Children can't speak English. Can they go to kindergarten in America?

Parents of American Ivy League students share: seize the mother tongue window, let their children go to kindergarten in the United States, and gain real bilingual ability in Chinese and English for life.

My children travel back and forth between China and the United States. They randomly switch between kindergarten, primary school and junior high school, and thus they have completely natural and true bilingual Chinese and English (they have spoken Chinese since childhood at home). The so-called completely natural and true bilingualism, I think the simple definition is that there is no "instant translation" or "no thinking" between the two languages. Language is the product of real life. Scientifically speaking, mother tongue can only be formed in the so-called once-in-a-lifetime and fleeting mother tongue acquisition period (such as kindergarten) and in the natural non-classroom language environment (such as children of the same age playing); On the contrary, improper classroom foreign language education in childhood (including rote memorization, premature grammar contact, Chinese phonetic symbols, exams, etc.) may make many children form long-term fear of foreign languages. No matter how hard you try in the future, you can't reach the level of your mother tongue. Moreover, the mother tongue can't be forgotten, just like riding a bike. Even if you don't ride for a long time, you seem to forget it, but you can recover quickly after riding again. My children once "forgot" so much English, but when they came back to America, they shouted and ran with other children, and English came back. In fact, science has long known that the physical location of mother tongue stored in human brain is completely different from that of non-mother tongue foreign language. There is a case in which a person who immigrated to the United States at an early age and spoke English almost all his life suddenly forgot English when he was old and only spoke his mother tongue.

Now my child has graduated from an Ivy League university in the United States and continues to study for a doctor of medicine in the United States. Although children's bilingualism is a natural acquisition of "something for nothing", it has always played a great role in their educational growth and participation in social competition.

I think parents should spend more time on their children, especially important things that involve their children's life. Parents, mothers or grandparents can accompany their children to live in the United States for half a year or even a few and a half years intermittently, and pick them up and down to kindergarten every day (kindergarten has a school bus, 5-year-old preschool class, and middle school does not need to pick them up), so that children can easily have permanent "real" bilingual Chinese and English. In fact, living in the United States for half a year is also a very pleasant thing for parents. Children go to kindergarten during the day, and parents can play and shop within two or three hours' drive around; On weekends and holidays, you can take your children around the United States and breathe fresh air in the blue sky and white clouds (such as Sequoia Forest near the San Francisco Bay Area, Monterrey, Shili Coast, Yosemite, etc.). Of course, parents can also go to the government's English cram school for foreigners, which is almost free (many of these schools also provide free kindergarten services for kindergarten mothers), or spend some money to study English as a foreign language in a community college, or even a degree course (intermittent several and a half years may be enough to get credit for a formal degree). In short, give your children a chance to be bilingual, and at the same time give their parents a different life (at least breathe clean air for a while, so that their family's lung health can be restored).

I am now a professor and doctoral supervisor at a university in Shanghai. My house in the San Francisco Bay Area has been rented to office workers in Silicon Valley, and there are many good kindergartens nearby. I really hope to see more children in China acquire real lifelong bilingual ability in Chinese and English like my children, so I am willing to give priority to renting the house to parents who are really willing to spend time with their children to acquire bilingual ability in their mother tongue. Please add wx to the contact: ProfessorCEO.

Note: Free public education in the United States is from preschool to senior three, * * *13; Preschool education is private, and foreigners and citizens pay exactly the same kindergarten fees and have exactly the same rights, so it is cost-effective for us in China to go to the United States for kindergarten. Ordinary kindergartens in the United States charge hundreds to thousands of dollars a month. It is recommended to go to an ordinary kindergarten, because children in China go to the English atmosphere in the real environment, that is, the communication when children play, and nothing special is needed. Real-world English communication is free in the United States, and no special arrangements are needed.