Multilingual Challenges

The ability of living things to learn and adapt to the environment is something that is often underestimated.

Son No 2 was practically an English-totaller, when he joined the vernacular Chinese primary school at the beginning of this year. In the school, the main language of instruction is mandarin. In less than half a year, he is now fairly comfortable in mandarin and there is evidence to show that his thoughts are beginning to be framed in mandarin.

How do I know?

One, I have begun to notice that at times, his English sentence structures sound peculiar. There was once he said, "I everyday do homework." This sounds like a translation from mandarin, "Wo tian tian zhuo gong ke." In English, we would have said, "I do homework everyday."

Also, in English, we normally say, "My brothers and I ....." but in mandarin, it is "I and my brothers... " And in English, we say, "Where are you going?" whereas in mandarin, it is "You are going where?" There are many other examples of how the two languages differ in terms of sentence structure. It can be confusing to a new learner.

Two, it is noteworthy that in the learning of the third language, Malay, Son No 2 has chosen to use, not English, but mandarin to help him remember new Malay words. Thus, peppered all over his Malay textbook are chinese characters to remind him of the meaning of the Malay words.

In a way, I am profoundly glad that he has not faced much difficulty picking up mandarin and to a lesser extent, Malay.

Nevertheless, niggling anxieties remain at the back of my mind. After all, Son No 2 has always articulated well in English. His English reading skills are above average for his age group. It would be sad to see him taking a step backwards where the usage of English is concerned. So, I am not resting on my laurels. Seeing that the teaching of English is insufficient in school (only once a week!), I will make sure that he continues to build a good foundation in English through my personal coaching. Yes, that's the kiasu mom speaking... unapologetically!