Moving to China with children

[danjos]

Hello:

I plan to study Mandarin for one year and bring along my family:

a wife and 2 little children age 7 and 8.

I would like them to study Mandarin too. We speak no Chinese at all now.

Could anybody give suggestions on what should the children do?

Most language schools only write about youths or adults program.

I suppose that I could not put the children into regular chinese school since

they would not understand anything.

Are there any programs or activities for foreign children to help them

learning the language faster?

I am flexible to be in any cities that are family friendly

I am grateful for any ideas or information

Thank you

Danjos:help

[imron]

I suppose that I could not put the children into regular chinese school since

they would not understand anything.

They wouldn't understand anything at first, but if you did this, I'd bet that after a year they'd be more fluent than you

[studentyoung]

Could anybody give suggestions on what should the children do?

Most language schools only write about youths or adults program.

I suppose that I could not put the children into regular chinese school since

they would not understand anything.

It is easy. You can send them to a local bilingual international school or hire a tutor to teach them Chinese. If you are in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, you will have many choices.

Thanks!

[colourpear]

Check if you have chance to work in China, and then surly you will make many Chinese friends who can speak English in your working place in China . Before you use Chinese fluently , you can ask your Chinese friends for help ,for example, telling them what kind of school you want for your children. Of course ,in your work place ,you can also learn Chinese from your colleagues.

And the job should better offer you the place to live, and you don't have to rent your house yourself.

If you don't have chance work in China, check if there is any organization in your city which provides opportunities to go to China, which can handle all the stuff including living, studing school and so on.

plus: I am moved b your determination of learning Chinese.

[danjos]

Hello:

I plan to move to China to learn Mandarin and bring my children of 7 and 8 years old.

Does anybody has any info on International School for them?

We do not speak any chinese at all.

Ideally, I would like to put them in a public Chinese School with other Chinese kids but not sure if this is possible. I am hoping that the children can take some Mandarin courses as well, but all programs I read only caters for young adults or adults. Are there program that caters to small children as well?

From the other post, I was informed that there are International School in big cities like Beijing, Shanghai. How about in other cities such as Hangzhou?

I just worried that they might not learn Mandarin as well by studying in international school which use English

I appreciate any information

Many Thanks,

Danjos:help

[Xiao Kui]

I think it depends on the int'l school as to whether they have a good chinese program or not. A lot of the kids I've met in China who go to int'l school don't have very good Chinese and more importantly their circle of friends is almost exclusively other foreigners. There are some int'l schools and private Chinese schools, however, that have some kind of bilingual education program where regular subjects such as science, math, etc. are taught in a mixture of Chinese and English. That seems like it may be beneficial to your kids and another advantage would be that in some cases their classmates would be mostly Chinese so maybe your kids would make good Chinese friends that way.

There are a lot of people who've sent their kids to private Chinese kindergartens and then to Chinese public school, but there is generally an age you want to do this by or your kids may feel left way behind in the Chinese schools. I think some folks who send their kids to Chinese schools send them only for part of the day - morning, for example because the Chinese school day can be pretty long, with a long break for lunch @ noon kids come back and stay from 2:30-4:30 or later. I think it will really depend on your kids' individual personalities/aptitudes whether they'll be able to Chinese school or not. It seems 7 or 8 is still young enough, I've heard 10 is a little too late for kids to begin Chinese school, because they're way behind by then.

Please note that I don't have any kids, these are just some of the things I've heard from expat families. Hope a poster with firsthand knowledge will follow up.

[roddy]

Danjos, I've merged your two posts.

International schools will be very expensive. You could put them in a local school, which will be a lot more affordable but you might not be delighted with the quality of the education. Also, there's obviously going to be a major period of adjustment for the kids. If they were going to be here for ten years, then maybe that would be worth it, but for a year? I'm not sure.

[studentyoung]

Hi, Danjos,

I found one Chinese language school in Beijng named “Hengshu Chinese School”. From the photos on its website, it seems that it can offer Chinese classes to little children.

http://www.hengshu.com/chinese/zp-07.html (photoes)

http://www.hengshu.com/chinese/kc.html (classes and costs)

http://www.hengshu.com/chinese/dizhi.html (map From the map on the website, it seems that the school is near Tiananmen Square and a subway station.)

For more details, you can also e-mail: hengshu@hengshu.net or dial 13522555414（for English）.

Anyway, good luck!

Thanks!

[lilongyue]

Check this out.

http://shanghai.asiaxpat.com/forums/momsdads/

People from areas other than Shanghai post here, but there is info for people raising children in China. Might be able to find some useful links, too.

[zerolife]

I agree with you that a regular Chinese school would be the best choice. There are some very good international schools that teaches bilangually but you that have to have the money.

I used to intern for an organization that sents American highschool student to China (and other countries) for a year and as far as I know, most of them go to Chinese schools. Pretty much all of the students I met don't speak any Chinese at all but they somehow survived.

However you should do some shopping. There are top rated public schools and terrible ones.

[lily_spring88]

I think bilingual school is better. Regular chinese school will not teach in English, and then

it is hard for your childeren to understand.

Bilingual school plus private tutor will be the best. Shanghai is more suitable. If you like

hangzhou best,then it may be also ok. Just ok.

with rdgs,

JO qiao

mermaid19821113@hotmail.com

[simonlaing]

The cool thing about china is a lot of the rules haven't been written yet.

Because the price of living is quite low here (outside Shanghai, BJ and HK) there are options.

As other posters pointed out sending your kids to the international school would be easier for them to fit in but probably wouldn't give them good chinese skills.

Sending your kids to Chinese school will give them many issues to adjusting to the school. Most Chinese kids are learning to write dictations and short papers . For them it is learning to write an oral language they already know. You kids would find the barrier not only of writing but learning the oral language which everyone here already knows.

In addition most schools here are extremely competitive and give the students a lot of pressure and work . We're talking about classes and tutoring afterschool. Music lessons and homework on the weekend. My Fiancee's young nieces usually don't watch any TV they are so busy let alone sports or hobbies unrelated to school.

An acquaintance Tom has come to Nanjing with his 2nd grader and tells me the transition is getting quite difficult.

The other possibility is home schooling. As you and/or wife goes to classes you can have a tutor grad student at 30 yuan an hour come and teach you and your kids. You and Your wife can keep the kids up to date on the US school work and you can adjust the time to the needs of Chinese class. There are lots of Children's learning chinese materials here , though not much other subject english material for young kids so you would want to bring those if you came.

This arrangement is also more flexible if you wanted to take a trip or do some part time english teaching. (It can be a way to meet more people that you can actually talk meaningfully with)

There are a couple of private Mandarin language training centers, but they are not popular here in Nanjing. In Shanghai and other places they may be better, but although they may have small classes , I think the teaching style is often long lecture and dictation. I have limited knowledge about it so perhaps others can explain about it. In any case most only take high school age students and above so you're still in a Bind with the Kids.

The other thing is that Chinese is a difficult language to learn. Even one year of hard study will not make you fluent and you will be lucky to be conversant and able to read basic texts or write a short paragraph at the end of it.

You seem to have the drive. Coming to a new culture will be tricky but worth it in the long run.

Good luck,

SImon:)

[dporter1465]

We lived in Beijing last year with our two boys, 7 & 11, and sent them to a Chinese public school. They both had had a bit of exposure to the language at home, so they were not starting entirely from scratch. It astonished me how quickly they picked up the language and adapted to the local scene. They complained in Beijing about the stares on the streets and unwanted attention and occasional piles of trash, but they very rarely complained about school. I didn't worry too much about content--I figured the important thing at that age is straight neural stimulation, and they certainly got plenty of that just dealing with the language and the math.

[md1101]

dporter, that sounds very interesting. can you tell us a bit more about how your children went in the public school? how much chinese did they know beforehand? how did they know it?

and how good was their chinese before you all left china?

[danjos]

Dear All:

Thank you very much to many good insights and useful info.

Could a foreigner's children register in a regular Chinese public schools or I should I should place the children in a private chinese school?

Does anybody have any ideas the differences between the two in terms of quality and cost?

In the US, we have district system where the children can only go to school nearby theit house and public schools here are free.

Definitely, hiring a private tutor is very valuable. But we would like to immerse into Chinese culture and living as much as possible inspite of the language limitations. Going to chinese public school, living in chinese neighborhood is our plan.

I am so surprised to hear the heavy load of school work for the children in China. Here, my 6 and 7 years old boys spent the majority of time doing soccer, tennis, piano etc. and they are going to top rated public schools. Probably because the small one is sill in kindergarten and the bigger one in 2nd grade and it might get tougher going forward

[dporter1465]

Our kids had a few years of weekend Chinese school experience before going to China, and they'd had some exposure to spoken Chinese at home. Some of the public schools there are willing to take foreign students; others are not. The adjustment is clearly easiest for younger kids than older. We knew a fifth-grade student who felt totally lost for the first several months.

On the whole we felt pretty good about the education they received. They memorized dozens of Chinese poems, made great progress in math, learned to write lots of characters (it didn't seem to occur to them that it was difficult, because it was what everyone else was doing!), and made some good friends.

The tough parts were the relative lack of individual attention from teachers (classes are too big) and difficulty in setting up playdates (middle-class Chinese kids are too busy with English, math, and piano lessons).

[kadijah]

Hi Everyone. I am considering moving to China with my daughters who are eight years old. We are beginning to learn Mandarin from after school programs. We know the basic things like Bo Po Mo Foe and songs , poems, some conversational phrases but we still aren't able to communicate efficiently. I really want them to learn it fluently. I am considering maybe a 2 year stay in China, Singapore or even Thailand. Can anyone offer any advice? I am willing to move anywhere of those countries.

Thanks

[Daan]

Would you be moving to have your kids learn Chinese or for another purpose?

[kadijah]

To Daan

I want to move to China specifically to have my children become fluent in Mandarin.

[Daan]

kadijah sent me an e-mail message saying:

I want to move to China specifically to have my children become fluent in Mandarin.

Let's discuss this in public