4:28 AM
But I can identify with some experiences - learning English, speaking (a variety of) Chinese at home, eating Chinese food, reading Junie B Jones and picture books instead of books I should be reading at my grade level.
Unlike her, I went to 托儿所/幼儿园 in China. 托儿所 is usually translated into English as "day care". 幼儿园 is usually translated into English as "kindergarten", but Chinese "kindergarten" would go from 2-3 years of age to 5-6 years of age. At 6-7, a child would enter primary school.
In elementary school, my parents would help me on homework, but they could only go so far. My father was working in academia and had a professional grasp of the English language. Not perfect, but it was enough to write research papers and express his ideas clearly. My mother was learning English by watching soap operas with subtitles and reading ESL books. She often watched The Young and The Restless.
As a result, I scored better on math and science than reading and writing.
Embarrassingly, I was placed in ESL 4 times. At second grade, I went to a new school, and the school assigned me to the ESL department. In third grade, I was free of ESL, but we moved to a different state. I changed schools again, and this school assigned me to ESL in 3rd grade. In 4th grade, the same school sent me to ESL. Only in 5th grade, I was free of ESL. But then, in 6th grade, the school assigned me to ESL.
In 5th grade and 6th grade, I also had weekend Chinese classes and piano classes.
In Chinese school, I scored pretty high marks. But then, my family moved again, and in the new neighborhood, I didn't go to Chinese school. I also decided that I would stop speaking Chinese, because my English was not improving. Eventually, I used English for almost everything and psychologically became afraid of using Chinese.
Only recently as a young adult, I decided to re-learn Chinese, but the main purpose was to have some kind of foreign language skill. I could work on improving my Spanish, the foreign language that I learned throughout my teen years, but I saw no advantage in doing that. Too many Americans could speak Spanish. So, I looked into Chinese.
From a monolingual English speaker's perspective, Chinese is hard.
From a bilingual English-Chinese speaker's perspective, Chinese is the easiest language I have ever learned. In just a few months, I could read and write at an elementary school level.
I don't think I have ever learned any Chinese grammar points. I just know them.
Now, I am fully communicative in Mandarin Chinese.
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