Raising an Almost Bilingual Child

Learning to speak cat.

My son's teacher kindly emailed me a soft copy of one of this week's homework tasks - a poem to be memorized. This is standard work for schoolchildren in Taiwan. It helps them to learn to read new characters, and to find out about their cultural heritage through poetry. The teacher was trying to help by giving me something I could put into Google Translate.

There was only one problem: the copy was in characters only. It had no accompanying bopomo (a phonetic Mandarin script). Without this, my son has no idea how to say any unfamiliar characters. And, lacking a parent at home who can read Chinese, no one to help him.

Chinese

Raising your child to be bilingual is a worthwhile aspiration, I think. There are many studies that show the cognitive benefits of bilingualism, and let's not forget the advantages in the job market.

One of our main reasons for coming to live in Taiwan was so that our son could be fluent and literate in English and Mandarin, as well as experience living in another culture. And we've come a long way since I wrote this post back in August last year. At that time neither of us could say much more than hello and thank you in Chinese. But it's easier, I think, when one or both parents is fluent in the languages the child is learning.

As it is, we muddle along. My son can read bopomo, I can read pinyin (an alphabet-based script), and between us we know a range of characters. So each evening we sit down with that day's homework and figure it out together.

There's always a story of the week, through which new characters are introduced to the children. We have to translate the story into English first, of course. When my son encounters an unfamiliar character, he asks if I know it. If I don't, he reads the bopomo out, which I then turn into pinyin and put into my phone's dictionary. Then we scroll down the list of matching characters to find the one we want. Sometimes, this doesn't work, so we have to sketch the character into this programme:  http://www.nciku.com/. Our method isn't an exact science, as most words have two or more characters, and there are many stock phrases with more characters, but we do our best.

It's a laborious process. If I were a Taiwanese parent, I would be able to just read it and tell him. More pertinently, if he were a Taiwanese child, he'd probably recognise the word from its bopomo sound, and not have to ask.

This is something that possibly isn't obvious unless you've been through the process. When children go to school to learn to read and write, they are already fluent in the language and have an innate grasp of most of the grammar rules. Children learning an additional language at school have to learn to speak and understand, and read and write it at the same time.

Other points have become apparent to us as we go through this process:

 - being able to understand what something means doesn't necessarily mean you're going to know how to say it

and

 - being able to say something doesn't mean you understand what you're saying.

So, while my son might read something out flawlessly from its accompanying bopomo, he might not have the faintest clue what he just said.

All in all, though, he's making good progress, and I'm immensely proud of him and all the hard work he's put in.

English

One concern I hadn't really thought through until recently was how to maintain and hopefully continue to improve my son's English literacy while we're here.

This thread on Forumosa indicates that I'm not alone in considering this problem: http://www.forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopic.php?f=96&t=112757

There are many good ideas in there. Last week my son attended the first session of the first ever Parent's Place course on writing English for bilingual elementary school students. It was great fun, and at the end, the teacher gave out cookies!
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Parents-Place/240486032645928

Another idea I had was for my son to write his own blog, which you'll see he's taken up with some enthusiasm: http://bottomlesstum.blogspot.tw/

Culture

My son's teacher told me the other day that the one time she spoke English to him, his face changed. He knows she can speak English, but that she's chosen not to use it with him, so it wasn't surprise he was registering. She couldn't explain more, but I think I know what she meant.

Language is the doorway and the mirror to culture. People think and act in subtly different ways according to the language they're using, influenced by the premises in which the language is grounded. As well as learning another language, I think my son is absorbing another set of values and ways of looking at the world.

I hope so. I think the knowledge that there are other, equally valid, ways of thinking about things will stand him in good stead throughout his life.

In the meantime, we just need to work on memorizing poems.

四季的頭髮

夏天的頭髮像是西北雨

又急又長，還會唱歌

太陽一出來，就被剪掉

秋天的頭髮像是滿天飛的風箏

「咻！咻！咻！」的在天空中衝刺

看誰長的長又長!

冬天的頭髮是山頂的白雪

冰涼涼 、冷颼颼的

最喜歡滑雪板幫它梳梳頭

春天的頭髮是剛冒出來的小青草

它們踮起腳、挺起腰，一散千里

大聲說：「耶!還是短短的頭髮最好看！」

This is the translation according to Google Translate.

I'm pretty sure 'Trinidad' is wrong

Four Seasons hair


Summer hair like a Northwest rain
Vexation long, still singing
The sun is out, it is cut off

The autumn hair like flying kite
"Phew! Phew! Shoop!" Sprint in the sky
See who is a long long long!

Winter hair hilltop snow
Ice cool, chilly
Brushing your hair to help it favorite skis
Spring hair is just coming out of a small grass
They tiptoe, straighten the waist, a casual Trinidad
Exclaimed: "Yeah!, Or short hair is the best looking!"