They are all crap. That’s my point. They are all crap; they just aren’t all legislated against.
Four years and younger, I say yell they say yell, at least after a little teaching and repetition.
Older than four years, I say yell they say yau. I say ell, ell, ell, ell… e e e e lllll eee elll ell ell y y y y ell, yell yell yell and they say yau.
All together I spend including today several lessons on just that one vocabulary but no success.
At home, I talk to my wife and tell her about this. She, whats wrong? yau! I yell she yau and so on.
It’s such a proven fact that after a certain age the brain and especially the hearing closes certain windows/doors that are almost impossible to reopen.
And even if you could open that door again,why going through all that effort when there is the perfect age/time for it?
It’s not a proven fact, where kids are in an EFL environment (kindy) not a bilingual environment. They develop horrible fossilised Chinglish.
No big deal!
Ten years ago, you’d teach any elementary or high school aged kids and find yourself in front of rolling eyes only.
The teaching material versus the students’ capabilities absolutely mission impossible.
Now, you can have smooth conversations in most of the classes, at least, after some effort and in Taipei.
I suspect that this is due to the kindergarten teaching hype a decade ago.
Why is there such a teaching English hype in Japan? After years of humiliation with chicken fly?
You feel annoyed cause of some Chinglish? My guess you’d be the first to notice flying chicken.
No, no, I understand all the psychological reasons why parents do it. The ‘proof’ is not there: these are business who will of course propagate the ‘younger is better’ set of assumptions. They aren’t bad people: they believe themselves because it sound intuitively 'common sense-ish.
Chinglish is of course not the worse thing in the world, but it sets learners back when they’re older and want to do something such as pass a written exam. There are no Taiwanese student in classes above upper intermediate Ievel in the university prep program I work on in Britain. The advanced kids are all Northern Europeans (predictably), and students who started in their teens (Libyans, Kazakhs)
Sorry to disagree, but the prove is there. There have been studies on how language listening develops, and till the age of 8 month we are all what is called universal listeners. That means till that age you are able to learn new sounds and distinguish them.
http://mind.cog.jhu.edu/courses/102/slides/lecture14-speechsoundacquisition.pdf
Native language studies in infants. Taiwanese kindy kids aren’t those environments and they’re older. Apples and oranges, I’m afraid.
As I said, I understand why people think this. It just doesn’t really bear out in kindies because they try to replicate a bilingual environment but they can’t because the children are much older, there are too many kids, and the time in the foreign language environment is very short, even in an all-day program.
Save your cash for lessons when the kids are older. Ship em off to Britain when they’re 19. They’ll get from high school to university level (6 or 7 in IELTS in the UK ) in 12 months. Give 'em piano lessons instead.
As I mentioned in my first post above, I think some of those windows are still open till the age of three to four.
I’ve been teaching here for more than 14 years now, I know what’s an easy task and what isn’t.
It’s a little late for you to experience what it’s really like to teach bloody beginners at the age of 12. Most kids nowadays had some English input at a young age.
According to the above study, it’s the input that matters at that age.
Anyhow, how many of you managed to learn Chinese fluently equivalent to Chinese natives.
What I could have done in a couple of years at the age of 3-5 is taking me now decades. If you do better, than you are a linguistic genius, congratulations.
I have friends who are remarkably good at Chinese who started much later on. Some after their teens. The problem is not your age. The problem is your approach because of your age. There is no proof that learning a language earlier is better. Ermintrude is perfectly accurate.
A kindy doesnt replicate a native speaker environment, even if the kid starts in the xiaoban.
So teach them when they are older than 12! What in your life has led you to believe that 12 year olds are good at assimilating information? 
Society has 12 year olds in school for social and developmental reasons: the ‘real stuff’ in any subject comes post 16, when kids are developed enough to take it. Look at their curricula for other subjects. You, as an intelligent adult (I don’t know you, I’m just assuming ), could learn it all in a couple of days, while they take a year.
I’ve taught beginners at every aged for nearly 20 years, from Taiwanese 3 year olds to traumatised, illiterate adult refugees. An adult will still learn more in six months than a three year old.
However, there are plenty of reasons to teach languages to kids other than to make them proficient users. The affective stuff is important, and giving them a window on the world. Im not saying ‘kindy is evil!’, just ‘don’t believe all that learn like a native speaker’ stuff’. It’s marketing, based on received wisdom.
Engineering students and obviously linguistics students tend to be the best learners!
There is no proof that bothering kids in the middle of puberty, with all kinds of pressure and tests, just gotten aware of their own sexuality and mortality, is less harmful than teaching at an age where learning a language is the thing to do.
Also there have been studies with MRI scans that show and proof that those young aged learners use the same brain aria whereas the older learners use a different part of the brain.
I just feel that pushing kids at 9:00 pm so they can keep up with the others is more harmful than playing some games in the morning.
No, the best time would be university aged. If they had motivation.
Kazakhs, for a number of reasons, are amazing at this. Two of my recent students got 8.5 in IELTS reading, recently, 7.5 overall. They are outliers, obviously, with most of them hitting 6.5-7.
MRI studies on Taiwanese kindy kids, learning English in non-bilingual families? Even if these studies replicate the environments that Taiwanese kindies encapsulate, what do you think linguistic brain area activity in a young child displays? What conclusions can you draw from that? That a child is developing a second language, or that a learner is mapping the new language onto existing schema? Or that you are looking at something completely irrelevant to the research question? That language existing in different parts of the brain is inferior(tonal language speakers’ brains light up like Christmas trees under scrutiny, whereas non-tonal languages are more localised anyway)?
As I said, I understand completely why you think like you do. All the studies people cite are generally irrelevant to ythe Taiwanese kindy context, though: it’s newspaper stuff to manipulate parents and make them cough up for fear of leaving their children behind. It’s a powerful, emotive lobby, obviously.
Have to run to work, now. Don’t think I’m disrespecting your experience by writing this, it’s just something that interests me.
The MOE are trying to stop the formal teaching of English to young learners. They are not as daft as a lot of people here think.
I love you to bits, but disagree with you here. The key words are if/motivation.
I have no problem with very young learners gaining input from a native speaker of a second language as long as the instruction is correct. In the majority of cases in Taiwan the instruction has a negative impact, so I agree with the policies of the MOE.
You realize that you are using a conditional here?
Also a few students is not a representation for the majority of the population. There are always about two out of ten students in my classes that do excel.
The others have some problems ranging from concentration disorders to hearing losses and minute brain injuries.
Language is one of the most complicated thing nature has come up with.
Here is, where I think, you are wrong. You intend to protect the kids, but at the same time make the decision for them what they should do when/while going to university.
Most Asian people know how difficult it is to learn any western language, and English is important for an upper career.
You are not in the position to make that judgment call for them on deciding when and how to spend their time and recourses.
Rich people can simply hire private teachers and English speaking nannies. They can afford to pay a year off for some language studies overseas.
Here is the thing I do agree though. Years ago, I taught for a Happy Marian Kindergarten here in Taipei.
The tuition was really high like 25 000 plus 20 000 for food and extras per month.
Their program promised learning by experiencing the real thing, weekly field-trips, playtime cooking and art classes etc.
When I asked for the basket of fruit since fruit was the topic of the week, the manager just gave me some poorly printed pictures and told me that would do.
The field trips were all canceled. Next, the manager decided to cancel playtime and told us we should teach.
My coworkers approached me and we agreed that this was going far too far. During the next meeting I demanded that he followed the teaching plan and that the kids got playtime. Since I was the only one not depending on the visa, I found myself very lonely on this one. He refused, my coworkers agreed and I used the f word in combination with the long U.
I was fired of course. People like this ashole messed it all up.
I forgot he called my wife and told her that I was a bad foreigner and lazy because I wanted the playtime for myself.
Which I cannot completely reject, since playtime is some sort of break-time, but not completely useless since you’re still observing the kids from a different perspective.
Why don’t they just make sure that these people really do what they promise?
Of course. All learning is conditional on motivation, with any age group.
I’m not telling anyone what they should or shouldn’t do. I’m saying that the received wisdom that surround the 'earlier is better’are not underscored by actual research: it’s just pop psychology and marketing, and that there’s a presumption that the MOE is clueless and hasn’t consulted with outside ELT agencies or done any research.
It keeps me in work in the UK, at least.
Kids at different ages learn in different ways. I suspect the 20 something year old Kazakhs were able to do great at memorization tasks and language theory and concepts. And learning in that way requires a lot of motivation. That’s why I continue to stall out learning Chinese. Younger children on the other hand learn in a more natural way and usually have far superior phonetic pronunciation even if they don’t live in a full time English environment.
Contrary to the popular opinion here I usually get a few 1st grade students that went to very good kindergartens. I have been surprised that they can barely write since that is one of the popular criticisms of kindy instruction but they have a high level of thinking in English compared to 3rd and 4th graders. Despite this 3rd/4th graders pick up memorization tasks far easier especially any grammar concept (like capital letters or a/an) no matter how trivial. the other thing that I have noticed is that students that start at our school in 1st and 2nd grade (we don’t do kindy) never have a Chinglish accent. That includes good students, bad students, terrible students or even students that learned kindy English. Some students that start later in elementary (3rd-5th) have had big pronunciation issues. I don’t know the background of every student but that could be due to starting an English program (anchinbans or elementary school) with a Chinglish speaking teacher or possible first language interference. English speaking adults have problems pronouncing certain 2nd language sounds that don’t occur in English (I definitely do) and the same is true the other way around. But if you start teaching kids a 2nd language early enough you can avoid that issue.
The problem with kindy in Taiwan isn’t that the students are learning English but rather the example that Hamlet gave. I subbed at a kindy that was using a pile of books that were more suitable for 2nd-4th graders for kindy instruction. There is absolutely no reason that 3-6 yr olds should be in a book/writing intensive English program. For that matter they shouldn’t be in a book/writing intensive program in their first language. The excuse that has always been given for no English in kindy’s was that it interferes with 1st language development. I don’t really believe that but I won’t pretend to be an expert on kindy instruction.
In the end I don’t think English kindy is bad for students but I do think that it is a complete waste of money.
English language acquisition should not be the number one priority for very young learners. Stuff like throwing a ball or climbing up things are more important. I have no problem with any kindy that combines the two and has, say, kids climbing monkey bars with English instruction from a native speaker. Or baking cakes. Dressing dolls. All good.
When some idiot walks into the classroom and tries to teach English - then I back the MOE banning it. Do 3-4 year old kids in your country get taught phonetic rules or have to write the alphabet for homework? And that would be in their native language.
And would you let someone with an associates degree in for example accounting (could be worse) teach your kids back home? There is a big difference between being responsible for controlling development at different levels and just teaching a language. That is why the native speaker with a 2 year diploma and Tesol can teach at a language school where they are only responsible for the language and not at a kindergarten where they are responsible for so much more.
BUT
This is not an endorsement of the current kindy system here. Heck, my kids will stay away until I can’t deal with them at home, and some days … :fume: