Situation #2.5: We require Chinese to be spoken at home, but our child is reluctant to do so.Reality: At times, you may become discouraged when your child is reluctant to use the home language. Other pressures outside the home, such as that a teacher or a relative may say the child is not competent in English, or within the home, such as that the child is not living up to your expectation of competency in Chinese, may add to your doubts toward the benefits of Chinese learning. You may even be tempted to discontinue using Chinese at home with him altogether.

Research shows that continuing to speak to the child in Chinese would give the child at least a passive knowledge of the language, which may well be reactivated eventually. While it is advisable for you to persist in speaking Chinese to him, there may be special factors why your child is reluctant to use the home language. It is better to proceed carefully with an awareness of your child’s individual personality, while showing understanding and good humor. It is far worse to end up frustrating the child, demean the use of English, and indirectly place an adverse effect on his speaking Chinese. You may continue to offer him every opportunity available to use the home language and to help him express thoughts that are difficult for him in vocabulary and language forms. Expect a learning period. If you do require the rule of speaking Chinese at home, explain the reason you are doing so with compassion. Make it a family mission for everyone, especially if there are siblings. Listen attentively to his point of view, but be firm of your decision. This will most likely ensure a positive note on such action.

Family involvement is crucial to your child’s progress. Your viewpoint toward Chinese conveys the priority your child would have for the language. The learning of Chinese should not need to be pressured. Contrary to the common belief, it can be natural and fun. You can use both English and Chinese with your child interchangeably, emphasizing neither, allowing the child to regard both languages as workable communication means used by the family. Or you can make a choice of speaking Chinese solely based on your family situation. Remember that it is the way of life in most of the rest of the world to have more than one language. There are very few countries where people speak only one language.

Situation #2.4: My child used to speak often in Chinese to me, but the older she grows, the less she speaks.Reality: First, it is likely and logical that she does so. The vocabulary and sentence structure she knows in Chinese may not be sophisticated enough to express the knowledge she wants to convey at her age range. A seven-year-old girl who wants to tell her mother about volcano eruption she learned from reading an English book may have a difficult time expressing the same thought in Chinese if it is not well developed. Even if she is competent in the vocabulary, she may be delayed or interrupted a bit too often by the adult in order to express her thoughts fully and seamlessly, which is desirous at her age. Hence, it is very important to avoid situations where she is corrected too much to the point of embarrassment or discouragement, or where she is punished for making mistakes, or where she is placed in a position of comparison with others in the competence of the language. You may want to take it easy overall, but be consistent and firm about your mission, with or without your child’s commitment, depending on her age and personality.

Also, you might need to be more aware of a constant correction-making on your part when she speaks Chinese. Making mistakes is, in fact, an essential part of the learning process. It is a sign to you that your child is indeed making effort to test out the different rules that Chinese has.

Instead of focusing on the details of the Chinese language, she should at the same time be involved in learning relevant age-appropriate topics and sentence structures in the language. This can be anything that interests her: learning how to do origami, playing a sports game, or discussing current events. She can learn the content using Chinese and hearing Chinese from you or significant others. This is the most meaningful and effective way to develop her linguistic ability. Even the written part can be learned this way as you incorporate the different facets such as strokes, sentence construction and composition into playing such as games and story writing. This approach can bring the language more alive and more connected to her life.