Bao & Bun's Bilingual Journey

We just finished 90 books this week, a significant milestone for Little Bao this past year. Though most of these books are leveled readers that he can finish within 5 minutes, I’ve noticed that he’s now able to read longer passages by pointing as he reads.

This weekend, I encouraged him to start reading picture books. While his reading stamina has improved, his Chinese character recognition is still lacking. He needs to use Zhuyin for about 30-50% of the longer passages, and his Zhuyin skills aren’t strong yet, making the reading process challenging and disjointed. One goal for this summer is to improve his reading fluency in both English and Chinese. For English, he’s practicing reading words faster. For Chinese, though he didn’t like Sagebook before, I think it’s time to revisit it and master those high-frequency characters. I’m more confident this time because his memory has improved, and he’s more willing to put in the effort compared to a year ago.

Additionally, the new tutor has been a great fit. We’re using Taiwan’s first-grade second-semester textbook. The teacher is very caring, teaches at a fast pace, and provides excellent class PPTs. She usually teaches online group lessons, but I specifically requested her after a trial class showed she could handle Little Bao’s distractibility well. While I’m still uncertain if 30 minutes of tutoring a week will make a significant impact, I believe consistent lessons will aid his overall Chinese learning.

His summer karaoke class starts this week, and I’ll share more about that in the next update.