Our friend Tu Ming previously attended a lecture on bilingual education organized by Keystone International School in Beijing, which she brought to share. Her experience after listening to it is that Chinese parents take their children, talk well, and use the Chinese that they think are the most liked, the best, the most understanding, and the most beautiful, and do not mix with foreign languages that they are not good at.
Text | Painted names
Bilingual education is currently popular in the market, people are more worried that learning two languages at the same time, will it lead to information confusion, will it affect children's thinking and learning? The more exposed you are to a particular language, the faster you can learn a language? Does bilingual education lead to problems with children's cultural identity? Parents know foreign languages, is it best to speak foreign languages to their children at home?
It seems that it is necessary to prescribe a Chinese medicine formula that cures all diseases in order to answer these questions, but this is obviously a flicker, such as the flicker of a fake bag. This article is just about one perspective, just for practical discussion.
If we put vocabulary in a universal position first, that is, the learning of any language is based on a rich vocabulary, such as building a house, you have to have bricks (or other things like sand, pebbles), and then how to build? What kind of house to build?
Ms. Zhou Huiqing, who has worked in California Public Schools for 25 years, believes that bilingual learning is to learn language through subject content, second, to learn language in relevant cultural contexts, third, to balance discipline and cognition, fourth, to promote cognitive development, and fifth, to develop critical thinking skills.
In situational learning, the child will ask the teacher, if it were you, what would you say? In the relevant situation, after the children have reached a certain level of cognition and know how to compare, they will find that their words are not up to their expectations. Professor Zhang Zhimei of San Jose State University mentioned a phenomenon that often occurs in immersive teaching: in a contextualized environment, language is not instilled in children, but the environment increases children's requirements for language and enhances their cognitive needs.
Since it is the environment that raises children's language requirements, is the mother tongue the first to have the advantage of improvement? There was a time when I was in the circle of scholars, who often got together to break their hearts for China's economic development, in order to show that they had read the works of economists such as Adam Smith and Friedman, but also to appear foreign, Chinese scholars in the expression of their hearts, Cold Buding will always emerge a few words of foreign English, this Chinese-British mixed fashion style, soon flowed into most of China's families, especially in the third-tier cities or above.
But Professor Zhang Zhimei suggested that parents take their children, use the language that parents themselves feel like most, the best at, the most understanding, and the most aesthetic, do not mix with the language that is not good at it, her meaning is vulgar translation, that is, to speak well, first speak the mother tongue well, and eat thoroughly. Therefore, at home, I no longer speak Hunan Changde English to my children, and his father is also much more restrained.
Professor Zhang Zhimei took a school in California as an example, the same group of American children of different skin colors who just entered the school entered a different classroom each time they attended class, learning English in the first classroom, Learning Chinese Cantonese in the second classroom, Learning French in the third classroom, and Learning Mandarin Chinese in the fourth classroom. The teachers in each classroom teach in their native language, and the content is common sense of life. Two years later, children are already able to communicate on the playground in the foreign language they learned, which is social language. After 5 to 8 years, the children have the initial mastery of the academic language. Please note that the first two years are social language, this social language is the basis for building a house, and when laying the foundation, it is the language of life, what language is most likely to blurt out, of course, is the mother tongue.
Professor Zhang Zhimei said that in the immersive bilingual teaching program in Northern California, when children learn geography in the fourth grade, they use Chinese to cut in, and do not use English to teach. She explained that California's geographical environment is very superior, and children can let their parents take them to play outdoors during the holidays, or they can look up the Internet and read pictures. Integrating foreign languages into subject learning helps students learn two languages at the same time, which not only increases vocabulary, but also greatly improves their expression skills.
There are more and more indications that children's learning is not isolated, but a family, a learning family, which can ensure that children can follow up the learning of a second language while deeply understanding the way of mother tongue. How can a family support children to develop bilingual, bicultural abilities? Zhang Zhimei said frankly: In bilingual and bicultural education, whether it is children, teachers, parents, they are facing the challenge of constantly learning new knowledge, so they need good mental habits to persevere.
She shared the 16 Habits of Mind proposed by Arthur Costa, emeritus professor at California State University, and bena Kallick, a private consultant, which are: persistence, empathy, reflection, questioning and asking questions, clear and accurate thinking and communication, creating, imagining, innovating, willing to take risks and bearing consequences, thinking together, controlling impulses, thinking flexibly, striving for precision, applying old knowledge to new situations. Gather information through a variety of senses, maintain curiosity and admiration, have a sense of humor, and open your heart to continuous learning.
▲ 16 mental habits
Before the child reaches the first grade, it is best for parents to be able to lead the child to read for at least 1,000 hours. Reading here doesn't just mean reading books, but includes reading works of art, museums, and the world around us. That is, the situation that language learning requires, my dear, have you done it? Anyway, in terms of mother tongue, I almost did it.
The theory that advocates that children start bilingual learning from primary school believes that children who master bilingualism are more flexible and sober, can see problems from different perspectives, have better communication skills than their peers, have higher reading skills when they grow up, and are more tolerant of people with different behaviors and cultural backgrounds.
The counter-theory is that very few people know two languages and are equally proficient in both languages; that people who are truly bilingual acquire two or more languages in childhood and speak purely without accent; that all bilinguals have a multicultural background; that switching between different languages is an inertia of those who are bilingual; that bilinguals are good at both translation and interpretation; and that bilingual education delays a child's language acquisition and hinders the development of language ability.
Zhang Zhimei, who supports and is committed to bilingual education, pointed out that there is a misconception that people think that learning a foreign language too early will affect the mastery of the mother tongue, which is not the case. Ask a five- or six-year-old, will an apple grow on the nose? People with a single language will think the problem is silly, but children who have learned more than two languages can look at the problem in different dimensions.
Of course, families that have not yet entered bilingual learning, don't worry, there is a Chinese medicine formula that says: everyone can become a bilingual person at any time of life, childhood, adolescence, or adulthood. There is no age cap on acquiring a new language ability and using multiple languages later in life. Even not knowing pronunciation skills doesn't limit your fluency in a new language.
Malcolm McKenzie, principal of Beijing Keystone International School, who served as principal of a famous private high school in one of the "Eight Schools Alliance" in the United States for 6 years, wants to put the ideas and experiences formed in his more than 20 years of principal career in Europe and the United States into China's educational practice. He believes that multilingual learning is conducive to the cultivation of multi-dimensional thinking. Immersive language programs are best for children to learn a language.
Malcolm said: "We should stick to the fine tradition of questioning, criticizing and creating, and if our students are prepared to explore the unknown, the best and most rigorous colleges in the world will open their doors to such children."
In Malcolm's view, "world school" has a double meaning: on the one hand, it learns from the world, and on the other hand, it learns for the world. The former is that the school guides students to learn the essence of different traditional educations around the world, and the latter is that the school consciously creates various educational opportunities for students, cultivates their international feelings, and allows them to go out and apply the knowledge and skills they have learned to the world.
Malcolm said that Chinese education often carries the expectations of Guangzong Yaozu, compared with the practice of American parents, he hopes that Chinese parents will learn to let go, let their children control the steering wheel, so that students can have a relaxed growth space, they can explore, explore their own interests.
Zhang Zhimei advocates giving children plenty of play and rest time, so that children can precipitate the knowledge they have learned through play, do not fill the children's daily time, children learn very full, do not lose at the starting line, but may lose at the end.
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