Jiu Feng: Talking about the story of Chinese learning Chinese

Jiu Feng: Talking about the story of Chinese learning Chinese When I first arrived in Phoenix, the scale of Chinese education in Phoenix was still relatively small. At that time, Hope Chinese School (formerly known as Tempe Chinese Language School...

When I first arrived in Phoenix, the scale of Chinese education in Phoenix was still relatively small. At that time, Hope Chinese School (formerly known as Tempe Chinese School) and Modern Chinese School had only 200 students combined. At that time, on the one hand, the scale of the Chinese community was not so large, and on the other hand, there were many families who did not attach importance to their children's Chinese education. Therefore, in addition to being an active parent when my children attended Chinese schools, I also wrote two articles calling on the Chinese to pay attention to the Chinese education of the next generation. In particular, "Overseas Chinese Education Should Cherish the Rare Bilingual Education Environment" was circulated on the Internet for a while.

This article really helped once it was published. Some friends around me originally thought that since we were not planning to return to China, what would we do to learn Chinese? If we want our children to have a happy childhood and do not force them to study, they would naturally not go to Chinese schools. Later, under my influence, everyone insisted on sending their children to a Chinese school even though they lived far away from the Chinese school. I was very pleased and happy to have more Chinese children inheriting Chinese civilization. Inadvertently, more than ten years have passed, and each of the two Chinese schools, Modern Times and Hope, has a scale of nearly a thousand students, giving people a sense that Chinese culture is endless.

But I met a friend the previous Saturday and I asked if I didn’t go to Chinese school today? She said she would not go early, and none of our families would go. It's not enough to talk about speculation. Why don't you go? It doesn't seem to be my business. The saying "talking without speculation" comes from a joke. Some overseas Chinese consider it fashionable to scold China. They especially like to dig up negative domestic news on the Internet as a topic for entertainment and entertainment. Every time friends get together, they compete to see who scolds China the most. So a friend asked a relatively typical question (because this question is very representative of the situation and the person, so it was included in my article). The problem is that China's economy is prosperous, but China has no human rights; Mexico's economy is depressed and drugs are rampant, but Mexico is a democratic country and Mexico has human rights. If you were asked to choose to immigrate, would you choose China or Mexico?

With this foreshadowing, everyone should understand that since they have chosen to go to Mexico, there is no need to go to a Chinese school. Logically speaking, whether others can attend Chinese schools has nothing to do with me, but this matter is still representative in the Chinese community, especially since I still regard them as friends, and I feel sorry for the children to miss this stage, so I always want to write something to let them understand some truths.

Some of the students I have taught come from companies that do business with China, some are planning to travel to China for business, and some are married to Chinese wives. But the students who caught my attention the most are the students who are Chinese themselves.

Chinese students account for about 1/3 of all students. Most of their parents are Cantonese-speaking seniors. Their children can understand a little bit of Cantonese at most, but not Mandarin at all. One of them only knew his Chinese name and was a doctor working at the Mayo Clinic. He was very busy at work, and he suddenly decided to pick up the language of his ancestors. The only difference between doctors was money and time. Because he was so busy with work, at the end of the semester, he gave up and found an interface that stopped working. There is also an overseas Chinese from Malaysia who not only came here by himself but also brought his white wife to study with him. There was a shipping customs agency that sent four employees, including one Chinese and one Japanese, because it had too much Chinese business.

It is difficult for adults to learn foreign languages ​​and it is even more difficult to learn Chinese. Although these Chinese people have more or less Chinese backgrounds and accept Chinese a little faster than Westerners, they are used to pinyin writing. To remember hieroglyphics is like climbing a mountain. Without a little endurance and motivation, it may be impossible. It’s not like when we learned foreign languages ​​in order to take college entrance exams, and there was no way to go abroad. Even so, most of us have learned a mute English after years of studying. Very few adults in the United States can persist in learning Chinese.

There is an underage junior high school student in our adult Chinese class. His father is a third-generation overseas Chinese who moved from Germany to the United States. Naturally, he cannot speak a word of Chinese. His mother immigrated to the United States from Taiwan when she was 8 years old. Her Chinese is not very good. However, they have learned the hard way and realized the lifelong regret that their parents did not let them learn Chinese. They must let their children speak their own language. Children are children, and the mother has a certain language environment at home. This Chinese child is the fastest among my students to learn and has the strongest language ability.

This also indirectly tells us that if you miss the best age for learning a language, you will not only get twice the result with half the effort, but it will also be almost impossible. There is not a single adult Chinese person in our class who can persist in learning Chinese. Basically, they give up after one semester and never come back. However, there are two older ones who are learning to play out of hobbies and have persisted. There is also an Indian girl who is working in the United States for a short period of time and has a very strong thirst for knowledge. She is still learning and making rapid progress.

The key to whether a child learns Chinese or not depends on the parents. If the parents are short-sighted or simply look down on their own culture, it may be too late when the child grows up and wants to learn. Time will not flow back. You are busy saving money for your children, but no matter how much money you save, you cannot buy the medicine for regret.

Overseas Chinese education should cherish the rare bi-native language education environment

Research shows that our brains process language learning differently in childhood and adulthood. When learning multiple languages ​​in childhood, the brain uses the same area to process different languages, and thus can develop pure dual or multiple native languages. When a person learns another language as an adult, the brain must allocate another area to process language learning, and the learning efficiency is greatly reduced. As the first generation of immigrants, I’m afraid they all have memories of the pain of learning a foreign language and the experience of the difficulty of integrating into the local culture. The earlier you learn a language, the better. If you learn a second language before the age of 9-12, you can become bilingual without any accent – ​​Truly Bilingual.

Overseas Chinese families provide an excellent language and cultural environment for their children's bilingual education. If they can persist in Chinese mother tongue education and mother tongue conversation, their children can naturally master pure bilingual skills and will benefit from them throughout their lives. English and Chinese are the two most widely spoken and spoken languages ​​in the world. The rising China and the United States have become the locomotive or dual carriage driving world economic growth in recent years. As China's economic and cultural influence on the world continues to expand, and driven by the Chinese people who are everywhere and account for one-fifth of the world's population, Chinese will undoubtedly become as important a language as English in this century.

Bilingual learning is of great help in developing children's intelligence, memory, and logical thinking skills. Chinese characters as pictorial characters are different from Pinyin characters and require different functions of the brain to process. Just like using chopsticks makes people's fingers more dexterous, using pictorial characters makes people's minds more alert and invisibly promotes the development of multi-functional brains. It makes sense that Chinese is helpful for logical reasoning. A friend’s daughter entered Harvard University with nearly perfect scores on the SAT and SATII in seven subjects, as well as the Presidential Award. She concluded that her daughter’s successful experience has one thing that we Chinese families can learn from. It is very simple. When children start learning mathematics, they must learn to use the Chinese multiplication table to solve problems.

When children first start learning mathematics, whether they think in Chinese or English seems to be a matter that has nothing to do with mathematics, but in fact the knowledge here is bigger. 3X5=15, if you think in Chinese, it only takes two seconds, three times five equal to fifteen, a total of 4 syllables, but if you think in English, three times five equal to fifteen, a total of 13 syllables, one second for every two syllables, plus there is a pause in the middle if the sentence is long, the same problem in English will take 8-10 seconds, and the mathematical calculation efficiency will be 4-5 times worse. Since she had a basic foundation in Chinese mathematics at the beginning, this friend's daughter's talent in mathematics quickly emerged and she jumped two levels in a row. This leading advantage among her peers has continued to this day. The multiplication table is a tool that we can't live without when we are dealing with numbers, whether we are university professors or street vendors, from elementary school to old age. If you pay attention to the comparison of the calculation abilities of Chinese and Americans, you will find that there is an astonishing difference. Most Americans will not be able to calculate accounts without a calculator. However, in China, a hawker who cannot read a few words or an old lady who often buys vegetables has no worse verbal calculation ability than an American math teacher. Another important phenomenon is that children who have attended elementary school for several years in China are the best in their class in mathematics after arriving in the United States.

Most places where Chinese in North America live have weekend Chinese schools, but there are still a large number of Chinese families who do not pay attention to their children's Chinese education. The typical reason is that we are not planning to go back to China, so what is the use of learning Chinese. Many young parents do not know that if their children are going to apply for a good university in the future, they must start taking a foreign language elective in the third or eighth grade of junior high school. Instead of waiting until the child's language ability has been basically formed before painfully starting to learn a language, it is better to let him learn his native Chinese in daily life from the beginning and use it as a foreign language in school. Mastering a foreign language gives children more opportunities and a broader perspective in their future. A friend’s child went back to China to study Chinese for one summer when she was in elementary school, but then stopped. She didn’t expect that the University of Michigan where she is currently studying would allow her to take the Chinese proficiency test. She was able to do well in listening and speaking, but not in writing. She took the test with the intention of giving it a try, and she actually did well. The school exempted her from six credits. The exemption of credits means tuition and time are exempted.

Others say it’s not that they don’t want their children to learn Chinese, but that they just don’t want to learn and don’t want to force them. The United States is a paradise for children, and we don’t want our children to have the painful experience of being forced to study again when they were young. It is true that parents and children have to pay some price to go to Chinese school on weekends, but it is not hard to develop a habit, and both adults and children can make many friends and participate in other social activities in Chinese schools, making life more fulfilling and rich. In fact, it is not that the United States does not force children to study. For example, if a child does not want to go to school and you do not let him go, then you are violating the compulsory education law. After entering high school, the school will give you many choices in life. For example, if you want to graduate from high school, it should be relatively easy. There are not many subjects and the burden is not heavy. However, the current AIM exam also makes it difficult for many people to pass. If you just want to go to community college after graduation, you need to take more math and skills courses. If you plan to go to a general university, mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, foreign languages, etc. are essential. If you want to go to a competitive university, in addition to completing the required high school courses, you must also take some college preparation courses, honors courses, advanced courses, and prepare for PSAT, SAT, ACT, etc. If your goal is to go to an Ivy League school, be prepared to work hard. In addition to the courses mentioned above, four years of high school must be completed within three years, and all SAT, SATII, and ACT exams must be completed. The last year is basically used to prepare for college courses. The four years of high school must maintain a GPA as high as possible in all high school courses. In addition, one must actively participate in extracurricular club activities, demonstrate leadership skills and develop one's own strengths as much as possible, and also find time to participate in at least dozens of hours of voluntary social welfare work every semester. As long as you have the energy, the school will give you unlimited space to exert yourself. Do the children still have time to play? I'm afraid I don't even have time to sleep. From this point of view, it is definitely not easier for children in the United States to go to a good university than for children in China who just immerse themselves in study. But this is the child's own choice and he is forcing himself.

In the early years, when children are not too busy studying, force them to learn Chinese, be busy, and develop good study habits. By learning Chinese, they can improve their memory skills, and it will be easier for them to adapt when they are really busy in high school. It is easier to cultivate children's fun and habits by starting early. If you start learning at an early age, it may cause greater pressure. In the United States, white people pay relatively more attention to education, but black people are far behind. Judging from recent crime statistics, 12.6% of black people have to spend some time in prison before the age of 30, while the proportion of white people is only 1.7%. Most of the good jobs are occupied by white people, and black Hispanics can only do low-level, low-paying jobs. Who should our children surround themselves with?

There is also a kind of person who disdains his own motherland and his own mother tongue. After finally escaping poverty and backwardness in China, how could it be possible for the next generation to have any chance of returning to poverty? So I tried my best to be as Chinese as possible in my life. Nothing in China is good, and everything in the United States is good. Even the junk food that foreigners think is more delicious than the delicacies of China. From face to face, I try my best to dress myself up as American as possible. I only regret that my skin cannot be dyed white. It seems that in this way, I have become a real American, superior to the Chinese. Occasionally returning to the country would show off one's noble status and criticize those who had used their blood and sweat to support the homeland where one became famous. Of course, one's own father and brother would have to beat him out of the country when they couldn't bear it. Therefore, there is even more reason to cut off the roots of China, vow not to return to China, and never let the next generation speak the language of the inferior people again. For people like this who just want to be foreign slaves, it's fine not to learn Chinese. It's a pity for innocent children.

Many American families who adopt Chinese children try their best to send their children to Chinese schools to learn some Chinese or hire a Chinese tutor in order to prevent their children from losing their Chinese roots. Many of their families are not wealthy but have to bear the extra cost and energy to make their children more like Chinese. No matter how effective the children's Chinese education is, their spirit is enough to put those who are not ashamed of their own culture to shame. This is also an important aspect of the success of the diverse and open American society.

Although many families also send their children to Chinese schools, they use English when communicating with their children. I wonder if they want to learn more English? I am still afraid that my children will forget how to speak English when they arrive at school. As a result, the English I received from my children was very limited, and I am afraid I will never be able to change my Chinglish, while my children’s Chinese mother tongue education will be greatly compromised, and the gain outweighs the loss.

Paying attention to education is a fine tradition of Chinese culture. Cultivating children to be bilingual talents is a unique condition that we overseas Chinese have without fighting for. Let’s cherish such a rare opportunity for our children. School is about to start again. If your child has not started learning Chinese yet, prepare to go to a Chinese school next semester. What are you waiting for?

> People's Daily Overseas Edition