Our strategy to teach our kids Chinese

[miaomiao]

My wife joined this site recently and was invited to share our strategy to teach our kids Chinese. That's kind of a long post to write, so my wife invited me to do it. She's Chinese and I'm an American who spent 2 years in Taiwan and am pretty fluent in Chinese. I'm also in medical school, but finally found time to write it. I posted it on our blog today, and for reference am pasting it below. It's a somewhat comprehensive view of how we've gone about teaching our kids Chinese living in America.

 

http://www.teachkidschinese.com/2014/06/our-strategy-to-teach-our-kids-chinese.html

 

 

 

Learning to Speak Chinese

 

Speak Chinese to your kids

 

The first and most important thing we have ever done is commit to speak Chinese in the home. This has been difficult, especially because I am American. My Chinese is not perfect, and my wife’s English will always be better than my Chinese. Sometimes there is a communication gap. Sometimes it's easier for everyone if we speak English. I consider myself to be a relatively disciplined person, and it has taken a lot of effort for us to maintain the rule where we speak Chinese at home. It’s even difficult for my wife, since she’s been in America for years now and sometimes comes to English words easier than Chinese words. Lots of our books and other media are in English as well, and sometimes it’s hard to switch back to Chinese afterwards. So, I can understand how kids with Chinese parents grow up in America speaking English at home. It's a shame, but I can see how it happens. If the parent’s speak good English, it’s simply the easiest thing to do. Speaking Chinese when you are not in China takes effort, even for adults. However, as we’ve been consistent with this rule, our kids comply. They know they are supposed to speak Chinese. We constantly reminded them and even went through a phase where they would get sent to time out if they spoke English. Now, for the most part, it’s not an issue. I’m guessing it will be get harder as the kids start school and get even more immersed in English, but for now our 4 year old and 2 year old speak Chinese at home.

 

Because we’ve been so strict about this rule, our kids speak Chinese. I have a friend who took a year of Chinese in college, and my 2 year old speaks way better Chinese than he does. My four year old doesn’t speak like a four year old native, but he speaks pretty darn good. He can communicate basically anything he wants to, as good as a four year old can reasonably be expected to communicate.  

 

We started speaking to them when they were babies, and they often picked up Chinese words before they picked up English words. Of course, we didn’t want them to not learn English. That would make their social development awkward when they went to church or played with friends. So whenever they learned a new word, we would teach them both the English and the Chinese. In a way, this made teaching new words easier. To explain what the new word meant, we could use both English and Chinese to explain it. I think that a lot of times it made it easier for them to grasp the meaning, having the extra explanation if it wasn’t clear in one language.

 

In social situations, it’s OK for them to speak English. We say that if friends are over or we’re outside and talking to someone else, than speak English. However, if we’re outside running errands and just talking with our family, our rule is that we still speak Chinese. Otherwise, as soon as we leave the house the kids would speak English and never learn much Chinese. Hanging out at home, there’s really a limited vocabulary that you need to get by every day. It’s when you’re out and about outside that you see new things and really need to learn new words and how to say new things. Enforcing the rule to speak Chinese outside has been very important.

 

I’ve heard that if kids can keep speaking another language until they are about 7 years old, then it becomes somewhat permanent. It’s amazing how fast they can forget. Once when our oldest was almost three, we spent a month at my parents house. We spoke English the entire time. When we got home, we realized that he had forgotten A LOT of his Chinese. Even basic things like colors didn’t come back to him right away. Hopefully if we keep it up Chinese will be a permanent part of his brain some day.

 

Send them to China

 

One good thing that we might do some day is send our kids to China for a while. We’ve visited my wife’s family several times and spent a month at a time in China. Unfortunately, my wife’s family lives in a small town and speaks a dialect similar but more complicated than Shan Dong Hua. Native Chinese speakers think it’s easy to understand, but it’s difficult for me. This means they don’t really have full immersion of mandarin when they go there, and it’s probably hard for them to understand everything. Nonetheless, it’s surely beneficial for them anyway.

 

Let them watch Chinese TV

 

We’ve written several posts about letting our kids watch Chinese cartoons. Our kids used to watch 1 or 2 episodes of English cartoons or children’s shows on most days of the week. We don’t have cable or even an antenna, but we do have Amazon prime and there’s no shortage of kids shows for them to watch. For the past 2 months, however, they almost never watch English TV shows. We’ve used our Roku to show them Chinese kids shows we find on youtube. There’s tons of kids TV shows on youtube for them to watch. We have written about two of them, Qiao Hu and Lao Hu Huan Xiang. I feel no guilt when they watch TV. Not only are they having fun and being entertained, but they are learning Chinese. I don’t feel like their brains are rotting away in front of the TV set. To the contrary, they are learning more about Chinese culture and getting immersed in the language.

 

Sing to them in Chinese

 

If you grew up in China, chances are you know some Chinese nursery rhymes. Sing them to your kids! If you don't know them, learn them. There are many on youtube you can find.

 

Listen to Chinese Music

 

This is one that we haven't really tried yet... our kids are starting to really appreciate American Music, and we bias them with our eclectic taste of indie rock and folk rock. I am thinking we should listen to more Chinese music, but both my wife and I don't have nearly as much Chinese music on hand.

 

Read Chinese books to them

 

We have 100+ English kids books. There’s so many books out there it’s hard to be a parent in America without accumulating lots of them. And that’s a good thing. We have a much smaller supply of Chinese books, but we always jump at the chance to read Chinese books with them. Every Chinese book teaches them new words. You might be surprised how many Chinese books your local library has. If they don’t have some at your local branch, most cities still might have some that you can request be sent to your library. Eventually, we hope that Amazon starts carrying more Chinese books. It's so easy to buy from Amazon that I know we and others would buy more if they carried them.

 

 

Learning to Read and Write Chinese

 

Our 4 year old has gotten to the point where he can probably read about 150 – 200 characters. He can probably write from memory about 80. This has been a combination of us giving him worksheets to do, us reading him books, and probably mainly him playing with the iPad.

The blog has a page on different Chinese worksheets, and there’s lots of resources out there for free. There’s also worksheets you can buy. Keep in mind that these are more time intensive. For your kid to get anything out of a worksheet, you are going to need to coach them through it. You can’t just expect them to do it by themselves and learn something.

 

iPad apps, on the other hand, pretty much do all the teaching for you. We’ve found about 4 apps that we really like, that are affordable, and that do a great job teaching our kids Chinese characters.

One of them is called Chinese Writer, where for $10 you can have access to 5000 characters. The app lets you practice writing the characters on the iPad, you can create different practice packs for your child, and there’s a little game which is surprisingly fun and great practice for both kids and adults. I think it’s very effective. We have a little Chinese book that we read with my oldest, and I’ve put all the new characters from the book into a practice pack on the app. After several episodes of playing with the app, my son is almost able to read the book by himself now. We made a small practice pack with the numbers 1-10, and our two year old was able to learn the numbers quite easily.

 

The other apps are basically fancy versions of flash cards or animated stories that teach you characters along the way and have little quizzes and games as you progress through the story. They are fun, my kids love them, and they actually learn stuff as they play. It’s way better than them wasting their brain on the iPad playing things like fruit ninja or plants vs zombies.

 

We don’t have a lot of experience yet teaching our kids to read and write, but we are encouraged with the results. We really hope we can get to the point where they learn enough characters to be able to read recreationally when they are a few years older. I was raised in a family of readers, and I remember reading books for fun as early as second grade. If we can get our kids to this level, they will be set for life, since they will continue to read for fun and improve their language skills.

 

That’s our goal!

 

 

 

Any other tips or suggestions?

[Adam_CLO]

Thanks for your post. Are you worried that your kids will pick up a non native Chinese accent, when you speak to them in Chinese? I don't know how good your accent is, but what would you recommend in cases where one of the parents has a non native accent?

[gato]

Thanks for a great post.

 

I was going to ask you about the "one parent, one language" method, but I see that there's a nice article here comparing the "one parent, one language" method with the "minority language at home" method.  The method you are using appears to be this latter method (i.e. using Chinese, the minority language in the US. at home).

 

http://www.omniglot.com/language/articles/bilingualkids4.htm

Raising Bilingual Children: The Different Methods to Success

[roddy]

Impressive post, many thanks. 

 

Which are the other apps you're using? There seems to be a huge number of relevant apps out there, was it difficult to find decent ones?

[Mindmaxd]

Good job miaomiao 那口子 xD,Pretty good article,hope you can share more experiences then.

[gato]

For more TV resources, you might consider by a mainland China equivalent of Apple TV/ROKU.  There are many choices available and much cheaper than Apple TV or ROKU.

 

My mom, who lives in the US, has been using this iQiyi set top box, and she says it works well for most shows.  This is the 4K (ultra HD) version:

http://item.jd.com/1144553.html

创维（Skyworth） i71S 爱奇艺4K盒子 四核 双WIFI 网络机顶盒 安卓4.4.2 钛黑

 

Looks like JD.com can ship to the US for a good subset of their products (I couldn't find the 4K iQiyi box, but this 1080p version is available):

http://en.jd.com/product/skyworth-i71-hdmi-dual-cores-wifi-tv-converter-box-network-player-green/998291.html

Skyworth i71 HDMI Dual Cores WIFI TV Converter Box Network Player Green

 

http://help.en.jd.com/help/question-42.html

We currently ship to 78 countries/regions, using trusted third party courier services such as UPS, DHL and EMS. All products listed on our site can be shipped to the countries/regions listed below, and cost of delivery is automatically calculated at the checkout stage based on your shipping method, destination country/region and the combined product weight. Supersaver, Regular and Express shipping options are available and will be displayed when you checkout. Tracking is also available on ALL our parcels, so once you receive a dispatch email from our warehouse, you will be able to track your parcel every step of the way.

 

You can also of course buy Chinese books from such online shopping sites as amazon.cn and jd.com.  

 

For Chinese music, I recommend that you download Douban FM app (avail for both iOS and Android) (it's a good source of Chinese indie music):

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.douban.radio

[miaomiao]

ADAM_CLO: My accent is quite good, but I am still worried about it. I remember being in Taiwan and meeting a family where the dad was American and the mom was Taiwanese. The kids spoke English with a crazy accent! It wasn't even like the dad's accent. People say our kids have a decent accent, so maybe we're doing OK. But I admit my wife wonders sometimes where they learned some bad grammar... only to eventually discover they learned it from me!

 

Gato: thanks for that link! I admit we have been concerned at times that our kids don't speak English as well as their peers. We even took a break for a few weeks to speak English in the home to help him improve at one point. It helped our kids improve very quickly and we were able to switch back to Chinese. Our oldest is very shy and I think needed that boost in his English to interact with his peers.

 

Roddy: You are right, there are a tremendous amount of apps out there. Most are crap. We favor the following 4 apps:

 

•  2Kids Chinese -- One of the best apps we've seen. About $9 for full access.
•  iReading HD – 宝贝学汉字 --  FREE! The best Chinese flashcard app out there
• 2Kids爱阅读 -- Another great app, about $8 if you want to unlock all the episodes
• Chinese Writer --a great way to practice and really learn the Chinese characters, both for kids and adults. $10 for full access. It's worth it!

 

Gato: thanks so much for sharing that skyworth device! I had heard about those things but never really investigated. I'll show my wife and we'll consider getting one for sure. Eventually. Although we got our Roku for $40, which is cheaper than the skyworth device.

 

And thanks for sharing about the douban app! I think we will for sure start using that!

[miaomiao]

For anyone that has amazon prime... they now offer some free music. I found the following album that is free for prime members that we instantly liked. Great for kids.

 

Little Dragon Tales: Chinese Children's Songs (Instrumentals)

[miaomiao]

Actually I couldn't find douban.FM on iPad store

[msittig]

My wife and I are raising three (hopefully) bilingual daughters, in Shanghai up until March and now in Southern California. Our oldest is 7 and just finished the last couple months of first grade here in English (was in Chinese grade 1 in Shanghai); the middle daughter was in daban and just finished kindergarten here, and will repeat it next year; and the youngest is 2.5. For various reasons, the oldest switches back and forth quickly and fluently between English/Chinese, the middle one has trouble with both, and the youngest speaks mostly Chinese. We speak mostly Chinese at home, but I'm a frequent offender of this policy. A few reactions to the OPs post and sharing of our own experiences:

 

• It gets harder to keep them speaking Chinese when they hit school, but it's not impossible. Our school has the most native Spanish-speakers of any in our district, and I wonder if this makes it easier for our daughters to accept that being bilingual is cool.
• Go out of your way to make Chinese friends, especially friends with kids. Meetup.com is good for this. Peer teaching/learning is a powerful teaching tool.
• We use iPad+PPTV+AppleTV to mirror Chinese cartoons onto the TV.
• Dangdang delivers to the US for RMB 50, takes a couple months so order early.
• Use the local Chinese supermarket/bookstore. We are lucky in that Southern California is blessed in this regard. We picked up a set of textbooks/practice books by 中国暨南大学华文学院 called 《中文》 at a bookstore by the Ranch 99 in Rowland Heights for our two older daughters; it's geared toward CSL learners, with chapter headings and some appendices translated into English. It focuses on characters, and has pinyin above words but doesn't teach it explicitly. We're having them work through a couple pages a day. Our second daughter, who had not formally started learning characters in Shanghai, just read her first "poem" today and was very proud of herself. So exciting for her, and for us as parents.
• We read a story or two every night before bedtime, sometimes in English (daddy) and sometimes in Chinese (mommy). The series we're working through right now for the Chinese is the 《故事馆》 series. They really enjoy the 侦探故事馆 book, which has mysteries and then you flip the page upside down to read the solution, a la Encyclopedia-Brown/Two-Minute Mysteries.
• They've been playing iPad apps that teach pinyin/characters since we lived in Shanghai, but from my perspective these apps only seem to support learning that happened offscreen, never replace it.
• My oldest daughter used a hand-me-down smartphone with WiFi to listen to Chinese music (I think we used Kugou), but the screen has broken and we haven't had the chance to replace it.

We would love to get them into a bilingual/immersion school, but those are few and far between. We are budgeting for frequent trips back to China in the future.

[gato]

It seems that Douban FM (as well as 虾米音乐, another similar music steaming all) have been removed from the non-US version of Apple AppStore for copyright reasons. They are still available on the China AppStore, and Android app stores.

[miaomiao]

msittig: what a great post! Thanks for your guidance and ideas. You are further along in this process than we are! I would love for our kids to make chinese friends! You would think living in Houston we would have done that by now... but we don't live close to many Chinese people and we're not terribly social. We don't really have many American friends either ;-0. We went to the library today and actually met tons of Chinese families. Most of them weren't interested in becoming friends, however. They already had their group of friends. My wife did get the number of one family, so maybe we will hang out in the future.

 

Never heard of PPTV, we will give it a look.

 

Have you tried the Chinese Writer app? I think it's one of the best ways out there to learn characters.

[miaomiao]

And thanks for that textbook recommendation and the mystery book recommendation!

[oceancalligraphy]

Spotify has quite a bit of children's music in Mandarin (and Cantonese)

There are albums listed under the artist 兒歌 (Children's Music) that sound familiar. Maybe I listened to it as a child?

[victorhart]

Hey everyone, you and your kids are undoubtedly at a vastly more advanced level than me, but you might find the following text I wrote interesting (and hopefully amusing) nonetheless.
 
http://mandarinexperiment.com/2014/05/18/how-to-teach-your-children-mandarin-chinese-qiao-hu-week-17/ 
 
My six-year-old daughter is a fully bilingual, native Portuguese/English speaker, reader, writer and is also learning Spanish and dabbling in Mandarin and American Sign Language. I have a good amount of experience with language acquisition and instruction.