Hi everyone,
I am hoping to get some input from anyone who can help. My daughter just turned 2, and we are hoping to teach her Chinese, but neither of us knows Chinese. At minimum, we would like to expose her to the language enough to where she develops “the ear” for the language and is able to speak fluidly. Ideally we would like her to learn to read as well. Is this feasible since neither of our families speak Chinese? Have any of you taught your children to speak, understand, read Chinese without knowing the language? And those of you who are native speakers, do you have any other tips or ideas? Or resources that come highly recommended that would be simple for us to follow? I would like for her to learn to read traditional Chinese, as it seems so beautiful, but if there aren’t enough resources, simplified would be good too. I will be learning alongside of her or trying to stay a step ahead.
Some background info: she currently communicates in Spanish, English, and ASL.
Any feedback is much appreciated!
That’s awesome that you want to teach your daughter Chinese! I’m sure she’ll take to it like a fish to water, just like she did with reading in English. 
I’m very new to teaching my boy (18months) Chinese, but would be happy to share what we are doing. He doesn’t talk very well yet (in any language), but he does repeat words in Chinese. He has read some Chinese characters, but in those cases he said the word in English. Oh well, it’s a start! 
Considering I’ve learned so much Chinese myself from teaching him, I’m sure his nimble little brain is picking up a ton. When he is older he will probably/hopefully :biggrin: start to show more of what he knows.
Ok, all that being said, here is what we are using so far:
Audio
Baby’s First Words in Chinese. He loves it, I love it. I got it from audible and play it in the car. I love it because it has lots of traditional Chinese songs, but it’s interspersed with regular speaking and rhymes. So it’s great that it has both, versus just songs.
Video
Little Reader Chinese
Baby Learns Chinese
Wink to Learn
Little Pim
I’m planning on buying some audiobooks, the Chinese tag pen, etc… but haven’t gotten around to it yet.
I have a student who comes by once a week and plays with him speaking Chinese for 90minutes. She’s only been by about 5x so far, but I’m hoping this will make a big difference as he gets older. When he is 3-ish I’ll enroll him in some sort of Chinese class. They have lots of those in my area and I’ve heard good feedback on this technique from other non-native speaking moms.
We are teaching simplified, but all the above resources are also available in traditional.
Wow! That’s so great that you have a student come by to play and talk with him in Chinese every week! That will definitely make a difference, as hearing a native speaker, in person vs just watching a video, is important for really learning a language. Maybe as he progresses, you can find him a playgroup with others who speak to their children in Chinese.
Thanks for the suggestions. I have Wink to Learn Spanish, and she used to really like it. Hopefully, she likes it in Chinese. I played Little Pim for her in Chinese last night, but I wasn’t sure about the pinyin. Any thoughts on whether or not to introduce that yet? I will look into Baby Learns Chinese. I haven’t come across that one yet. Of course, Little Reader Chinese!
I’m just concerned that I won’t be able to read to her in Chinese like I do in English and Spanish, but I guess that’s what they make audiobooks for!
Have you asked the question on google - several options come up, including this
http://www.hanbridgemandarin.com/course/chinese-language-course/chinese-course-for-children
My daughters best friend is off to China in August for a month - she will be learning basic spoken Mandarin by attending a school every day for 3 weeks (she is already fluent in Russian, Polish, German and French!) She said that trying to learn written Chinese will be the next challenge!
Just a quick update: I haven’t implemented anything yet, but I think I’m going to start with the Pimsleur approach, myself, and branch out from there. I’ll let you guys know how it goes. I’ve also found a Mandarin Chinese speaking play group nearby that we will probably try to join once we get things going so that she can be immersed in the language, in person. I’ve also requested Baby’s First Words in Chinese through the inter library loan system. If they don’t have it, I will make the purchase soon along with Wink to Learn. In the meantime, we will start with small video clips on youtube of simple things like colors, shapes, numbers, etc. I’m excited about this new learning adventure.
Glad to hear you’re going for it !
Hi ELEducation and all,
The suggestions so far are great, and ELEducation I especially love your idea of prioritizing learning some of the language yourself as a parent. That’s the approach we’re hoping to take with ASL and Gregg shorthand. XD
I’m just starting out with EL, (DD @6wks) but I have a lot of experience learning Chinese and other languages as an adult, so I will go ahead and weigh in. My suggestion for learning Chinese with EL is a relatively low-key piece of low-hanging fruit:
Prioritize learning the “Chinese Radicals”!
This can be done super-simply using standard “bit” flashcards. There are 214 “Kangxi Radicals”, but there are also sub-lists of the more frequent ones. The top 100 are super-high-yield, but the next 75 or so aren’t bad either, and the last few might be kinda fun.
Some sources:
http://www.hackingchinese.com/kickstart-your-character-learning-with-the-100-most-common-radicals/
http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/radicals.php
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangxi_radical
I starting learning Mandarin ~13yr ago in undergrad, and speak Chinese frequently with some family and friends. I am now very-conversent to the point of fluency on a narrow range of topics, although I really need to broaden my vocab and read more. åŠ æ²¹!
Oops, I made the previous post using my wife AyJy’s account. She’s fluent in Chinese. I, Steven, am the one who is conversent/learning Chinese. :clown:
Thanks for your input! It’s quite helpful to hear from someone who learned Chinese as an adult as well. I appreciate your take on the topic, and I will be looking at the resources you provided. I can’t wait to get started!
We also taught and are teaching our daughter ASL. I started with just a few signs and kept adding more and more. At night, I would study ASL online at www.lifeprint.com, and the next day, I would teach her new signs and incorporate them throughout the day. We also reinforced with Signing Time. Once she had a big signing vocabulary, I took a couple of ASL classes to try to practice and learn more conversational skills so that I could pass that on to her as well. I wouldn’t say I’m fluent, by any means, but I do my best to sign with her throughout the day.