Chinese progress for the kids...

My children have been taking a two-hour Mandarin Chinese class on Sundays since we returned to Washington. I originally just hoped they would gain some "familiarity" with Mandarin- I didn't really expect them to learn a lot. But I sit in class next to my daughter every week, and I started to notice that all the kids- not just mine- seem to retain very little from week to week.

Now, I'm no kindergarten teacher, but I think L's teacher has a lot of good tactics- she uses repetition, games, individual questions, pair work, etc. I'm sure there is something more she could do to appeal to these kids, but overall, I think she does a decent job. And yet, none of them seem to remember anything, even the kids with Chinese parents (the class is probably 1/3 kids with non-Chinese speaking parents, 2/3 kids with Chinese parents, some of whom seem to speak to them at home in Chinese and some that don't.).

This whole thing about kids learning languages so quickly is starting to seem questionable.

So I've been thinking about it. One possible reason is that these kids don't HAVE to learn Chinese. There is no urgency or necessity- now throw them into a Chinese-only school, like we did with the kids in the DR, and I suspect they would learn more quickly.

But the other thing is that we were only paying attention to Mandarin once a week. They needed more repetition, and they needed help attaching meaning to the characters. We knew it, but we just couldn't find the time.

Two weeks ago, I reached my threshold. The kids were just sitting in class, tuning out the teachers, learning nothing. I realized if we didn't change something, we would have wasted three (including commute) precious hours every weekend for a whole school year.

I looked at my dream of them learning to speak Chinese during this tour - it's not going to be easy. It's not easy for Chinese children to learn their language- it takes long hours of writing characters over and over again and I don't know what else. For us, too, it's going to take time and it's going to take commitment. So, we decided to try our best to start reviewing Chinese during the week. And lo and behold, it worked!

We made Pleco flashcards for each lesson and helped the kids memorize some characters and sentences last week. They were excited to use the Ipad. We practiced speaking at random times. And today, my daughter READ from her book- pairing characters together on her own to make questions and sentences, something she hasn't done since we started this class.  It was the coolest thing! And after we finished spinning around the table in celebration, she said- I want to do more Chinese homework! I want to do it every day!

Now I'm not naive enough to think THAT desire will last, but I am hopeful that their progress will lead to more progress which will lead to being able to have conversations in China! My long-term vision is that one day, they will be fluent in Chinese, and they will shock native Chinese speakers, and they will say, thanks Mom, for pushing us learn Chinese as kids.

We'll see, though.