Regularly, there are questions posed in the bilingual parenting group (of which I am a member) about how to encourage your child to speak more Chinese back to you. L's Chinese production ebbs and flows, but I have been on a re-booted effort to actively encourage his speaking recently and have had a lot of success. Today, I adhoc recorded a casual, unscripted lunch-time conversation with him. In this conversation, you can hear that although he still naturally slides into English conversationally, I keep gently nudging him to come back to speaking Chinese by offering sentence-starters that mirror what he has just said in Chinese. He is encouraged then to repeat himself in Chinese. I try to do this in every conversation I have with him, and I have noticed it making a big difference. (At first he did feel frustrated sometimes, because he didn't have all the words, but I try to not criticize his phrasing or pronunciation and to model what can be said in that situation, and over time it has gotten easier for him to switch between the two languages.)
Here is the link to our (imperfect, unscripted) conversation if you are curious what that sounds like. I hope this offers some ideas to another parent out there!
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About MeBorn in Asia, I have spent more than a third of my life living outside of the U.S. thus far. I currently reside in the Pacific Northwest with my techie husband and two biracial children. Categories
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July 2021
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