I would like this to be a platform where parents can exchange tips on successfully raising bilingual and biliterate children in Chinese and English in the US and where parents can share their success stories and progress, to encourage each other in this most challenging pursuit.
Wednesday, April 2, 2014
Excellent academic paper to read on this subject
I found an excellent academic paper by Rong Liu discussing this very topic:
Hi Oliver, I know this is probably ages ago for you, but I'm just wondering, at what age do you think it's appropriate to start teaching your children characters? Doing a search on the Chinese web yields all sorts of ages, from 1.5, all the way up to 5/6. I know we need to start early in a non-Chinese majority environment, and probably at home, so just curious what your experiences have been. Thank you!
Hi Dana. Thank you for writing. 5-6 sounds good to me. You don't need to start "early" per se. It's the pace that you can sustain their their Chinese instruction and exposure that matters. Besides the speaking aspect, the key is for the children to learn enough characters so that they enjoy reading age appropriate extracurricular books, in Chinese. For example, if the child can read Harry Porter in Chinese comfortably by 11-12, s/he will find learning Chinese relevant and useful. It is more difficult to find teen novels in Chinese with phonetic assistance. I hope that helps. Let me know if I can help you in any other way, if you really want to attempt this pursuit.
I would love to get in touch and ask you more questions if possible - sounds like you have a really great working system. Would it be possible for me to drop you an email sometime? Otherwise I'm at danaqchen (at) gmail (dot) com. Thanks so much again!
Sure thing, just write me at ckec2009@gmail.com. It is easier for me if you can provide me your phone number, some background information on your family (general occupation, age of children, parents' language capability, area you live in, etc.), and possible time to call, so that we can set up a time to call. I love to chat with other parents regarding this topic. I have yet to compile the email responses that I have been writing to other parents and it's much faster to talk on phone, Skype, FaceTime, etc...
Hi Oliver (and Dana), I just stumbled upon your blog and I'm excited to see that there are others out there! After years of raising our children (4 and 7 yrs old) learning Chinese, I have recently thought about creating an online space for parents like us to share and learn from each other. Looks like you have already done so! How has your experience been thus far? Are there many parents in your community or online who are interested? Looking forward to hearing about your other conversations with other parents. I think many in my community would participate (the SF Bay Area) but don't really know unless I try.
To Dana: I don't think you can start too early. With our 7 year old, we started teaching her characters when she was 4-5 years old, thinking that we didn't want her to be confused with English letters/words. She reads at about the 1st grade level in chinese now (using a couple workbooks that 1st graders in Taiwan use). With our son though, we just started incorporating chinese into daily routines from the beginning. We'd read one English book, and the next one would be in Chinese (board books at that time, with one word on each page). We figured that if the child has the ability to learn to associate a sound with a symbol, such as /a/ for three lines that form an "A", then they can just as easily learn the sound "yi" for a horizontal line "-" (the number one, in Chinese). And it has been true - he just turned 4 and recognizes many chinese characters, and has started sounding out simple English words like "sat", "pat", etc.
Finally, on the subject of this blog post, here is a book that I have come across that also speaks to the same topic of Chinese heritage learning. I haven't read it yet but it is on my to-do list. http://books.google.com/books?id=1Hy5NizWusgC&dq=Maintaining+Chinese+as+A+Heritage+Language+Liu&source=gbs_navlinks_s
Sorry for the rambling! Looking forward to many more conversations…
Hi Oliver, I know this is probably ages ago for you, but I'm just wondering, at what age do you think it's appropriate to start teaching your children characters? Doing a search on the Chinese web yields all sorts of ages, from 1.5, all the way up to 5/6. I know we need to start early in a non-Chinese majority environment, and probably at home, so just curious what your experiences have been. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteHi Dana. Thank you for writing. 5-6 sounds good to me. You don't need to start "early" per se. It's the pace that you can sustain their their Chinese instruction and exposure that matters. Besides the speaking aspect, the key is for the children to learn enough characters so that they enjoy reading age appropriate extracurricular books, in Chinese. For example, if the child can read Harry Porter in Chinese comfortably by 11-12, s/he will find learning Chinese relevant and useful. It is more difficult to find teen novels in Chinese with phonetic assistance. I hope that helps. Let me know if I can help you in any other way, if you really want to attempt this pursuit.
DeleteI would love to get in touch and ask you more questions if possible - sounds like you have a really great working system. Would it be possible for me to drop you an email sometime? Otherwise I'm at danaqchen (at) gmail (dot) com. Thanks so much again!
DeleteSure thing, just write me at ckec2009@gmail.com. It is easier for me if you can provide me your phone number, some background information on your family (general occupation, age of children, parents' language capability, area you live in, etc.), and possible time to call, so that we can set up a time to call. I love to chat with other parents regarding this topic. I have yet to compile the email responses that I have been writing to other parents and it's much faster to talk on phone, Skype, FaceTime, etc...
ReplyDeleteHi Oliver (and Dana), I just stumbled upon your blog and I'm excited to see that there are others out there! After years of raising our children (4 and 7 yrs old) learning Chinese, I have recently thought about creating an online space for parents like us to share and learn from each other. Looks like you have already done so! How has your experience been thus far? Are there many parents in your community or online who are interested? Looking forward to hearing about your other conversations with other parents. I think many in my community would participate (the SF Bay Area) but don't really know unless I try.
ReplyDeleteTo Dana: I don't think you can start too early. With our 7 year old, we started teaching her characters when she was 4-5 years old, thinking that we didn't want her to be confused with English letters/words. She reads at about the 1st grade level in chinese now (using a couple workbooks that 1st graders in Taiwan use). With our son though, we just started incorporating chinese into daily routines from the beginning. We'd read one English book, and the next one would be in Chinese (board books at that time, with one word on each page). We figured that if the child has the ability to learn to associate a sound with a symbol, such as /a/ for three lines that form an "A", then they can just as easily learn the sound "yi" for a horizontal line "-" (the number one, in Chinese). And it has been true - he just turned 4 and recognizes many chinese characters, and has started sounding out simple English words like "sat", "pat", etc.
Finally, on the subject of this blog post, here is a book that I have come across that also speaks to the same topic of Chinese heritage learning. I haven't read it yet but it is on my to-do list.
http://books.google.com/books?id=1Hy5NizWusgC&dq=Maintaining+Chinese+as+A+Heritage+Language+Liu&source=gbs_navlinks_s
Sorry for the rambling! Looking forward to many more conversations…
Thank you for your interest, Eric. See you on FB.
Delete