April updates

New books for my elder daughter, after she finishes the Twilight series. Maybe she will get to one of them next week during Spring Break.

Books for my younger daughter. Most of them are still too difficult for her but she is reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid in Chinese now.

Books for my almost middle school daughter, who is NOT enjoying all the preteen/teen girl drama at school, to say the least. Welcome to "mean girls" and bullying years. It does not help that she is born and raised DIFFERENT from the typical children in the south. We have been exploring these issues and recently watched TV movie "Odd Girl Out" about school bullying, which was extremely helpful to her. She is more analytical and much less emotionally vested in the school drama now.

I have set up a Facebook group for interested parents and have been getting good feedbacks.  Interested parents can check it out at www.facebook.com/groups/ChineseAndEnglish4kids/

Excellent academic paper to read on this subject

I found an excellent academic paper by Rong Liu discussing this very topic:

Maintaining Chinese Language as a Heritage Language in the United States: What Really Matters

March updates

Bilingual in Chinese and English

3/2/2014

The more I write about this topic and answer readers' question, the more I realize how important and critical it is to learn Chinese well in the first decade of the child's life, if the parents want to devote serious attention to this.  I estimate that my 10 year old daughter can probably get a 3-4 in Chinese AP test now and should reach a solid 4 in another year or so.  My understanding is that a 5 in Chinese AP is equivalent to two years of college level Chinese in the US.  To me, the dedication we devote to their Chinese is equivalent to the dedication one friend devote to their 11 year old daughter who is now level 9 in gymnastic or tiger mother Amy Chua having her daughter play 3 hours of piano a day, including during vacation (at least that's what I remembered reading).  At the end of the day (and there are only 24 hours a days no matter what), parents have to ask themselves, "what does my child enjoy doing and what would I prefer my child be able to do at age 25 and beyond?"  For my family, the answer is clear.  Since my daughters do not have very strong affinity for sport or music (they do enjoy their guitar and tennis class), we chose to devote more of our attention to their Chinese for the first decade of their life.

3/6/14

Something interesting happened that I did not expect.  It is COOL these days to know Chinese.  I remember the craze for Japanese language course (6-8 credits a semester?)  in college during the 1990s.  My older daughter was reading Twilight in Chinese on her Kindle at school and fellow students and a teacher were amazed and asking her things left and right.  I think it is great that she can read these American novels in Chinese, such that she is culturally "connected" to her American peers while linguistically "connected" to Taiwan/China at the same time.

3/10/14

OMG!  We did such a great job creating a Chinese immersion environment for our daughters that Charlotte, my soon to be middle schooler daughter, is not schooled in American pop culture and has a bit of tough time making friends at her new school.  And it is at this age when friends become important.  In my defense, I did in the past try to get her to watch American pre-teen sitcom and learn about/watch team sport such as football, but she wasn't interested.  Since knowing is half of the battle, now that she knows, she is enjoying watching "Good luck, Charlie" reruns on Netflix.  We are going to get her up to speed in no time!  Things should get better the closer it gets to high school, when students segregate themselves into different crowd based on interest or academics.

3/11/14

Charlotte is done reading the first book of the "Twilight" series in Chinese.  It took her almost three weeks, with school works and things.  It also took her some time to get used to reading the translated English names.  The next book she plans to read is the Chinese edition of "My Sister's Keeper".  The subject maybe a bit tough for her age.  We'll see how it goes.

3/14/14

Links on a Chinese summer program in Taiwan

NTNU Chinese Summer Camp

3/25/14

Charlotte is now working on the third book of the "Twilight" series.  She wants to read the Chinese edition of "My Sister's Keeper" afterwards.  I have the Chinese edition of "Mocking Jay", the third book of Hunger Game, ready for her.  I am going to try to get a copy of the Chinese edition of "Divergent" for her also.

Updates

Chinese version 中文版

2/13-2/24

Charlotte finished five short Chinese novels in the last 10 days and is now captivated by the Chinese edition of the novel Twilight (暮光之城).  Amazing.  Our hard work over the past 10 years is finally paying off.

Here is one section of the first novel without zhuyin that she read:

"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。"

2/25/14-ongoing

Upcoming project for 7 year old Georgia: reading till fluency of selected chapters of the Gospel of Matthews in Chinese with phonetics assistance first and then without.

"How about scheduling?" asks a reader.

Due to increased school work for my fifth grader, our main scheduled Chinese lessons are now reduced to Saturday or Sunday mornings, consisting of 45 minutes of reading aloud, 45 minutes of writing practice, and 45 minutes of karaoke singing.  My younger daughter has less homework as a third grader, so I give her Chinese lessons to work on weekday evenings IF she is done with school work.

However, to me, these short "formal" Chinese school work are only half of the story.  Since their Chinese are fairly good already and they grew up surrounded by Chinese environment, they are learning by osmosis also.  They listen to Chinese pop music (iPod shuffle, no screen to distract them), sing Chinese pop songs (and a few English ones) while riding in the car, watch Chinese soap opera and cartoons in Chinese on some mornings and evenings during the week and on weekends, and read Chinese comics and books (novels, story books) with and without zhuyin.  All these other things, they do it WILLINGLY and EAGERLY for FUN.  Not that Jay Chou's Chinese pronunciation is good, but all these other things make Chinese relevant, which to me, is one of the most important and difficult aspect of such bilingual upbringing.

So, that's why I think it is CRITICAL to get the children's colloquial AND formal Chinese to decent level of fluency early on (by 7-8), before other things in their life take more priority, so that they will ENJOY these other aspects of Chinese.  Otherwise, parents like us are just fighting a loosing battle.

Many parents have children whose Chinese is not strong enough, thus speaking more and more English, shunting Chinese home work, or not interested in extracurricular reading of books in Chinese.  Since the rate of improvement in the Chinese of children of Chinese heritage almost always lags behind that of English, the situation is likely to get worse.  I suggest that the parents perform a jump start in their Chinese program, if their resource allows.  This would typically take the form of an extended immersion trip where the children gets formal instructions in Chinese and daily exposure to peers and people of various age group and background who speak Chinese to them.  The required length of these trips obviously depends on the level of the children's Chinese.  For my children, I think 6 to 8 weeks a year is good enough.  For children whose Chinese is very rudimentary, it may take up to a couple of years.

I hope this helps.

Epilogue

Well, these posts summarize most of what I have to share at this point.  I will provide update periodically of new things I learn from experience or fellow parents and my daughters' progress, if anyone is interested.  Besides setting priority and commitment to this very challenging goal, I think the key to "success" is as follows:

1) Surround your children with a full spectrum of Chinese language expression early on.
2) Get their colloquial Chinese to near native level early on, before they get sidetracked by too many English speaking peers and busy extracurricular schedule, and maintain it till at least 8-9 or so, particularly for the eldest child, if the younger children are to have a fighting chance.
3) Build up their character recognition (probably at least 1,000 to 2,000 characters) and reading comprehension as soon as feasible by age 9-12, so that they can enjoy broad based reading on their own.
4) This will most likely require periodic immersion trip oversea, in addition to faithful study in the US.  It is the textbooks and extracurricular readings that will bring depth and fullness to their expression.
5) Make it fun and relevant, whatever your resources are.  Use your imagination!

As I hail from Taiwan, I told myself and my children, "Since we can't raise you in Taiwan for you to study Chinese, we will bring Taiwan to you in whatever way we can."  So we did.  It is like my daughters were attending Taipei American School, with English spoken at school and Chinese everywhere else, right here in rural America, with blue sky, smog free air, and little worry for tainted food.

I would love to read any suggestions and constructive comments.  And PLEASE share your success stories.  Every parent who read this blog, including myself, could use lots of encouragement and testimony.

Thank you for reading.

One Chinese learning resource 僑委會中文教材 and Chinese AP test

A friend pointed this out as a Chinese study resource: 僑委會中文教材

http://media.huayuworld.org/interact/ebook/default/.  I don't think all the links on the web page work but most seem to.

Check out Chinese AP oriented readings on the higher level section.

http://media.huayuworld.org/interact/ebook/default/hard.html

I think the materials there are probably harder than the actual AP Chinese Cultural and Language Exam.  http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/public/courses/teachers_corner/37221.html

For what I can tell, AP materials from 僑委會中文教材 are probably more like 5-6th grade level in Taiwan.  I looked over the AP materials from College Board and it seems to be more like 4-5th grade material.  I read somewhere that getting a 5 on the Chinese AP test is like two years of college Chinese classes in the US.  Does anyone know if that's true or not?