What is it with kindergarten managers being lunatics? Everyone I know who works kindy says that their manager is a nutcase. Is it because by definition in this country the places almost always have to be illegal and they can only find maniacs to run the places?
Any time a Taiwanese parent asks me about the best way to get their kid to learn English I always advise strongly against private bilingual kindergartens.
I sent our daughter to a private bilingual kindergarten. Many of the kids had dual citizenship and some would end up at TAS. Expensive, even for half day option. But I wanted to do the right thing as a dad. Some months later, they had a school event for Christmas (I believe it was). I was appalled to hear the kids speaking English with tones. We kept our daughter there for only a few more months after I noticed various other problems. Fast forward to now (she’s 15). Fluent English. So good in her arguments with me that I always encourage her to become a lawyer after college in the US!
A major problem with pronunciation is the obsession some teachers have with choral drilling. The kids start copying each other. I remember when a preschool my daughter went to started providing an hour a week of English teaching. She came home one day asking me what a fraaaaag was. It took me a while to figure out she meant frog.
Yes, they mimic words, but don’t know what they mean or how to communicatively apply them. Which is why their essays are filled with malapropisms, awkward phrases, and other word choice errors.
Wat dat you say? Frrrr aaaahhhh Ggggeeeerrr, (Frog) A lot of those learn English programs on TV the foreign model teachers speak in super slow motion and over pronounce.
Yeah and this goes on for them throughout their adult life.