中文進度 Chinese proficiency progress

Code switching

人生 中文進度 Chinese proficiency progress

“Georgia” (9) has a stronger tendency to switch to speaking English, compared to our 12 year old daughter, “Charlotte”, who can pretty much express herself well in Chinese the great majority of the time. So, seeing that Georgia needs extra work on fuller colloquial expression, we hired a tutor to work with her on the weekend, one hour on Saturday and one hour on Sunday. She reads aloud story books with more colloquial expressions and conversations with the tutor.  The tutor also has Georgia make sentences verbally based on different sentence structures. After two months, she is doing better now.

Thankfully, Charlotte’s Chinese is strong that she continues to speak to Georgia in Chinese the great majority of the time and the two continue to converse in Chinese most of the time at home, where we continue to monitor and enforce the “Chinese Only” policy.

As I had written before, it is important that the elder child has excellent colloquial Chinese so that the younger child has a fighting chance to learn Chinese well enough.

 
  

Breakthrough!

人生 中文進度 Chinese proficiency progress

Here is one section of the first novel without zhuyin that Charlotte read at 10 and half.  I was ecstatic when she told me that she enjoyed reading a novel on her Kindle.  I put it in Kindle two years prior, hoping that she would one day be able to read it.  Our hard work over the past 10 years finally payed off!

“普通崖羊都是灰褐色的。高黎貢山的崖羊體毛卻深褐泛紅，到了冬天，毛色鮮紅亮麗，在鋪滿白雪的山上奔跑跳躍，宛如一團團燃燒的火焰。紅崖羊性情溫和，毛色奇特，是世界上獨一無二的品種，因此，極其珍貴。遺憾的是，紅崖羊的數量太少，只有孤零零一小群，生活在狹窄的納壺河谷。當地山民也知道紅崖羊是世界級的珍稀動物，從不傷害它們。母羊一年生兩胎，每胎產兩三頭小羊羔，繁殖力在牛科動物中算是高的。但不知為什麼，紅崖羊的數量就是發展不起來。據我請來的嚮導——藏族獵手強巴告訴我，他爺爺年輕時曾仔細數過，這群紅崖羊有66只，前幾天我在動物觀察站用望遠鏡數了一遍，不多不少，也是66只。

半個多世紀過去了，紅崖羊的數量一頭也沒增加，這不能不說是個悲慘的謎。
我連續跟踪了半個多月，終於找到紅崖羊之所以發展不起來的癥結所在。罪魁禍首就是兩隻貪得無厭的雪豹。”