I started this post about 7-8 months ago but decided that I really needed to wait to see if what I tried worked before posting. I’m finally seeing the fruits of my labor now.
I admit, I got lazy with the Chinese. Complacent. Maybe even a bit smug.
It was clearly my fault that in the beginning of our Fall semester, Thumper started speaking more English. She’d come off from a summer of English: weeks visiting with her grandma, weekly 3 hour dance practice with a non Chinese speaking friend, listening to Magic Treehouse in English, watching English cartoons and movies. I even started speaking English, a sentence here and there, when Baba was around, just so I didn’t have to translate.
It’s no surprised then that she started periodically speaking English, in Chinese environments, sometimes just a word here or there, sometimes completely switching over. She wouldn’t stop when I asked her to. Of course, when Thumper starts, Astroboy starts.
I finally reached my “must do something” point when she spoke English to Eclectic Mama, even though Eclectic Mama never speaks English to the kids, and mostly speaks Chinese to adults as well. I was really mad at myself at the state of things but sadly yelled at Thumper instead, told her I wouldn’t bring her to Chinese co-op if she’s going to be speaking English. Not my best parenting moment.
It was time to start my Project Get-the-Kids-to-Speak-More-Chinese.
How do I get the kids to speak Chinese? For me, the theory is very simple, intent + defined goals + language exposure.
Intent
Before I go on with the specific steps I took, I want to expound on how, without strong intention, it’s hard to implement and persist. I find people don’t talk about this part much. Kind of like dieting. We all know exercise plus eating sensibly helps you get healthy. But people seldom talk about ways to switch over your thinking to help you stay focused on that task or get back when you’ve fallen off the wagon. Instead the focus is usually on different types of diets.
What do I mean by intention? Designer Mama puts it in another way. I paraphrase, “Instead of looking for ways to ‘treat’ the kids, it’s treating the parents who want to teach.”
For example, I want the kids to speak Chinese, but I was speaking English to Thumper sometimes. Or, I let them watch English TV. Or I say, I don’t have money to spend on Chinese class or the trips to Taiwan are too expensive. Going to Taiwan wasn’t on my mind because the kids have been maintaining their Chinese since we returned 2 years ago.
With intention comes a change of the my own habit and a willingness to explore options I otherwise, reflexibly, say no to. It’s amazing what I was willing to consider, and ultimately decided to do, once I determined the English speaking situation was dire. Now, somehow, I’m willing to find ways to find that money to go back this fall. I started exploring ways; maybe teach a class, work part time, sell un-used books, clothes, etc.
Back to Designer Mom. She doesn’t speak Chinese, but Cantonese. A year ago, her daughter started attending English elementary school, after a few years in a bilingual school. When ours kids played together about 4 months after school started, you could see how fast she was forgetting her Chinese, despite going to after school tutoring. Since she didn’t know Chinese play language, she often substituted English words and would switch over to English completely after 5-10 minutes. It wasn’t her fault, she just didn’t have the vocabulary.
Designer Mom, who spoke English to her child since birth, made a complete switch. She started with just designated days in the week where her child was required to speak Chinese to her. And now she speaks Chinese most of the time, even if her pronunciation isn’t perfect and she doesn’t know the right words sometimes. Our kids recently played together and it’s amazing how just one year of consistently speaking Chinese made such a difference. The children now play about 80% of the time in Chinese and when they start using English, will switch back to Chinese if we remind them.
How do you stick to the “Speak Chinese” diet? It’s about the creation of habits. Maybe start small like Designer Mom. Designate days or specific instances where you only speak Chinese. Make sure before you start that you install a dictionary app. Get into the habit of whipping it out every time you don’t know a word. Every time. Don’t skip and get lazy. Habits takes at least 3 months to form.
Goals
Having a defined goal goes hand in hand with intention. Without clearly defined goal, it’s hard to know how all out one needs to go or what one needs to do. My goal in this case was for Thumper and Astroboy to speak Chinese in Chinese speaking environments and being able to use words easily, rather than switching over to English because they forgot or don’t know how to say something in Chinese.
This means that they can speak 99% Chinese during our co-op and all of our Chinese playdates without switching over to English due to not knowing the vocabulary.
Different people have different goals. Sometimes it’s just speaking and listening, sometimes reading and writing. Sometimes, they feel elementary level Chinese is fine by high school. Other people want a native Chinese native level while in the U.S. Sometimes, Chinese level must be higher than English in lower elementary. Other times, they feel better if the English is ahead and Chinese is secondary.
To reach my goal, I knew I had to up the listening language exposure so they can learn the vocabulary. In addition, they had to think that in these situations, it is normal to speak Chinese. I’ll talk about language exposure in the next section. To make them think it’s normal to speak Chinese, I knew I had to form that habit of speaking Chinese myself. (Refer back to point #1 about intent and forming habits.)
Language Exposure
The author moved to a different country every 5-10 years and his dominant language changes the longer he’s in that country. There was another example of a child who completely forgot his first language in 4 months, after moving to the US at the age of 4. 4 months! What I realized reading the book was that the more immersed in the language one is, the easier it is to make that switch and become fluent.
For me, exposure is really about where I want the kids to be on the range of fluency, from 100% English to 100% Chinese immersion. My defined goal and my intention kind of determines where I am on that range. This time, it meant going back to almost 100% Chinese at home and outside of home. Basically, 100% Chinese in whatever environment within my control. The kids still get their English with their Baba. But otherwise, it’s Chinese the rest of the time.
Conversely, if I feel like their English needs some “leveling-up”, I up the English exposure by enrolling in more English extracurriculars, summer camps, weeks with grandma, etc.
What I Did to Up the Exposure
1. 100% Chinese from me.
If a parent speaks any amount of Chinese, this gives you the biggest return on time investment. Nothing beats a parent (or some other adult) speaking Chinese to the kids 100% of the time. It can provide the children with both kitchen Chinese (day to day living Chinese), as well as adult vocabulary if you’re mindful about having conversations on academic subjects. A child doesn’t learn the Chinese they need as adults by playing with other children, that just provides them an opportunity to use the language day to day so they would want to speak the language and not lose it.
So, no more lazy English sentences that addresses both kids and Baba. I have to say it twice.
I also started being as mindful as I can about using Chinese when I speak to other Chinese speaking parents. It is hard to enforce the “Speak Chinese!” rule the older the kids get when they see me speaking English.
Typically, when the kids use Chinglish, if I just say the word or phrase they don’t know in Chinese, they will repeat it. This is my favorite method because it removes the power struggle that comes when you tell them to “Speak Chinese’. Though this is also my last resort. It works for me partly because it’s a habit for the children. I started by asking them to repeat whatever I just translated. I have found that this method does not work when a child’s is more comfortable in English, because they get tired quickly having to constant repeat what they just said in Chinese again.
For those kids, it’s faster to up the Chinese listening immersion level first.
As I mentioned above, 100% Chinese means I look up words I don’t know every time. There are so many daily vocabulary that are more specific to living in the U.S. (pancakes, waffles, cranberries, poppies, etc), and I didn’t learn them as a child. I even look up words like “Golden Gate Bridge”, “Muir Woods”, etc. For me, the more complete my sentence can be in Chinese, the better. I want the children to understand when they watch Chinese newscast based in the U.S. Otherwise, the older they get, the more English creeps up into their Chinese sentences.
2. No more English entertainment of any kind
I told Thumper that we will be switching back to listening to Children-Can-Listen-World-History from ximalaya.com instead of Story of the World English edition, which she loved more.
We stopped listening to NPR News, This American Life, and Radiolab in the car. Instead, we listened to Adventures of Edward Tulane, Pippy Longstocking, and whatever else I can find from Ximalaya on our drive to and from any activity. Some of these ximalaya.com recordings sound like they come from professional radio readings, complete with background music, questions for children listening, summary, etc.
Instead of once a week movie, which was often in English, we switched to almost nightly 30 minute TV. Sometimes it’s Magic Schoolbus, sometimes Science in Our Daily Lives (a Chinese science program), sometimes dubbed movies. When the kids really loved watching Inside Out in Chinese, I allowed them to watch it 3-4 days straight, until they could almost memorize the entire movie. Given Thumper’s personality, she started dissecting the movie, asking tons of why questions, including the meaning of certain words she heard.
Repetition is key when it comes to audio and videos, especially for younger children. The kids tend to only have 1-2 choices at a time. I usually get sick of it before they do.
The hardest part for me was establishing the habit of introducing these things in our daily routine. One thing that helped was to implement one new habit each month so as to not feel overwhelmed. First I tried to remember to download something onto my iPhone before we leave the house so we can listen to it during our drive to and fro our co-op and weekly classes. The ximalaya app is not the easiest app to navigate. But the time spent was well worth it. Then I tried to remember put these shows on during lunch hours. Lastly, after dinner, I started letting kids watch TV 30 minutes to an hour a day nightly, about 4-6 times a week. All these habits took a few months to feel like routine.
I had to constantly ask myself, “What can I squeeze in listening wise?”, when I see that the kids are just sitting around doing nothing.
3. More Chinese playdates
As an introvert, this is very very hard part for me. I’m usually wiped after 2 days of social activity. But we made sure to show up on our co-op during days when other people cancelled, so that we could get a Chinese playdate in. I agreed to playdates with other people when I normally would just say no because I didn’t need any more social input.
As Mandarin Mama noted, it’s hard to get a playdate where the kids have mostly around the same level of Chinese. I don’t have a solution for that except you have to be very proactive in searching. And most importantly, if you really want it, drive far for it. Last semester, I thought driving 45 minutes for a playdate was too far. This semester, I did it every week, just so the kids could have more Chinese playdates.
Driving an hour 3-4 times a week was killing me, though, if I wanted to do co-op, playdates, and also go to local Chinese libraries, so I decided to move. Of course, being closer to Chinese resources isn’t the only reason, but a contributing factor. I figured all else being equal, moving will give me a cheaper and better return on my efforts to maintain CLE. Rather than going back to Taiwan yearly, I am now closer to friends and also library resources.
My last resort would probably be moving all the way back to LA if we really need to, where my parents live. We’re still going back to Taiwan later this year. But I figured if I can set up our CLE well here, it can also provide that daily language listening and speaking exposure. We’re also not a all Chinese household where it’s easy for the kids to get a home CLE. I’ve also recently realized that the effort I’ve put in the last year in getting Thumper to read means that I can kind of ease up after this year for Thumper.
People probably think I’m crazy in my quest for Chinese fluency for my kids. But it’s just a matter of priorities. It is totally okay if a high level of Chinese isn’t what one is aiming for. But if you feel that the kids Chinese level isn’t up to what you wanted, then you have to make it a priority and drop other things in your and their lives.
Did it Work?
Letting the kids watch a lot more TV and listen to audiobooks turned the kids around. That and the fact that both of them are reading a lot more now. (I didn’t intentionally read to them or have them read to up their Chinese level.) Both Thumper and Astroboy pretty consistently speak Chinese in our Chinese playdates. They play with each other in Chinese unless they’ve spent a day with Baba. Typically by the end of the day they turn to speaking English instead.
In re-reading this post, I realized I was scant on the details on how to get the kids to speak more Chinese. For me, most of the effort, 90%, is changing our own mindset, creating that environment, getting into action and maintaining consistency. It’s not about the children, it’s the adults. When people say, “My kids doesn’t want to speak Chinese anymore”, and I learn the details of their CLE (Chinese Language Environment), it often turns out that they are the ones creating that environment which promotes English, but they don’t see it.
The formula is simple. The more immersed you are in the language, the more the kids will speak it. The question is, do you want to make the change?
