Hi,
Sounds like you're really motivated, but I am very confused as to why you would put finding students or other native speakers at Step 4?

It seems that exposing yourselves (you and the children) to  fully fluent person speaking a total language effectively, with proper intonation, grammar, context, inflection, idioms would be a great motivation and role model. I am learning chinese (mandarin), and trying to keep it for my son (whose native language was Mandarin but now he is really anglophone). We found someone to come into our house right away. It needn’t be a language teacher, though someone who speaks well without some exotic regional accent or lots of slang would be best. But someone who would give you phrases that would be helpful for you, that you could hear the whole “way” the “beat” of speaking in that language, vs individual vocabulary words. Someone who can give you on the spot correction of your pronunciation and usage?

And the interest of having that “special friend” come over can totally motivate the kid to want to communicate in that language. We have a woman who comes over once a week for an hour or two. She helps me with vocab and sentences for everyday things, making a meal, getting him dressed, what we did the last week, looking at photo album and showing it etc. I also now have a university student who comes to play with my son, and only in chinese... he resists me speaking Chinese, or esp reading books to him: he seems to like flashcards and Dora the Explorer in Chinese, but this student just speaks ONLY chinese with him, and when he sees her coming he tries Chinese. It is so fun to hear him trying English with her and when she continues in Chinese, he will then repeat the chinese after her.

I am stumbling along myself, not fluent: I can say “oh, there is a lion, there is a snake” but if there is an earthworm or a cheetah instead, I would have to find a dictionary, and even then probably not say it right, whereas a native speaker can usually answer a child’s (and your) questions right away.

Anyways, I am doing English (my native language), French (the local language in Quebec) and Mandarin, and it is going fine. The other day I did a whole set of flashcards, just saying the words in mandarin, and he gave me almost all the right english responses, and was thrilled when I turned over the shizi and it was a lion after he’d said Lion. We together watch dvds, esp with songs or stories, and then I sing the songs when we play or walk in the stroller. Then I get more cds and dvds with those same songs, and he is thrilled to recognise them and starts to sing along all the chinese words....

I really try to make it as multimedia and normal as possible... conversational, watching dvds and books, playing etc... I do Chinesepod.com myself, as well as grammar books and reading children’s books with a dictionary, and then the other “fun” stuff with him...

btw, as he differentiates more between the languages (and they will: my son can point out an english sentence or a chinese sentence in the same book), it is likely they will develop preferences... I just stick to French if he speaks English... I see he understands the French as he gives correct and appropriate responses in English. I would say, yes, it is a cow, it is also a vache in French, un nai niu in Chinese. One of the advantages of being multilingual is understanding that there is more than one way to designate something... it: Cow is just one name for the same animal to many people. I do find it helps to have something, that is like a treat, like Dora, ONLY in that language... if he wants Dora, he has to listen to Chinese.

Best of luck!

hah! Well, if it doesn't have anywhere to show right now, or anywhay to change languages, that would answer why they don't show or be changed eh?

thanks for the answers!

Hi,
thanks! yes! we can get fields now to type in location etc, and the birthdate and ethnicity for my son DID work properly when I clicked "submit" on the "baby info". Thanks for taking the time to fix it!

I don,t see where the location (birth location, where we live now, connected info: mother's birth place) show up in our profiles once we enter it. Where would that be?

All that shows on my son's "baby info" page are his name, birth date, ethnicity and gender.
thanks!

Sorry KL, it really isn't working any better.

Now I can get the dropdown calendar to get the correct date on the "edit baby info". I cannot type in the date manually. There still is no way to enter child's birth place or home location. Once I wrote in "chinese" for ethnicity, and got the correct birth date by dropdown calendar, I clicked "submit", and the edit window faded out, leaving the baby info unchanged/unedited.

On the "my info" profile page, there still is no way to enter location either.

Thankyou.
I am on mac OS10.3.9 with Firefox 2.

Jinjl, yes, that is why we post links: so you can see the product. Please check the one I already put, which has a few screenviews, from 4-6, and also the link there to vol1-3:
http://www.childbook.com/Baby-Learns-Chinese-DVD-Level-1-2-3-Flashcards-p/dvd361bundle.htm
There is a video preview as well. Please note that the online previews and screenshots do not do justice to the high quality of the images on the actual dvds, which are quite beautiful.

They are based on Doman flashcard principles: written characters, spoken words and iimages. Unlike little Pim it is not for learning conversation or sentences.

There is also a product sample and intro at youtube by the company Baby Learns Chinese itself:
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/PwwpbCZyYA0&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/PwwpbCZyYA0&rel=1</a>

I just got an email from http://bogeji.com that the Dora chinese dvds are on sale, ie 89.99$ instead of 99.99$ for the 26 dvd set. Many dvds in chinese including Berenstein Bears etc are on sale... looks like 10% off.

Yes, Baby Learns Chinese has the choice in the menu of traditional or simplified. A new set of 3 Baby Learns Chinese is just out, with new topics. You can check them at Childbook.com, which has them on sale right now.
http://www.childbook.com/Baby-Learns-Chinese-DVD-Level-4-5-6-Flashcards-p/dvd364bundle.htm

btw, http://bogeji.com also has new dvds on sale right now: Dora, Berenstein Bears, many others. I just got the sale email.

However you can see I did go through everything and manage to edit the "personal text" and "signature" to try to get this info in! ;D

I have the same problems. In "my information" it says "current location" but there is no field to enter in my current location.

In my baby's profile it says 2009-03-10. No idea why. My son is born 2005-11-10. On the edit info field, it is possible to highlight the incorrect date in blue, but I am unable to either delete it or write in another date, and the little calendar does nothing if I click on it. There is a little "ethnicity" field and I wrote "chinese" and clicked "submit" or "update" or whatever it says, and the editing box faded off, but the info on his profile hadn't changed. And it says "birthplace" but like "current location" in the "my information" tab, there is no field to write anything in , so it is impossible to submit information. Same with "connected location".

It would be great to be able to update this info, as I would like to connect with others who ave 3 yr olds, and not 4-5 month olds. And I'd like to connect with others who have chinese children, or are in Canada, but am unable to enter this info.

Thanks.

Jinji,
I thought much the same upon viewing the sample videos. I don't see how the Sing to Learn are any different from Karaoke videos: We got 5 for $20 Canadian in chinatown. There doesn't seem to be any teaching as in, the children aren't doing what the words say, or having flashcards of the objects or actoins named in the words.

I too don't see much point in the "musical rewards" and I didn't really find the flashcards to be engaging at all. The voices often seem to be prerecorded words put together to form sentences, rather than a natural speaking voice saying a whole phrase.

Are there some users of thee dvds out there who really like them, or don't, who could tell us more? What re their strengths and weaknesses?

thanks

I don't have one (yet) but I had never heard of it, so I thank you for posting about it. It looks fantastic for my 3 yr old, and best of all, it is made in Canada, so for us, no international shipping and importation charges! Thanks so much.

Well, I suppose that having one language per parent is great if you are going for bilingual (and not trilingual like us) and have two parents (not one, like me). ;D

As for you speaking Cantonese in public, I think that is way more acceptable than me sticking to speaking English with my son in public in Quebec, where French is the majority language, but a minority language in general on the continent, politically, and socially (ie widespread English music, books, tv, movies etc)... we are fighting an uphill battle to get him to learn and speak French, so for me to allow him to default to English whenever I am present would be a huge nono. Learning languages is so complicated isn't it! So many factors to take into consideration.

As per the "apple ping guo" thing: one great suggestion for getting around the "using two spoken languages" is if you have done signing with your child. When my son came from China at 22 mos and didn't speak any language (just lots and lots of babytalk, which was indecipherable with lots of mah, meh, nah, neh), we used Babysigningtime and SigningTime. He still loves it. The wonderful thing is that I can SIGN "apple" and SAY "ping guo" and he totally gets the concept of what ping guo means. I used that a lot when he started to understand English, and we were beginning French. I could sign "shoes" and say "va chercher tes souliers" and he would go get his shoes. YAY!

A book I liked was "The Bilingual Edge" which gives various alternatives to One Person One Language. BTW, with one person one language, how does the child see back and forth conversation in a language, ie question + response? I guess because I don't and can't do it, I know less about it.

Yes, that is the song (though ususally without so much flowery instrumentation!). As you can see that the Zhao Zhao Zhao Pengyou, the "zhao"s are two beats long, whenever I've heard this sung, they say zhao-a, zhao-a or zhao-ya, zhao-ya...

Here it is on Chinesepod: http://chinesepod.com/lessons/baby-talk-friends-song

The first Play and Learn with Mei Mei (by teacher Mei Mei Hu) dvd has that song, and also "Ba Luo Bo" (pull the turnip... which is an interactive song, as is the Zhao Pengyou song), and Liang Zhi Lao Hu (Two Tigers... to the tune of Frere Jacque/Are you sleeping). My son loves that dvd and we have to sing Ba Luo Bo, with us in a line pulling and then falling down, all the time.
http://www.meimeiandme.com/dvd01.html You can also get it at amazon and the regular chinese learning sites: childbook.com, asianparent etc.

Here is the Two Tigers song at Chinesepod: http://chinesepod.com/lessons/two-little-tigers-song

Songs are a really great way to learn a language.

Actually I speak Mandarin as well, but since I am already teaching my son Cantonese, I want a different person to teach him Mandarin. I heard one person can only speak to the child in one language otherwise the kid will be confused.
 

Ethanmama, your cantonese class sounds fantastic! What great ideas!

Maybe because Cantonese and Mandarin are so close you might worry about confusion. I am a single parent and I speak English, French and Mandarin to my son, and I don't think he is confused. Maybe I would like him MORE confused, as then he couldn't pick up a bilingual English Chinese book and say "no chinese mama, english" and point to the english words! He's so not confused he will stick to replying to me in English if I speak to him an hour in French ... and he understands perfectly well, which is why he gives all the right answers. At his daycare (we are in Montreal) it is only FRench. And I speak French with him on the street as it is the majority language. In fact I bet most parents who speak minority languages at home cannot only speak to their children in one language. When out in public, speaking the majority language, you speak the majority language with everyone, including your kid, usually. It would be really strange dynamic to be speaking French with another mom and child, and then every time I address my child, even if they were addressing him in French, for me to address him in English, as my one language. And i could never really reinforce his mandarin if I had to stick to English only.

You must reinforce your child's mandarin language learning outside the classes with the teacher, non?

My major reason for having a teacher,and students to interact with my child in mandarin is 1) so I can learn too, and 2) so he can have an immersion experience with a native speaker. The student who comes to play with him is quite bad in english and french, so he HAS to make an effort to communicate in mandarin.

Anyways, I worry more about quantity and frequency of language exposure vs confusing him.

Wow, that is really a lot of money. She is making $120+ per hour? That seems crazy. I guess you have to decide if you can afford it.

If not, I might just put an ad in a community paper, a college classified ad or just ask around.  Our "teacher" was found by accident: a repairman said his girlfriend was from Beijing, when he saw my Chinese son. She isn't a "teacher" but is more than adequate. I do something like give my child a bath, or we play with his train etc, or I cook, and she gives me phrases and sentences, and I write them down. She adds in characters. It is very informal, but very pertinent.

We sometimes listen to chinese music on cd, or dvd. Sometimes she helps me to read a chinese picture book. She is a great resource: she brought us homemade dumplings and gave me the recipe. She brought us chinese new year ornament and told us what all the traditional things to do for new years is: cut hair, new clothes, clean the house, food, red envelopes with $ for the kids, etc. Just think how much you can get just from a regular person who has lived the culture and language.

She also taught my son to count perfectly in Chinese in 15 minutes: she put his stuffed toy turtle on her head, and counted "yi! er! san!... and he had to repeat after her each number before she said the next one... and then at shi! (10), she jerked her head forward so the turtle fell off and he caught it, and laughingly screaming wanted it again and again. I heard him counting perfectly with tones to 10 that night in his bed (he is 3).

Just to say, you don't need a real teacher, or planned lessons, or organised class, or materials other than a pencil and paper and your everyday life. Plan to bake cookies one week, play with playdough the next week, and you could probably find someone, even a student (like the one who plays with my son in chinese for free), who could say what you are doing, what the dough colors are, etc, all in chinese. Believe me, the kids, and you, will remember so much in context, and not cost $120 each time!!

Good luck!