How do deal with limits of OPOL for a non native speaker?

[fireblaze]

What do non fluent parents do when they "run out" of language and cannot learn fast enough to match their child's pace of language acquisition?

I'm a non fluent heritage speaker of Mandarin. I can speak about daily life things like cooking, eating, playing, and casual/shallow chats with strangers. I can read books with pinyin, but mostly I just translate our English books because it's mentally easier and faster to read in English and translate in my head.

My son is almost 2.5 years old, and I've been doing OPOL with him since birth with the exception of English songs. His dominant language is Mandarin and he pretty much 100% switches to mandarin with me even when speaking English with others. Our family and community language is English.

Despite doing my best to learn the names for cement mixer, crane, bulldozer, triceratops, pterodactyl, brontosaurus and a bajillion other toddler obsessions, I just can't keep up with his need to acquire language. I cannot learn enough new mandarin words fast enough to keep up with all his interests and books to be able to speak 100% mandarin to him. I find that I already have to simplify a lot of things because I lack an expansive Chinese vocabulary. Chinese people who chat with me assume I'm a native speaker, and while my accent and intuitive sense of grammar and sentence structure is fine ... I lack so much vocabulary to discuss a variety of topics.

I don't want to switch to English because I'm afraid it will "break" his expectation that he always speaks in Mandarin with mama. He 100% of the time switches to mandarin right now.

However, I just can't learn mandarin at the pace necessary to have full, rich conversations with him. How have other non fluent parents handled this?

We were offered a spot in a dual immersion preschool for him later this year, but I'm not okay with their ratios (1:12). Our child's current daycare is 1:5 for 2 year olds and 1:7 for 3 and 4 year olds. I will do my best to get him in the dual immersion K-6 program when he's older, but it's by lottery and not guaranteed. I feel like if I can keep him speaking Mandarin until he's 5 and enters the DLI program in elementary school then I can relax. But between ages 2-5 when I just can't learn Mandarin fast enough to support his pace of language acquisition, how should I approach this?

 

[knowledgeisnotignorant]

@fireblaze I'm a pretty good Mandarin-speaker but boy I hear you re: the names of construction vehicles and dinosaurs! I never knew their names in English or Mandarin until my son hit that age... I started making up names to be honest. He can correct me when he figures it out later =P

If OPOL is getting in the way of proper communication and bonding with your toddler, I personally would introduce some of the language you are more comfortable in. Yes language acquisition is important, but more important is the parent-child bond.

I second joining the immersion preschool earlier, especially if your son is on target developmentally and generally pretty well behaved at daycare.

 

[bubbles328]

@fireblaze I think it’s interesting that all the things you listed are things I don’t know the name of in my own mother tongue that I speak fluently. I finished high school in my home country and even did some postgraduate studies later when I moved back, I just don’t know anything about construction work or dinosaurs to know specific names. So every big vehicle is a truck and all dinosaurs are just dinosaurs. I thought about getting my kid a dinosaur book in the language in question so we can look at it together. Maybe you can have some books or printouts handy on the subjects your toddler is interested in to help with this?

Fluency is such an interesting thing isn’t it? I learned a 3rd language up to a C1 level but would probably really struggle with just animal names because I never needed to know that stuff when I learned the language as an adult.

 

[branannabanana]

@fireblaze I would describe my Japanese as similar to yours, although I also studied it and lived in Japan again as an adult.

Our 100% immersion preschool has high ratios as well (1:8) while the preschool we are currently attending is 1:3 or 4 (because it’s a co-op and it’s one teacher with 2 or 3 parents). We decided to do MWF at the immersion and TTH at the coop, so we still get a lot of adult-support and community through our preschool. If kiddo decides he doesn’t like immersion because of the ratio (or something related to the ratio like not enough one on one adult time), we can always pull him.

Our public school also has a 50/50 Japanese English immersion program, and it’s also a lottery, but our lottery is such that non-Japanese speaking kids are only eligible to apply to the lottery for Kindergarten, and only kids who speak Japanese at home and are keeping up with the language based curriculum can apply in subsequent years. So if we don’t get in during the first round we can always reapply. Yours might be similar!

Aside from exposure through school, we do all media in Japanese, so my son (3.5) says words I don’t even understand sometimes that he has learned from Sesame Street.

 

[rodan]

@fireblaze I have no advice but just posting to say I’m pretty much in the same boat (but with a younger child), so looking forward to seeing what advice you get! I’m also a heritage speaker with decent Mandarin for daily stuff, and did do some study later in life so I can read a bit, but not a true native speaker. I will say that I do feel that us Mandarin heritage speakers have a tougher time than for some other languages. The bar for functional fluency just feels much higher. For example, my husband is a heritage Spanish speaker. He spoke less Spanish with his family growing up than I did Mandarin, and never studied Spanish in school, yet just because it’s linguistically more similar to English he’s able to read newspapers without an issue and pick up any new kid vocabulary fairly easily. Not to mention it’s way easier to find other Spanish speaking families for play dates. I barely have Mandarin speaking friends in the area much less playmates for my baby. I wish there was a support group for not-perfectly-fluent Mandarin heritage speakers attempting OPOL haha.

 

[knowledgeisnotignorant]

@rodan I see a lot of not-perfectly-fluent Mandarin heritage speakers where I live (Northern California)! I think just in trying to stick to OPOL (even if you're having to substitute English for words you don't really know) you are already way ahead of the curve.

From what I've observed, most are NOT doing OPOL, and doing English as a default language with some Mandarin words thrown in ("Oh look here is a truck. 卡车."). Unsurprisingly the kids aren't really speaking Mandarin. I've only seen them in public so things may be different in their homes. Granted: this so-called "public" is an exclusively Chinese library and community center, so I can't fathom why an OPOL or MLH family would feel the need to switch to the community language there.

It's very obvious from the kids which families are actually doing OPOL/MLH and bolstering the heritage language. So all I can say is: keep up the great work and it will pay off!

 

[idolsmasher]

@rodan The barriers to entry for Mandarin are higher (tones, pronounciation, characters). But after that it's a very simple language. No tenses, verb conjugations, gendered words etc.

 

[lostandinsecure]

@fireblaze My husband is a Cantonese speaker but did all of his education in an English speaking country and so I feel like his language skills are similar - can do daily life really well, but doesn't know lots of more specific stuff (like less common animals, vehicles, dinosaurs). He also switches to English frequently almost by accident.

My boys get their "specilist" input from my parents in law. My nephew is basically the same age and so we are hoping they will speak Canto with each other as they grow older, although at the moment my boys general language skills out-pace their cousin.

Are there opportunities for Mandarin conversations with your family or peers of the same age?

 

[aldredian]

@fireblaze I think this blog will help you

https://chalkacademy.com/

This is a Chinese American mum who has to relearn Mandarin as an adult. In other words, a non-fluent heritage speaker like yourself.

Her children are now school aged and she's still going strong so I reckon a lot of articles here should resonate. You can probably message her as well for her tips but she has written quite a lot of tips already.

There's 2 articles in there.

One is how she taught her children to read Chinese as a non-native speaker.

Another article is how she fits in learning Mandarin along with her children.

I'm sure you can find something there.

 

[ibaneztony]

@fireblaze Here to provide solidarity - this is exactly my situation!

We have Saturday school that I've enrolled kiddo in, giving no pressure so far except to enjoy it, also travel when you can and get your parents/extended mandarin speaking family to input should help.

Unfortunately no bilingual daycare here for our needs so the local language is stronger.

Between the ages of 11 months and 4 years we would have spent 2-6 weeks immersion with my parents or extended family (either here or there) 3 times. Each time his language skills jump a lot, and as time goes on it fades again, but never to the previous level, so net improvement is positive compared to me doing it alone if that's something yall can afford, I highly recommend it.

 

[maxinetwells]

@fireblaze If getting children's books (which very much are designed to teach the vocabulary!) in your language isn't an option maybe you're able to find some children's shows revolving around construction vehicles and dinosaurs (and whatever else he's interested in), where you can learn the words alongside your boy. This seems to have worked very well for me at least. I don't have to say "Oh I don't know what that's called in x" anymore because I've watched the episode with a bulldozer or whatever a gazillion times by now.

 

[dms10707]

@fireblaze I wish I had some advice, because I'm in the same boat. I have 2 kiddos (Irish twins) who are about kindergarten age, and I've been doing OPOL with them since they were born in my second language.

I definitely have the problem with lacking vocab, as well as struggling with forming more complex sentences and explanations. One happy consequence is that I'm forced to respond slowly - way slower than I would in my native language - and I think it helps me consider every single thing I say a lot more too. It is really frustrating to not be able to communicate more fluidly/effectively, but I guess it makes my speech more intentional? Womp womp.

Unfortunately, we have no immersion/community options where we are, and we homeschool anyway, so I'm their only source of language 2. I spend a lot of whatever discretionary kids funds on books in language 2, especially books with specific vocab (dinosaurs and construction are big ones!!!). Any media they consume I try to make language 2.

Wish I had some advice! For what it's worth, my kids are older than yours, and for every day that I panicked about whether or not they were actually taking anything in, I'm pleasantly surprised more and more when they come out and say things (unprompted!) in language 2. It's like magic. Way slower than I probably would have liked when I started, but now I'm happy to take my victories where they come!!

 

[tinisha]

@fireblaze Can you set up playdates with other Mandarin speakers in your area? That way you can lean on other parents for at least some of the gaps in your knowledge.

 

[msj2001]

@fireblaze 1) Make more effort to learn more Mandarin;

2) Quickly look up words you don't know;

3) Get other Mandarin sources (playgroups, dual-language pre-schools, etc.);

4) Reading directly books in your OPOL language rather than in another language will be more and more useful in the future, because when kids start understanding the story they get impatient if you translate in your head or with a quick Google Translate.

 

[japerezwire]

@fireblaze I would look at buying the kids books or flash cards that have pinyin. They are pretty cheap on Temu and AliExpress.