SatudayTeenRBC (Age 12-18)

Saturday Teen Discussion Thread

Topic of the Day: A member inquired about recommendations for good audiobooks recently. I told her that my daughter is not into audiobooks (spoiled by stories told by the human audio player, a.k.a. Mom), so I am probably not the best resource in the group. That said, I do believe that high-quality auditory input is likely THE method of overseas Chinese language education with the highest ROI among all – The huge resources over the internet makes the practice virtually free or with little financial costs, and the time commitment is also the smallest because audio inputs can be utilized in fragmented, multi-task fashion when kids are riding the car, doing daily jogging, washing dishes or cooking. The returns for these small investment are incredible – as I mentioned on my last post, kids can acquire Yugan by auditory pathway even before they recognize a particular character, which will make the task of character recognition 2-3 times more efficient down the road and the process of reading much smoother.

While I myself took the most time-consuming road — serving as my daughter’s audio player by making up stories for her every day, I know that members of this group are incredibly resourceful in this front. I am inviting parents to share accessible, attractive, interesting sources of audio materials for teen and tweens with group members. I will start with a few items within my limited knowledge:

1. I have reviewed an awarding-winning Taiwanese book 我的同學是一隻熊 which has a similar feel to the English classics “Charlotte’s Web”. A parent has shared information on audio version of the book in the comment section of my review below:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/ChineseAndEnglish4kids/posts/5360773607480254

2. 親子天下有聲書 App: The above audiobook comes from this subscription service which is widely used by Taiwanese parents for a vast amount of quality audiobooks. I would appreciate inputs from parents who find other excellent audiobooks in this App.

https://storyapp.parenting.com.tw

3. 時間的女兒: A very popular history podcast from Taiwan. Mainly for high intermediate to advanced learners who are interested in history.

I look forward to see everyone’s recommendations.Guest Post for #SaturdayTeenRBC (Age 12-18)

The Road to Independent Reading – Development of Yugan (語感), Part I

In my last post, A Primer on Yǔgǎn, I discussed why recognition of Chinese characters alone does not translate to the ability of independent reading: Chinese characters are similar to compressed zip files, which need to be extracted and decoded after you commit the “file name” to memory. And the unzipping process itself is very tricky – You cannot memorize every single word, phrase and idiom by brute-force recitation. I guarantee you will run out of disk space before long. However, there is no shortcut key for you to batch-extract the files either. So far the best way which educators and linguists can figure out is to learn them by contextualized learning – Characters are not studied in isolation, but in context of the rich tapestry of Chinese expressions.

Contextualized learning can be further divided into two categories: Contextualized reading and real-life immersive experiences, both are indispensable keys to independent reading. Here I want to quickly reiterate that the goal of low-to-mid intermediate-level Chinese can be attained via existing programs such as dual immersion schools or online curriculums, plus a casual Chinese ecosystem. I have covered the topic in my previous post Setting Expectations/goals for Overseas Chinese Education (Part I) and will not repeat myself here.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/ChineseAndEnglish4kids/posts/5124570031100614

For those who are eyeing advanced reading levels, I highly recommend deliberate nurturing of Yugan from a very early stage, as the process is long and challenging.

Extensive, guided, progressive reading is the most important method to foster sophisticated Yugan. A well-designed study plan should include both formalized studies and extensive reading. De-emphasizing either component often results in failures.

For formalized studies of contextualized reading, the biggest no-brainer materials are standardized textbooks. The most canonical ones are Language Arts textbooks for public schools in China or Taiwan — guaranteed learning materials for all Chinese native students by default, selected by national-level experts, painstakingly edited and proofread. Most parents in the group are outsourcing this part of study and many programs come with their own study materials which are perfectly fine.

Paired reading is another essential but often under-utilized component of Yugan acquisition. If I use swimming as a analogy, textbook studies are similar to reading swimming manuals and practicing basic moves in shallow water – Necessary steps to learn how to swim, but kids will never be good in swimming until they jump into the pool. If children want to learn to read, they must read real books, period. However, kids would not have sufficient decoding abilities at the beginning. All RAMs in their little brains are used just keeping up with recognition of individual characters and parents/teachers need to be at their side to assist them to unzip the files, otherwise the micro-processor in their brains will crash. Never say to your kids: “You have learned 1,000 characters so far, why can’t you read on your own?” THEY CAN’T. Yugan develops through the act of reading by actually processing connected Chinese text repeatedly, progressively and extensively. The mechanism is cumulative: every sentence a child successfully decodes reinforces the neural pathways connecting characters to meaning, building the automaticity that eventually becomes genuine linguistic intuition.

The execution of paired reading is simple: Have kids READ ALOUD with parents or tutors, either one-on-one or in a small read-aloud group. Kids should read books at their current or a slightly lower level. I am including a chart in the image section to show the approximate character thresholds needed for independent reading at different levels without zhuyin or pinyin support. (If the kid is reading with zhuyin or pinyin, subtract 300 characters from each item.) The practice of reading-aloud is so important and so under-appreciated that I think I will run a separate post dedicated to the topic.

Another even more overlooked but highly efficient practice is for the parent or tutor to READ TO THE CHILD with books one or two levels above the child’s independent capacity. This is ideally done by a human being who can point to corresponding characters while reading. discuss interesting passages, invite limited participation and observe the kid’s reaction, but for those who find the practice too time-consuming or technically difficult, good audiobooks are workable substitutes. Kids can acquire Yugan by auditory pathway even before they recognize a particular character, which will make the task of character recognition 2-3 times more efficient down the road.

Once kids reach the initial stage of reading picture books, comics or simple bridge books independently, they can start free-form reading in which children read silently on anything that genuinely interests them, followed by discussion with a parent or tutor. Ideally the selection should reflect progressively increasing difficulty, but if imposed progression kills the child’s motivation, then anything they are willing to read is better than nothing. A major pitfall here is that free-form reading is not a substitute for reading aloud, especially at the early stages. I personally pair-read full-length books with my daughter until she read her first few adult novels, and I would recommend that unless your child is one of those hyperlexic anomalies, you should keep on doing pair-reading until he or she is at least capable of reading youth novels independently.

For overseas learners to avoid the serious mismatch between their Chinese abilities and age-appropriate reading materials, children ideally should reach the basic literacy mark of 1,500 characters by age 10-11 at the latest. For kids who are in a dual immersion program or Saturday Chinese School where insufficient numbers of characters are taught, both character recognition and paired reading exercises need to be supplemented in parallel if the final goal is independent reading.

This post is running too long by now, so I will leave the entire topic of quality immersive experiences to the next time. I intend to write an in-depth post on reading aloud sometime in the future, too.

Guest Post for #SaturdayTeenRBC (Age 12-18)

A Primer on Yǔgǎn (語感): Why Can’t My Kid Read Chinese Books While Knowing Over 1,000 Characters?

In my last post Number of Characters Needed for Independent Reading, I made a final point: while character recognition is a necessary requirement for independent reading, it’s not a sufficient condition. An equally important element in Chinese reading is ” Yǔgǎn ” (語感), the intuitive feeling about meaning of phrases and sentences built from individual characters, a crucial component of overall comprehension.

In that post, I loosely translated 語感 into “literary sense” which is not precise enough. The phrase Yǔgǎn in Chinese actually have two-layered meaning. The basic level is the linguistic intuition needed for struggling learners to unfold the complicated, multi-layered meanings behind each individual character, allowing them to connect words naturally. The higher level is the literary sense or the artistic appreciation used by advanced users and professional writers to create beautiful, deeply impactful prose. In this article, I will focus solely on linguistic intuition.

Have you ever wondered why English literacy requires a basic vocabulary of 20,000+ words, while Chinese literacy requires only 2,000+ characters, yet Chinese is universally considered much harder to master? It is because in the operating systems of languages, English words act like individual files which can be simply opened, while Chinese characters act like compressed zip files from which layers of hidden ideas must be extracted.

So what exactly is in these zip files?

1. The Endless Folders (Compounds & Phrases): Each zip file contains countless nested sub-folders including combinations of words, idioms, collocations, and proverbs. For example, anyone can learn the character “一” (one) within 5 seconds, but that’s just the name of the zip file. If you go to a dictionary to “unzip” the file, you will find out that the character can be used as a noun, an adjective, a verb, an adverb, a particle, a conjunction and a numeral-measure word, with over 20 different stand-alone meanings, but the story does not end here — the real killer is the compounds of the character “一”, which can easily exceed 1,000 in a student dictionary and hit the staggering number of 10,000+ in the most comprehensive dictionaries! Worse yet, many of these sub-folders make no sense, and combinations of extremely simple characters such as 一文不名 (literally “one-essay-no-name, meaning: penniless) or 不可一世 (literally “not-okay-one-world, meaning: extremely arrogant) can baffle anyone who has not seen the idioms before.
2. The Unpredictable Plugins: As a child painstakingly extracts these zip files, they will encounter “unpredictable plugins” that stretch across entirely unrelated domains. A child might learn 羅 (luó) as part of the city name “Rome” (羅馬), but that exact same file can suddenly mutate into concrete objects (羅盤/羅網), abstract verbs (網羅/張羅), historical items (羅衣/羅剎), plants (羅勒), idioms (門可羅雀/包羅萬象) , and phonetically translated phrases (羅曼蒂克). Sometimes, a simple character reversal completely rewrites the software code. In the examples above, 網羅 usually means “to recruit/seek out,” while 羅網 means “a trap.” This kind of ubiquitous polysemy elevates the concept of multiple meanings to a terrifying new level for a learner, and I have barely touched upon the 2,000 years’ worth of historical/literary references packed into the language. To make matters even more confusing, the system updates pronunciation rules automatically while the visual data stays exactly the same. For example, in the short sentence 這幾個東西一模一樣,難以一一分辨, the character “一” (one) appear only 4 times, but is pronounced in three different tones! It’s like you are opening files with the same name but keep on seeing different contents.
3. The Hidden Files (System Abbreviations): Chinese does not have spaces between words like English, and this simple omission can pose significant challenge for kids who just step into the realm of reading with the need to mentally find the hidden spaces. Those who manage to pass beyond this stage will soon find themselves facing an even more formidable hurdle: Formal Chinese text inherits a classical tradition where data is deliberately deleted to maintain an elegant, concise tone. When a news headline says ”兇徒前日抵京犯案”, the expanded data is actually ”兇惡之徒前些日子抵達北京犯下案件”, with exactly half of the characters omitted and readers must dig out the “hidden files” from their brain to fill in the blanks themselves, a task which is much more difficult than finding just the spaces.

Now comes the most important takeaway of the whole post – For effective Chinese teaching, character recognition and yǔgǎn (語感) development must be run in parallel, not sequentially, and not even in a “character-recognition-dominant” mode if one’s goal is advanced Chinese proficiency. This is the biggest pitfall of overseas Chinese education. Kids in Taiwan or China are developing their linguistic intuition all the time when they hear the evening news at the dinner table, take science classes in Chinese, read street signs, learn “one idiom a day” from teachers, and watch their favorite TV shows with subtitles. Their brains are constantly auto-unzipping the language, while our overseas kids are doing all of that background processing in English (see photo below). For overseas learners with high aspirations, Chinese yǔgǎn needs to be carefully and deliberately cultured by extensive reading and quality immersive experiences beyond an ecosystem designed for children (such as most dual immersion programs). I can talk about the actual execution in future posts if there are sufficient interests.

SaturdayTeenRBC (Age 12-18)

Saturday Teen Discussion Thread

Topic of the Day: In my last post “Number of Characters Needed for Independent Reading”, I gave the minimal numbers of Chinese characters required for basic literary (1,500) and for independent free-form reading (2,500). However, saying that your kids need to recognize X numbers of characters is one thing, while actually having them recognize these characters is a totally different matter which is easier said than done.

For young children, the first 300-800 Chinese characters are usually not very tough to learn due to a number of factors: Most of the characters are not abstract and some are even pictographs. The number is small enough that the “disk spaces” in the little brains do not get saturated. The characters are generally unique so the confusion factor due to similarities among groups of characters has not set in. Simple materials such as Sagebooks or 四五快讀 can usually suffice. However, as the number of characters recognized increases to approximately 800-1,000, these advantages start to go away while simultaneous retention of old characters and acquiring new characters become a real challenge.

Currently, the classic and most widely used method for Chinese character recognition is 隨文識字 (Contextualized learning of Chinese characters), which is employed by billions of students in China and Taiwan who learn by studying high frequency characters carefully embedded in standardized textbooks (or other reading materials). When this approach is used, both intensive study of deliberately designed texts (to include high frequency characters) and extensive, more informal reading are needed. While repetitive rote memorization of single characters (such as flashcards) often does not work well beyond the first 800-1,000 characters, most students who are not hyperlexic still need supplemental learning methods on top of contextualized learning via reading/photographic memory only. (Those who are not familiar with the fascinating phenomenon of hyperlexia can refer to my previous post:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/ChineseAndEnglish4kids/posts/5225901967634086

) The needs of supplemental methods vary widely by students but may include muscle-memory learning via writing characters (not necessarily writing from memory), various linguistic practices such as filling-in-blanks, making up words or sentences from characters (造詞造句), learning radicals/components, composition, repetitive reading aloud, audiovisual materials, mini projects, literary games or even AI-assisted learning.

Most dual immersion programs and Saturday Chinese schools teach 150-200 characters per year, so kids who do not receive extra instructions will likely hit the “1,000-character-wall” around the time they finish elementary schools. For those parents who have successfully helped your children to learn characters beyond this critical point, what approaches did you use? Are they successful? How receptive are your kids to these methods? Will you do things differently if you need to do it again (such as for another kid)? I myself used a very unique approach of flashcards interwoven with creative story-telling; however, I do not consider this method duplicable by other parents so I won’t elaborate here.

Guest post for #SaturdayTeenRBC (Age 12-18)

Number of Characters Needed for Independent Reading

Many parents consider independent reading of Chinese books and newspaper the “Holy Grail” of overseas Chinese education. And the most basic requirement of Chinese literacy is character recognition. Chinese is not a phonetic language, so students do not have the easy choice of “sounding the words out” when they try to learn how to read English or other Romance languages. In order to understand texts, one must be able to recognize the characters and there is no way to get around this fundamental requirement.

To illustrate the point, let’s look at a passage from a children’s story:

小錫兵與眾不同，他雖然少了一條腿，但志氣可不比別人少。他對舞蹈家的愛情堅定不渝，不因世俗的偏見而改變，如此的勇氣與決心使得他在流浪的過程中無畏無懼，到最後終於回到原點，和舞蹈家一起消失在火爐中。

With a vocabulary of 417, the passage would look like this: ”小■■■■不同，他■■少了一■■，■■■可不比■人少。他■■■家的■情■定不■，不因■■的■見而■■，如此的■■■■心使得他在■■的過■中■■■■，到■後■■回到■■，和■■家一起■■在火■中。”

With a vocabulary of 821: ”小■兵與■不同，他雖然少了一條■，但■氣可不比別人少。他對舞■家的愛情■定不■，不因世俗的■見而改■，如此的■氣與■心使得他在流■的過程中無■無■，到最後終於回到原點，和舞■家一起消失在火■中。”

With a vocabulary of 1267: ”小■兵與眾不同，他雖然少了一條腿，但志氣可不比別人少。他對舞蹈家的愛情堅定不■，不因世俗的偏見而改變，如此的勇氣與決心使得他在流浪的過程中無■無懼，到最後終於回到原點，和舞蹈家一起消失在火爐中。”

So when a kid recognizes fewer than 500 characters, the passage is practically non-comprehensible. With a vocabulary under 1,000 characters, the reading requires so much conjecture and context guessing that it would be very challenging for kids who are not highly talented in languages. To achieve reasonable comprehension, a vocabulary of 1,300-1,500 is usually needed.

One importance concept of Chinese vocabulary is “Text Coverage”, the percentage of text which can be covered by recognition of a certain number of characters: The first 100 “high frequency characters” cover 40% of texts in general adult books, 200 characters cover 50%, 500 – 75%, 800 – 85%, 1000 – 90%, 1500 – 95%, 2000 – 97%, 2500 – 98.5%, 2800 – 99%. It’s why knowing the basic “High Frequency Words” are so important in acquisition of Chinese literacy. The Taiwanese government defines “Literacy” as knowing 1,650 characters. The Chinese government’s definition is 1,500 characters for rural population and 2,000 characters for urban population. Taiwanese elementary school textbooks cover approximately 1,800 characters from 1st to 4th grade and 2,500 characters at the end of 6th grade; however, Taiwanese students recognize far more characters than these textbook numbers: A 2008 study showed that average Taiwanese 4th graders recognize an average of 2,660 characters and 6th graders know 3,340 characters on average (see photo). The Chinese elementary school textbooks cover approximately 1,600 characters in 1st and 2nd grade and 3,000 characters by the end of 6th grade.

In my opinion, for reading without zhuyin/pinyin, average students need to know at least 1,000 characters to read comics, 1,500+ characters to read youth novels, 1,800-2,000 characters to read simple adult novels and 2,500+ to read general adult books and newspapers. The process of character acquisition can be tedious if parents/teachers do not know how to teach creatively and interestingly, but it is an essential component for those who want to carry out the “front loading” strategy. Most dual immersion programs and weekend Chinese schools spread out basic character acquisition over a period of 8-10 years, with 150-200 characters taught per year. Such practices often create a serious mismatch when students attempt to read age-appropriate materials. A frequent outcome is that students lose interests in Chinese reading when the number of characters recognized limit the books they can read at their intellectual levels. Parents who want kids in these programs to have good reading abilities should provide supplemental studies on their own.

A final word of caution is that while character recognition is a necessary requirement for independent reading, it’s not a sufficient condition. An equally important element in Chinese reading is the “literary sense” (語感) which is an intuitive feeling about meaning of phrases and sentences built from individual characters, a crucial component of overall comprehension. Dual immersion programs and weekend Chinese schools provide the environment to build 語感 up to the intermediate level, but not to an advanced level. Literary sense for reading Chinese at the adult level needs to come from extensive reading and other advanced immersive experiences. This is a totally different topic which I can cover in a separate post if there are enough interests.

SaturdayTeenRBC (Age 12-18)

Saturday Teen Discussion Thread

Topic of the Day: One of the concepts I learned from Oliver Tu’s blog is the use of “Open the Gap / Close the Gap” Strategy. He and his wife deliberately prioritized Chinese learning in the early years of their US-born daughters, a practice which resulted in slower English development (“Open the Gap”). From around third grade, they began balancing the two languages, allowing English to catch up over the next 4–5 years through targeted efforts while keeping Chinese strong (“Close the Gap”).

Personally, I agree that if the goal of overseas parents is a high level of Chinese proficiency, the strategy is quite useful. (For US-born kids who have intermediate or lower Chinese levels without advanced reading abilities, the English gap is usually not an issue to them since these kids spend most of their time on English learning.) Both my husband and I are native Chinese speakers living in the US, and we speak exclusively with my daughter Amber in Chinese from birth. She only had a short stint in the local English-speaking preschool when she entered a public kindergarten with English-Spanish dual immersion program, so she had a wide-open gap in English. (As for Spanish, she know absolutely none at that time, but it’s another story). Her first trimester report card showed that she only knew 9 high frequency words in English! Despite her English gap, we still pushed her Chinese learning aggressively with 100% Chinese conversation at home, daily character recognition, reading and writing practices. In the meanwhile, I actively encouraged her to read English books – Thanks to her school which made daily reading with logs a requirement, the task was not difficult. Due to my work schedule, we needed a part-time nanny who came 2-3 afternoons a week and my husband found a bilingual paraeducator in a nearby school (with a rate slightly higher than typical nannies) who could assist Amber in both her English and Spanish homework. I monitored Amber’s progresses in English and gave her assistance by reading along with her as needed. We also signed up her with the summer reading program in our local library every year. She gradually fell in love with English reading and finished the whole set of Harry Potter in 3 weeks during the summer between her 3rd and 4th grades.

However, we still felt the need for more English instructions, as her Lexile level was only hovering around the 50th percentile as the beginning of the 4th grade. We transferred her out of the dual immersion program into a regular public school in 4th grade. It was a very timely move by chance – Covid started in the second half of her 4th grade, which significantly weakened the power of all dual immersion programs. It also gave her an opportunity to read tons of fantasy novels which she was really into at the time. With massive reading, her Lexile level took a major jump from 800’s to 1200’s in 5th grade, but it was not until 8th grade that her Lexile level finally crossed the 90th percentile mark.

Do you have a story of “Opening the Gap/Closing the Gap” also? Please share with other parents if you do. For those without such experiences, you are also welcome to share your personal views on the concept and/or your own story.

SaturdayTeenRBC (Ages 12-18)

Saturday Teen Discussion Thread

Topic of the Day: A reward feedback system, which uses positive reinforcement to encourage desired behaviors and boost motivation, is a very common mechanism in education. It can be used effectively in language learning. Actually, one of the most important reasons that toddlers learn a new language rapidly and efficiently is that they are constantly living in a “natural reward feedback system” – They have to tell adults that they want to eat, drink, get diapers changed or play to get basic needs in life satisfied. Many parents who are raising bilingual children in Chinese and English have deliberately employed some kind of reward feedback system when their kids get older, such as “You can get a small gift if you read X number of Chinese books”, or “You can earn 50 cents if you tell Auntie a story in Chinese”, with varying degree of success.

The execution of a reward feedback system can get tricky as kids turn into tweens and teens, when they start to have their own ideas and trivial gifts can no longer satisfy their appetites. Hopefully by that time, the youngsters have either acquired the habits of speaking and reading Chinese on a routine basis, or better yet, have started to enjoy Chinese so much that Chinese activities become an award itself!

I did use a reward feedback system when my daughter Amber was young. She did not have a weekly allowance. We provided all the necessities in life including adequate recreational needs and healthy snacks, but if she desired extra treats or fun stuffs on her own, she would need to use “points” earned by tasks such as reading books or practicing piano. She has a notebook in which she recorded and balanced points herself. As she was reading Chinese books daily throughout her elementary school years, Chinese reading was a major source of her “income” at the time. We stopped the point system after she was able to earn money on her own at 14. Interestingly, by that time, she’s so much into Chinese that Chinese-related activities have become both her income sources and her rewards. She would earn money by tutoring kids in Mandarin and writing for Chinese newspaper, and then spend it by paying for C-drama channel subscriptions such as愛奇藝 and 騰訊 (among other things). I am so glad that things have come full circle!

For those with teens or tweens at least home, what is your experiences with reward feedback systems in Chinese learning? Did it work? How does the system evolve over time? Do you recommend the reward feedback systems to other parents? What are pitfalls to be aware of? Those without teens or tweens at home can share your own experiences when you were young.

SaturdayTeenRBC (Age 12-18)

Saturday Teen Discussion Thread

Topic of the Day: In last Saturday’s Teen Discussion Thread, we discussed the issue of when and how to “close the gap” in English for overseas bilingual learners. From the comments, I can see that the strategy for “closing the gap” is quite goal-dependent. If parents have set very high goals for both English (98-99 percentile in SAT verbal) and Chinese (C1-C2/ACTFL superior), then a lot of deliberate efforts may be needed to “close the gap”. On the other hand, for lower goals such as English language abilities above average US high school students and low to mid-intermediate Chinese, the standard US public school system plus weekend Chinese schools may suffice.

Overseas parents who enroll their children in Chinese/English dual immersion programs clearly value their kids’ Chinese education. However, depending on individual goals, some may decide to pull the students out of the program at an earlier point so they would have enough time to “close the gap” in English, while others may want to keep their kids in the program for as long as practically possible. Personally, I moved my daughter out of her Spanish/English dual immersion program after 3rd grade to concentrate on English, but Chinese is such a difficult language that more time in immersion may be needed for satisfactory results.

I asked Google AI for an appropriate time for US-born kids to leave a Chinese/English dual immersion program, and AI said that research indicates it takes at least 5 to 7 years of immersion to develop “cognitive academic language proficiency”, and many experts recommend staying through 8th grade for an intermediate level of proficiency, which is the threshold where the language becomes “sticky” and harder to forget.

Parents with kids in the Chinese/English dual immersion programs, at what point do you plan for your children to “graduate” from the program and back to all-English instruction? Parents whose kids are not in these programs can also express their opinions on how many years of dual immersion are optimal for learning of both languages. Again, I think the decisions are highly dependent on your expectations, so please share your considerations in context of your bilingual educational goals, if possible.

SaturdayTeenRBC (Age 12-18)

Saturday Teen Discussion Thread

Topic of the Day: In the last discussion thread two weeks ago, I ask about opinions on Saturday Chinese Schools for teens and tweens. The thread generated a lot of interesting discussion and many parents shared experiences of their own.

The result is a three-way tie: About 1/3 of the commenters said that the overall Saturday Chinese School experiences were worthwhile in which they learned Chinese and enjoyed the social interactions, although nobody reported language attainment beyond an intermediate level. Another 1/3 said that they did not learn or retain much Chinese, but loved the cultural and social aspects. The remaining 1/3 hated the experiences without mentioning any merit.

From reading all the comments, the general consensus appears to be: The forte of weekend Chinese school is culture awareness, including fostering friendship, community ties, cultural knowledge/activities and most importantly, a sense of belonging and identity. As for Chinese learning, the efficacy is quite mediocre, but it can be a low-cost option for parents who prioritize cultural exposure over language attainment.

If a student follows a reasonably good weekend Chinese school curriculum diligently to its end (8-10 years), he or she can usually achieve an intermediate level of proficiency, which is likely the goal for the majority of the parents in the group. If these parents also prefer strongly for kids to have a “Chinese cultural hub” filled with peers of similar backgrounds, cultural activities and social functions, weekend Chinese schools can be a good fit. The financial cost is a particularly attractive factor, as most weekend Chinese schools’ tuition are in the $500-700/year range, so a 8-10 year-long commitment will only cost parents a few thousand dollars.

Some potential downsides are the significant time commitment: Approximately 4 hours of Chinese school (including 1 hour for commute) plus 2 hours of homework a week, 30 weeks a year on top of extra activity hours for 8-12 years can easily add up to 2,000 hours. Also, if parents have a completely “hands-off” approach and allow kids to simply spending a morning in weekend Chinese school while doing homework the night before, the risks of kids either dropping out of the program or remaining totally illiterate at the end of the program are quite high. Children can be particularly resentful about loss of precious weekend hours and traditional teaching methods with tedious rote exercises. Poorly qualified teachers and school administers who are often parent volunteers or low-pay workers can exacerbate the problems significantly.

Fortunately, many weekend Chinese schools have started to see these problems and some are aggressively making changes to adapt to the modern era, especially in areas with large Chinese populations. They introduced novel, interesting teaching methods, qualified teachers and well-organized classes in which students have to take tests to be placed. Some offer tracks particularly designed for non-heritage students. Fun cultural classes/activities, interesting competitions and congenial peers interactions are encouraged which serve as some of the strongest learning motivators, unique to in-person weekend Chinese schools.

I am inviting parents to discuss the following aspects of in-person weekend Chinese schools which can make the experiences truly worthwhile:

1. Any novel or improved approach in teaching methods which can contribute to better efficacy of in-person weekend language schools, either hypothetical or implemented in real life? For example, project-based learning, de-emphasizing of character-copying, incorporation of digital technologies, concurrent reading programs, etc.
2. Interesting cultural activities which can pique students’ interests, either hypothetical or implemented in real life. For example, field trips, well-designed novel competitions, bilingual online book making/publication, learning through digital media, etc.
3. Requirements in teachers’ qualifications and modernization of curriculums: I know some weekend Chinese schools are now requiring all teachers to be either credentialed or having related degrees. Some adapt new curriculum or even design their own curriculum. Anyone with experiences or ideas regarding this front?
4. Programs specifically designed for non-heritage learners and efficacy of these programs.
5. Recommendations of excellent weekend Chinese schools for parents living in your area.
6. The idea of using weekend Chinese school as “cultural supplements” while doing additional language studies – Weekend Chinese schools are time-consuming enough, and the idea of using them as supplements can make the time-commitment humongous. How do parents successfully combine weekend Chinese schools with external resources?

SaturdayTeenRBC (Age 12-18)

Saturday Teen Discussion Thread

Topic of the Day: Until about 15-20 years ago, Weekend Chinese School was THE main method of Chinese learning for overseas students, with dubious effectiveness. Most of the schools were run in a very traditional way of dull textbook-reading and character-writing practices which were sufficient to bore many kids out of their minds. The typical curriculum often spreads out recognition of 1,500-2,500 characters over 8-10 years, so students are not equipped with the abilities of reading Chinese books at a early age, with the end result that most students are never able to read adult books and newspapers in Chinese. Last but not the least, the classes are typically arranged on Saturday mornings, and young children often resent the loss of that golden weekend time slot.

However, a strong positive of weekend Chinese schools is the creation of a semi-immersive environment in which students get to grow up with peers of similar backgrounds and do cultural activities together. Most schools include cultural classes in their curriculum so students get exposed to activities such as Chinese calligraphy, painting, dance, crafts or martial arts. Holiday activities celebrating Chinese New Year and other Chinese festivities abound. All kinds of intramural and intermural Chinese competitions are held. Students and parents know each other well enough to form a tightly-knit community.

It has never occurred to me to send my daughter to Chinese school. The two main reasons are ineffectiveness of the teaching method and my desire to keep the weekend “open” for her personal enjoyment – I managed to schedule zero weekend class or any kind of weekend external coaching/extracurricular activity throughout her elementary school years (although my home teaching of Chinese ran year-round on a non-stop basis). I never thought much about such arrangement, until she entered high school and got to know a handful of Chinese-speaking ABC schoolmates who all went through our local weekend Chinese school. One day she was talking to a Chinese classmate on the phone and all the sudden she asked me: “Mom, why did you never send me to weekend Chinese school? My friend wants to know.”

I started my explanation but she simply handed her phone to me and said, “You explain to her.” Slightly embarrassed, I told the girl that weekend Chinese school’s pace was way too slow comparing to my home curriculum. Her friend seemed satisfied with the answer, but my daughter continued to pursue the topic after she finished talking to her friend by saying: “Mom, why did you not send me? In that case I would have a group of Chinese friends whom I could grow up with!” I looked at her and asked: “If I did that, you would have lost all Saturday mornings for the past 10 years and you would need to get up at 8am every Saturday to go to school to copy Chinese characters. Are you sure that’s what you want?” She thought about it for a few seconds and said “NO!” and it was the end of discussion.

What is your own experiences and/or opinions regarding Saturday Chinese Schools for teens and tweens, either for your kids, yourself as a teenager, or children of relatives/friends? Are these classes effective? Are students happy? Are they making friends? Are they speaking and/or reading Chinese as a result? Did students drop out and why? Let other members know your thoughts!

SaturdayTeenRBC (Age 12-18)

Saturday Teen Discussion Thread

Topic of the Day: One of the greatest advantages of being Chinese-speaking heritage parents in the arena of overseas Chinese education is the ability to speak to the kids in Chinese at home. Many Chinese-speaking parents vowed to take advantage of their conversational abilities when their kids were born, only to find out later that such feat was not as easy as they thought. Parents can speak to little kids in Chinese for everyday needs such as eating, sleeping or playing, but as children enter school, they get influenced easily by the all-English (or other local language) environment and may start to switch to English under peer pressure.

The problem gets trickier as kids turn into tweens and teens. As children mature into young adults, simple daily conversations are no longer sufficient for their lives. Parents cannot just talk to kids about what to eat for dinner or whether they finish their homework. To have meaningful conversation to sustain a good parent-child relationships, family conversations need to include topics such as current/historical events, values/ethics, psychological issues, school academics, finances, arts/sciences, critical analysis (of books read or other subjects) and popular entertainments. If the kids’ Chinese abilities do not grow proportionally with age, they may soon realize that their vocabulary and conversational proficiency do not support adequate expression in life, so they may simply switch to English as the easy way out.

The problems are even tougher for non-Chinese speaking parents. It can be very difficult to find Chinese-speaking peers for their children. Some heritage parents whose Chinese conversational abilities are poor may try to recruit help from relatives such as grandparents, but the kids may or may not have common interests with the elders to have engaging conversations. They may find similar peers in their dual immersion programs and/or weekend Chinese schools, but it is extremely common for these kids to switch to English as soon as they step out of the classrooms.

What is the situation at your home? If you are a Chinese parent with foreign-born teens or tweens at home, do you still speak to them 100% in Chinese? For both heritage and non-heritage parents, do your teens and tweens get chances to speak Chinese routinely outside of your house?

Both my husband and I are native Chinese speakers, so we simply speak to my daughter in Mandarin from birth. She is 15 years old now and still speaks to us 100% in Chinese. I made deliberate efforts to use mature, advanced words and phrases in our conversations starting at a young age, with progressively increased level of difficulty so she could acclimatize gradually to the increasing needs for sophisticated Chinese expressions. We discuss all kinds of topics on our dinner table, and there is a whiteboard in the dining room where characters, phrases and idioms coming up in the conversation can be written out for better comprehension. Interestingly, one of the reasons which she avoids to speak to me in English is because I speak English as a second language with a heavy Taiwanese accent which she’s not used to! She does not attend Chinese schools, and her public high school only has 10% Asian, with a handful of Chinese students. However, she did find 2-3 Chinese classmates who speak Chinese fairly well and use Chinese as “secret language” among themselves. She speaks to native Chinese relatives and friends exclusively in Mandarin, regardless whether she’s in the States or in Taiwan. Occasionally, Chinese guests visiting our house would attempt speaking to her in English, and I have amusingly observed that she would answer them in Chinese! This is opposite to the common scenario that ABC kids would talk back in English when their parents or relatives try to talk to them in Chinese.

SaturdayTeenRBC (Ages 12-18)

Saturday Teen Discussion Thread

Topic of the Day: One principle I always maintain personally is that overseas children need three essential components of Chinese language education to achieve good proficiency: Fundamental language arts study, guided reading and quality immersive experiences. Parents in this group typically strive to provide all three components for their youngsters, but as kids grow older and go into secondary schools, academics and many other activities may take up so much time that some parents start to cut down Chinese studies, especially after the children have achieved an intermediate level of Chinese proficiency roughly equivalent to the Chinese AP/HSK 4 level. Kids at this level with sufficient reading and immersive experiences can usually read advanced bridge books or simple youth novels independently, and some parents may opt to just have the children do some reading and/or immersive activities such as Chinese media or Chinese cultural events while forsaking formal Chinese classes with vocabulary, reading/comprehension, speaking, and writing exercises.

For those who continue to provide their teens and tweens with regular Chinese language arts instructions beyond dual immersion programs or middle/high school Chinese classes, finding suitable teachers or classes may be somewhat challenging, as few of the major online platforms and in-person overseas Chinese schools offer advanced courses beyond HSK 5-6 level, so parents often need to identify and/or create customized lessons for their children. I’m inviting these parents to share their experiences: How do you find teachers, textbooks, teaching materials and study time for your middle and high schoolers? What do their study plans look like? Are they effective and enjoyed by your kids? For those who are not continuing regular Chinese language arts instructions, do you think that these lessons make a difference? Are you concerned about regression of the kids’ Chinese abilities?

As I’ve mentioned in several of my previous posts, my daughter and her study partner do Chinese online study sessions for one hour (with up to several hours’ preparation time) each week throughout junior high school and now into high school years (currently in 10th grade). About half of the these sessions are devoted to fundamental language studies including textbook reading, idiom/classical literature study, oral presentations and writing exercises. Recently the kids even attempted the Chinese language arts section of the Taiwanese high school entrance exams (given after completion of 9th grade in Taiwan). I find these study sessions quite useful and intend to keep them going, hopefully until the end of high school.

Guest post for #SaturdayTeenRBC (Ages 12-18)

The Challenge of Chinese Composition

Learning Chinese composition is often considered to be an especially challenging task in the field of overseas Chinese education. Traditional composition training in Chinese societies typically starts in the lower elementary level, with exercises such as phrase formation 造詞 and sentence construction 造句. Formal writing instructions from middle elementary level include content organization, critical thinking, conventions and essay writing assignments with feedbacks from teachers. The entire process is quite time-consuming, yet most of the skills taught in the Chinese and Western language arts classes are similar. Since there are many transferable writing skills across different languages, I’ve always wondered whether a non-traditional shortcut can be used to pursue Chinese writing proficiency. I did my own experiment by purposefully delaying my daughter’s Chinese composition training until she has achieved a decent level of Chinese literacy AND learned sufficient writing skills in her English language arts classes. Personally, I am satisfied with the results so I am sharing my experience here, which may or may not be duplicable by other overseas parents. Unorthodox educational methods need to be used with caution and tailored to each person’s individual need.

My daughter Chinese was 100% taught at home by myself (while attending California public schools all the way), and I did not use any textbook for the first six years. I taught her 2,500 characters by telling her stories I improvised on the spot, interwoven with flash-card displays of new characters which are worked into the narration. While this unconventional method could be extremely difficult for others to reproduce, another thing I did was to work a large amount of advanced phrases, idiomatic expressions and historical/literary knowledge into the storytelling process, which may be possible for other parents to do without the story improvisation part. As my daughter’s vocabulary expanded and her literacy improved through diligent daily reading of Chinese books, she started to participate in my story-making. Initially she would interject with one-sentence requests, such as “Mom, can you have the cops fight more pirates?” Later, when she sometimes got dissatisfied by a tired mom’s perfunctory response, she would flesh out the storyline herself, like adding a particular fighting scene. I deliberately encouraged her to make up her own stories while correcting/enhancing her language usages along the way. Gradually her sentences grew into paragraphs, which eventually evolve into spontaneous narration of full-fledged mini-stories over five years of our storytelling, during which I never asked her to do any written composition exercise.

Armed with a vocabulary of 2,500+ characters, reading volume of about 4 million characters in Chinese, extensive oral narrative experiences and basic writing training in her English language arts classes, I encouraged her to write up something about her beloved romance novel My Fair Princess 還珠格格 when she was 10. Possibly due to her inexperience, she wrote at a snail pace of a few sentences a day and ended up with a 700-word essay after a month, which was successfully published in the World Journal 世界日報. With the encouragement of the editor, she produced another 1,000-word article in a week to participate in a national writing contest sponsored by the newspaper, and ended up winning a Recognition Award.

She lost interests in Chinese writing after doing those two articles, possibly due to the slow writing speed. I did not force the issue at that time, instead, I concentrated on fundamental language studies, extensive reading and oral presentations during her junior high years, while leaving all the writing training to her English teachers at school. When we returned to Chinese composition in 8th grade, I was pleasantly surprised that she was able to write a 600 to 800-word essay spontaneously in a little more than an hour. So after more than 8 years’ of Chinese studies, we finally started to do very laid-back composition lessons on a routine basis. She and her study partner would write 1-2 articles a month, with assigned topics such as short story/book reviews, social topics based on magazine/newspaper articles, or life experiences. The drafts would be revised during our study sessions which typically involve corrections of wrongly written words, inappropriate word/phrase usage and incorrect punctuations. Her essay structure and contents are generally fine with little need of revision, and I think that credit goes to her English teachers, not me.

One problem I identified with this short-cut approach is lack of training in academic formality and professional tone of Chinese writing. She’s writing mostly what pops into her mind, so the word usage and sentence structure are often a bit too causal. Many teachers and parents would assist children to replace plain phrases with more sophisticated, graceful expressions, but I think that she has a sufficient store of advanced, idiomatic expressions in her brain and she just needs to dig them out to use in the right places. So I set two simple rules recently when she composes: One is for her to use at least 3 four-word idioms and 3 refined phrases in her article (It is okay for her to search the internet or ask AI for synonyms). The other is asking her to cut out extra words and modify colloquial expressions to make the sentences more formal. The trick worked nicely – her writing became tighter with a more sophisticated tone, although she still write in a mixture of colloquial with formal expressions which is fine with me. I am attaching a draft of her most recent article in which she labeled 4-word idioms and advance phrases in different colors, as well as the final version which appeared in the World Journal earlier this month. For those who would like to read a simplified version, here is a link to the newspaper article:

https://www.worldjournal.com/wj/story/121428/9128647?from=wj_catelistnews&zh-cn

SaturdayTeenRBC (Ages 12-18)

Saturday Teen Discussion Thread

Topic of the Day: My 15-year-old daughter watched a large amount of Chinese TV dramas and game shows between ages 10-15, which were quite helpful to her language proficiency. However, as she gets busier and busier in high school, she no longer has enough time for lengthy dramas, and has turned to short videos in Chinese, mostly on Instagram. She would occasionally share some of the videos she enjoys with me. I think a significant number of the videos she watches belong to the realm of wordplay 文字遊戲 which requires certain proficiency level in Chinese, especially with the need to read texts/subtitles rapidly, as it is difficult (sometimes impossible) to understand the content by listening to the audio alone. Also, because most of the videos come from China, she has picked up quite a few simplified characters just by reading the texts. Here is one example which I think is useful for learning idioms:

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Here are two more wordplay videos which require relatively high comprehension level for someone to understand the content in real time upon first viewing:

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However, there are also quite a number of videos which are mainly silly entertainment, full of current web slangs:

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I have never restricted her screen time or viewing selections (and still do not plan to do so now) , but I cannot but notice a number of recent studies indicating negative effects of short videos, including decreased attention span, potential addiction, sleep disturbance, and so on. Do your teens or tweens watch Chinese short videos at home? What do you think about the practice? Do your restrict them? If they do not watch Chinese short videos, will you encourage some videos which may be helpful to their Chinese abilities, such as the ones I linked above? Please share your experiences and opinions.

SaturdayTeenRBC (Ages 12-18)

Saturday Teen Discussion Thread

Topic of the Day: Having your kids speak a second language is something that many parents would like to pursue. However, if you set your goal at teaching a difficult language such as Chinese to a fairly decent level, which entails considerable opportunity cost, you may not get enthusiastic thumb-ups from everyone around you. A spouse who’s not from a Chinese family may not understand why you want to spend so much time to teach kids a language that he or she cannot speak, or would like the kids to devote more time and efforts in other endeavors. In-laws may want you to communicate with your kids in a language which everyone understands in family gatherings. While most of the heritage parents would like to see their kids speak Chinese, many may be satisfied with a mediocre level with everyday conversational and basic reading/writing abilities, so relatives and friends may be puzzled at your huge investments in pursuit of a high proficiency. Some heritage parents who can speak local language fluently may elect not to teach their kids Chinese, either because they would like the children to assimilate into the local culture better, or because they do not see practical use of Chinese in life.

I have seen every kind of reactions in people around me through my daughter’s Chinese journey. I am fortunate to have a husband who is fully supportive of my aggressive teaching at home and is happy to speak to our daughter in Chinese 100% of the time. Chinese relatives are also supportive (evidenced by the avalanche of used Chinese picture books arriving at my house after my daughter was born), but some were incredulous at the beginning. When my brother heard that I intended to teach my American-born daughter to read newspapers and write greeting letters in Chinese myself more than a decade ago, he told me that it was an impossible mission because he has not seen anybody around him succeeding in such an endeavor in his entire life, including himself who had kids years before me. One friend told me that the best achiever she had seen was an ABC who could read comics after 10 years of Chinese school, so my goal might not be realistic. When I set out to try reaching my goal zealously, another Chinese friend told my brother: “I think your sister is possessed with an obsession 走火入魔.” (By the way, her son knows no Chinese by design.)

My brother and friends may be right to some extent since their kids were born in an era when the only available resource was boring Saturday Chinese classes. My daughter was born in 2010, at a time when overseas Chinese education was in transition from an uninspiring traditional mode to a more viable one with amazing technological advancements and favorable public perception in the US. In recent years, I have sensed a very friendly environment with people approving or even envying my daughter’s Chinese abilities. My brother now is a proud uncle who would tell others that his niece’s Chinese is pretty decent. Friends would tell me how their kids feel like foreigners while visiting Taiwan due to inadequate previous exposure to the language and culture, with some regrets of not teaching the kids more Chinese before. Members of the group with children in secondary schools may have also gone through a similar transitional period. What are/were attitudes of relatives and friends about your passion in teaching kids Chinese?

Guest post for #SaturdayTeenRBC (Ages 12-18)

Use of Technologies on Chinese Studies of Overseas Teenagers

On my last post “The Evolution of Overseas Chinese Education for Children”, I discussed how digital technologies have transformed the field of language learning. However, the massive amount of resources may also create confusion for inexperienced parents. The situation is somewhat akin to shopping in a well-stocked supermarket. You see so many things that you don’t know what to buy. The choices can get tougher as kids turn into teenagers with higher Chinese abilities, as the products to acquire become more sophisticated.

One thing parents should keep in mind is that no matter how good the technologies are, the basic principles remain the same. Kids still need the three essential components of language education as they advance: Fundamental language arts study, guided reading and quality immersive experiences. Parents still need to design their roadmap based on each individual kid’s learning style to tailor the shopping list accordingly. I am sharing some of the resources I’ve come across for teens and tweens with intermediate Chinese levels or above. The list is by no mean comprehensive. Those who have other good ideas to share are welcome to chime in.

1. Fundamental language arts study: Structured language studies, typically using professional products such as textbooks teaching vocabulary, grammar and comprehension, with speaking, reading and writing exercises. Most of the major online platforms have advanced courses up to HSK 5-6 level, but few structured overseas programs exist for even higher levels, and parents who would like to outsource fundamental Chinese studies may need to find one-on-one tutors from platforms such as italki, Amazing Talkers or Preply for customized lessons.

For parents who would like to teach kids at home, electronic versions of Chinese secondary school language arts textbooks can be found in this website: https://zxkeben.szxuexiao.com/cz_yuwen.html Taiwanese textbooks are harder to find, but some are available. For example, this is the PDF file of a 7th grade language arts textbook provided by the publisher 翰林, complete with annotations, practice questions and supplemental sections (PC with chrome extension required): chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://website.hle.com.tw/market/jr/教材/教材樣書/翰林國中國文七下課本.pdf

(see photos for sample pages). It is also easy to use AI to generate additional lesson plans, assignments and test questions.

2. Guided, extensive reading: For students who read traditional characters, one of the best resources is Hyread e-book

https://ebook.hyread.com.tw/ for two reasons: First of all, the books in the system include a large number of books and magazines for young readers. Secondly, most Taiwanese libraries and even some US libraries subscribe to the system, so you can read the books for free with an account. And even foreigners can get online accounts from the Taipei Public Library!

Once your child is able to read adult books, the free electronic book selection suddenly expands exponentially. I have rarely spent any money on Chinese books for my daughter since she started to read adult books without zhuyin. My favorite website (outside of Taiwanese libraries which have tons of adult ebooks and magazines) is the 好讀 site which provides a large number of high-quality e-books downloadable in Epub form, but the books are only available in traditional characters. 好讀 now has two sites: The original site at

https://www.haodoo.net/ where most of the books are stored and a second generation site at https://haodoo.org/ for recent additions. For those who read simplified Chinese, a good free book website with even more books than haodoo is 九九藏書網

https://www.99csw.com/book/index.php Registration is not required to read these books online and readers can choose between simplified or traditional characters, but the books are not downloadable. 微信讀書

https://weread.qq.com/ has probably the largest collection of simplified online books in the web, both for free and for sale. Those who like web novels can simply google 網路小說 to access free books which are too numerous to be finished in a lifetime. Similarly, people are interested in ancient literatures can google 古典文學網站 to find countless public domain resources.

3. Quality immersive experiences: This is where new technologies really come into play. So many resources which were not there 15-20 years ago are popping up everywhere to the point one does not know how to choose. Unlimited Chinese audiovisual materials are available via YouTube, Netflix, iQiyi, Ximalaya, Apple Podcast and a myriad of other websites. There are even specialized sites offering advanced materials such as 評書吧

https://www.pingshu8.com/ which tell ancient stories in the traditional format with complex languages. Non-heritage kids who need conversational partners can find them easily on language learning platforms with very affordable rates or even on language exchange platforms for free. Some members in the group run interesting online programs such as Motherly Notes classes and Oliver’s debate classes. With proper monitoring by parents, teens and tweens can do gaming in Chinese such as Minecraft, Black Myth: WuKong or the Three Kingdom games. Online academic or other extracurricular activities abound in Chinese (such as arts or math classes — my daughter tutors math entirely in Chinese for some members’ kids of the group). Those who love to sing can listen to any song they like online, do Chinese karaoke or even make their own music videos using AI. All kids now can easily generate their own AI Chinese/bilingual books, Chinese slide shows or video presentations…. The list is practically endless. Parents just need to be diligent and creative in identifying suitable activities for their children.

Last but not least, one of the most important resources provided by modern technologies is a vast amount of information and advices on overseas Chinese education which can be readily found with Google search or AI. This bilingual group itself is a prime example. Many members of this group are very resourceful and willing to help. When there is a will, there are thousands of ways in the digital world!

SaturdayTeenRBC (Ages 12-18)

Saturday Teen Discussion Thread

Topic of the Day: There are over 360 English-Chinese dual immersion programs in the US now, each with its own curriculum and goal. I’ve always wondered about the level of Chinese which can be attained by graduates from these programs. Recently, Heather Liu told me that her daughter’s dual immersion program teaches 850 characters from K-5. I checked with Google AI which told me that elementary dual immersion students learn 100-150 characters per year, reaching approximately 600-800 characters by the end of 5th grade and students in a middle school program might learn 1,000 to 1,500 characters, depending on the program. These numbers sound relatively low to me because the official definition of “Literacy” by the Taiwanese government is knowing 1,680 characters and by the Chinese government is knowing 1,500-2,000 characters. If the figures given by AI are correct, then most of the dual immersion program graduates can still be considered illiterate by the end of the program, unless parents do extra supplementation to improve students’ Chinese abilities. Worse yet, lack of vocabulary will limit the students’ abilities to read Chinese books, which will further limit their potential to progress in their studies.

For those parents with kids in the English-Chinese dual immersion program, I am curious to know what levels of Chinese these students can attain upon either entrance (K-5 program) or graduation (K-8 program) of junior high school. Can these students express themselves well in Chinese? Are they literate, meaning that they can read common Chinese books or newspapers? If not quite so, can they read easier books without zhuyin/pinyin such as comics or youth novels? Approximately how many characters do they know? Do parents in these programs supplement the kids’ Chinese studies and are their efforts successful? Are there programs beyond junior high schools? Please share your experiences which can be of interests to many of the members in this group.

Guest post for #SaturdayTeenRBC (Ages 12-18)

The Evolution of Overseas Chinese Education for Children

Recently, I asked members of this group in a discussion thread whether they wished to have learned Chinese better when they were young. From the responses, one can see how difficult it was for ABC youth to learn Chinese in the pre-millennium days. Back in those times, the only resource for Chinese learning was weekend Chinese schools specializing in a very traditional teaching method which was boring enough to kill most kids’ interests. The social atmosphere was also unfriendly for Chinese learning, with peer pressures to speak English and general ignorance of the public to Chinese culture. Those were the dark ages when raising a kid in the US to be truly bilingual and bicultural was an extremely challenging task for heritage parents fluent in Chinese, and an almost impossible mission for non-Chinese speakers.

Landscapes for overseas Chinese teaching have changed drastically in the last 15-20 years, as numerous resources became available and Americans developed much better awareness of the Chinese language and culture. For example, roughly 10 Mandarin dual-language programs existed in the US before 2009, and now the number has grown to be over 360. But in my opinion, the most important factor for the change is the “mobile and social media revolution” starting a few years after the new millennium – Facebook launched in 2004, YouTube 2005, Google Translate 2006, iPhone/Kindle 2007, Android IOS 2008, and IG in 2010. All these devices and platforms gathered critical mass rapidly within a decade to provide an unbelievable amount of information and resources – For example, Chinese learning Apps emerged around the time of a major smartphone and App boom, roughly between the early and mid-2010’s (Duolingo was founded in 2011), children’s Chinese e-books also became popular around the same time due to availabilities of Kindle/Android as reading devices, Ximalaya launched in 2013, and this bilingual FB group was created in 2014. I would say that the last generation of the overseas parents who were really struggling due to serious lack of resources were those with kid(s) born before or around 2010 (the year my daughter was born). Since then, new inventions were evolving so rapidly that overseas Chinese education entered a new stage every 3-5 years starting in the early 2010’s.

Of course, the biggest driving force came unexpectedly and ironically in 2020 – the Covid pandemic, which single-handedly made online education a mainstream tool, and forced every student in the US to have a free trial. It is an understatement to say that online language learning exploded in the following few years. And then, Open AI took the center stage in 2022, which is doing even more amazing things, far beyond Google translate, electronic dictionaries, reading pens and all kinds of Chinese learning Apps.

I still remember the beginning of my Chinese journey with my daughter in the early 2010’s, when I was frantically searching, reading and watching everything I could find about overseas Chinese education via Google search and YouTube, the only online resources which I was aware of. Sadly, ignorance was my strength at that time. I had no idea what high frequency words, Sage 500 or bridge books meant. I did not know the importance of reading aloud – Heck, I did not even know that I was supposed to read to her every day! Everything was learned painstakingly and slowly by trial-and-error. Fast forward 10+ years – Now I have an FB account (as a very belated participant), iPhones for everyone in the family, e-book accounts in two Taiwanese libraries and free ChatGPT/Gemini accounts. When my daughter reads a work by some famous Chinese writer, I no longer spend a whole hour Googling and writing out annotation/explanation of all the difficult phrases for her. I simply feed dozens of phrases to AI and I would get them all done under one minute, complete with zhuyin if needed. I even have ChatGPT write supplemental materials for me. The photos below are from our lesson plans of this weekend – a sample passage and annotations from a short story we will be reading (琉璃瓦), with a concise introductory note of the author 張愛玲, all done by AI within a very short frame of time.

To summarize my thoughts and advices:

1. To American-born (or other foreign-born) Chinese parents in this group: IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT that you did not get to learn Chinese well in your younger days. It was simply a nearly impossible task at the time, unless you were the very, very lucky few who possessed an extraordinary language talent and/or very dedicated, resourceful parents.
2. Time is different now. Do not let previous adverse experiences affect your wish and mindset to teach kids Chinese. While the process is still time-consuming and difficult, it is technically so much more doable now than 15-20 years ago, even for parents with poor Chinese abilities or non-heritage parents.
3. Do not be shy to employ new technologies. Simply counting on weekend Chinese schools or even dual immersion programs is often not sufficient to achieve true literacy. While electronic tools and learning from online sources cannot replace caring parents and well-qualified teachers, they can serve as very useful assistive devices of Chinese immersion with significant saving of time, efforts and expenses.
4. The next wave of language learning, the AI-assisted machine learning, is coming now. I anticipate that machine learning will revolutionize language studies in the future.
5. While teaching overseas kids to an intermediate level of Chinese is easier in this era, journey to an advanced level is still mostly sailing on uncharted waters with significant obstacles. Hopefully as more people join the journey, collective experiences and new technologies can add up to make things smoother. This is my purpose of running the Teen Thread. Let’s support each other and keep going.

Guest post for #SaturdayTeenRBC

Setting Expectations/goals for Overseas Chinese Education (Part 2)

This post is a continuation of my last one which outlined the basic goal of overseas Chinese study, the low to mid-intermediate level. Here comes the next goal, the high-intermediate to low-advanced level, which should please many parents in this group, but is at least 2-3 times more difficult to achieve than the first level:

1. Level of proficiency: Listening and speaking abilities to participate effectively in age-appropriate conversations under all circumstances, including social, academic and professional settings. Recognition of at least 2,750 characters which covers 99% of the common Chinese texts. Abilities to read adult books and newspapers independently, demonstrated by reading aloud any lesson (except ancient texts) from Chinese/Taiwanese 7th grade language arts textbooks accurately and fluently without preview. Writing abilities of typing 800-1,000 word essays of various styles in authentic and fluid language.
2. Standardized testing/educational level equivalency: Kids at this level have language proficiency equivalent to elementary school graduates in Taiwan or China, except the skill of handwriting Chinese characters by memory. These kids should be able to pass HSK 6 with some preparation and score a 5 in Chinese AP with minimal preparation. The CEFR equivalency is B2+ to low C1 level.
3. Time, efforts and expenses required: Another 1,000-1,400 hours of dedicated studies on top of the 800-1,200 hours required for intermediate level (totaling approximately 2,200 hours, a figure based on estimate of The U.S. Foreign Service Institute for their English speaking diplomats to achieve general professional proficiency in Chinese, see photo) including learning 3,000+ characters, extensive and progressive guided reading, as well as speech and writing training, plus daily enhanced/advanced immersion experiences such as non-trivial conversations in a wide variety of topics, advanced audiovisual materials, unguided leisure readings, literary games, academic or extracurricular pursuits in Chinese and activities in Chinese societies with significant language components (such as OCAC experiences) for a minimum of 5-6 years. Money spent at this stage is heavily dependent on amount of outsourcing by parents and difficult to estimate, but for those who outsource a lot, one-on-one or group lessons at this level can easily cost $15-20+ per hour.
4. Methods: Very few structured programs exist for overseas kids at this stage. Dual immersion programs and traditional weekend Chinese schools no longer work, period. Although some programs currently in the market seem promising, their track records are all too short to show long-term, proven results.

Enhanced/advanced immersive experiences are the most challenging aspects of the whole scheme. Simply talking to your children in “kitchen Chinese” everyday or plugging them into a dual immersion program may bring them to an intermediate level, but these tricks do NOT work for the goal of an advance level. If you are setting up a “Chinese Language Ecosystem” a la Oliver Tu, the system should to be deliberately designed to offer aggressive and progressive exposure to spoken language beyond mundane daily exchanges and 書面語 which means words/phrases commonly used in written forms but rarely heard in colloquial expressions, from an early stage on. That’s why I said that goal-setting is important. For parents who are truly committed to this goal, I highly recommend them to provide enhanced/advanced immersive experiences from age 5-6, and to make an all-out efforts to “front-load” kids’ Chinese study so an intermediate level can be achieved by age 8-9. Without these efforts, the failure rate to attain the above goal before college can be quite high. Setting up enhanced immersive experiences may not be very costly in terms of dollar signs, but it takes tremendous time, efforts and creativities on the parents’ part. As to the question of “so how exactly can this be done”, it is so complicated that another full length post is warranted and I won’t go into the details here.

5. Benefits:

• Much fewer chances of regression with an advanced proficiency level.

• Abilities to carry out spontaneous, fluid conversation in professional, academic and sophisticated social settings, as well as read independently and freely in Chinese. These abilities will open up doors to a fascinating world of Chinese culture which kids will be willing or even eager to explore due to their ease with the language.

• Kids can be fully functional in a Chinese society including attending universities in China or Taiwan and taking jobs which do not require highly specialized language skills.

• Abilities to have in-depth Chinese communication with family members whose native language is Chinese, which may enhance parent-child relationship during puberty.

• Abilities to study Chinese further in an “auto-pilot mode” with limited guidance from teachers and parents as kids can read and write on their own.

• Kids can confidently claim “Professional working proficiency in Chinese” in speaking, reading and writing in their resumes and applications. They may even get locality-dependent bonus points while seeking employment in certain fields such as medicine, law, counseling, international trade/banking, public services and foreign relations.

6. Disadvantages:

• While achievable by persistent pursuits, this goal is very difficult to reach and considerable time and efforts are required from both parents and children. Financial costs can be quite high for parents who outsource a lot or make frequent trips to Taiwan/China.

• Severe lack of relevant resources, guidance and structured programs, which forces parents to become creative and resourceful themselves in order to tackle the task.

• Loss of significant amount of time which can be used for other endeavors, including thousands of hours which can be spent on advancement of English (or other local languages). While bilingual kids can still learn the local language very well, subtle differences between these kids and their monolingual peers who have spent tons of extra hours in one single language may start to surface at an advanced level.

• Less time and fewer chances to be exposed to or immersed in local culture.

• Possible resistance from kids to aggressive Chinese learning due to various reasons such as peer pressure to speak the local language, strong preference of English (or other local languages) books, reluctance to spend a lot of extra time and obstacles encountered in the process of learning. In some cases, such resistance can be damaging to the parent-child relationships.

My final advice to parents is 非誠勿試 – Do not attempt this goal unless you are very, very sincere. You really need to know what you are going into because the opportunity cost can be very steep, unless you are the luckiest few whose kids possess extraordinary language talents.

SaturdayteenRBC

Saturday Teen Discussion Thread

Topic of the Day: Do you wish you have learned Chinese better when you were a teen or tween? This question is open to all parents with any chance of learning Chinese in their younger days, not just parents with teenagers. The most applicable group is likely the American-born-Chinese (or other foreign-born-Chinese) parents, but 1.5 generation immigrants, non-heritage parents who had some learning opportunities (such as high school Chinese classes) and mixed-race parents are all welcome to share their experiences. With severe lack of resources and shortages of opportunities in the old days, members in this group who are not first generation immigrants likely had few chances to learn Chinese to a highly proficient level. Some might be offered learning chances but passed on them or might not speak to their parents in Chinese. What is your story? Were you offered the options of learning Chinese? Did you resist them or embrace them? How did your decisions and actions affect you later in life? Would you do things differently if you are given the choices again? First generation immigrant parents who have special insights into this topic are also invited to join the discussion.

I am a 1.5 generation immigrant who came to the US with my family in 8th grade. It was a time when Taiwanese students only started to learn English alphabets in the 7th grade, so high school life was a cruel survival game for me. I had no more formal Chinese education since then. However, Chinese literature is the greatest passion in my life, and I managed to read in Chinese almost every day even in the most hectic times, all the way up to now. And that’s why I choose to teach my daughter Chinese 100% by myself even though I have zero background in education – I am passing something which is so dear to my heart to her, in the same way American daddies showing their kids how to play baseball. I have enjoyed the whole experience tremendously.

Guest post for #SaturdayTeenRBC

Setting Expectations/goals for Overseas Chinese Education (Part I)

Setting expectations and goals is one of the most important tasks in overseas Chinese education. Oliver Tu has discussed the huge time commitment for children overseas to attain a goal of high-level Chinese proficiency, and the reasonable alternative of setting a lower goal in a blog entry:

It is not your fault!

But what do those “Goals” mean exactly? Can we quantify the commitments? It is really as much as Oliver estimated (5,000-6,000 hours) for a goal of “working professional proficiency”?

Different people may have different opinions, and I’m giving my own thoughts here. An extremely common goal for many overseas parents is the low to mid-intermediate level, outlined as below:

1. Level of proficiency: Listening and speaking abilities which are comfortably functional in everyday life, without capacity to fully understand or participate in highly sophisticated and complex discussions. Recognition of 1,200-1,800 characters which barely touches the Chinese/Taiwanese governments’ official definition for “literacy” (1,680 for Taiwanese population, 1,500 for Chinese rural population, 2,000 for Chinese urban population). Reading abilities ranging from reading menus/street signs to comics and/or bridge books. Writing abilities of typing/voice inputting 100-250 word essays in very plain, simple language.
2. Standardized testing/educational level equivalency: This part can be quite controversial, as there may be distinct differences between test scores and real-life proficiency. Here is my very rough estimate: Kids at this level have language proficiency approximately equivalent to the end of second grade to somewhere in the first semester of the third grade of native students in Taiwan or China. They should be able to pass HSK 4 with relative ease, and a score of 5 in Chinese AP is achievable with various amounts of additional studies (up to a full-year’s AP class) during high school. The CEFR equivalency is approximately B1-B1+.
3. Time, efforts and expenses required: 800-1,200 hours of dedicated studies including acquisition of vocabulary as well as reading, speech and writing exercises, plus home Chinese ecosystem and/or other immersive experiences (for non-heritage families, these can be dual immersion programs, conversational partners/nannies/au-pairs, afterschool programs or extended stays in Chinese-speaking societies). Money spent is inversely proportional to time of parental teaching, but with careful planning (especially with the help of free programs such as dual immersion public schools), it is possible even for non-heritage families to achieve the goal with a budget under $5,000. The figure will likely be higher if neither parental teaching nor free program is available. It can also be much lower for parents who do not outsource at all (if lost wages from teaching kids are not included).
4. Methods: Intermediate Chinese level for kids without exceptional language aptitude or learning disabilities can be achieved in several different ways :

• Intensive home schooling by parents at 1-2 hours a day year-round, plus strong home Chinese environment, for 2-4 years. A common formula used by many in this group is Sage 500 followed by progressive reading training using picture books and bridge books.

• Daily one-on-one private lessons and/or intensive, structured programs year-round, plus varying degrees of immersive experiences for 3-4 years.

• Dual immersion program for 5-8 years, depending on percentage of Chinese taught of the programs and degree of immersion/supplemental learning outside of school.

• Weekend Chinese schools for 8-10 years plus various immersive experiences. The failure/drop out rates are really high via this route. Very solid teaching, diligent work and consistent efforts are required for success.

• A combination of above methods resulting in 800-1,200 hours of intensive instructions and academic practices, plus sufficient immersive experiences to foster listening and speaking abilities.

5. Benefits:

• Practical, achievable goal which can be reached by all kids without significant learning disabilities, even for non-heritage families. While the price tag for time and money spent is still quite high, it’s within reasonable reach for most families.

• The possibility of rapid “front-loading” the whole plan within a short period of time such that the opportunity cost is minimized and plenty of time can be available for other pursuits. (It took me about 2.5 years of quite focused daily teaching on top of nearly 100% home Chinese environment from birth).

• Kids can be functional in a Chinese society for travelling and daily living activities.

• Kids can have a decent foundation if they decide to pursue Chinese further later in life.

• Kids can safely self-claim “Fluency in Chinese” in their resumes and applications, given that definition of “fluency” varies widely among laymen and can be subjected to many different interpretations.

6. Disadvantages:

• Very real chances of regression, especially if proper maintenance work is not done. It’s not uncommon for kids to regress to an elementary Chinese level.

• Lack of ability to carry out spontaneous, fluid conversation in professional, academic, or sophisticated social settings. Such deficiencies are easily perceived by native speakers within a short period of non-trivial conversations even for kids with perfect accents.

• Lack of true ability to read independently and freely in Chinese, which can limit access to (or willingness to access) culturally relevant materials or activities.

• Lack of abilities to study Chinese in an “auto-pilot mode” due to insufficient proficiency, with need for supervised, guided studies to advance to the next level.

• Inabilities to have in-depth Chinese communication with family members whose native language is Chinese as kids develop into puberty with rapidly expanding knowledge base and scope of life.

After reading the summary, many parents may not feel satisfied and can be eager to set their eyes at the next level. However, due to multiple factors including the tendency for language study to “plateau” after the intermediate level (see photo which uses English as an example), inherent properties of the Chinese written language which pose significant challenges in decoding at an advanced level, dire lack of standardized teaching methods and resources, shortage of peers with similar language abilities and fierce competition from English (or other local language) books, the road to the next goal (high intermediate to low advanced level with professional working proficiency) is much, much more treacherous and time-consuming than the initial goal above. Due to the plateauing effect of language learning beyond the intermediate level, it is quite possible for students to spend a lot of efforts with limited improvement. Parents who are not seriously committed to pay a large opportunity cost may want to consider setting their goals at the low-to-mid intermediate level to avoid such waste of time and money. I will discuss the second end point at my next post.

SaturdayTeenRBC

Saturday Teen Discussion Thread

Topic of the day: The road of Chinese learning for children overseas is long, winding and difficult. And every other parent is asking the million-dollar-question: “How do I keep my kids interested and engaged in learning Chinese?”

It’s not uncommon for kids to dread classes and studies, especially for a very complicated language filled with weird characters which do not seem to make sense to their developing brains. Little kids may be coaxed into voluntary learning by doing games, story time, role playing, media viewing, music making, etc., but things usually get much tougher as they get old enough to realize that they are spending their previous leisure time on something that other kids do not have to grind through. And the situation often got worse after parents overcame the humongous hurdle of equipping their kids with basic vocabulary and reading ability, because it was also the time kids acquired similar abilities in English (or other local languages) and the battle of Chinese against English books could be an absolute uphill or even insuperable one. All parents in the group with older kids (not elementary school kids please) who have gone through these phases are invited to share your experiences: Did you encounter a period of time during which your kids seem to lose interests in learning Chinese? What was the resistance you met? How did you meet the challenge and what was the outcome? Those who have not seen such moments are invited to tell others how you avoided the pitfall to maintain interests in Chinese learning. Finally, those who seem to be “stuck” with your middle or high schoolers right now, please tell others about your predicament. I will try my best to give my opinions and hopefully other admins/members will also chip in.

Now a little bit of bragging time here: I guess I am the fortunate one since I never have to force my daughter to learn Chinese. I do not recall any fight or tears shed over her need to speak Chinese 100% at home, do Chinese activities (including writing characters!), read Chinese books or have online study sessions. I think one of the keys here is that I teach her Chinese all by myself without any outsourcing, so I DO TAKE “NO” FOR AN ANSWER and can adapt to her requests (or whims?) at any time. If she glanced over a Chinese book I gave her, heard my introduction of the storyline and said that she was not interested, I would simply switch to another one. When she said she did not want to do Chinese debate (something I really hoped her to do), I would just say okay because there were tons of other fun Chinese activities around. Those who have read my posts so far know that I have enough tricks and creative ideas to keep Chinese learning relevant and fun with all kind of real-life applications so she never seems to get bored. I’ll continue to share them as long as there are enough interests.

Guest post for #SaturdayTeen RBC

Learning Chinese through reading on-screen subtitles

Can your kids learn Chinese reading from real-time subtitles on videos?

It depends.

Some kids are “reading/writing learners” with a high affinity for written materials. These are the ones who would benefit the most from subtitled videos. A small percentage of these kids are so hyperlexic that they read everything and anything which comes within sights. I have seen extreme real-life examples such as kids who learned to read Chinese books simply by watching TV programs with subtitles. I have also seen youngsters who picked up more than one foreign languages just by “shadowing” TV dialogues, which means simultaneously reading subtitles and sounding out the sentences with the actors. But these are the rare exceptions, not the rules. Most reading/writing learners can gain significant enhancement of their Chinese reading abilities from watching subtitled programs, but the experiences cannot entirely replace learning via traditional reading materials.

Some kids are audio or visual learners. When they watch a video, their attentions are mostly focused on the actions and dialogues. Their eyes barely fall on the subtitles. Also, the better their listening ability is, the less attention would be paid to the texts on screen. Subtitles are not very helpful under these circumstances.

One way to get around this pitfall is to have kids watching videos in a language which they cannot comprehend, so they would have no choice other than looking at the subtitles. I have successfully used the technique on my daughter when she was 10 years old. It was at the beginning of the pandemic, when almost no recreational activity was available except audiovisual materials. I would like to find something to watch which could further her Chinese abilities, but I knew that she’s a visual learner who seldom put her eyes on subtitles when she watched Chinese videos in the past. My selection at the time was Nodame Cantabile (交響情人夢), a 11-episode Japanese mini-TV series made in 2006 which my husband and I really loved. The DVD I had was dubbed in Japanese with Chinese subtitles.

I told my daughter who was almost bored to tears by the confinement at that time:

“Do you like to watch a very enjoyable TV series?”

“Of course!” She jumped with excitement.

“But there is a catch,” I said: “This is a Japanese show, so you will have to read the Chinese subtitle to understand it!”

“Oh then… No thank you. I don’t want to watch it any more.”

However, I was so confident at the additive potential of the show that I told her: “Let’s make a deal. You only have to watch the show for 10 minutes. If you are still not interested after 10 minutes, I’ll simply find you something else to watch. Okay?”

I was not exaggerating — It took only 10 minutes for her to continue gluing to the TV, and after the first episode, she was absolutely hooked to the point that I had to make an effort to pull her away from the screen every day. The show centered on a group of aspiring young musicians in a Japanese Music Conservatory. The school’s crown prince, an arrogant but extremely handsome and talented young conductor from a wealthy music family, fell for a charming, sweet student who was both a piano genius and a scatterbrain with almost no practical life skills. It is adapted from a manga series and the slightly goofy storyline is filled with so much humor, warmth, passion (for music) and comradeship that it can be enjoyed by everyone in the family, regardless of age. The show is also an excellent primer in classical music – Famous works such as Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, Mozart’s Symphony No. 31, Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1, Brahms’s Symphony No. 1, Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, performed by professional symphony orchestras, were interwoven seamlessly into the storyline to come up with many memorable, moving scenes combining classical music performance with emotional elements of the plot. Many fans admitted that their initial interests in classical music stemmed from the show.

The series was so successful that several sequels including two additional TV drama episodes, a two-part grand finale TV movie and an anime series were made. The original series appears to be currently available in Netflix with traditional Chinese caption as one of the options (see Photo, I have not tried to watch the program in Netflix myself). The sequels and anime series are much harder to find.

Other than Nodame Cantabile, my daughter also watched the Japanese movie Wood Job! and the anime series Run with the Wind after she read these two books (which were reviewed in one of my previous posts). While she enjoyed these experiences greatly, after she finished watching Nodame Cantabile she told me that she was not really reading the subtitles over the first 1+ hour – She was such as visual learner that she relied mostly on watching the actions to follow the plot. She did not start to read subtitles seriously until somewhere in the second episode, when she could no longer keep up with the more and more complicated storyline and additional characters. Well, that’s what you end up when you have a visual learner at home….

Guest post for #SaturdayTeenRBC

In-Person Tutoring in Taiwan: Our Experiences

This summer, my 15-year-old daughter’s spent 3.5 weeks in Taiwan mostly by herself. Prior to leaving the States, she expressed her wish to try some in-person tutoring sessions in Taiwan. She has extensive experiences taking online foreign language lessons (other than Chinese), but has not really used tutors for core school subjects such as English, math or sciences before, so I arranged a couple of trial lessons for her. For parents who are taking kids to Taiwan for extended vacations or the OCAC program, this may be an interesting activity to try, with the potential of developing into long-term online relationships.

There are many Taiwanese commercial platforms which would match students with tutors after some basic screening, but I chose to use free resources to hand-pick tutors. I mainly utilized the following two FB groups where both teachers seeking students and students seeking teachers can post without cost:

家教網

https://www.facebook.com/groups/628916884757960

臺北市家教網

https://www.facebook.com/groups/2032416707052727

Since these are free platforms, information, credentials and resumes are NOT verified. While most of the posts are genuine, users must exercise judgment and caution to avoid exaggerated/false advertisements or even downright scams. It is very important to take everything with a grain of salt: Do not open unknown links from any self-proclaimed “teacher”. Do not give away private information to someone unknown. Ideally, meet with the teacher in a public place for trial lesson prior to trusting the teacher completely.

Most of the tutors posting for jobs are elite college students in Taiwan with top college entrance exam scores who offer academic tutoring in core subjects. However, many variations exist: There are students with special achievements such as math/science Olympiad winners, science fair winners, writing contest awardees, competition-winning pianists/violinists, sport coaches, international students teaching their home languages, and professional tutors (usually with higher fees). Service offers vary from nanny type role (陪玩), homework help (陪讀) to very serious test preps. Patents can either scan/search the ads to find a good fit or post on their own. Sample ads seeking for elementary school Chinese tutors are included in the photos below.

Interested parties usually contact each other via Messenger privately to see if they are good fits for each other, to negotiate salaries and to schedule trial lessons. Asking prices by tutors vary with qualification and experiences. A very rough reference range for in-person tutoring by college students is $12-17/hr for elementary schoolers, $15-23/hr for middle schoolers and $20-30+/hr for high schoolers (payable in Taiwanese dollars which I convert to USD here). Some tutors, especially the inexperienced ones, are willing to offer discounted or even free trial lessons. Tutors are often willing to go to students’ houses. For teenage students like my daughter, lessons can be conducted in local cafes such as Louisa 露易莎 or Starbucks. Interestingly, Taiwanese tutors do not give much discount (possibly 5-15%) for online lessons, but if there are two kids of similar ages or needs, many tutors may be willing to teach two kids at a rate which is only slightly higher than the one-on-one rate.

Let me share one of my personal experiences here. My daughter said that she would like to do a quick review of the AP Pre-Calculus class which she just finished, and have some previews of Calculus for next semester, so I found two tutors who have taken AP calculus or IB math in international high school programs in Taiwan and are heading for universities in North America. I told the tutors that they can conduct their lessons entirely in Mandarin except for mathematical terminologies. My daughter went on trial lessons with both teachers and decided that she liked one of them a lot, so she continued to have weekly lessons with her while she was in Taiwan. She even had a few online lessons with her after she came back to the States. She eventually finished her Pre-Cal review and previewed differential section of calculus with a total of 9 hour-long lessons. For face-to-face lessons in Taiwan, she simply gave the tutor cash at the time of the lesson. For online lessons, we have Taiwanese relatives help us to transfer tuition into the tutor’s bank account. My daughter communicated with her tutor via Line in Chinese. A sample of the teacher’s Line messages is included in a photo below.

There is a more direct way to seek for college student tutors if you happen to live close to a university while visiting Taiwan — Simply drop by the Departmental Office 系辧公室 of the major for which you are looking for a tutor and ask the office staff for assistance. Don’t doubt: Taiwan is such a friendly place that you won’t get responses such as “what are you doing here” or “hey you don’t have an appointment”. You will be greeted with enthusiasm and provided with useful helps. I know because we’ve done it before: My daughter was in a Spanish-English dual immersion program from K to Grade 3. During that time, we pulled her out of school every year for 1-1.5 months to attend elementary schools in Taiwan (it was the pre-OCAC program days), but her dual immersion school still required her to do homework during her absence. Neither my husband nor I knew Spanish, therefore, we needed a tutor to help her with the school assignment. We lived in 淡水 back then, so my husband took her to the Office of Spanish Department at 淡江大學 and told the staff there that we were looking for a tutor for beginning Spanish (with my girl smiling at them at the same time – She was really cute at that age) so please recommend your best students to us. Well, we got totally free referrals right on the spot – initially a college senior with top grade and a year’s overseas exchange experience in Spain, gradually advancing to a star graduate student and finally an university lecturer from Panama in subsequent years, all at very reasonable rates. Everyone was willing to come to the house due to proximity of locality. The trick will work even better if you live close to one of the several Normal Universities 師範大學 in Taiwan which dedicates to training future teachers in all kinds of subjects.

SaturdayTeenRBC

Saturday Teen Discussion Thread

Topic of the Day: If you ask me: How can one be successful in an overseas Chinese-learning journey? I will say: 1. Set your goal, 2. Plan according to the goal, 3. Be persistent. That’s all.

Okay, this is a bit too simplistic, but goal-setting really is the first important step in helping your children to become bilingual in Chinese and English. Your goal dictates your plan, determines how much time/efforts you will likely spend, and helps you to proceed realistically. I have seen parents who set an initial goal which was too lofty and ended up either giving up or modifying the goal significantly. I have also seen parents who started with a realistic goal and later were pleasantly surprised that their kids reached the goal faster than expected. Of course these goals are not unnegotiable and can be modified along the way. Please share your initial goal when you first embarked on the long Chinese journey with your kids who are now in junior high or high schools: What were your expectations when they were young? Did you reach your goal? If the answer is yes, when and how did you reach the goal? Where did you go after you got there? And if the answer is no, did you lower your expectation or modify your plan? Those whose kids are younger but feel that they have reached their initial goals are also invited to share their experiences.

My original goal for my daughter’s Chinese proficiency was for her to be able to read Chinese newspapers and type (not handwrite) simple greeting letters with ease. I reached my goal when she was 11, when she finished reading The Legends of the Condor Heroes by Jing Yong (射鵰英雄傳) over her summer vacation and won a Recognition Award in a national Chinese writing contest sponsored by the World Journal (世界日報). I got there by talking to her exclusively in Chinese from birth as well as teaching her character recognition and Chinese reading daily for six years. (Surprisingly, I did not teach her how to write essays.) After I reached my initial goal, I figured that since I still had some time to use and she was still willing to learn Chinese, I would just continue to teach her. She has been doing weekly study sessions with her study partner since then and the saga is still going on…

Guest post for #SaturdayTeenRBC

What can your teenagers do for Chinese outside of classroom (7) ? – Semi-independent vacation in Chinese societies: The Recap

In my last post of the “What can teenagers do for Chinese outside of classroom” series, I talked about my 15-year-old daughter’s plan to spend 3.5 weeks in Taiwan mostly by herself:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/ChineseAndEnglish4kids/permalink/5007591826131769

Now she’s back (for a while) from her Grand Adventure which she enjoyed tremendously. Here is a recap of her activities in Taiwan:

1. The overnight trips: She went with her dad and/or other relatives on two overnight trips. The planning was handled by the adults and she just tagged along to have fun. One was an overnight Yilan 宜蘭 trip to visit local natural/historical sites and farms including 宜蘭磚窯, 北后寺, 香格里拉休閒農場, 福山植物園, 三星休閒農場 (where visitors can harvest scallions in the field and make scallion pancakes/breads by themselves, see Photo). Another was a 3-day, 2-night trip with her dad which centered around a visit to Xinyi Elementary 信義國小, a remote school in Nantou 南投 where she volunteered to teach English for a small NGO. Prior and after the school visit, they visited Taichung 臺中市, Chiayi 嘉義市 and Alishan National Forest Recreational Area 阿里山.
2. Day trips with senior relatives/friends: For these trips, she contacted local relative and friends to work out sightseeing plans together. The planning was mostly led by the senior relatives/friends with some inputs from her. She got to visit 野柳, 陽明山, 北投地熱谷, 平溪 (放天燈), 九份, 十分, 猴硐貓村, 永安漁港, 桃園蓮花節, 大稻埕 on multiple trips. Many are famous tourist attractions such as Yehliu Geopark, Jiufen and Yangmingshan National Park, but some of her most memorable experiences actually came from lesser known activities such as riding giant water lily in Taoyan’s Lotus Festival (See Photo), playing with cute cats roaming about the Houtong Cat Village or making traditional indigo-dyeing roses in Dihua Street (See Photo).
3. Day trips with junior relatives/friends: She planned several excursions herself to either host friends visiting Taiwan from the USA or have fun with her younger Taiwanese cousin. These urban adventures in Taipei often ended in her newly-discovered, favorite night market 饒河夜市, where she fell in love with sweet potato balls 地瓜球 and mung bean smoothie 綠豆沙. Once she took her US friend to hike 象山步道 in the afternoon and took panoramic pictures with Taipei 101 at sunset, an experience which even I did not have before (See Photo).
4. Free solo time: This is the self-proclaimed highlight of her trip — to roam all over Taipei via Metro by herself for a teenager’s shopping spree. The prime location is the Metro system around the Taipei Main Station including the extensive underground shopping streets 臺北地下街, 西門 (西門町), 東門 (永康街). Her favorite shops include 寶雅, 誠品書店, 小熊媽媽手工店, 墊腳石圖書文化廣場 and Uniqlo. She claimed that she got so much exercise walking around that she did not have to sign up with a dance studio as she originally planned!
5. Foods, foods everywhere: Taiwan is a foodie’s paradise, especially for someone from California where restaurant dining is starting to feel like a luxury. My daughter sampled beef soup noodles (which she loves) all over Taiwan. She ate tons of fresh fruits daily. She liked Din Tai Fung 鼎泰豐 where she could visit for a fraction of the cost and waiting time comparing to their eateries in the US. She asked me about 芋泥鴨 a few months back and I told her: “This dish is so complicated that none of the Chinese restaurants in Southern California offers it, so please eat it when you are in Taiwan!” and she did (See Photo). She also tried some fun stuff such as flambé ice cream torched by a fire-breathing dinosaur 恐龍噴火冰淇淋 and cheese-flavored gelato. The cost of foods on her spending log was so low that I stared at the numbers with jealousy!
6. Academic time: I arranged for 10+ hours of local face-to-face tutoring for her in math and science, as well as a 3-hour SAT English group class trial. She also continued to provide online tutoring for her own students while in Taiwan. All these learning and teaching sessions are run entirely in Chinese. I can write a post specifically about the Taiwanese tutoring scene if there are enough interests.

After she came back to the States, I asked her to name the favorite thing of the trip. She said without a second’s hesitation: “THE FREEDOM!” I can felt the palpable excitement and thrilling sense of independence of a young girl from her beaming face with glowing eyes. Frankly, it was totally different from the bored look I saw when I took her to the National Palace Museum 故宮博物院 in Taipei a few years back. Some of the things she treated herself in Taiwan probably would not spontaneously come to my mind in a lifetime – Getting a manicure with fancy nail painting, playing a drumming game with her cousin for 2 hours in an arcade, ice skating in the Taipei Arena 小巨蛋, visiting a pop-up store for the popular Chinese TV drama 難哄…. The enthusiastic tone and radiant expression when she described these activities almost moved me to tears by thinking: Nowadays parents are so often obsessed with kids’ “education” and “achievements” that we try really hard to make everything “relevant” and “competitive”, but as youth is so precious, why can’t we just let go occasionally for teenagers to really enjoy themselves to their hearts’ content? I probably should be appreciative that she’s willing to do all these things with real people in life rather than hiding into the virtual world (and in Chinese, too)!

Guest post for #SaturdayTeenRBC

Saturday Teen Discussion Thread

Calling parents of teenagers — please share anything which has to do with your teens’ Chinese journey! Those who do not have teenager at home but feel that they can contribute meaningfully to “Topic of the Day” are also welcome to comment.

Topic of the Day: Learning traditional Chinese arts and cultural crafts can enhance overseas Chinese language studies significantly. On top of acquiring new talents/skills, these pursuits also allow students to have a deeper understanding of Chinese culture, and the Chinese language is often utilized in one way or another in the process of learning. Most of the weekend Chinese schools in the US offer “Cultural Classes” such as calligraphy or Chinese dance, and dual immersion schools typically integrate some Chinese cultural activities or skills in their curriculum, so young overseas learners are often exposed to various forms of Chinese arts. However, continual pursuits of traditional Chinese talents and skills are less common in secondary schools, due to the time and efforts required. Do your kids still pursue Chinese cultural activities such as Chinese calligraphy, brush painting, Chinese instruments (Guzheng, Erhu, Pipa), Wushu/Kung Fu/Tai-Chi, Chinese Go, Beijing Opera (or Cantonese/Taiwanese opera), Chinese handcrafts or Chinese dances in middle and high schools? How much time and efforts are involved? What benefits do they get from these practices? Pictures and videos are welcome!

Our family is extremely lacking in this area. Since my daughter’s Chinese is exclusively taught by me, she missed out all opportunities of Chinese cultural activities/classes offered by US Chinese schools. One of our Chinese neighbors gave my husband and me free Tai-Chi lessons for a while, but my daughter was not interested in slow-motion exercises (just like any kid, I suppose). She did attend week-long overnight Chinese cultural camps ran by the Southern California Council of Chinese Schools in two consecutive summers between her second and fourth grades, during which she got brief exposures of various Chinese art forms, such as traditional Chinese dance, Chinese calligraphy, Chinese yoyo (diabolo/扯鈴), Chinese knots (中國結), etc., but she did not continue to pursue any of them. The only thing I enjoy myself and has taught her informally throughout the years is Chinese cooking. She cooked Chinese dishes such as Mapo Tufu 麻婆豆腐, Chinese-style oxtail stew 中式燉牛尾, cabbage with Sakura shrimps 櫻花蝦高麗菜 and made pastry/desserts such as Chinese steamed bun 饅頭, rice dumplings in red bean soup 紅豆湯圓 with me when she was in elementary school. Nowadays she would make herself Chinese dumplings or Chinese noodle soups when she feels like it from time to time (she cooks many of her own meals) – At least she needs to read the recipes in Chinese!

SaturdayteenRBC

Saturday Teen Discussion Thread

Calling parents of teenagers — please share anything which has to do with your teens’ Chinese journey! Those who do not have teenager at home but feel that they can contribute meaningfully to “Topic of the Day” are also welcome to comment.

Topic of the Day: Keeping up with Chinese becomes more difficult as overseas kids turn into teenagers for a variety of reasons. They are more occupied by school works and other activities. Many may find books in English (or other languages) more appealing than Chinese books. Some may have troubles keeping up with their Chinese reading abilities. Do your children still read Chinese books as they enter middle and high schools? If the answer is yes, how old are your kids and what books are they reading? Do they read these books out of their own free will, or only as assignments by teachers and/or parents? If the answer is no, why do they stop?

My 15-year-old daughter and her study partner of the same age have been reading few full-length books for their weekly study sessions due to their busy high school schedules. Over their 9th grade period, we did a few novelettes including 禁門（瓊瑤）, 棋王（阿城）, 呆虎傳（司馬中原）, but they were mostly reading non-fictional articles from periodicals like 天下雜誌 or chapters of non-fiction books, covering a variety of topics such as modern technologies, lifestyle, health and foods. They also read a few books on Chinese history from the 阿亮老師趣說中國歷史 series by 莊典亮. They did read a small number of Chinese fictions out of their own interests. The girl was reading web romances from China such as 別為我動心（翹搖）, and the boy read mysteries such as 隱蔽嫌疑人（陳浩基）.

saturdayteenrbc

Saturday Teen Discussion Thread

Calling parents of teenagers — please share anything which has to do with your teens’ Chinese journey! Those who do not have teenager at home but feel that they can contribute meaningfully to “Topic of the Day” are also welcome to comment.

Topic of the Day: A Taiwanese mom asked me recently how I taught my daughter Chinese typing. Just like many Taiwanese heritage kids who were born and raised in the US, our children learned traditional characters and zhuyin without knowing pinyin. This created a problem when they needed to type in Chinese, because they must either get familiarized with the zhuyin keyboard, or learn how to convert zhuyin to pinyin.

I told her that I considered zhuyin-to-pinyin conversion easier to learn than touch-typing in a zhuyin keyboard for my daughter. Students in Taiwan typically learn Chinese typing using the zhuyin method because they may not be very proficient in English typing, but for American-born Chinese kids who can type in English easily, it only take a very short time for them to learn zhuyin-to-pinyin conversion, and then they can type in an English keyboard using pinyin input. I made my own conversion table from internet sources, and was able to teach my daughter the whole table in about a week with only 10-15 minutes of instructions at dinner table each day. After she learned the basic principles, I asked her to start texting and composing in Chinese with pinyin input whenever possible. While she was a little bit reluctant at the beginning, she quickly realized how easy it was to type pinyin in Chinese and adopted the method effortlessly. I have shared my personal conversion table in a Chinese blog article before:

https://doctork.pixnet.net/blog/post/405250327

What was your experience when your kids who only knew zhuyin needed to learn Chinese typing? Did they learned zhuyin keyboarding, zhuyin-to-pinyin conversion, or just figured out how to type Chinese by themselves?

Guest post for #SaturdayTeenRBC

Opportunity costs of overseas Chinese education for teenagers

Opportunity cost, in economics, refers to the potential benefits that an individual, investor, or business misses out on when choosing one alternative over another. All forms of bilingual and multilingual education incur opportunity costs, but the price tag is especially high for overseas Chinese education, because Chinese is one of the most difficult languages to learn. Many parents who teach their kids Chinese in a non-Chinese society would give up, phase out or significantly cut down Chinese education as their kids turn into teens. The number one reason is most likely the child’s unwillingness to continue, and the second most common reason is often the high opportunity cost.

Here are some of the opportunity costs which I can think of for overseas parents with teenagers learning Chinese:

1. The students’ time and efforts: Teenagers nowadays seem to be three times busier than my young and innocent time. Everybody is so busy taking advanced courses, playing sports, learning musical instruments, doing STEM competitions or writing contests, participating in speech/debates, studying for the SAT, volunteering, acquiring leadership positions…. Where is the time for Chinese?
2. The parents’ time, efforts and financial cost: Aquiring high-level Chinese abilities is an extremely time-consuming endeavor. Even achieving native elementary school proficiency level can easily take up thousands of hours. And kids do not learn Chinese by osmosis, especially reading the writing. Considerable time, efforts and money need to be spent by the parents. Also, resources and educational options became more and more scarce after intermediate-high levels which can be difficult to find.
3. Cognitive load: Nothing is free in this world. Efforts show. Commitment pays off. If someone spends a significant portion of his/her brain power and time in learning another language, less resources will be delegated to cognitive performances in other areas. This is especially true to the area of proficiency/expertise of English (or other local languages). The common belief is correct: Children who are bilingual or multilingual often do not have trouble becoming fluent in their first language, but as Oliver Tu has suggested, extra efforts may need to be spent to “close the gap” as these students may lag behind in the early phase of learning. And even if the “gap” is seemingly closed, as a student’s first language ability reaches a high level, subtle differences between really good students who spend all the time in one language only vs. those who spend only part of the time in that language may begin to surface.
4. Missed opportunities: This point is closely tied to #1 above. Time and efforts spent by the teens on Chinese learning can be used to develop other valuable skills to fulfill certain personal goals such as career exploration and college admission. While Chinese-inclusive bilingual/multilingual abilities can possibly enhance career prospects, such advantage is not evident in every field and is likely on the decline for all career paths given advancement of AI language technologies and significantly increased English proficiency among young professionals from Taiwan, China and other Chinese societies.
5. Parent-child relationship: In some cases, children may become quite resistant to Chinese learning when they reach a certain age. If parents continue to force the issue at that point, their actions may have a detrimental effect on the parent-child relationship. This can be especially challenging during the already difficult teenager stage. Of course, there are also kids who really enjoy Chinese learning and love to interact with their parents in Chinese. Under the circumstances, Chinese learning becomes a powerful bonding tool, so this one is not necessarily an opportunity cost in all cases.

Have I paid my dues by persistently having my daughter learning Chinese all the way into high school (and still ongoing)? Definitely. Fortunately, she enjoys Chinese so much to the point that I do not see any negative effect on our relationship – Actually, I believe that Chinese learning fosters our relationship a lot. However, I have seen and felt everything else: Time which could be spending elsewhere, tremendous efforts putting into Chinese education, the pressure on cognitive load, fewer chances to explore other possibilities…. But is it worthwhile? My answer is still a resounding yes. The precious moments I spent with my daughter doing Chinese, the heritage bonds and the cultural identity I gave her are things which I would not trade for anything else in the world. But it’s me only. Other people can certainly have their own thoughts.

Guest post for #SaturdayTeenRBC

What can your teenagers do for Chinese outside of classroom (5) ? — Chinese Media for Youth

Many parents in this group express the desire to get their kids to a sufficiently advanced Chinese level by early adolescence, with the reason that children become so busy after a certain age that they won’t have enough time for consistent, high-quality Chinese study. However, there is another reason that people often overlook, which is cultural exploration. If a child can reach the proficiency level of an average native elementary school graduate, he or she will enter a stage in which there is no struggle to understand or express things in Chinese. As the usage of any language becomes innate, intuitive and effortless, a whole new world of fascinating cultural experiences (especially pop culture) and opportunities will open up which he or she would be willing or even eager to explore. Recently, my 15-year-old daughter shared her “Chinese Media List” with me and my jaw dropped — I had no idea that she has been “chasing” so many lengthy Chinese TV series on her own for the past five years, from age 10 all the way to 15!

Her interests seem to fall within a few specific genres: The Chinese fantasy (仙俠) with heavy mythological and some martial-arts components; costume/period drama with purely fictional backdrop (the only drama with a true historical background on her list is 長歌行), and of course all kinds of romances. I’m sharing her list here with my own categorization, so parents can get a sense of what teenage girls growing up in the US might enjoy nowadays. These are 100% of her own selections since I did not even realize she was watching these shows, most of which I have not heard of before. (As to those parents with boys – Sorry, I don’t have a boy so I won’t have a list for you guys.)

1. Fantasy: 與君初相識, 恰似故人歸 (The Blue Whisper), 護心 (Back from the Brink) ,永夜星河 (Love Game in Eastern Fantasy).
2. Costume Drama: 將軍家的小娘子 (The General’s Lady), 長歌行 (The Long Ballad), 且試天下 (Who Rules The World), 惜花芷 (Blossoms in Adversity), 雙世寵妃 (The Eternal Love ).
3. Teen Romance: 上游 (A River Runs Through It), 流星花園 (Meteor Garden), 偷偷藏不住 (Hidden Love), 當我飛奔向你 (When I Fly Towards You).
4. Urban Romance: 難哄 (The First Frost), 別對我動心 (Everyone Loves Me), 程序員那麼可愛 (Cute Programmer), 以愛為營 (Only for Love).
5. Sport Romance: 你微笑時很美 (Falling Into Your Smile), 噓, 國王在冬眠 (Ski Into Love), 甜蜜暴擊 (Sweet Combat).

She usually watches them while crocheting, her favorite pastime. While these shows can be time-consuming to chase, they are not totally without educational or psychological values. Here are some of the benefits which I can think of (as an afterthought, of course):

1. She got interested enough in some of the romances to read the original novels. Most of these series are based on Chinese web novels and she asked me to purchase some of them for her. On one of our Chinese study sessions, I had her do a slide presentation on the web novel 別對我動心 (which totaled about 300k characters) and she came up with a charming mini-project featuring photos from the TV drama. I’m including the title slide in the photo section below.
2. Watching TV dramas is helpful to oral communication skills. During our conversations which are always in Chinese, I would sometimes notice my daughter using fairly sophisticated phrases or expressions which I did not recall teaching her. I was assuming that these may come from the Chinese books I gave her to read, but I might have given myself too much credit – She told me that she learned a lot of these expressions from the TV series she watched!
3. I also see media-sharing as a potential method of cultivating relationship between Generation Z (and probably Alpha) teenagers and their parents. My daughter and I have been sharing online Chinese video shorts with each other occasionally for the past few years and had a lot of fun. Recently my daughter started to press me to watch The Long Ballad, one of her favorite shows. In her words: “Mom, don’t you always want to have a good parent-child relationship with me? Well, we can talk about these dramas which I love and we will have really good communication!” So I was just coaxed into watching the first episode and was amazed at how enthusiastic when she was talking to me about the show – Definitely much more animated than when I asked her about her school work! As a feel-good ending, I am including an absolutely adorable Chinese video clip she shared with me on Mother’s Day. Although the holiday has past, I think the little clip will still bring smiles to many moms’ faces:

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Guest post for #SaturdayTeenRBC

Chinese Book Clubs for Teens and Tweens: Youth Novel and Adult Books (2)

In my last article posted on 1/18, I have discussed initial steps to set up a book club for oversea kids who can read Chinese youth novels and adult books, including identification of study partners, book selection and book sharing. In this post, I’ll follow up with my personal experiences on conducting actual discussion sessions for my 15-year-old daughter and her study partner (a Canadian-born boy of the same age) over the past four years. The children read the books and complete assigned tasks prior to our hour-long discussion sessions, co-hosted by myself and the boy’s father who are both active participants in the discussions. Formats and modules we’ve tried include the following:

1. Plot narration: The kids take turns to summarize the storyline of the book, which takes anywhere between 20-30 minutes. I try to select books of medium length (between 80k to 150k characters) and divide longer books into two sessions, so the plots would not get too complicated to remember. This practice can ensure the kids really understand what they read. When we read Detective Galileo（神探伽利略）, a mystery series by the Japanese author Keigo Higashino（東野圭吾）in which the super sleuth is a physics professor, it took us some work to make sense out of the physics-based tricks. In one short story with multiple twists, the kids even had trouble figuring out “who murdered who?” initially, but these made very fun discussion sessions.
2. Built-in discussion questions: This is usually not an option for adult books, but some advanced bridge books and youth novels come with discussion questions at the end. I have written about one such series in the past: Books in The Children’s Classics（兒童古典文學）by 莊典亮 have a list of discussion questions which we used. A sample page is shown in Photo #1.
3. Student-led discussion questions: This is our most used module. Each kid comes up with three discussion questions after reading a book. They take turns to ask the partner their questions, followed by the questioner providing his/her own answer. These questions must be open-ended without definite answers so a meaningful discussion can be carried out. When we discussed “Who Can Hear the Humpback Whales Sing?”（張文亮：有誰聽到座頭鯨在唱歌） , a book featuring true stories of marine biologists devoted to ocean conservation, the kids came up with questions such as “How did the attitude of fishermen change on sustainable catch practices promoted by Johan Hjort during the First World War?”, “Can these oceanographers earn their own livelihoods by studying marine creatures?”, “If you were stationed in a no-man’s island during the war like William Dawbin, will you be observing humpback whales like him, or will you be doing something else instead?” This practice often made the kids think seriously about the content of the books.
4. Custom-designed discussion questions: When we read the 4-volume, 1-million character martial arts classic The Legends of the Condor Heroes（射鵰英雄傳）, the story is too lengthy and complicated for the kids to narrate plot or design three questions with adequate breadth, so the parents simply came up with discussion questions for the children. Some of the questions are shown in Photo #2. The hero in the story was born and raised in Mongolia with Chinese heritage, so when we discussed his painful decision as Genghis Khan forced him to lead the Mongolian army to invade China, I drew parallels between the protagonist and the kids themselves who were born in the US/Canada with Taiwanese parents by asking them who would they support if the two countries were to go into war. We ended up with a quite thought-provoking discussion.
5. Factual questions: This format is mainly for knowledge-based non-fiction books. The focus is information acquisition, not literary analysis, so I would compile a list of factual questions for discussion. When the kids read the Chinese translation of “Why We Sleep”（爲什麽要睡覺）by Matthew Walker, they were given very specific questions such as “What is melatonin? Is it more effective in treating insomnia or jet lag? Why?”, “What are the two stages of sleep based on scientific studies? Which stage include the slow-wave sleep?” These sessions tend to be more boring since they are closer to quiz reviews than discussion sessions.
6. Shortlists: This format is for books with a large number of specific terminologies to explore. When the kids read Chinese translation of the German youth novel on personal finance “A Dog Called Money”（小狗錢錢）, I made up a list of financial terms featured in the story (mutual funds, stock trend chart, shareholder meeting, floating rate, rule of 72, inflation, etc.) for them to take turns to explain, followed by discussions of relevant concepts. When they read the Chinese history book series 阿亮老師趣說中國歴史, the kids were simply given historical names and events to explain. A sample list made by me is shows in Photo #3.

Hosting these book clubs are time/energy-consuming, but they are also rewarding and fun. If there is sufficient interest, I can also go over some book club activities which I’ve read about but have not tried personally. If you have any experience of your own, please share with the group!

Guest Post for #SaturdayTeenRBC

What can your teenagers do for Chinese outside of classroom (4) ? – How about teaching Indigenous Taiwanese kids in a remote mountain village?

My daughter joined My Giraffe Organization by serendipity. It’s a small, very low-key, US-based non-profit organization which provides online, one-on-one or one-on-two English classes to 5th and 6th grade students in a mountainous town in Nantou, Taiwan. The public Xinyi Elementary School 信義國小, officially designated as a “Very Remote School” by the government, has fewer than 10 students in each grade, with a large percentage of disadvantaged, aboriginal kids. The volunteer tutors (mostly US high school students with some Chinese speaking ability) use English as much as possible in these weekly, hour-long classes to provide an immersive experience, but occasional Chinese instruction is still needed, as they are teaching elementary school students with very limited English proficiency. Last year, they encountered a student whose English was so poor that her final exam grade was at the barely passing mark of 60/100. Initially, the team tried to maintain enough English instructions by pairing her with the best student in the class in a one-on-two instruction mode, but the trick did not work. The whole fall semester passed and she still got a minimal 60 at the final exam. Worse yet, even the good student’s progress was slowed down. It became apparent that this student needed instructions almost exclusively in Chinese; however, even though all the volunteer tutors attended weekend Chinese schools and could employ some Chinese in classroom as needed, none was comfortable with all-Chinese teaching for an entire hour. My brother served as a volunteer course monitor for the organization. He knew that my daughter has experiences tutoring students in both English and Chinese, so he asked her whether she would tackle the task. She became the youngest volunteer in the group as an 8th grader to teach the student using mostly Chinese. After a semester’s tutoring, the student achieved a 75/100 score on her English final exam! It is a very satisfying volunteer experience with years of Chinese learning paying off.

The serendipity did not end there. Late in the spring, the organization announced that it would host its first-ever on-site summer camp for the school so the tutors can meet their own students in person. Online volunteer tutors were invited to join the week-long project as youth counselors with all expenses paid except airfares to Taiwan. It’s an immersive experiences both ways – The kids got an immersive summer camp in which a lot of instructions were carried out in English, and the youth counselors got to interact with the students, local volunteers, residents and school staff in Chinese. My daughter and her fellow counselors had so much fun that everyone returned this year again as online tutors, including one who has entered college. And the students loved the camp so much that some showed up at 7am for the 8:30-3pm camp. My daughter made a video for the camp which I’m attaching here.

The NGO is 100% privately run with no governmental association. It is so small that its website has not been updated for a long time, with very little useful information:

https://www.mygiraffe.org/.

My daughter now serves as the Volunteer Coordinator for the organization, so if anyone is interested in volunteering, leave a private message and I’ll have her answer your questions.

Volunteer opportunities for My Giraffe Organization:

1. Online student tutors: Students 8th grade and up, including college students. Native level English proficiency and basic conversational ability in Mandarin Chinese (listening and some everyday conversation) are required. Chinese reading and writing abilities are NOT required. Chinese/Taiwanese heritage is not required. Instructional materials and teaching training are provided. Commitment is about 1.5 hour per week during regular semesters, on Sunday evenings sometime between 5-7:30pm, Pacific Standard Time. Volunteer hour certificates are provided and the organization also sponsors The President’s Volunteer Service Award for those who have accumulated sufficient hours.
2. Bilingual educators: Educators fluent in Chinese and English to assist in personalized curriculum/instructional material designing and classroom help. Educational experiences required but do not necessarily need to be in the field of language or bilingual education.
3. Media assistance: Website update and social media publicity. Students and adults are both welcome.
4. Adult course assistants: Assist in monitoring the course-in-progress. Solve on-the-spot technical issues for tutors and students. Occasional substitute teaching or even substitute hosting teaching sessions (only if the volunteer feels comfortable with the tasks). Volunteers need to be bilingual in English and Mandarin Chinese. Experiences with group Google Meet helpful but not required.

me

Guest post for #SaturdayTeenRBC

In Memory of Chiung Yao (瓊瑤), the Queen of Chinese Romance Novels

Chiung Yao (瓊瑤), the iconic writer called by BBC as “arguably the world’s most popular Chinese language romance novelist”, died in an apparent suicide on Wednesday (12/4/2024) at age 86.

In a brilliant career spanning more than half a century, Chiung Yao’s romance novels dominated the reading list of Chinese youngsters for several decades, from the mid-1960’s to late 1990’s. Many immigrant parents from Chinese societies in this group have probably read her books or at least heard of them. The popularity of movies and TV shows – based on her books and co-produced with her husband – was even more phenomenal. Her most successful TV series, My Fair Princess (還珠格格), went viral among Asian viewers around the globe, achieving an unprecedented TV viewer rating of 65% in China in 1999.

Chiung Yao’s romance books are melodramatic and passionate. While the plots of her books are somewhat formulaic, she is definitely one of the most captivating storytellers I have ever come across. Her books can be extremely addictive, especially to teenage girls. These qualities, coupled with her beautifully crafted, slightly formal narration, woven with aptly quoted idioms, classical poems and ancient texts, make her books attractive options for teen Chinese learners with a reading level of HSK 5/6 or higher (recognition of 2,000+ characters, with at least a native 5th grader literacy). For one, Oliver Tu has documented his daughters’ reading of Chiung Yao novels as teenage girls for their Chinese studies.

I do know parents who adamantly vow against these books for their children, in fear of Chiung Yao’s “Love Conquers All” viewpoints in which “immoral” issues such as extra-marital affair or avenging lover were glorified. However, as an author born in the 1930’s China, her values are actually quite traditional – akin to Victorian morality – and there is no explicit sexual scene in any of her books. As someone who has read every single one of her 60 novels, I would say that although a high percentage of her works (approximately 80-90%) may be somewhat over-passionate for the younger minds, there are several books with appropriate, enjoyable contents for readers aged 10 and above. You just need to know which ones to choose. My personal recommendations would include人在天涯, 在水一方, 青青河邊草, 還珠格格 (volumes 1 and 2) and白狐 (ranked in order of content appropriateness and reading difficulty level, starting with the most accessible one).

Most of Chiuang Yao’s novels are available as free online books. The ads-free Haodoo (好讀) website alone carries 45 out of her sixty novels which are in traditional characters and downloadable.

https://www.haodoo.net/?M=hd&P=romance

For those who would like to read her novels in simplified characters, this website has a large collection but the books can only be read online and the site has some ads:

https://s.bailushuyuan.org/%E7%90%BC%E7%91%B6

Kids whose reading levels are still not up there may try her TV series還珠格格, which can be found readily on YouTube.

Her books hold a very special place in our personal Chinese journey. I taught my US-born daughter Chinese reading all by myself. In her third grade summer, I introduced her to Harry Potter in English. Not too surprisingly, she got immediately hooked and zipped through the whole set in three weeks, followed by a reading frenzy of fantasy novels in English. Also not too surprisingly, she became less and less willing to read Chinese books. Although she was capable of reading youth novels without zhuyin at the time, she showed little interests in all the advanced bridge books and youth novels written by Chinese authors which I bought for her. Realizing that I am losing the battle against Harry Potter, Percy Jackson and all kinds of dragons, I decided to use the one secret weapon I had in hand.

I downloaded Chiuang Yao’s 在水一方from the haodoo.net website, and told her that we would start reading the book together. For every two pages which I read out loud to her, she only needed to read one page to me. She accepted the offer somewhat reluctantly in the beginning, but by the time we made to the second half of the book, she had become so addicted that she was begging me to keep on going every night to the point that I needed to force her to go to sleep. After we were done with the book, we moved to人在天涯, with her reading a higher percentage of the content, and then gradually branched out to books by other authors. She ended up independently reading her first adult novel (not by Chiuang Yao) shortly before she turned 10, and half a year later, I handed her the most famous work by Chiuang Yao, 還珠格格. The story of Harry Potter repeated itself in Chinese — She plunged into a reading spree and finished the 3-volume, 11-book series in 3 weeks! We have never looked back in our Chinese journey since then.