Tutor Time - suitable for non-Chinese family?

[Princess101]

I've decided against Tutor Time for this reason and think I will stick with Woodlands The Peak. Although the outside space is limited my son enjoys it and I think the teachers are good. My son is 14 months and attends the Wrigglers class, which prepares him for proper nursery.

 

[baguette]

when you say Chinese you mean Mandarin or Cantonese??

 

[southside852]

yes, when people say chinese, it usually means mandarin. tutor time is bilingual - english/mandarin.

 

[baguette]

so the proportion of time dedicated to Mandarin in Tutor Time (in someone's opinion or is it for sure or is it just a concern??) would be bigger than the one to English?

 

[southside852]

bilingual means 50% mandarin and 50% english.

 

[carang]

actually, when locals say "chinese" they mean cantonese...

ie) the job requires someone who can speak "english, chinese and putonghua"

 

[baguette]

I have the impression, that might anyway be very wrong, that in HK "local" nurseries Cantonese is the main language and in International nurseries (or bilingual) the main language is English and they speak Putonghua for a very small amount of time.
Therefore I think that being non-Chinese speaker in a bilingual nursery should be no problem at all.

 

[southside852]

maybe for other nurseries, but tutor time is half half (mandarin/english). for non-chinese it is still no probelm as my son did not speak chinese and loved it!

@ carang, funny you say that b/c our local friends in HK always said to assume that when someone says chinese they mean mandarin.

 

[carang]

that is funny, because EVERY local i have ever met said the opposite. i think it's because they don't consider mandarin to be the local chinese language. it's the language you need to speak when you go to china. as 99% of the local population speak cantonese, they consider THAT to be the local chinese language... hence calling it chinese.

i actually noticed the job listings back in 1995 when i first arrived here...

 

[nicolejoy]

Weird Cara because I've had the opposite experience - all my local friends say "Chinese" when they're talking about Canto. I just asked my hubby too (he's local-ish too) and he says that locals say "Chinese" meaning Canto most of the time...