Bao & Bun's Bilingual Journey

Over the past few days, my kids went on a field trip and returned with homework requiring them to write short sentences about their experience. While they both wrote their English versions during afterschool, I was determined to have them write Chinese ones as well. I sat down with them to help guide them in writing the Chinese version, which mainly involved translating their English sentences.

Through this practice, I’ve come to see more of the benefits of attending a Mandarin Immersion School. Although our MI school isn’t technically a true Mandarin Immersion program because they only have one Chinese class a day and don’t teach subjects like Math in Chinese. This homework assignment, where the teachers ask students to write about their experiences in either English or Chinese, offers a glimpse into the immersion experience.

As a working mom, I often don’t have the bandwidth to come up with lessons myself, so I’m happy to follow along with whatever the school is doing. Although the school is light on Chinese, there are at least some Chinese elements sprinkled throughout their school time.

In this writing exercise, Little Bun, who has higher skills in Chinese writing, used the Chinese writer app to learn how to write characters she didn’t know. Little Bao initially wanted to write everything in Chinese, but I showed him how complicated those characters were and let him practice a few instead and write the rest in zhuyin. Both of them came up with the Chinese translations and sentences themselves.

I know many families don’t live near a Mandarin Immersion school, but as I’ve mentioned in a few places, we moved to a place where our kids could attend one. There were surprises and transitions to get used to at our current school, but overall, I’m pretty happy about it. And the above homework assignment is definitely one of the reasons why.