It takes some work to keep two parallel language ecosystems (ELE and CLE) in a small place but we manage to. A very nice all American experience for us was the cotillion lessons, which I translate to “禮儀課“. It’s more of a southern thing.
What interesting region-specific experiences have you kids had in your area? Let’s exclude any talk of football (yes, the American version) and NASCAR for now….
Secret to raising a bilingual and biliterate child in Chinese and English: spousal support
No, not the type of spousal support divorcees talk about. I am talking about a cooperative and supportive spouse. It really matters whom you marry, just like everything else. FB COO Sherry Sandberg said so, in another context of course, as in “Lean In”.
Either the spouse has a good income, so that you can hire Chinese tutors or household help, and/or let you stay home to teach the kids Chinese, s/he does the bulk of the house chores (so that you can spend time to teach Chinese and establish a CLE), or the spouse does the teaching/CLE part. It is very time consuming to teach Chinese well and takes the cooperation of the entire family. It would be even better than the grandparents can chip in too.
你希望小孩的中文不錯嘛? 一個很重要的條件是什麼呢？丈夫或太太配合。不是多賺點錢，讓你能請人幫忙教學或做家事，或讓你能在家教小孩中文，不然就要他做大部分的家事，或就由他去教。要教好中文是件很花時間的事，需要全家配合，最好是家長的父母親也能幫忙。
Other thoughts for the day
I just spoke with another parent on my way back from work. Here are highlights of some of the points that I had not discussed before.
1) Education is the most important thing (well, besides the usual talk of wanting your kids to be happy and that sort of things). Schooling is a mean to the end. Education is SO much more than schooling. When schooling interferes with education, go see about switching school.
2) When weekend Chinese school (or immersion school for that matter) interferes with your kids’ Chinese education, such as focusing way too much on writing and testing, and you have a viable alternative such as home instruction, drop weekend Chinese school. Neither its scope nor curriculum is sufficient for level 3 proficiency and up any ways. A lot more is required. And if you DO do the “a lot more” part at home, you may figure out that you can be better off with home instruction.
3) Testing. I had never given my daughters any Chinese test. When we homeschooled, it seems the au pair did give them tests, but there were pretty much no stress involved, according to my kids. I didn’t know that they even had tests till just now. Why bother with test on Chinese at this age, as a Chinese-speaking heritage family? The language skill is for long term practical use, amongst other things. Test results means nothing, if one can’t speak competently or read a book. We just keep focusing on learning more and more and do more reading and conversing. There is no required pre-defined and adhered-to schedule to keep. Every day and every moment is a teaching opportunity.
4) Learning together. Here in the US, besides independent reading and watching Chinese cartoons, my daughters pretty much did all their Chinese learning with the au pairs, tutors, or me next to them. If I can manage to get some patient chart work done while they study, I try to do so, but I am there to help and guide them every step of the way. Sometimes, I would tell them to copy the text or do some reading comprehension exercises while I take a nap or something like that, but that’s infrequent. We watch all these funny Chinese YouTube videos and movies together. This allows the three of us to be our own CLE (Chinese language ecosystem), that we can retell jokes and stories months later. WE ARE OUR OWN CLIQUE and we have fun together.
5) Time spent with other heritage kids after 6-8 years of age is unlikely to improve much your children’s Chinese proficiency, since they almost always speak English to each other. It may help solidifying your children’s identity but not so much Chinese.
Raising bilingual and biliterate children in Chinese and English 