Taipei Times letter 2/20

Work Teaching English in Taiwan
#1

Well, I just finished reading Mr.Chandler’s letter to the editor (Taipei Times 2/20) and after careful consideration I have concluded that the letter is complete and utter horseshit.

“…with dissimilar sentence structures, such as Mandarin and English, a child’s mind may well become confused and even impeded in its natural environment”

Huh? My boys are growing up with three languages. Oldest (3rd grade) is on the school’s tennis team, does well academically, and is a very good artist. Honorable son #2 (second grade) is a blue belt in Aikido, a gifted piano player, and his teacher has talked to my wife and I about his skipping a grade in school (we said “no”). If those two examples aren’t enough to debunk this ah…um…“theory”, then we can all mosey on down to any kindy or language school and see oogles and gobs of kids who are learning English as a second language AND are happy, well balanced children. Yeah, yeah Chomsky this and Chomsky that…but I have always relied on trusting my eyes and ears more than any theorist. And what was said in the letter does not match what I see with my eyes.

“…among those youthful travelers who are merely passing through to get enough money for their next tattoo at the Full Moon Rave on Ko Phangan.”

That’s is so 1980’s. From what I see, folks coming over here now to teach are looking to pay off student loans, save enough for a down payment on a house back home, learn Mandarin, or generally experience life as an ex-pat. And for the most part they are at least staying for a year. The days of “travelers” blowing into Taiwan for six months to save enough to keep on traveling are long gone. Besides, Goa is the place to be, not Ko Phangan.

#2

Children are little language sponges. If they are given enough input, their brains are quite capable of sorting it all out.

In terms of reading and writing, you might want to delay (IMHO) until the kids have sorted out their spoken languages a little bit more. But that’s more a problem with Taiwan’s educational system, having three-year-olds write lists of words (I was supposed to teach four-year-olds Pinyin in the US once – they didn’t even know their colors reliably in English, which was their first language) and expecting literacy above all else. If they would just let the kids speak English, for example, at a young age, the literacy could come later (and faster and more accurately). Hmmm…just like little Western kids pick up their English?? :unamused:

#3

hehe.

#4

his letter was a rebuttal to a previous bigwig. more of the same as hers.

“Kids can’t learn too much at once!”…well, golly they should stop teaching in mandarin and use the languages the kids use at home if such is indeed fact. even the writer of the letter himself admits that chomsky’s theories on such are still theories and have not yet proven to be true.

is he arguing for hakka only kindergardens?

#5

[quote=“Durins Bane”]Well, I just finished reading Mr.Chandler’s letter to the editor (Taipei Times 2/20) and after careful consideration I have concluded that the letter is complete and utter horseshit.

“…with dissimilar sentence structures, such as Mandarin and English, a child’s mind may well become confused and even impeded in its natural environment”
[/quote]

Dammit, you beat me to the horseshit comment, that’s what came to mind. My son is doing well in two languages, I’m a product of a dual language childhood and there are really no reason two thunk I are confoosed and has grammer and spellung problims.

This is just another excuse to keep the status quo of minimal English levels among people, possibly the base motivation is a fear of the base culture being eroded?

#6

Obvously you two failed to read/mention the person he praises. Seems we have some “Uncle Tom” wannabe working for the locals. You can read her letter here:

taipeitimes.com/News/edit/ar … 2003099101

I work at 2 real kindergartens and I can safely say that they have all the picture books and activities they need. The teachers are knowledgable and supportive in class. They will intervene between a “bad” foreign teacher and the students if it merits it.

Now to take apart some of her arguments.

I’ve watched my Chinese teachers. They teach very little actually. They only have 3-5 hours a day with them and their lessons are short and conscise followed by a lot of playtime while they work with individual students. I really have a problem seeing where I impact there teaching.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but what is better; a half a day with a qualified Chinese teacher or someone they literally picked off the streets to watch the kids and schmooze the parents? Do cram schools not have these same problems?

Why? What does this unsupported assertion mean? How does it affect the students? How does she know this is true? I believe I’ll use DB’s term “Horseshit” here.

What really causes this problem is the priority given to English in public schools. When your child’s educational choices can be so directly affected by one subject, you will do what is in your power to help your child succeed. If your local elementary school fasttracks kids with excellent English, than I can bet you the local cram schools and bilingual kindergartens are booming.

Like what tasks? Children have learned multiple languages without dire consequences before. Again another unsupported assertion by some scholar, who I bet sends her child to a bilingual kindergarten.

CYA
Okami

#7

Oh, yawn! As usual, “experts” in Taiwan fail to explain why what they say cannot work, does in fact work very successfully in some other countries. e.g. Singapore.

And then, like so many others, Mr Chandler believes that dropping the name of linguist demi-god Noam Chomsky will support his contention. Like those others, he may have perused Chomsky’s writings, but has he looked across the fence? Plenty of researchers fields - indeed whole movements -such as, neurology, anthropology, evolutionists, psycolinguistics, sociolinguistics, etc. etc. have taken Chomsky to task.

While Chomsky’s might deserve his epithet “the father of modern liguistics”, these days he might better be called “the linguistic albatross.”

[quote]Insofar as I am a

#8

I don’t have kids so I don’t know for a fact. But I can see where kids can get confused with grammar between english and chinese.

Primary example: is or shi (pinyin).

English: I am cold.
Chinese: I cold. (Wo leng)

I’d lean towards chinese/taiwanese first, english later. And definitely dont have them try to write anything early. That would definitely confuse them to an extent. If only that the kids might not learn the proper rules for writing chinese characters.

Just a thought.

#9

I don’t buy it. My first language was German, possibly the most difficult language around, in terms of grammar, anyway. After kindergarten, I moved back to Canada (where I was born) and learned English. Within a few years I was learning French as a second language. For the last 15 years I have been dabbling in Mandarin. I never kept up my German after my grandparents died, and my French has atrophied into nothingness after years of disuse. But learning all these languages at different stages of my life has only made me a better person - there has been no downside to it at all…

#10

Well, I think that they would do… to begin with. But with enough corrective input from both languages their brains begin to sort it all out. I think it’s been shown somewhere that kids learning more than one language learn to speak at a slightly slower rate than kids learning only one, but that’s because of the extra processing involved in sorting out which is which and which words belong to which language.

I think the ‘danger’ is actually in having the kids learn English from non-native speakers - eg each other and the local teachers. My daughter is a native English speaker attending an English-only school, and at the moment speaks English, a few basic words of Chinese, and a third dialect I can only describe as ‘Taiwanese-American-English’ - she came home with ‘tore-toyse’ for tortoise and wants to say ‘he cuh-NOT’ for ‘I don’t want him to’ and has some English phrases that she says with a sing-song Taiwanese accent. Obviously we are correcting this (it takes time) and I’m confident she’ll end up speaking ‘properly’, but this would be unlikely to happen for the average Taiwanese kid in an English-only school. However, I think the worst that would happen is that they would know a lot of English - but still have Chinese grammar. (Well, actually I suspect the worst that could happen is that their parents speak to them only in imperfect English as described in another thread, and they end up speaking no language properly.) Which is going to happen even if they learn English later on. Meanwhile, they’ll have the vocabulary.

It’s interesting that Choamsky disagrees, because I’d always thought of him as someone whose opinion was to be highly regarded. Not having read his work myself, it’s hard to tell what his theory is. Could one not reason along the same lines and instead conclude that being exposed to two such different language structures might actually expand the mind rather than confusing it? Should we worry about mathematics and music as well?

#11

I don’t buy it. My first language was German, possibly the most difficult language around, in terms of grammar, anyway. After kindergarten, I moved back to Canada (where I was born) and learned English. Within a few years I was learning French as a second language. For the last 15 years I have been dabbling in Mandarin. I never kept up my German after my grandparents died, and my French has atrophied into nothingness after years of disuse. But learning all these languages at different stages of my life has only made me a better person - there has been no downside to it at all…[/quote]

Sorry I wasn’t clear. I wasn’t meaning that it’s a bad thing to learn different languages. I was referring to pushing too many differing, esp. grammar, languages onto kids at an early age. I know and agree with that kids are “language sponges” but even sponges have their limit. I was just saying that I can see if you put mandarin and english together too much at an early age it can confuse very young kids.

I’m all for learning other languages. Always seem to get better service in restaurants if you can speak their language. :slight_smile:

#12

Eh, I can see that speaking slower could have detrimental effects. The phrase, Kids are the cruelest of humans, comes to mind. That delves more personality development and that’s another thread. So…

I think you’re referring more towards accent than actual skill which is what I’m talking about. Speaking english with chinese grammar or speaking chinese with english grammar. Both are not to be desired. Accents eh… everyone has them, maybe a flatter accent than the “sing-song taiwanese accent” is preferred by some. Imho, most of the pacific-asian accents are more understandable than some European and middle-eastern accents. Accents, when speaking english and not their native language. Accents can always be fixed later. Look at Arnold :wink: Proper grammar is harder.

Assuming the kids are here, I’d rather them learn mandarin/taiwanese first and then learn english later. 1) They can get around better by themselves. 1a) talking with their "friends/nursey-mates/kindergarden-mates is part of their early development and not to be overlooked (start separate thread if desired) 2) English grammar, again imho, is more loose than mandarin. Hence requiring a bit more cognitive ability to get it right. And with that extra cognitive ability and their better ear from learning tones in mandarin/taiwanese, their accent can be improved faster.

This is to be taken with a grain of salt as i dont have kids and I know mileage will vary a lot. Just seems to me…

P.S. about the math… depends on school i think. Note the recent articles about how the east is surpassing the west in scientific skill. on the other note, creativity isn’t up there. but i figure that will come as culture changes slightly in the east.

#13

Not ‘speaking slower’ but ‘learning to speak at a overall slower rate’. And I don’t believe this is a big problem if you’re talking about ‘cruelty’ because some children are naturally more articulate than others, and I don’t think I’m talking about a delay which is any greater than the variation which already exists amongst children - which can be huge, depending on their families, care, personality etc. Some kids can conduct a fully fledged conversation when others are still constructing a full sentence. Secondly, if the children they mainly socialize with are children in their ‘English’ or ‘bilingual’ school, then they’re all going to be theoretically delayed at roughly the same rate, no?

Yes and no. I regard ‘he cannot’ as being Chinese grammar ‘ta bu keyi’. I’m not good enough at Chinese to know for sure if that can be used in the situation where an English speaker would say ‘I don’t want him to do that!’ but I’m deducing that from the situations in which she uses it. The accent thing is just a bonus :slight_smile:

I agree speaking English with Chinese grammar is undesirable, but my point was that with no English tuition they will speak Chinese with Chinese grammar; with English tuition they may well end up speaking English with Chinese grammar - but at least they will have English vocabulary. I don’t see how this puts them at a disadvantage to a native Chinese-only speaker who then wants to learn English later in life.

I do think it’s very important to learn to speak at least ONE language properly, but if the parents take care to correct the child in his/her native language, then I don’t see how this wouldn’t happen naturally. I’m not actually defending the current system - ideally I think local kids would be better off with primarily Mandarin/Taiwanese early schooling as well UNLESS they can somehow go to a school completely run by native/near native English speakers so they learn one language properly at school and one at home. Otherwise, I’d definitely support English exposure if it comes solely from a native speaker. It’s just this ‘confuse and impede’ theory that I don’t buy.

#14

Try Russian on for size…:wink:

Some times I found, back in the days when I was a teachers’ supervisor and trainer (SHOCK, HORROR!), that the people with the most letters after their names and the most theory swimming around in the noodles were the most shithouse teachers here.
I think Mr. Conehead letter-writer is just talking to hear his head rattle.

#15

Wouldn’t put it past the taipeitimes to invent letters and writers… DPP Xenopobes

#16

Problem is anything learned at school at an early age needs to be reinforced at home for it to take a good hold. Right? That’s my thing.

Anyways, I’ll revisit this when I get around to having kids. :slight_smile:

Im sure the kids will be fine. Just take some adjusting in some form or manner. Didn’t we all?

#17

I do not think kids woud use Chinese grammar with English and vice versa… after all this only happens when the person who is teachig this to them has bad English or Chinese

Kids don’t think about it in one lanaguage and then say it in another… therefroe they don’t translate and do not run into the grammar mistakes… they just open their mouths and say what they think

#18

Well, I’d say that depends how much time the kids spend at school - if you spent 30-40 hours a week in an English-only environment, no, I don’t believe it would require further reinforcement for the second language to ‘take hold’, at least the spoken aspect. But yes, everyone has to make their own decision for their kids :slight_smile:

Exactly - and at the ‘English’ schools, the local teachers also speak English to the children. That’s where the kids pick up the odd grammar/phrasing from. The local teachers are the ones who have to actually take care of the basic needs of the children, many of whom start off with no English at all - so the teacher acts as a liaison, speaking Chinese, and then following it up with English. Then you have the follow-on effect that the children will automatically have the tendency to speak English with Chinese grammar unless constantly corrected. How else do you think a child with two native English speakers as parents ends up coming out with such odd/gramatically incorrect phrases? It’s quite obvious where they come from too, because as you say, they copy everything exactly, including the accent :slight_smile: Personally, I’d rather they didn’t do this and leave the English to the native speakers, but it’s good for business, isn’t it?

#19

That would entail extra work for a copy editor or reporter, meaning no fucking way in hell.

#20

Hahaha. As if us native speakers don’t come up with our own odd phrasings and sayings. :slight_smile: