Balanced bilingual
People acquire their native language without any problem. Additional languages involve effort, lots of it.. Unless, of course one is lucky like three year old Doreen Mather, AKA Ru Yi. Her Australian father speaks to her in English; her mother speaks to her in Chinese, and she is acquiring both. Didn't take her long to figure out that Joe and I were English speakers.
Carl actually speaks some Chinese, but he and Jenny mostly use English at home. Doreen is otherwise surrounded by Chinese. What an advantage to be a native speaker of two world languages!
I was a professor of curriculum and instruction at East Tennessee State University and am now in emeritus status. Currently, I teach English composition part-time at George Mason University. I have taught in Cincinnati, Turkey, China and the Czech Republic.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
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