Schools Schools |
In some cases, there seems to be the foolish notion that the knowledge of a second language actually detracts from the competence of one�s native language. And this begs the question: wouldn�t that make people question the importance placed on learning English in the first place if it is only to displace a Taiwanese child�s Mandarin competency?
There are many questions to pose to the whole English kindergarten situation in Taiwan. Parents pay a fortune in tuition to these private schools. The children learn English all day, from Nursery, through Preschool (�Junior Kindergarten) to Kindergarten (�Senior Kindergarten�). The kids go home and the parents speak nothing but Chinese to them. For many, the Chinese begins as soon as the child is picked up from school. Later the parents wonder why their child �can�t speak English.� �I tried to make her speak in English to her aunt in America, but she wouldn�t speak.� This is because the exposure to English has been solely through the English teacher. If the parents aren�t willing to invest some time each day to have their child practice speaking English each day, or at least provide English resources outside of the school environment, they can�t expect the child to really take the language outside the classroom. The worst part is though, that after kindergarten, these children who have spent a few years learning in English, graduate to Elementary public school. These are primarily Chinese, children learning no more than an hour of English per day. The teachers are usually local Chinese, thus not native English speakers, and what little English is taught and learned actually deteriorates into Chinglish. All that was learned in the early years, all that investment, is simply forgotten. If any extra English is to be learned it is often through a buxiban (�cram school�) later in the evening, at the end of a grueling day of Chinese school, math class, dance class, piano class, and whatever other extra-curricular activity the child has been enrolled in. It�s tiring, and there�s little time for a kid to be a kid. |