"... because English language skills are vital for educational success in China."
Learning Chinese, however, is not vital for educational success in America. Sure, some might learn it. Great for them. But since everyone in the world is learning the universal language of business-- English, I don't worry for my son.
Moreover, as I read my student's papers, I would rather our students learn English better before moving onto another language.
I will though add that I also think colleges and high schools should get rid of the cursory "2 year" language requirement and replace it with a fluency requirement or a Country specific cultural/history requirement.
You either learn a second language or you learn about a Country.
Two things:
I watched my son in pre-school, 25 years ago, eat up learning the alphabet at the same time as sign language. It was easy for the teachers to do concurrently and fun for him. I wondered why every class didn't do this type of thing.
I watched immigrant neighbors purposefully raised their two sons with the wife speaking only Mandarin and the husband only French to them. They glide easily between those languages and English now that they are older.
Perhaps doing these kinds of things when children are very young will make it easier for them to learn languages and, more importantly, help to instill the love of learning different things.
3
In many parts of the world, bilingualism is quite normal from an early age,
The surprise and awe about raising bilingual children which the writer expresses in the article does not have an equivalent in countries where English is not the native language. Instead, we consider it a requirement to be bilingual, and even multilingual.
My own children, 7 and 9, are well on their way to become trilingual: speaking, reading and writing Swedish, English and Mandarin. Chinese. Soon enough, I hope they will learn, like their mom, both French and Spanish - and more.
Learning new languages is the most wonderful way of getting to know the world, and it’s so much easier than when we’re young.
4
What the article didn't mention was the influence of Confucianism throughout Asia, which values education, self-improvement, ancestors, and society. In the 90's I was a "cram-school" English teacher to Preschool through 6th graders in China and Taiwan, and realized how respect for teachers and learning impacted attitudes towards education. Not surprisingly, my (adorable!!!) 3 year old students learned English most fluently, and within a year were teaching ME how to improve my Mandarin, while the older children took a little longer because they were thinking about sentence patterns, but eventually developed a deeper grasp of the language often becoming more proficient than their regular English teachers at school. Our program didn't introduce reading/writing within the first year, and ensured that children learned in a no-stress fun environment through songs and games.
Sure we have bilingual programs in the US and I sent my son to a bilingual preschool / pre-K in NY so that he could communicate with his European grandparents, which he does proudly. The difference is, we as Americans do not respect teachers and education as much as we think we do. Though Chinese teachers earn less than ours and sometimes live in cramped environments at school, they are revered by their society as being guardians of children's development.
13
My 2 grandchildren, 5 and 2 yrs old, live in Singapore. My American son and Israeli daughter-in-law work there. My grandchildren learned Hebrew and English since birth. They attend an international pre-school, where all the children speak English in the morning, and are learning Mandarin in the afternoon, from their teachers. While I miss all of them terribly, visiting only twice/ year, they are all having an outstanding multi-cultural experience, especially siince the children are making friendships from dozens of countries - and the languages they are hearing.
8
How wonderful to have a multi-lingual population. I was bi-lingual and it came naturally, I had a caretaker who spoke another language.
When I did a teaching stint, I found children in some schools, couldn't speak standard English. Ebonics became a language, for a very short time. It was really bad grammar, and sloppy sentence structure. But, the most amazing thing was that many teachers were speaking in a patois, and speaking to their charges in this way. Some substitute teachers were even less educated. My worst awakening was talking to the librarian, who was just the worst speaker of the lot.
The better education is in private schools. This is, unfortunately, American education and it's not very good. We don't reward our teachers financially, and we don't hold them in high regard. We cut programs to the minimum that could help round out our children. Art classes, music classes, they take money and it isn't there for many schools. We're loading the children with homework for essentials, and foregoing the rewards of culture and understanding beyond the ABC's of an academic curriculum. Children living in better zip codes get
a better education, and even that leaves a lot to be desired.
Primary and secondary education in America fails us all.
It needs a basic overhaul, otherwise, we fall behind other nations, and do an injustice to our youth.
5
I'm from England; my first husband is from Spain and we raised our two children in San Sebastian which is in the Basque country. We raised our children to speak English and Spanish, and from age 3 (pre-school) they also started to learn Basque. When she was 8 years old, our daughter was enrolled in after school French lessons. (Not our son, but that's another story.) She now speaks four languages, the first two with native fluency. As another commenter stated, this takes work. Living in Spain in the 1980s, I used to order children's books by mail from England and the US; my mother recorded videos of British children's TV programs for my kids to watch, and we were fortunate enough to be able to travel back to England usually about twice a year. Whenever I meet couples from two different countries, I always encourage them to try to raise their children bilingual, yet I am surprised to see that this isn't happening as often as it should. And these days, with internet, YouTube etc, it should be even easier than it was forty years ago.
6
While there is some benefit to introducing very young children to a second language, and I do think foreign language instruction would produce better results if begun in kindergarten or first grade rather than in middle or high school as is typical in US public schools, this is a bit much. Not every child is ready to read in one language at two or three years old, much less two different language. I wonder what those Chinese schools were doing with the ones who couldn't hack it, because I guarantee there were some. China will be happy to show you their successes. They're not going to show you the failures.
It is also likely they were getting a lot of reinforcement of their learning at home, from parents fluent in both languages and academically accomplished. That would not be the case for many U.S. children. Finally, if we were to institute universal second-language learning in primary school, which language should we teach? Spanish? Chinese? Arabic? For much of the world, English is the obvious choice because of its dominance in commerce and science. For those who already know English, the choice is less obvious.
9
@Nikki Young children will learn whatever you try to teach them, as long as you make it fun and interesting. It doesn't really matter what second language you teach them; it is learning how to learn, in this case a second language, that is important.
7
@kj I think. Kiki was making a political point. Which language would would be deemed preferable to teach?
Sorry to say your way of thinking is very telling. That’s why the schools in this country are failing. When students don’t learn well here, people blame the teachers, the schools, the unfortunate family situations, or social problems, standards are lowered, but almost no one tells the student or his parents that he should study harder. In China, every student is accountable to his own grades. If you don’t learn well, then you are expected to put more effort into it. In this country, many graduate students need a calculator to do 7x0.8. In China, any third-grader can tell you the correct answer instantly. No way is perfect, but the ideal lies somewhere in between the US and the Chinese ways...
4
“…all the names here (written) in English and Mandarin…” There is no specific Mandarin writing, there is only Chinese writing. Many regional dialects are spoken in China, and Mandarin just happens to be the dialect of Beijing. It was only with the formation of the Republic of China that Mandarin was adopted as the ‘National Dialect’. The same words and writing are used in the different dialects so that a text written in Chinese can be understood by a Mandarin speaker or (for example) a Cantonese speaker, but would sound different when read out aloud.
4
@Rubbertree Correct, so in fact these children will become trilingual; Shanghaiese, Mandarin and English - Shanghaiese being quite different to Mandarin apart from the written characters. A big ask for a two year old!
@Rubbertree
" there is only Chinese writing"
Far from true. To begin with, there are the simplified vs traditional characters. Also, while Cantonese and other dialect speakers are expected to understand and use the "official" characters, there are characters in the Cantonese (and other) vernacular, which when written, are not used by Mandarin (and other) speakers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taishanese has some examples.
1
@plumpeople Chinese writing, whether traditional or simplified, cuts across dialects. For example, there is no ‘simplified Mandarin’ writing that is distinct from ‘simplified Cantonese’ writing. Traditional or simplified, the words and meanings are still the same, just as some English words can be written with American spelling or UK spelling. As to regional colloquial expressions and word preferences, they of course exist. Certain words and expressions used in Britain would sound quaint to the American ear. But the language is still English.
2
Here in Germany a scheme was introduced to give young children English lessons. it wasn't bilingual education and the results have truly awful in some cases. The teachers are in the main not native speakers of English and I have heard the children learn wrong structures and incorrect pronunciation; which since it was laid down early will not easily be fixed. Bilingual education could be an advantage if it is the "gate" to higher education, employment etc ( as is the case for English at present); otherwise I am not sure that it confers any particular advantage. In Germany, the UK, and Switzerland I have known children raised in bilingual and trilingual households - ultimately the children favoured and felt "at home" in one language showing their preferences strongly in the friends they chose, the country they chose to live in etc etc
1
@JJ Every kid is different, of course. My own kids grew up speaking two languages and learning a third at school and are completely fluent, in speech/accent and writing, in the two they learnt from babyhood. There were absolutely no problems at all; they did very well, at school and beyond. Those little brains are such sponges; yet everyone is of course different.
Gotta love that hindsight!
1
There is no scientific evidence that being able to speak more than one language makes you 'smarter'.
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@David J. Krupp
I don't see anyone claiming "smarter". (And I definitely agree that bilinguals can be nincompoops like anyone else.)
But my experience is that bilingualism makes people more empathetic. More able to put themselves in other people's shoes. Possibly more flexible and less frightened of others/the unknown.
Which are positive traits in these tumultuous times, no?
15
The frightening thing is how many of our children cannot speak English correctly, even though they were born here to American parents. When I had hiring responsibility for an agency, it was horrifying how elementary grammar and spelling rules were like a foreign language to so many applicants.
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@fireweed Oh god yes. I hate working with people who don't have basic punctuation and spelling down at least somewhat.
3
How about this: regardless of approaches to education, kids are different. As parents know, individual children have their own personalities, strengths, weaknesses, quirks. So whereas a bilingual framework is almost always a plus, some kids will be more "into" acquiring language skills than others.
Yet surely cultural expectations can smooth the path, as Dr. Klass notes. E.g., if normal adult behavior in country X is that educated people speak several languages, bingo! language learning will likely be "easier". I've noticed this when visiting my Scandinavian family, where adults around the dinner table generally switch to whatever language a guest speaks, and high school graduates often go abroad to study.
3
I am the mother of three bilingual adults. I always spoke to my children in English, my husband spoke to them in German. They attended German-language schools, and we read and wrote in English at home. It takes a lot of effort, and when small, the children like speaking the local language. But it is the greatest gift you can give them. They have all gone on to study and taken advantage of their perfect English. My daughter's boyfriend is from the Italian part of Switzerland, and she now lives and works there. And our son has a bilingual French girlfriend, so the number of languages in the family will extend!
A funny anecdote: When my son was about 3, my mother visited and took him to the store. She wanted to make an apple crisp, but did not recognize any of the types of apples. Inspiration: a lady about her age was also looking at the apples. My mom told my son to ask her what were the best apples for cooking with. He marched over proudly and asked her in English!
My mother and the lady quickly established contact on their own: "Äpfel zum Kochen?" "Yes, apples for cooking with." "Diese sind die besten Äpfel zum Kochen."
Afterwards, my son and the lady were talking in German. I think children don't even realize that there are two languages.
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@Sally That is so dear! Our kids for some time translated for us. The children were so used to "one parent, one language", that they just assumed that we each could ONLY speak/understand that one, though that was not the case.
Perhaps American parents should focus on letting their kids play more, no pressure.
As for Canadian kids, I wish parents who can afford it adopt the Chinese system reported here for preschooler. Give them a leg up in mental development. Canada is being squeezed between two economic powers now, what with the Chinese Huawei executive being held in Vancouver, arrested at the request of the Trump regime. Canadians need every advantage to survive the decoupling world. Let our kids be fluent in both English, French and Chinese.
2
The young brain also absorbs music instruction. I'm wondering how many different "languages" a child can cope with.
1
Don’t feel too wistful. You would have been fighting an uphill battle against most US educational districts. There are still plenty of people who think a bilingual child is not as smart as other kids and that the child is disadvantaged merely by knowing another (inferior) language. American culture is hostile to foreign languages because it is patriotic to speak only English...or so many have believed and still believe. The rest of the world is multi-lingual, but Americans insist on mono-lingual.
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Being bilingual is an amazing skill to have under your belt. When you are younger of course it will be easier to pick up, but you can always learn anytime. Growing up I spoke English in school and my native language at home with my family. I think bilingual education is great and I wish we could implement that in every school. I do understand that not every child will pick up the language and be fluent but at least that child has been exposed to a different culture/language that is different from their own. Also when they are older, they can use it in the workforce. I currently work at school (JK-8) that teaches bilingual education. For some of the students Spanish is their first language and they will learn english as their second language and vice versa. The students that don’t speak spanish will learn as second or third. Working with them I have managed to pick up a third language. It is such an amazing skill to have.
4
@Michelle There is a lot of research that shows that if children are not exposed to another language by about two, they will not be able to make the sounds unique to that second language. You may be able to learn the grammar, but you will have an accent that will identify you as a non-native speaker.
3
It’s different for people who grew up bilingual since they can already draw from a bigger variety of sounds. I grew up with French and German, for example. When I decided as an adult to learn Italian, I had the facility of already knowing a Roman language and for the pronunciation German helped since unlike French it doesn’t have nasal sounds. The more languages you learn the easier it gets.
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@fireweed
Definitely not true. I majored in Japanese in college. I had no previous instruction in the language. Although my vocabulary remains limited (and I never mastered Kanji), I quickly mastered the sounds, and Japanese people have told me I have no foreign accent, although my speech is a little sing-songy. (Japanese intonation is somewhat flatter than English, and for that matter my English is a bit sing-songy compared to others so that might just be a personal quirk).
3
It doesn’t have to be either or. Babies can learn a second and even a third language playfully. I grew up bilingual and so did my children and so do my grandchildren. As a result it was easy for me to learn a third and a forth language. Children enjoy it.
10
Perri Klass and her students can have it both ways. My daughter-in-law taught me how. My doctorate is in reading, language and cognition so when our grand daughter was born I suggested to my Swedish daughter-in-law to speak to the baby in Swedish. She not only did that, but she began collecting children’s books in Swedish and English. Every other evening at story time E read to her in Swedish while the baby followed along. Every other evening her dad read to her in English. Natural questioning arose from the baby about the stories in two languages. My granddaughter is a college sophomore now and is fluent in two languages. So is her brother. One doesn’t have to teach young children language in rigid ways as is done in China. Children absorb if given the opportunity and we can just smile and wonder about the miracle.
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Sorry, where did you read in this article that foreign languages are taught in a rigid way in China? Those kids were learning English during circle times and were having fun. Or maybe we are commenting on two different articles?
6
some of these comments seem to conflate bilingual language learning and academic pressure at young ages. not necessarily so-it has been shown that early exposure to a second language makes acquiring that language much easier. the part of the brain for language acquisition switches around age 7-9.So let's go for early bilingual learning, but without excess academic pressure.
18
Perri Klass should be grateful that her children's day care did not push academics on two-year-olds. That is a time for free play and learning to get along. Besides being contrary to what child development experts recommend, the early push for 'skills,' doesn't get kids anywhere. By third grade, kids who rattled off the alphabet, or whatever, at an early age exhibit no advantage over the 'slower' kids. And some kids are gravely damaged by the early push for inappropriate skill emphasis.
My town lacked a kindergarten, so I started first grade at age 5, already reading. My husband started school--and skill learning-- at age 7. He's the one with a Princeton Ph.D. in physics.
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@Susan Ohanian This is not true. If children have not learned to pronounce sounds unique to the second language by about two, they will never be accent free in that second language. There is a lot of research regarding this.
2
@fireweed I'm curious: can you be more specific about this "research"? I've seen -- make that "heard", I suppose... -- many (really: many) exceptions to what you state.
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@Chris Durban
Yep, I'm one of those exceptions. I can speak Japanese without an accent, and I didn't learn it until my late teens. Some people seem to have more of a knack for imitation of sounds than others. Also, anyone can benefit from instruction by a trained linguist or speech-language pathologist in how to produce a particular sound correctly.
5
The advantage of early bilingual education is that the mouth and tongue can adapt so that letters in other languages can be pronounced correctly. For example, the letter "r" may be rolled in some languages. Grown children and adults who have not formed the rolling"r" in childhood have trouble with it. The same with "th", "l" and many other sounds.
3
When our children were growing up, my Israeli-born wife and I made it a point to speak to them only in Hebrew, with varying degrees of success. Like a lot of things, 'one size does not fit all!
While the language skills of the children depicted in the article are impressive, I wonder, does the homogeneity of the students play a role in the success of of the program?
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@Henry
I'm sure it did, especially the likelihood of their parents' being able and willing to reinforce their learning at home. Also, I would not be surprised if the group Dr. Klass saw was somewhat curated -- was this their "gifted" class on display? I find it unlikely that all children can progress at the same speed at that age, it certainly doesn't work that way here. I think more likely there is some "tracking" involved, and the Chinese were showing off the highest-achieving kids.
3
Language development is, of course, different from academics.
But in light of expensive pre-K claims, it’s worth noting that in Norway academics start at age seven and their kids test, compared to the other European countries - at the top.
8
My first, and current, wife grew up speaking three diverse languages - Chinese at home, Vietnamese outside, and French in school.
Her siblings sometimes smile at the fact that she speaks none of them perfectly.
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@Charlierf
I think this is a good point -- languages can be fluently but partially learned, and then go dormant or become skewed by interference from another language.
There's also the question of literacy; not just coping with but *mastering* the written form of each language, which can differ significantly from oral fluency.
The world has millions of bilingual/trilingual people, but that includes lots of folk struggling with literacy.
Parents fascinated with oral bilingualism (which I think is great) should keep that in mind.
1
@Charlierf Your example does not prove that early exposure to a second or a second and third language will lead to not being able to speak any of them correctly. It proves only what resulted with your wife.
@fireweed
Yes fireweed, but the only thing worse than thinking this to be important is to ignore it.
I'm so lucky that in South Carolina, many school districts offer free preschool bilingual immersion. My son will start the Chinese program when he's 4. I tried to learn Chinese when I was married to a native Chinese speaker, and found it next to impossible.
3
I’m fully bilingual, with English being my dominant at this point, and I only started learning English in high school. So, it can be achieved later in childhood, too! Not as easily, of course, but it can be done, with enough support and resources. Languages are indeed a wonderful connection to the world, and to other people. I’m now raising my own kids bilingual as well, in English and my native language. It’s hard, because I don’t have a lot of resources or other people who speak it, and because I work full time, but we’re managing quite well. My kids are 5 and 3 and both are fluent and comfortable in both languages (the 5-year-old can read and write in both as well). So, there are many ways of doing it besides expensive fancy daycare!
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@Nefertiti
Good for you! One useful "method" I discovered with my (trilingual) daughter was time spent with her monolingual/other-lingual cousins her own age, in their home environments. Living/playing during short or long holiday periods. This proved terrifically motivating -- she progressed in leaps and bounds.
2
@Chris Durban I would LOVE to have that! Your daughter is lucky. Unfortunately though, all of our cousins who speak the other language are in Europe and we can't afford to travel often (and they can't afford to visit us at all). We can only go every other year for a couple of weeks. But even that is immensely helpful. Nothing like being fully immersed in the real living world of a language - playing with cousins, shopping at the street market, or making friends with people at the park.
I've been trying to find them other kids who speak this language here in the US, but unfortunately most immigrants don't teach their kids the minority language, or aren't consistent with it, so the kids don't feel confident/comfortable enough with it and end up speaking English with each other when we get together.
2
@Nefertiti
There is the option of Skype, Facetime or some other app to communicate with the cousins. Not quite as good as face-to-face, but they can still have a conversation and see each other. YouTube and similar sites could have videos produced by speakers of your native language, too, for additional reinforcement.
2
Whenever I was on the campus of the international school outside of Paris that my two daughters attended (being at least bilingual was a requirement for admission) I loved watching and listening to the pupils wander from one group of friends to another greeting each other and switching languages in the most natural way. Although English seemed to be their fallback language, these kids were studying one or two other languages, as is required in French schools.
America may not be Europe, but the potential for most US pupils to be conversant in Spanish ( 460 million native speakers worldwide) would seem to be a no-brainer. We live in a global village and speaking more than one language should be encouraged and funded in any enlightened and forward thinking school system -and I don’t mean just for elites.
11
That ability with language and a whole new culture illustrates something that’s not just impressive; it portends the future success of China over the West.
Could American children do the same under similar circumstances. Yes.
But schools here are far less rigorous. Still, if you live in a major city you or your kids might have a chance at attending a true language-immersion school.
3
@DD
Schools are under equipped for a bilingual program. Less rigorous is merely part of a bigger problem.
I am so grateful that my parents ensured I learned both their languages from the earliest of ages. Right from the start. They did not listen to all the pop psychologists and child development “experts” that warned that I would grow up “confused” and “slow”. They charged their own path and it worked. The only rule was don’t mix them. If you start a conversation or a sentence in one, finish it.
I am fully bilingual now. I can easily switch between both languages, and while my vocabulary for complex words (medical, business, SAT words) suffers if I don’t practice, both languages are indelibly mine. They gave me a gift that I cherish every day. It made me smarter and more capable of absorbing vast volumes of information. And it made it easier for me to pick up subsequent languages, even past the traditional age of synaptic plasticity.
To all I’m parents out there wondering whether raising your kids multilingual is a good idea, let me put an end to your questioning with a resounding YES!
This is how the rest of the world does it. It’s high time Americans did the same if they don’t want to be left behind.
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So true! I am raising my kids bilingual (one parent-one language, each using their native one), and literally everyone told me they would speak later and/or be confused - even if all admitting that it's a bug gift for a child. Well, there is no truth to that assumption, if anything they speak earlier and in a more sophisticated way.... interestingly, nobody who grew up bilingual has ever complained!
17
@Max actually true experts know that the confusion” or “slow”issue is totally bogus.
3
I grew up in Hong Kong many years ago and my first language of course was Chinese. I attended Chinese school and learned to read and write Chinese. I switched to study in an English school after grade school. The curriculum included both languages with Chinese literature and history taught in Chinese, and Science and Math, English writing, world history and literature taught in English.
As a bilingual person I discovered later in life that I have sharp spatial memory as Chinese writing requires memorizing the shape of words, each stroke must be in the correct space and form. For instance, I can remember numbers by seeing the shapes in my mind. Whereas European phonetical language requires memory of sound over shape. My ability to remember shapes has enabled me to remember details, thus features of everything, including directions, buildings, sceneries. But, in learning English I also had sharpened my sensory of sound, a language of phonics and syllables. In order to learn new English words, I repeated the spelling and the pronunciation out loud along with the Chinese meaning. The multi language education I had was challenging but it had enabled me to be a bilingual, and bicultural person, being able to have a much richer life. Unfortunately, my children growing up in America did not have the chance to be fully bilingual as schools did not offer it, as well as pressure of conformity at school.
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@Agnes
Actually, Chinese can sharpen your perception of sound, too, since it is a tonal language. Chinese music students are more likely to develop perfect pitch than American ones are.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/speaking-tonal-languages/
5
@Agnes Fascinating. Thank you for your contribution.
@Nikki
Thanks for the reminder. Yes, Chinese learn playing string instruments in perfect tone very easily. Whereas, Lantin based language speakers find it difficult to speak Chinese in the correct tone, thereby when the wrong tone is spoken by a foreigner ending in a very different meaning altogether, it often solicits misunderstanding or even giggles, e.g. missionaries in HK, when giving sermons in Chinese, at times causes soft giggles amongst Chinese faithfuls.
3
I brought in a Mandarin speaking tutor to play with my children from the time they were 18 months of age. Just play, 2 times a week, but using Mandarin. Then later at play school, it was reinforced by daily Mandarin classes - about 45 minutes each on top of on going play time with the Mandarin speaking tutor.
By age 9, there was sufficient grounding for my children to understand and speak simple sentences.
Doing the International Baccalaurette, Mandarin classes continued. They sat for Chinese as a 2nd language (standard level), and received 6's. But they have the foundation in Mandarin to go and spend a year in China and become fluent.
If your mother tongue is English, it is very difficult to learn a 2nd language because the international language is English. If your mother tonge is non English, it's easier to learn English.
12
It is a disgrace that Americans are known around the world for being monolingual. After years of language study in school, few kids are truly bilingual. In Europe, many people can hold conversations in several languages. Being truly bilingual is a continuing process. If one isn't interacting on an adult level with speakers of the second language, it will disappear. The children in China are preparing for a future in business and commerce in the future which they expect will be in English. They will get lots of practice.
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@S.L.
It's partly lack of practice and partly because unless they have a parent who is a native speaker of another language, most American kids don't start learning a second language until 6th grade or later. There's a big difference in the brain between studying a second language in grades 1-6 and studying it in grades 7-12.
3
you must totally immerse into the language to achieve proficiency in that language. I am a student in Hong Kong and my methodology of learning English is to read news, magazines (The Economist) and write constantly. All of these process without thinking in the way of Chinese can help a lot.
4
@W. Good job!
I wonder when these children will learn what their country is doing to the Uighers, Tibetans and Hong Kongese. Obviously never, but they could say their names in two languages.
I wish Americans like Dr. Klass would stop "normalizing" China with articles like this. It is one of the most brutal dictatorships on earth. Where's the next stop? Dehli? Riyadh? Moscow?
5
Oh what a wonderful world it would be...
"But I looked at the way those 2- and 3-year-olds navigated a second language..."
a second language using an alphabet, although not a very phonetic one. any observations about dexterity with an alphabet v. with characters/logograms?
mandarin supposedly has +10,000 characters; english has 26 letters (or 52 if you count capital letters too) and no accents, although maybe it should have some accents to circumvent its atrocious phonetics.
I have to add, last semester I audited a Conversational Spanish I class at my local community college. A New York State resident (citizen?) over the age of 60 can audit courses at any unit of SUNY or CUNY for no charge.
To my amazement I was able to coast along without thoroughly studying the text or other materials. My brain brought forward my junior high school, high school, and college Spanish.
Then again, Spanish was the third language with which I had had a familiarity. The U. S. Peace Corps added a fourth language, Ki Swahili.
Of course, at 76, I'm really only fluent in English unless I'm immersed in one of those other languages.
6
When I was but a toddler and later religious services at synagogues; Roman Catholic and Orthodox Catholic churches; and mosques were usually said in a different language than the vernacular (English).
Although hearing these religious languages was not necessarily equal to understanding them or even fluently speaking them it did allow for pronouncing certain sounds inimical to a language other than the vernacular.
Try pronouncing "chutzpah."
2
Reminds me of a 16 year old patient whose mom was Spanish and Dad was a native English speaker. The teenager was fluent in spoken Spanish but failing Spanish 4 in high school because she couldn’t read and write Spanish and had no understanding of Spanish grammar.
Duel languages ought to be taught in preschool and kindergarten. It’s going to be a multi language world soon enough.
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@JudyH, Ph.D.
Well JudyH, it’s worth noting that probably no more than five percent of the students who did pass the Spanish class were ever able to converse in Spanish.
4
@JudyH, Ph.D.
I don't know whether it was intentional (or a typo) but I rather like the idea of languages duelling rather than being dual! Great play on words!
Many places around the world feature polyglot societies, and that is the key to actually 'being' a polyglot. You must in fact use all your languages constantly in order to maintain any degree of facility. People in Europe may, in the course of a week, travel to another (or more than one) country, or area, where another language is needed. That happens less often in the u.s.
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Decades ago as a Peace Corps Volunteer teacher in Ethiopia I filled what little spare time I had by doing volunteer work for the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa.
I was envious of my many UN colleagues, mostly European and African, who spoke at least two and often three languages fluently; in comparison my native English, decent French and passable Amharic left me feeling linguistically inadequate.
Even my Ethiopian students, many of whom came from distant provinces with varied dialects, spoke at least two and often three languages (parents' tribal language, Amharic and English).
Learning languages is easiest in early childhood; I often wonder why most US schools do not offer foreign language instruction in the early years.
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Because it's hard enough to get kids to read books in English and do a little math?
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@Mon Ray We do not offer language because we do not feel it is important. Teaching language requires money and a commitment from parents. We Americans are so arrogant that we fail to realize there is an entire world out there where we do not matter.
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Both my children attended schools with other languages, but neither of them is bilingual today. My husband spoke to them in his native language. While they understand it, they cannot speak it. Unless these preschoolers continue in bilingual education indefinitely, I doubt they will be fluent English speakers in the future
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@Lawyermom Maybe your kids didn't try enough. I'm sure the kids described in this article will be successful - especially given the high quality of international schools in China.
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Such an education is available in the USA and Europe, and need not be in any way incompatible with the local academic models. It's hardly magic. Dr Klass saw education along the Chinese "achievement" model that also happened to be bilingual. My child received a bilingual German education (where children are believed to only be ready for the alphabet after age 6). But the languages were mixed in seamlessly with the Kindergarten, and all of the children grew up fluent in at least two languages even those from monoglot households. It was simply a German school in which English was also used.
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Looks very impressive. I am all for bilinqual or trilinqual education starting at a very young age if possible. however, the way they already start to drill the written languages into the bilingual education, it does not seem like a very natural or intuitive way for a child to learn a language/or things. I do applause they integrate a lot of playtime for these kids.
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From what I can tell as a high school teacher, American parents love of “play based” schools extends through 12th grade. There is massive pushback for teachers whose learning goals for classes may involve studying or real work, as this creates “toxic stress.”
It seems that Beijing’s parents start from the assumption of their child’s strength, while Americans assume weakness.
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@Kathleen This is such an insightful comment. Americans do assume weakness in their children. Ironically, their attempts to protect the kids make them even more fragile. I have read so many articles in which supposed experts explain the objective increase in children's anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation as a response to academic pressure. American schools actually demand less than ever, and standardized tests, from the SATs to the NAEPS, prove it. Kids are not expected to read difficult material, they are no longer expected to do mathematical proofs in high school, or, except at the most selective schools, in college, and they are not expected to memorize historical dates. These are all seen as too difficult for them.
We should be asking our children to do more rather than less. They need to build a sense of competence, and we won't let them.
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@Kaleberg
Part of the problem there is the emphasis on testing rather than mastery. By emphasizing performance on a single, high-stakes test, we create anxiety. If we instead emphasized mastery of skills or material, and then let the students design or choose projects that required them to incorporate the skills or material they had mastered, tied to something that interested them, we would get better results with less anxiety. Unfortunately, such an individual approach requires more work and attention on the teacher's part, and might cost more, so production line it is.
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Some years back I was at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's annual rose night. I met a couple. One was French. The other was Italian. Both were trilingual. They wanted their daughter to also be trilingual. Their way: Each only spoke to the child in their native language. Even if the child asked one parent in that parent's language, the other understood and if they answered instead, they did in their language.
Now there was no English spoken with the parents, so they hired a nanny that only spoke English to the child.
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Doesn’t work. If the child doesn’t respond in that language and continue to respond in that language almost every week, they will become an adult with minimal conversational skills in that language. Listening to a language is not enough. I was also a child with trilingual parents. Despite heavy exposure to four different languages, as an adult, I speak only one language and have no regrets. Also, I can sort of understand when people yell at me in 4 different languages, possibly more.
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@Cordelia Respectfully disagree: I'm successfully raising a trilingual-fluent child in the manner described above (one parent, one language, no exceptions). The commenter never mentioned that the children didn't respond in either foreign language — only that responses were consistent with whatever language corresponded to that parent.
Of course, the child has to speak ("produce/create") the language in order to become a speaker rather than passively bilingual, as you seem to describe yourself.
What the writer was describing was a scenario that occurs all the time: Parent A says something, and Parent B chimes in but in her own language, even though it's one conversation.
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@Cordelia I think that's more your issue. Plenty of other successful trilingual children out there.
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It is entirely possible to have both a developmentally appropriate play based education and a bilingual one. My daughter thrived at La Escuelita on the UWS.
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Of course, pre-school activities like the ones described here are dependent on parents who have already done the hard word of instilling in their children good manners, curiosity, and the spirit of cooperation.
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