joyce
gosh, ur birth experience is wrecked wif anxiety! Thank God everything turned out well in the end. think those who hv good experience in kk r usually the ones who take the more expensive package & stay one-bedder...i hv a couple of frens who did that cos they were under the older medical scheme so heavily subsidised.
gabby
ur ger is so cute! My ger will insist that only mummy can read Chinese books, daddy dunno chinese cos she has seen him fumble over the hanyu pinyin hahha
my ger is also streets ahead in her Eng compared to her Mandarin though i'm seeing baby steps improvement in the latter. Can't blame her either as we speak lots more Eng at home & there's no elderly in the home to speak Mand with her. I'm not too concerned honestly cos of 2 reasons.
1)For parents to be less stressful when they start pri sch etc, it's better for them to be better in Eng as most subjects r in medium of English. If Eng is weak, means many subjects will hv problems understanding the questions etc. Better to coach her intensively in one subject (Chinese) than many subjects (Eng, maths, science etc etc)
2) From my limited teaching experience, good Chinese is not abt just speaking Mand at home. I taught in a neighbourhood pri sch for many years. Hv come across so many students who speak predominantly Mand at home but yet their Chinese grades r not fantastic but just average. Why? Cos they dun read enough of Chinese books or expand their Chinese vocab so though they can speak/argue in Mand v well, when it comes to writing, it's all v simple & localised kinda spoken Chinese (not enough of proverbs or lack descriptive vocab/style). In fact some of my colleagues used to call that 'pasar chinese'
of course, the ideal is still to be effectively bilingual; not just speak but to speak well!
