feedback for "Infant Industry 7: Mandarin for Babies?"
-
While the concept is great, the website is so bad that I now will refuse to buy their books or enroll my child in the programs. Mindnumbingly bad. yes, that bad.
posted by : MamaC on 4/3/2007 at 4:32 PM Flag For Abuse
-
This idea is totally ridiculous and caters to the over-achieving and slightly naive parent (who has no clue about language development in children). Your child will never be fluent in another language if he/she does not either 1. have a native speaking parent of another language (or a full time nanny who spends more time with the kid than the parent does) or 2. live in a foreign country. Sure while it sounds cool (to some people) to say "my little Olivia is enrolled in Mandarin" and is sure to impress on kindergarden apps, you are only giving yourself fodder for play group conversation with no long term linguistic benefit for the child. Marry someone who speaks something other than English fluently if you want your child to be multilingual or move to another country. Anything else and you will only come up short and waste your money.
posted by : shm18 on 4/3/2007 at 6:21 PM Flag For Abuse
-
In response to shm18:
You're mostly right, but you've overlooked immersion schools and I believe you've overestimated the amount of time the nanny would need to spend with the child, but I'm not sure on that count. Immersion schools, however, can definitely create bilingual children BUT they must be high-quality bilingual schools, the child needs to attend for many years and I think the child needs to start attending fairly young.
posted by : hamsterkid on 4/4/2007 at 3:24 AM Flag For Abuse
-
I have my 15 month old in Mandarin class right now. And no we're not doing to impress people, it's because my husband is of Chinese descent but knows no Chinese dialect and for the sake of our son's identity development, we thought it might be a good idea for him to be exposed to it. Granted, he's too busy running around while the instructor sings to him the words for colors and numbers, but he's hearing something different than what he normally hears out of my mouth or my husband's. And I'm learning it too, albeit at a toddler's level but you gotta start somewhere... Oh and the elementary schools in town are offering Mandarin anyway...and I live in the Northeast in an average Mid Atlantic town.
posted by : arirang on 9/28/2007 at 12:41 AM Flag For Abuse
-
As someone who is an English speaker born and bred for 25 years in French speaking Montreal and can barely speak French, I find this topic interesting. I'm not alone, many english montrealers cannot speak french well.French people and immigrants cannot go to english schools in Quebec, so english speakers for the most part grow up isolated.We got one hour of french eah day, which we sat through and grew bored. We had english Canada and US tv, magazines, radio, pop culture, we didn't need or want french. We grew up thinking french was the enemy and when we turned 18 we move to english Canada. Or so the story goes during the 60's to mid 90's for working class english speakers. Now, parents understand that kids need to learn French and they don't have to move away, they were born there and have a right to stay..albeit needing and by golly liking french!
I moved to San Francisco and want my kid to learn spanish instead, spanish speakers are much nicer when you mangle their language. :)
posted by : bunbun on 4/10/2008 at 4:57 PM Flag For Abuse
