Ella at 22 months reading English and Chinese books

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Discussing video

Ella at 22 months reading English and Chinese books

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Author aangeles	Rating 4.71 (7 votes)
Date June 03, 2010, 02:48:05 PM	Views 4779

[aangeles]

Ella is now 22 months old and has progressed so much not only in speaking English and Mandarin (plus a smattering of Spanish and Filipino) but also in her reading and decoding skills. I am so happy to be able to share with you some recent videos of her reading whole books in English (some with words that she has never seen before) and in Chinese. I was looking at her old videos from when she was 15 months old (http://forum.brillkids.com/general-discussion-b5/15-month-old-reading-english-and-chinese-and-identifying-classical-composers/) and it is amazing (to us that is!  ) how far she has come! 

[waterdreamer]

Amazing!! Just amazing! LOL she reads Chinese better then I can

[KL]

That's really wonderful! Thanks so much for sharing!!

[zaku]

wow!!! so adorable.....amazing 

[rugrat]

Amazing! You video has inspired me.  What are you using to teach Ella Mandarin, is it Little Pims?

[NewWorld2011]

Yes it´s really awesome!! Great work aangeles!! 

[aangeles]

Amazing! You video has inspired me.  What are you using to teach Ella Mandarin, is it Little Pims?

Thanks everyone!

Rugrat, it depends on whether you are asking about teaching her to speak Mandarin or to read Mandarin. I think those are two different things (albeit with a lot of overlap) and I take different approaches and use different materials for each. For reading Mandarin, I used Baby Learns Chinese (DVDs and flashcards) from when she was 10-11 months old. I got Little Reader when she was 14 months old and started showing her Chinese files on LR. I also have lots of books in Chinese - I especially like the I Can Read Myself series and Wo Hui Du series because the books are really designed to teach reading. For speaking Mandarin, basically I just try my best to speak to her exclusively in Mandarin. Chinese children's songs on CDs and videos help a lot. And, to help her comprehension and conversational skills, we make an exception to our 'no TV' rule and let her watch cartoons but only in Chinese. It's surprising how much Chinese she picks up from watching Elmo and Winnie the Pooh in Chinese once or twice a week. Oh! about Little Pim, I use it to teach her Spanish and French but not Chinese because it uses simplified Chinese and pinyin while we have decided to teach her traditional Chinese first. Otherwise, I think it's a pretty good learning tool for languages.

Hope this helps!

[seanhendrick]

wow congratulations! I was amazed especially in her Chinese reading skills..Way to go, ella!

[DallonsMommy]

Omg she is so adorable!! GO ELLA! Would my son be able to learn chinese and spanish if neither one of us (me and my husband) speak any different language? Would I just need to buy some dvd's or something? I ask because I saw where you said you speak chinese a lot to Ella so I was curious if it would be to difficult for him to learn since we dont know how. THanks!

[aangeles]

Omg she is so adorable!! GO ELLA! Would my son be able to learn chinese and spanish if neither one of us (me and my husband) speak any different language? Would I just need to buy some dvd's or something? I ask because I saw where you said you speak chinese a lot to Ella so I was curious if it would be to difficult for him to learn since we dont know how. THanks!

It is definitely possible for your son to learn other languages even if you or your husband are monolingual. However, in my opinion, it would entail more than just letting him watch dvds in the the target language. Research have shown that children learn best from directly interacting and talking with another person and not from passively watching videos (although the dvds do help in reinforcing their learning). Also, in order for them to be fluent in the language, they need to be exposed to it at least 30% of the time (some say 1 hour a day is enough). In our case, neither my husband nor I speak Spanish, but one of Ella's teachers in daycare does so I asked her to speak to Ella exclusively in Spanish. Plus we let her listen to Spanish children's songs, watch Little Pim Spanish and Dora cartoons in Spanish, read Spanish language books to her, etc. I think these activities will start her on the right track towards learning a language that neither I nor my husband speaks. Here are some articles on non-native speakers teaching another language to their children which you might find helpful:

http://www.multilingualchildren.org/tips/not_native.html
http://ezinearticles.com/?Monolingual-Parents-Raising-Bilingual-Or-Multilingual-Children---Is-That-Possible?&id=2487340
http://www.multilingualliving.com/2010/05/21/are-you-fluent-enough-to-raise-your-child-in-a-second-language/

Also, there is at least one other forum member who is not a native Chinese speaker but is teaching her boys Mandarin. You might be interested in taking a look at her blog:
http://mandarinkids.wordpress.com/

Hope this helps! 

[ZaJa]

congrats! great job!

[TeachingMyToddlers]

Great job! What is the book about Jesus she is reading? It's a really great book and I'd love to get it for my daughter.

Thanks!

[FloridaMom]

Thank you so much for sharing! It is very inspiring! I was not sure if I should go for one more language in reading (I speak Russian to my little one 80% of the time), now I definetely will.
You both did a wonderful job! Congratulations!

[aangeles]

Thanks everybody! smile

LilyAndOwensMom, I downloaded the book about Jesus from this website: http://www.dltk-teach.com/minibooks/ You can make your own mini-books and they have all sorts of free printables. It's really great!

sveta, I would definitely encourage you to teach your baby to read in Russian. I can't tell you how rewarding it is to see my daughter learn to read in my native language, especially since there are a lot of Chinese poetry, literature, and even martial arts fiction books (think: Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon) that I really enjoyed reading and would like to eventually share with her when she grows up! biggrin

[Laralinn]

Amazing!! It's very encouraging to see Ella read books in both languages. I've been exposing my son to two languages (Russian and English) since he was 11 month old, now he's 30 month old and I don't see much of him reading at all. So seeing you daughter read gives me hope!

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