My brother moved back to Taiwan after spending 20 years in the states. He now has a 3 year old daughter who he speaks to in English, while my SIL speaks to her in Taiwanese/Mandarin, but she doesn’t like to speak English. She goes to a “bi-lingual” daycare/preschool, but is speaking English with accent learned from school. Is there anyway to avoid that? Thanks.
Not really.
Put her in a kindy with kids from the US only. The American School?
Put her in a kindy taught by teachers who are native English speakers.
You might consider a playgroup with other English-speaking kids, though they might just speak Chinese if they hear her doing so.
Drill! Drill! Drill!
No seriously, environment has everything to do with it. It can be corrected though, if it is important to you. I have a job correcting my son’s poor Chinese at times as he learns it from the nanny. He has the Taiwanese ‘Su’ not ‘Shu’ problem on a few words.
Don’t be afraid to constantly correct her. It often helps for kids to learn songs too as a fun way of practicing intonation and stress. Chants I suppose may be even better sometimes, and songs can be learned without anyone present as well.
A friend who had a baby with a Taiwanese man, moved to the states when the girl was still about thre or four months old. She grew up speaking only English. Then the friend and the man decided to have another go, so he came to the States. He spoke to his daughter in Mandarine and Taiwanese for a while, but she would not respond and he gave up.
Then, when the girl was four, they moved back to Taiwan, but live seperatly. The girl lives with her American mom, but spends plenty of time with her Taiwanese family and attends a bi-lingual kindy. The mother is very nearly the ony source of fluent English now. Within one year, her daughter is now nearly fluent in Chinese and speaks English like it was her second language. My friend is very frustraited, but the reality is that she spends little time directly interacting with her daughter. The child hasn’t lost any English yet, but HAS begun to speak it more like “Chinglish.”
What is happening is that the L2 is haveing an L1 like effect on the L1. The fact that she hears so much Chinese every day, that she interracts with that language the most, and that she’s at a near perfect age to pick it up sopping gravy are simply overwhelming her first language. It’s perfectly normal and completely unavoidable.
This is why people studying language do immersion programs. It’s just so hard, maybe impossible, to overcome environment.
My view about this is that parents should prevent their kids from being exposed to too much sub-standard language input. I know that may sound really harsh, but I’ve seen too many kids here in HK who have grown up to speak fossilized Chinglish even though one, and in some cases both parents were native or native-like speakers of English. Most of these kids spoke native-like English until they went off to a local, supposedly English medium of instruction primary school. It’s no wonder that if your kid spends his or her most attentive moments every day immersed in non-native, and in many cases just plain poor English, he or she is going to end up speaking like that. It seems to me that some parents of these kids are just in denial about their child’s English going down the tubes. Some of these parents who are non-Chinese speakers rationalize it by thinking that their child is learning Chinese well by going to a local school. The trouble is that the Chinese abilities of kids in local EMI schools is very low.
Contrast the above with native-English speaking kids I know in Taiwan and HK who go to schools where Chinese is used as the medium of insruction. In pretty much every case I’ve observed, such kids of course learn Chinese well, and their English remains native-like at least in terms of phonological and syntactical development. Their vocabulary lags behind that of monolingual English speaking kids and non-natives who are truly immersed in a strong English environment. The real test to me though is cognitive development. I personally believe that the native-English speaking child in a CMI school is going to end up better off than native or non-native speaking children studying in a Chinglish medium of instruction school. The former’s academic English will be able to piggyback on their Chinese later in life if they need to pursue secondary or tertiary education in English. My son will go to a local EMI primary school only over my dead body.
According to pretty much all of the academic literature on bilingual development in children, what you describe just does not happen. There is usually very little interference from one language onto another in children so young, and what little there is is usally very short-lived. Kids don’t confuse languages just by learning more than one of them. Kids do confuse languages when the input they receive is confused. I’d bet money that what is happening is she is being immersed in Chinglish on a normal basis. Perhaps her father and his family think they need to speak “English” with her since her Chinese is not at the level of local kids of the same age. The amount of time in which Chinglish is used with or by her is likely greater than the amount of time she spends talking to mom in English. I’d say that the solution is not to spend less time using Chinese, but instead to ask dad’s family not to speak English to her and to pull her out of whatever Chinglish kindergarten they might have her in. I’d be very interested in hearing more details about this child’s actual language environment.
The advice I would give to the OP’s brother is that he should pull his child out of the “bilingual” kindergarten and either make himself content with local Chinese medium education and the initial lack of development of English academic skills that come with that, or get ready to spend the big bucks on one of the better international schools.
The problem is that my brother doesn’t hear the accent when I mentioned it to him, and I didn’t want to bug him about it. The school she’s attending is not international, but the tuition is 13000NT a month, I guess that’s considered to be pricey. Their plan is to send her to school in the states when she’s between 6 to 9 years old. I don’t know…maybe I should just mind my own business 
[quote=“Jive Turkey”]My view about this is that parents should prevent their kids from being exposed to too much sub-standard language input. I know that may sound really harsh, but I’ve seen too many kids here in HK who have grown up to speak fossilized Chinglish even though one, and in some cases both parents were native or native-like speakers of English. Most of these kids spoke native-like English until they went off to a local, supposedly English medium of instruction primary school. It’s no wonder that if your kid spends his or her most attentive moments every day immersed in non-native, and in many cases just plain poor English, he or she is going to end up speaking like that. It seems to me that some parents of these kids are just in denial about their child’s English going down the tubes. Some of these parents who are non-Chinese speakers rationalize it by thinking that their child is learning Chinese well by going to a local school. The trouble is that the Chinese abilities of kids in local EMI schools is very low.
Contrast the above with native-English speaking kids I know in Taiwan and HK who go to schools where Chinese is used as the medium of insruction. In pretty much every case I’ve observed, such kids of course learn Chinese well, and their English remains native-like at least in terms of phonological and syntactical development. Their vocabulary lags behind that of monolingual English speaking kids and non-natives who are truly immersed in a strong English environment. The real test to me though is cognitive development. I personally believe that the native-English speaking child in a CMI school is going to end up better off than native or non-native speaking children studying in a Chinglish medium of instruction school. The former’s academic English will be able to piggyback on their Chinese later in life if they need to pursue secondary or tertiary education in English. My son will go to a local EMI primary school only over my dead body.
According to pretty much all of the academic literature on bilingual development in children, what you describe just does not happen. There is usually very little interference from one language onto another in children so young, and what little there is is usally very short-lived. Kids don’t confuse languages just by learning more than one of them. Kids do confuse languages when the input they receive is confused. I’d bet money that what is happening is she is being immersed in Chinglish on a normal basis. Perhaps her father and his family think they need to speak “English” with her since her Chinese is not at the level of local kids of the same age. The amount of time in which Chinglish is used with or by her is likely greater than the amount of time she spends talking to mom in English. I’d say that the solution is not to spend less time using Chinese, but instead to ask dad’s family not to speak English to her and to pull her out of whatever Chinglish kindergarten they might have her in. I’d be very interested in hearing more details about this child’s actual language environment.
The advice I would give to the OP’s brother is that he should pull his child out of the “bilingual” kindergarten and either make himself content with local Chinese medium education and the initial lack of development of English academic skills that come with that, or get ready to spend the big bucks on one of the better international schools.[/quote]
You are right and I was not clear. I did not write down that I was considering the “Chinglish” as the L2. I had this response all thought out, but apparently I got lost somewhere while trying to type. Never mind. But what she’s getting at the bi-lingual pre-school is a native speaker teacher, and local teacher’s helpers. So, the “teacher” has good English, though different than her mother’s American English, and the rest is mostly Chinglish. I don’t think her Chinese family speaks Chinglish to her, though, as her Mandarine is better than her English now. She spends, generally, about equal time with Chinese family as in Kindy, and less time with her mom, well, less quality time with active language use. If the Chinese family DO speak any English, it’s Chinglish. So, she’s immersed in a mostly “Chinglish” environment, with a strong Mandarine influence.
Yes, the books and research all say that a second or other language almost never interfears with a first language, but in this case, her first language, which was very well developed, is taking a huge hit. It’s shocking how corrupted it has become in only one year. And they came back almost a year to the day after they returned to Taiwan, so I saw it first hand. Not only verbal language, but body language as well. That was very interesting to me.
NatalieZ, You should read “Nature versus Nurture” by Judith Harris. She talks about how language is acquired through peers and not parents. Some obvious examples are that immigrants can acquire native accents even their parents can basically not speak the language. The book talks about how a Caucasian child picked up an African-American accent/vernacular through her exposure to African-American children in daycare.
Maybe when a child is only exposed to a language through parents then they will be forced to pick up the parents accent but since the children you are talking about are interacting with Taiwanese children they will pick up a Taiwanese accent from their peers. Even American children with two American parents would pick up a different accent if educated abroad. Even if they are educated in an American school.
That is why it is so funny that Taiwanese, Japanese, and Hong Kongese want native English speakers. Only in rare cases will they pick up native like accents. They would be better off hiring native English speaking children as playmates if it were possible.
Two Wongs don’t make a White.
Sorry, had to put that silliness out there.
Natalie, peer environment is important, but I have to add more to that. Looking back, I would have to attribute it to lots of reading out loud (yes, reading combined with phonetics go a long way towards pronunciation and “accents”), and lots of movies, songs, and TV shows (ie popular culture).
What I learned uniquely from my peers (their grammar was horrible) was idioms. Using and understanding idioms goes a long way to blending in. You don’t get very far knowing your grammar, but not knowing “raining cats and dogs”.
It’s like that apocryphal story about the German soldier pretending to be American, speaking excellent American English, but saying “benzene” or something instead of asking for gas. Seems to me, that guy was probably shot dead.
I will add to that, that the Asians I met with the best English usually watched a lot of American movies. I believe that watching a lot of movies can really help one’s language learning.