4yo interested in spelling in English while trying to teach him Chinese

[cb_isme]

Hi everyone - my son is now 4 years old. We raised him speaking Mandarin Chinese as his first language, supplemented with Cantonese and a bit of Spanish. Ever since he went to preschool, he has switched more and more into English, although he switches between Mandarin and English pretty seamlessly, often in mid-sentence.

My question is about how to navigate early interest in reading. My son has started expressing more and more interest in phonics and learning to read and spell English words. He'll ask: "how do you spell stairs" or "how do you spell banana" etc. Obviously, I'm thrilled that he's showing this interest and I spell things out in English. However, I'm also concerned that English will start to supplant Chinese as a result. Should I also spell things in pinyin? Do I need to start with the basics of "b, p, m, f"?

For anyone who is teaching their kids Chinese or any script based / non-phonemic alphabet language - what is your approach to ensuring your children also learns to read and write in your target language? Note: I am not a native speaker or reader in Chinese so I actually require quite a bit of assistance from Google Translate and pinyin to read a lot of Chinese.

What I've done so far:

1. Sourced books in Chinese - even early readers (which we never bought before because I would verbally translate from English into Chinese) to expose him to written Chinese language (even these require heavy use of Google translate for me!)
2. Put up signs in Chinese around our house on common objects (refrigerator, chair, table, mirror, etc)
3. Created Chinese music playlists and sourced Chinese story podcasts (not a visual thing but just trying to get 360 degree coverage)

Thank you all in advance. This community is such a great resource!

 

[aldredian]

@cb_isme I have an almost 4yo. (Disclaimer: I am a native speaker)

Since about 3.5yo, I've been letting him play this app on and off: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hongen.app.word

It's an incredibly effective app. My son recognise about 30 or 40 characters now. As in, when I quiz him while reading books, he'll recognize them by about 90% accuracy.

What has also surprised me is he is actually remembering how to write the characters as well (unprompted. Just randomly wrote the character and showed me. Wrong stroke order though but no matter).

My only headache is we're from Taiwan.

99% of our Chinese books are all in traditional Chinese and my son gets frustrated when I show him the traditional versions and complains it's not the one he learned. The flip side though is the app does have a function that allows me to quickly show him the traditional version and I'll say, "This is how we write it." It hasn't been too bad though. I showed him 飛 tonight in traditional and he was able to recognize it though complained a bit it's not the one he knows.

So my next headache is whether to teach him ZhuYin because ZhuYin helped me a lot when I was growing up. I would not have learned characters quickly enough if not for ZhuYin. I bought both alphabet letters magnets and zhuyin magnets and he loves playing with them and asking me what things read. A lot of the times he'll arrange gibberish but it's just fun. The whole point is to make it fun.

Anyways, here's the same iHuman app but for pinyin. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ihuman.pinyin I haven't used it though.

These are such well made apps. Pity there's no traditional equivalent.

Otherwise, there are these reader series.

Here's a few blogs, also from non native speakers, on how they taught their kids to read.

https://chalkacademy.com/teach-child-chinese-characters-nonfluent-parent/

https://lahlahbanana.com/2020/08/01...ren-to-read-chinese-as-a-non-chinese-speaker/

Here's a blog article around levelled reading series: https://lahlahbanana.com/2020/03/28/chinese-reading-pen-le-le-chinese

https://chalkacademy.com/chinese-leveled-readers-comparison/

The only problem with these series is they're EXPENSIVE AF.

My mum's friend managed to get me some second hand Greenfield ones which I'm using right now though I've found the iHuman app currently the most effective.

My other avenue now is buying the kids magazine series from Taiwan as they contain teaching materials for ZhuYin so that's the next thing I'm looking at. Still expensive AF.

Next avenue is online tutors/classes or even face-to-face teachers.

 

[lostchildinthemidst]

@aldredian It looks like you shared an AMP link. These should load faster, but AMP is controversial because of concerns over privacy and the Open Web.

Maybe check out the canonical page instead: https://lahlahbanana.com/2020/08/01...ren-to-read-chinese-as-a-non-chinese-speaker/

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[phausof]

@aldredian

my next headache is whether to teach him ZhuYin

Yes! to Zhuyin. Especially if your friends/family use it, and if you go to Taiwan periodically.

 

[cb_isme]

@aldredian Thanks for these resources! ChalkAcademy is spot on for me as a non-native speaker. I have found that the Sage Books series is incredibly hard to find in the US and expensive...in some Facebook groups I've seen there seems to be a 2nd-hand market for these!

I just downloaded the iHuman apps and they look really polished, albeit a little bit more "gamified" than I'd like. But overall, very nice. Thank you!!

 

[phausof]

@cb_isme We're starting with a combination of 'sight reading' and bo po mo 'spelling' (LO is 3.5 yr old). For sight reading, when you are reading a book, isolate one simple character in the text for your LO to read, while you read the rest. Everytime that character shows up in the text, pause, point to it and let LO fill-in with the right sound. Works better with books they are already familiar with.

If you are using pinyin, you might eliminate some confusion by 'spelling' a word/character as: initial • medial • final (i.e. 大象=d•a + x•i•ang), rather than spelling it out with each individual letter like you would an English word. Zhuyin is a little better for this IMO, but pinyin works too if that is what you're used to.

For writing, we have lots of books for both Zhuyin, and basic Mandarin words--and we write a lot of things together (especially when drawing). Some of them have dot/dash lines to trace, sometimes I just get our LO to use her pointer finger and I help her trace a character, or I hold her hand in mine to write something of her own. Muscle memory is an important part of learning!

One more note: if you are stumbling to read stories fluidly in Mandarin, your child will likely get really frustrated and want to do something else. I'd recommend practicing reading them yourself until you are comfortable without any assistance. Also our LO naturally wants Mandarin books sometimes, or English books others, or some combination. I think it's natural for them to have a preference, and for that preference to change fairly often. I wouldn't try to force reading something they aren't into at that moment.

 

[aldredian]

@phausof Can you share how you're teaching ZhuYin? I've bought some of those books that you can press with sounds and 小牛津 pen reads out a rhyme. There's so many different products there that tries to teach it but I just haven't found anything that interests my son. Only the ZhuYin magnet somewhat interests him but since he now recognizes a couple of characters, it seems to confuse him.

He sees ㄧ and just think it's actually the character..I have explained and demonstrated to him how ZhuYin spells out the sound or we'd play a game and just randomly spell out different words (I pick silly ones so he finds it funny) but yeah. Not getting much traction.

I have found an app that teaches it but he finds it boring. It's a pity there isn't an app like iHiman for traditional characters and ZhuYin.

 

[phausof]

@aldredian Well, we're really only just starting with Zhuyin, our LO doesn't really 'get it' with the symbols yet, although she recognizes and can repeat about 2/3s of them if I point to one. We've got a few books that have each symbol, with stroke order, and words/pictures that correlate to the Zhuyin sound. We sing a ㄅㄆㄇㄈ song. We also have a few of the 點讀筆 books too that cover Zhuyin, and the magnets like you mentioned. Mostly we're just slowly repeating the initial/medial/final sounds --verbally-- and especially if her pronunciation is a little unclear. And when we write things that she already (sort of) knows, like her name, I'll write the Zhuyin beside it. I would guess it's a little early, since she's not reading yet--really just memorizing her favorite books. My wife and I have been talking about how to make it a little more academic (?), maybe having a day we 'study', but at the same time she's still quite young, and we are wary of making learning a chore--so we haven't done anything too specific yet and will probably take it slow. I imagine that when she wants to read, the usefulness of Zhuyin will become more apparent to her (hopefully!!??). I'm a little more focused on sight-reading simple characters first, to foster a desire to read. She already speaks super well. Things that took me ages to learn come naturally to her (ugh!). She's trying to write too, which is great (but looks like scribbles in character shapes). I was impressed that she scribbles out the right number of 'character shapes' in a neat line for the sentence she wants to write. My nieces and nephews didn't really start with Zhuyin until they were 5, so I feel like we're still ahead of the curve without even trying really.

I should add that I always look forward to your comments here, because it seems your LO is just a little older than ours and on the same learning path! I've taken some good advice from your comments, so thank you for that!

 

[cb_isme]

@phausof Thank you! I'll try introducing pinyin using the example you shared. That's super helpful advice.

So far my son has been very patient with me stumbling through Chinese, even giving me time to grab my Google Translate app and using it's picture function to translate. I think right now, he's really enjoying the increased exposure to Chinese characters. He's even reading the super basic board books even though in English he prefers more complex books. That said, I am also practicing outside of reading time so that I can sightread better.

Thanks again for your advice!

 

[phausof]

@cb_isme Awesome, and that's very impressive! I'm also not a native speaker. My reading is pretty good, but I do occasionally rely on Zhuyin (which thankfully most of our children's books have).

We have one book that my daughter loves (骨頭--fantastic book) that has black text on a dark blue background for a page or two. By now I should have just memorized those pages, and yet I stumble through it every time. My daughter has no patience for it, and will say ”我累了” and look at me like I'm the biggest idiot. Oh well! I try.

 

[df623]

@cb_isme Following as I’ve just had a baby and plan on speaking to her exclusively in Mandarin though not a native speaker.

 

[zhuru523]

@cb_isme You said that Mandarin isn’t your native language, so does that mean it’s a foreign language that you learned as an adult? If so, how proficient are you in the language?

Just curious cause I think it’s pretty impressive you were able to pass down a foreign language to your child, which is something I might want to do in the future too but I’m not sure how proficient you must be in the foreign language to achieve this (like would basic fluency be enough, or near-native like grammar and vocab).

 

[cb_isme]

@zhuru523 I took two years of Mandarin in undergrad and then spent a semester abroad in Hong Kong where I took beginning Cantonese for one semester. Seven years after my last undergrad class, I did a grad school summer internship in Shanghai where my Mandarin improved dramatically. But then I stopped speaking for 10+ years and basically lost all of it, lol.

I can't take credit for my son's Mandarin proficiency. We had a Mandarin speaking nanny who basically taught him Mandarin as his first language until he went to daycare at age 2 years and 9 months and then preschool. In preschool, he went from no English to fluent English.

In addition, my wife speaks Cantonese nearly fluently and she speaks some Mandarin. We both do our best to speak Mandarin at home but are back sliding more into English as his language skills become more advanced.

My advice is to go for it and see how far you can get. All the better if you can bring in additional resources like a nanny or extended family. The biggest thing is committing. You'll be surprised at how much you can accomplish.