Location: USA
Parents: Chinese, English
Children: 7 years old=English, Chinese & Spanish at school; 4 year old=English, Chinese
Lydia is a colleague of mine. She and her husband are from China. They live in New Jersey and raise their two boys (7 and 4 years old) bilingually with Chinese and English. Read here what challenges they have encountered and how they have kept up Chinese, the boys’ minority language.
Minority language at home—most of the time
VERONIKA: Alright! Thank you very much for taking the time today for the interview.
LYDIA: That’s my pleasure.
VERONIKA: My first question for you would be: what languages do you speak at home? What’s the situation at home?
LYDIA: We try to speak Chinese because both my husband and I are from China; so we want the kids to be able to understand the language. So Chinese would be the language that we hope to use at home. But as Jayden, the older one who is 7, spends more time in school, it’s getting difficult because when Jayden and Michael, who is 4, talk to each other, it’s rarely in Chinese. It’s always in English.
VERONIKA: Yeah, that’s a common challenge.
LYDIA: Yeah, that’s right.
VERONIKA: But you and your husband are trying to introduce and speak Chinese?
LYDIA: Yeah, most of the time—my husband and I met when we were in college in China. So our primary language is Chinese. The thing that was helpful was that when both kids were little, my parents and my in-laws took turns to come here to help take care of them. They only speak Chinese and that’s why my older son’s Chinese is better than the younger one because he had almost 4 years of exposure intermittently to his grandparents, but the younger one only had that for like 2 years.
VERONIKA: I see. So you and your husband speak Chinese at home?
LYDIA: Yeah.
Chinese school on Sundays
VERONIKA: Do the kids attend a Chinese immersion or bilingual school?
LYDIA: No, they go to the regular American English school. Jayden is at Stony Brook right now and he’s a second grader. Michael is at the Pennington Montessori. But Jayden does go to a Chinese Sunday afternoon school where he learns Chinese for about two hours. They do have homework every day. So a big part of my job after work is to make sure he finishes his Chinese homework. He will need some help when he does the homework.
VERONIKA: What is it like at the school? Are those formal instruction classes?
LYDIA: Yes, formal instruction classes. Most of the students are Chinese descendants. So their parents are first generation immigrants like us, but they want their kids to understand Chinese language and the teacher is also a Chinese teacher. They do have other classes for kids or adults who do not live in Chinese environment. Randy is in another class.
VERONIKA: Oh, really?
LYDIA: Yeah.
VERONIKA: I didn’t know he is learning Chinese!
LYDIA: Yeah, he’s making a lot of progress!
VERONIKA: That’s nice. We have Ella in a German school on Saturdays. They start at three months with music classes. It is called the Musikgarten;it is like a “sing along rhythmic class”. They do rhymes and songs and percussion instruments—that sort of thing. Is that how the Chinese school is structured too or do they start later?
LYDIA: By later you mean age or?
VERONIKA: Yes, age.
LYDIA: You have to be at least five to be in that.
VERONIKA: So it’s formal instruction right away?
LYDIA: It is like kindergarten. They have kindergarten class, first grade, second grade. This is actually the second Chinese school Jayden has been in. He started when he was 5 at a different school. So he already took it 2 years before we transferred him to this school. It’s closer to home.
The need to push gently
VERONIKA: Does he like to go or does it take some pushing for him to go?
LYDIA: I cannot say that he would say, “Oh wonderful! I’m going to Chinese school this afternoon”, but I think he is paying attention and he is trying to get the homework done. Yeah, that’s the thing about him. He may not be very enthusiastic, but once he gets his hands on it, he’s pretty serious about it.
VERONIKA: Lucky you!
LYDIA: Yeah, I know. And the Chinese homework is more interesting this year than the homework he had in the past because they use a different textbook and the homework corresponds to the textbook in both written and online homework. So part of the homework is they write Chinese letters. That’s the written part. And then there are online stories that are relevant to their textbook.
VERONIKA: That’s interesting. And will the little one start next year then?
LYDIA: Yeah. Well, that’s the plan. We want him to start next year. In general, Jayden is more verbally advanced; not just because he’s older. If I compare him with Michael when they were at the same age, he’s more verbally advanced and Michael is more physically advanced.
VERONIKA: They have different strong points.
LYDIA: They have different strengths. I guess that’s by nature. So we do want Michael to learn more Chinese next year.
Reading books and creating the need to use Chinese
VERONIKA: Do you use any other means of exposure other than Chinese school?
LYDIA: So at night, when Jayden was little, I read Chinese storybooks to him. With Michael, I alternate. So one night would be Chinese and another night would be English. Like last night, we read some Chinese story books about the Thomas train. He understands, but he has difficulties saying it. With Jayden, he can say it, but it is more of a habit to use English. When Jayden was little, I actually pushed him very hard. Like I would ask him a question, he would respond in English and I would pretend that I don’t understand him and it gets to a point he told me, “Dude, you should learn more English!”.
VERONIKA: That’s actually what I’m doing with Ella right now. I pretend I don’t understand. And oftentimes she then says it in German. But I see a little quizzical look on her face, like “I know you understand”.
Unexpected rewards when visiting China
LYDIA: They’re very smart and they can tell. But I would say that I try to take them back to China a couple of times a year. When Jayden realizes that he can actually read some of the signs at the airport, that was very rewarding to him. Last time when we landed, he saw the exit sign in Chinese and he recognized that. Then he’s very excited. He’s like, “Oh, I know that word”.
VERONIKA: Yeah. Now that Ella speaks more, I think going to Germany is going to be very rewarding too. If she speaks German and then all of a sudden, she has people who understand and respond…
Skyping with family in China
LYDIA: Yeah. And because of the fact that my parents and in-laws don’t speak any English, I really want the kids to be able to communicate with them in Chinese. And they’re very close to the grandparents. We Skype a lot, almost every other day.
VERONIKA: That’s good–more exposure that way through Skype.
LYDIA: But now I think they’re talking to their grandparents less because they’re so occupied with their own stuff, either toys or TV.
VERONIKA: Do you have any particular challenges that you see in keeping up Chinese as the minority language?
The challenge of siblings using the majority language
LYDIA: Yeah. I think the main reason is because they talk to each other a lot and it’s really hard to get them to talk to each other in Chinese. I think their listening is completely fine. It’s the speaking part and, of course, the writing part too.
VERONIKA: Yeah. Literacy is an entirely different ball park!
LYDIA: Yeah. Like two friends of mine, they’re a couple. They actually take it to the extreme. Both of them are faculty members so they have that flexibility. They would take the kids back to China for four months. Their kids would be in the regular Chinese school. Their kids’ Chinese is very, very good.
VERONIKA: Yeah. But then you have to have the time available to step away from your job.
LYDIA: Yeah.
Be persistent!
VERONIKA: Do you have any advice for parents who are either raising kids bilingually or thinking about it?
LYDIA: I guess just be persistent and help the kids understand the benefits. Sometimes it may be difficult for them to see the immediate benefit because learning a language, there are fun parts of it, but let’s face it, a lot of the time it is about doing the homework, doing the exercise, and memorizing things. It could be boring for them. So be persistent and supportive; it is really important. Then try to provide them with the authentic experience for them to use whatever they learnt—the knowledge, the facts. I think that would be the incentive for them to keep learning. And for us, because China has such a rich history and culture; so if they understand the language, there are stories that they would be able to understand better. That could be another incentive. But I think being persistent is very, very important!
VERONIKA: It’s pretty much connecting content with the language so it’s about something not just about the language.
LYDIA: Yeah, not just about the language. For example, when Michael was learning counting numbers, I tried to help him do it in both languages. But it’s funny that he still thinks Chinese is Spanish.
VERONIKA: Hmmm. Interesting.
LYDIA: We have an au pair from Thailand. I accidentally spoke some Chinese to her once and Michael said, “She doesn’t understand Spanish”. So I was like okay…
VERONIKA: He probably learns Spanish at school?
LYDIA: Or maybe he thinks any language that’s different from English is Spanish.
VERONIKA: Yeah, that could be what he thinks. He doesn’t have that abstract level yet [i.e., language awareness]. Well, thank you very much. I think that was really insightful!
