Alexandre, a Kindergartener, has been hearing and speaking both French and English since he was born. Using the “One Parent One Language” approach to teaching children two native languages, Herve has been speaking French (and some Dutch) to the kids and Laura has been speaking English. She asked us to speak Mandarin to the kids and my husband added lessons on writing simple characters with a mao bi (Chinese calligraphy brush).
Alexandre loves the special attention, the novelty of making ink from water and traditional dry ink stick, using a small calligraphy brush, and the fun of seeing the different pictographs and ideographs dry on the page. He can recognize most numbers from one to 10, the word for big, da; and the components of his (and his little brother’s) Chinese names. He can write most of those 14 characters, all of which happen to be “high frequency” words.
Recently, he noticed a Chinese book at our house, opened it up with confidence and looked over the page — from the hundreds of Chinese words, he recognized and picked out the ones he knew. We got him a yellow marker and he happily circled all he could find. At only 5 and 1/2 his eyes are not yet “tracking” (tightly aligned to one line after another) smoothly for English and French (both read left to right, horizontally) or Chinese (usually read top to bottom) so he found characters by random discovery rather than in a sequential linear fashion. However, his fearlessness in approaching the topic and his delight in discovery really amazed me — adults are so hung up about what they can NOT do that I was impressed with (and reminded of) the genius of child learning. They can do something! So they do it with joy!
Susan Olmstead Wang 