as he has parental/teacher/fellow students support and understanding, he will be that eager sponge. If he makes friends and has a good time while slowly learning stuff, even if it is at a lower pace than his fellow students, he wil still be that sponge. But if he’s bullied or becomes frustrated he wil become a stone, and no learning will happen no more. So the task now is not to gt him up to speed in his studies, but to spoon feed him the basic skills so he can find his way. Petrichor is being a supportive parent, the school is now taking the no pressure approach but probably needs to give him more tasks as his skills take hold. As long as he’s not caught in a rat race for grades -which thankfully, he isn’t- then it’s OK. As long as the child is hungry for learning, in a positive environment, he’ll keep on walking. I am more concerned with him being bored now, gotta find some Bopomofo coloring books and stuff.

I have an acquaintance whose kid started kindergarden here. Now kiddo speaks more Chinese than Spanish, even talks to Mom in Chinese, which is a problem as she has to turn to us and ask: what did she say? :laughing:

29

[quote=“tsukinodeynatsu”]I started learning characters at around 13 and did a year of high school in Japan at 16, with only two years of self-study under my belt. And it was ALL Japanese.

It was all Japanese, did you learn spoken Japanese first, did you live in Japan? How much did you comprehend, did you enjoy it? Did you have to pass the Japanese exams or it was all just for a year and that’s it? Your comment is not too helpful without context.
Anyway Japanese is not Chinese, it’s an easier language to read and write even if it also has some Hanzi, Japanese standards for Hanzi comprehension are low.

30

[quote=“headhonchoII”]
Ironlady, I know you are an expert in Chinese learning but actually take the time to read and understand what I am saying before replying to something that I didn’t even write. I feel you just bounce off my post to let us know your feelings on teaching Chinese more than anything. Apart from the reading part which I don’t fully agree with but how can you seriously state that writing a Chinese ‘word’ is as easy as writing English ‘word’ for example. It’s not even in the same ball park. The majority of the Chinese speaking world doesn’t agree either!
Also what you are talking about is an idealised environment, not reality. You know that yourself having talked about it many times.[/quote]

Well, we did it (taught kids to read 50+ unique characters based on known language) in reality this summer, in a very short time. It wasn’t an idealized environment, it was a Chinese teaching program, in an English-speaking country, yet. Try two hours a day for 10 days. You want to see the videos of the final assessment, with the kids reading out loud a text they’d never seen before and answering questions? I’m talking about real kids reading real text in Hanzi. We were amazed at what they could do given the firm grasp of the language going into the literacy phase.

As far as writing goes, I am no fan of teaching people to write Chinese by hand in any case, but as long as there is an understanding with parents, child and teacher(s), using the odd bit of bopomofo won’t kill anyone in the first year or two.

Please show me where I claimed that it was as easy to write Chinese by hand as it is to write an English word. In any event, if students are writing using computer IMEs, writing a Chinese word is not substantially more difficult than writing an English word. The prerequisite is that they know the word in the language sense before embarking on the literacy side of it. In that regard, it would be worth communicating with the teacher to make sure that the readings are appropriately front-loaded for language and scaffolded where necessary.

31

So would you advise that I leave my son be to acquire the spoken language for the first few months before embarking on any literacy tuition, Ironlady?

32

Sounds good and it’s similar in ways to how I learned Chinese, it’s definitely the best way to do it, get a bit of proficiency in the spoken word first, natural acquisition and usage.
But Taiwanese schools won’t provide that, even the ‘reputable’ ones like Shida use extremely outdated methods, as you have mentioned here also. That’s why I said it would have been better if he had at least some basis in Mandarin before he landed up here in such an alien environment.

33

Petriocher,

I haven’t read the entire thread, so sorry if I repeat something already said. I just wanted to suggest that you could ask for your son to go to first grade in the morning’s Chinese class, for the first 6 weeks of school. It’s ALL teaching the phonetics and pronunciation, and would give your son a great base to work from. At my son’s school, Chinese lessons are at the same time everyday for all grades, so if it works that way your school, it could be a great help to him.

There are very short breaks between classes here, of just 10 minutes each. Some teachers discourage kids from going to play as it takes too long to get them organised again. My son just spent two months in a school in NZ, and his biggest challenge was what to DO during all that playtime. He often tried to break in to his classroom as he was overwhelmed by the playground. But in the end it was great socially. Here, you really have to join some kind of activity to make friends, so try to find something your son likes to do in a group. Public schools usually start their afterschool programs about three weeks into semester, so go and ask your teacher what they offer, and ask her/him to tell you when that paper is handed out, so you don’t miss out in enrolling in any afterschool activities your son might enjoy. Also, don’t be surprised about taking more time to make friends. When at home, I was surprised how friendly all the kids were to my son the first day, then they went through a whole regrouping of friends, falling out etc. Here, it seems to be, you are not accepted for some time, but once you are, you are friends for the longhaul. Make sure your son realises it’s not him, it’s just the way it is for everyone.

It should also be noted there is a pretty big jump between second and third grades content-wise, so if your son is near the cutoff date for age and is not unhappy being with younger kids, it could also be good to try secondgrade.

I’d also like to suggest buying the magazine “Newton Kids” a bit later in the learning process. It has a lot of science stuff in it and is aimed at early elementary level. It has a CD, lots of pictures, and the pronunciation symbols in the magazine. Textbooks are pretty dry (social studies teaching things like to wash your hands, how to button your shirt…), and it’s this magazine that has motivated my son to actually read anything outside of school that is not English. You can get it at the library if you want to take a look before purchasing it.

All the best! Don’t forget to keep an eye out for some family events, like Halloween events, so you can meet some more families, too!

**I also want to add, my kids’ school has a new program this semester. An extra six hours a week of classes for children with non-Taiwanese parents or who are really falling behind in Chinese. It’s free. I had the pleasure of working with the teacher in charge of these classes, last semester, and the kids love her. With the added bonus of an English teacher who looks very promising (confident, correct speaker, dynamic personality), and a principal with a very wholistic approach to education of the child, I just wish more children would come so the school doesn’t get shut down!

34

Just saw this article in the New York Times about a family that did this in Russia with older kids. Apparently it was painful in the beginning, but turned into a very positive experience.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/magazine/my-familys-experiment-in-extreme-schooling.html

35

Hi asiababy

Thanks for your informative post and apologies for not replying sooner. I have been very busy trying to find an apartment for us and quite a few things have been put on the back burner.

I talked to my son’s teacher about his attending the first grade class for the morning bo po mo fo lesson and she thought it was a good idea. But then the next day she told me that a mum had stepped forward and offered to teach him and another non-Chinese-speaking classmate at that time in the mornings. This woman is a native speaker, but she also speaks English and the native language of my son’s classmate! So I feel extremely lucky and as far as I can tell he feels better about his days at school. He’s definitely stopped complaining as much and yesterday he told me the Chinese words for teacher and door, quite proudly. Obviously, there’s only so much progress that can be expected in such a short time, but I think it makes him feel as though there is hope for the future, and that people are sympathetic to his difficulties.

Also, I’ve come to an arrangement with another mum that we will take turns looking after each other’s children in the half school day afternoons. Her children speak English and she’d like to expose them to a native-speaker environment to keep up their language skills, and in return she’ll use Chinese around my son, help him with his homework and begin to teach him some characters. He’ll also be able to play with her sons.

Other parents have said to me too that the social aspect of his life is the most important thing to get right, and I think so too. So we’ve started going to the weekend soccer practice sessions at the school, and also we tried swimming practice for the first time yesterday. It’s still early days with both of those. For a British boy, my son isn’t particular interested in or skillful at football, but he watched and kicked a ball around a bit and I think if we carry on going he’ll join in properly quite soon. I decided against the after-school clubs for this semester, as I felt that being at school itself was enough of a challenge for him at first, and that I needed to make sure he really enjoyed the rest of his time in Taipei, just to stop him hating the entire experience of living here! But next semester we’ll definitely sign him up for whatever he’s interested in.

Surprisingly, the other children don’t seem to have kept their distance from my son at all. I don’t know if it’s his physical differences or his boisterous personality but he seems to be an object of attention, and only a little of it has been negative. A father commented as we were watching them line up to say goodbye to their teacher - look how popular he is. I think he’s (understandably) well-known in the school and doesn’t mind that at all.

Thanks for the magazine suggestion. I’ll look into that when his skills improve. It’ll be good practice for me too! I’ll also be checking your website for ideas on what to do and where to take him.

36

[quote=“zyzzx”]Just saw this article in the New York Times about a family that did this in Russia with older kids. Apparently it was painful in the beginning, but turned into a very positive experience.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/magazine/my-familys-experiment-in-extreme-schooling.html[/quote]

Thanks. I read that through and it gives me hope for the future. It was amazing that even a grade 5 child survived and flourished in a foreign language environment. It sounds like a very special school that really took on board the children’s needs, though. I think that greatly increases the chances of success. I really empathised with hearing those ‘I want to go home!’ phone calls! It’s hard to put your child through difficulties when they have no understanding or appreciation of why you’re doing it to them or what the benefits are. A lot of it depends on the personality of the child, as to whether they’ll cope or be irreversibly damaged. I used to know someone who was put into an English-speaking school at age 5 when they had no English, and they recalled quite strongly how traumatic it was.

I really, really hope my son experiences the same growth and sense of achievement of the children in that article.

37

[quote=“zyzzx”]Just saw this article in the New York Times about a family that did this in Russia with older kids. Apparently it was painful in the beginning, but turned into a very positive experience.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/magazine/my-familys-experiment-in-extreme-schooling.html[/quote]

I was just coming to post the same article! Glad you found it helpful, petrichor.

38

Update

We now seemed to have reached the nadir of this process. I’d thought things were going okay but then one day this week I happened to speak to several different people about what my son was doing at school and they all had saddening stories to tell.

I’d known that my son had started borrowing English books from the library to read in class and I’d asked him not to do this after his teacher told me that he was reading all day except for his Chinese class in the morning. He’d said he wasn’t but in fact he was still doing this. I’d asked him to join in with classes where he could just copy what the other children were doing, such as art and music, but found out that he hasn’t been doing this. In fact, he’s been actively refusing to do anything other than read English books and, just lately, play on the computer in the library. When the school has tried to help by getting in other English-speaking, older children to help him with maths, for example, he’s quite rudely rejected them. According to his teacher the only thing he did with the rest of the class last week was PE.

He has at least one Chinese class a day, sometimes two as there is a volunteer mother who is also teaching him, but it seems that even with the latter person he has been quite truculent. I don’t believe that it’s from his Chinese classes, where he learns bo po mo fo, writes out characters and learns the odd item of vocabulary, that he’ll learn to speak Chinese, though; it’s through interaction with other children who are speaking Mandarin. And if he’s reading in English and refusing to engage with what’s going on around him, I can’t see that he’s going to acquire any language.

In break time as far as I can tell he goes off to play by himself. I’ve tried to encourage him to join in with soccer practice at the weekends and last week he did actually do this. We’ve also been out a couple of times with another mother and her sons to go bike riding etc. (Taiwanese mum and her children - they speak some English but they speak Mandarin to each other while we’re around.)

We’re in a cleft stick. Doing nothing in class drives my son crazy, so he’s resorted to this tactic of reading and disappearing off to the library. But if he does this all the time he isn’t going to learn Chinese. (His teacher isn’t prepared to put in any effort to stop him doing this. I don’t know if this is just her way or whether he’s alienated her.) If he doesn’t learn any Chinese things aren’t going to improve for him at school. Worst of all is this attitude he’s developed of rejecting offers of help and refusing to engage with his classmates.

I went to speak to the counselling officer at Xinsheng Elementary about the possibility of him transferring there, as I’d understood that they have a greater proportion of English instruction, but it turns out that it’s basically the same set-up as that on offer at his current school. He’d get a class of Chinese language in the morning, then the rest of the day he’d have regular classes. So, aside from the fact that it would be a fresh start, I can’t see how his particular problem would be addressed by his going there. He’d still have nothing to do for the majority of the day because he can’t understand anything.

This seems to be a problem related to his personality type. There’s a non-Mandarin-speaking foreign girl in his class who loves the school and is very happy there, and she speaks hardly any English! I’ve also spoken to Taiwanese parents who took their children to the US for extended periods of time, and returned with children who were not traumatised and could speak some English.

We’re still undecided as to what to do. We can get Chinese tutors outside of school and try to increase his general exposure to Mandarin then too, but that doesn’t really solve the problem of his rejection of almost everything that’s happening in his school day, at least not in the short term. (His teacher told me he’d even stopped eating anything but rice at lunchtimes too.) The volunteer mother who’s teaching him suggested that we make a deal with him that he’ll read some of the time and join in those things that he can, but I’m not confident that he’ll stick to it. He’d told me he was joining in when he wasn’t.

One possibility is that we’ll transfer him to a private bilingual school. We went to see one when we came over last year but decided against it because the proportion of English instruction was quite high. In this situation it might be exactly what’s needed though. The other option is just to wait it out, continue encouraging him to stop reading and to try to engage more, and increase the level of Mandarin tuition and exposure outside of school. All of which isn’t guaranteed to pay off, and compels him to continue in a situation that’s clearly unfavourable to him.

39

It sounds like your son is suffering from a pretty big case of culture shock. Really.

I don’t think it has much to do with anything else at the moment. But not understanding what’s going on around him seems to make him feel isolated. The reading is a good thing, IMO. It shows that he’s thinking about his problem and trying to find constructive, positive (if passive) ways to cope. He’s obviously a smart boy.

Sometimes these things really can take some time. Think of times when you’ve had culture shock. How did you deal with it? Usually, I try to do my best to find something from “home” or something that reminds me of home and is a comfort, if only for a short time. This little “break” is healthy because it helps me make it through the next day or two, or couple of months, and one moment at a time, I eventually make it through the rough parts.

I have known people who never seem to be able to adjust. I’m not sure why that is, but I’ve seen it happen. So support your son in a way you think he might like.

Cook good “home” dishes for him. Buy him something he’s interested in, or that would mean something comforting to him. Let him talk on the phone to old friends he’s left behind.

His teacher is never going to be much help with this. Firstly, many Taiwanese have never been farther away from their hometowns that a one off trip to Taipei. She/He likely has no experience with feeling like your son feels. Secondly, many Taiwanese teachers wouldn’t do anything anyway. Their job is to get the kids through the books and turn in their paperwork. You son’s teacher MIGHT care about how he feels, or how he performs on exams, but she/he doesn’t need to in order to be doing his/her job.

Could you spend some time with your son at school? Usually there’s time in the morning for parents to come in and tend the classes. Many students arrive before teachers in the morning, and teachers usually have a meeting every morning, so aren’t in the classrooms, or are just in and out, until nine o’clock. Why not ask your son’s teacher about going in sometime and giving an English lesson, or telling the kids a story about something from your home? You can use puppets and props to be understood. Or try getting them to make a simple craft, or drawing, that will have something to do with where you’re from. Just to give your son’s classmates something positive to associate him with–give your son some cool points.

I’m sure things are not easy, but I’m sure that you can find a way through this. You do need to be in frequent contact with the teacher/school, as they’re not likely to bother coming to you about things. Or any other parent, for that matter.

Good luck!

I meant to add that getting into outside of school activities where he still gets lots of Mandarin exposure could only help, I’d think. Is he interested in martial arts? Interested in learning a musical instrument? Theater? Sports? Not just pushing homework. Not anchingban stuff, but stuff he’s interested in or talented with. It could be a release, and good language exposure at the same time. Both will help him adjust to school.

40

I deal with Taiwanese teachers all the time and Housecat is right that while they may care their only job is to get through the book and fill out the paperwork.*

He seems like a self-starter and clever. You’re going to have to undo all that Taiwanese school crap and get him refocused on learning.

*I’d actually have my kid carry an mp3 recorder to school so I’d know exactly what the teacher was saying to her/him. I’ve worked with enough Taiwanese teachers over a long enough period of time to have seen it all. Everything is fine till it isn’t. Then it all blows up and somehow they aren’t responsible.