dear mommies,
first i want to say thank you for all the information everyone has contributed. i'm so glad to see this question raised. all of your replies have been very informative and helpful. i agree that learning chinese (canto or mand.) is much easier at a young age and fluency in eng. is much easier to pick up at a later age. however, my situation is a lil complex and hope to get some opinions.
we are planning to send my step son to the states for high school and myself and the bb will accompany him for about 2-3 years while my husband remains in hk to work. by then bb will be pre-school/kindergarten age and probably attend kindergarten in the states. but i really want her to learn chinese as i believe it will be useful to her later in life and it will help her establish a good relationship w/ her hk relatives. so i want to bring her back to hk for primary school (at the very least)
but after watching my step son go thru the local route of brute memorization and the pressures of exams, i'm hesitant to put the bb thru the same rigors. are there any "in between" options? i noticed that victoria in'l has a eng/canto bilingual route .... does anyone know if the students will become native or near native in canto?
another debate that i'm having is regarding PTH. since bb will have the exposure to canto at home, living in hk and relatives, should the chinese focus be more on PTH instead while canto is secondary?
any opinions/thoughts would be greatly appreciated. =)
first i want to say thank you for all the information everyone has contributed. i'm so glad to see this question raised. all of your replies have been very informative and helpful. i agree that learning chinese (canto or mand.) is much easier at a young age and fluency in eng. is much easier to pick up at a later age. however, my situation is a lil complex and hope to get some opinions.
we are planning to send my step son to the states for high school and myself and the bb will accompany him for about 2-3 years while my husband remains in hk to work. by then bb will be pre-school/kindergarten age and probably attend kindergarten in the states. but i really want her to learn chinese as i believe it will be useful to her later in life and it will help her establish a good relationship w/ her hk relatives. so i want to bring her back to hk for primary school (at the very least)
but after watching my step son go thru the local route of brute memorization and the pressures of exams, i'm hesitant to put the bb thru the same rigors. are there any "in between" options? i noticed that victoria in'l has a eng/canto bilingual route .... does anyone know if the students will become native or near native in canto?
another debate that i'm having is regarding PTH. since bb will have the exposure to canto at home, living in hk and relatives, should the chinese focus be more on PTH instead while canto is secondary?
any opinions/thoughts would be greatly appreciated. =)