Sunday, May 09, 2010

Extracurricular education

I've been thinking about it for quite some time - signing up The Little Madam for Chinese language classes. One of the obstacles was the fact that I didn't want to pay the tuition fees (which aren't actually that much at $50 per term).

But mostly it was fear of having to commit to more parental volunteering.

My brother just happens to be the something-or-other coordinator of the Chinese school, and his kids go there too of course.  TLM loves their company and wants to go, 'cos she'll be in with the big kids. So tonight I put my stake in the ground (as they say at work) and told him to go ahead and sign 'er up.

The deciding factor? Frankly I'm embarrassed that our half-Chinese daughter has learned to speak Spanish (from watching Dora the Explorer), but can't understand anything my mother tells her.

7 comments:

Amanda said...

She'll be tri-lingual!

Watson Woodworth said...

That's great.
She's still at that age range to pick up languages.
Wish I could say the same.

Violet said...

Amanda: and if you count the American accent she's picked up from all those Ben 10 DVDs, she'll be quadri-lingual ;-)

nigel: yeah she really is. But if you really want to learn a language, then I reckon you shouldn't let age get in your way :-)

Watson Woodworth said...

Tried Japanese a year or so ago at the urging of a pal in Japan, I was mostly thwarted by the non-phonetic alphabet.
Perhaps I should start with Roman alphabet languages.

Violet said...

nigel: Yeah I can imagine it wouldn't exactly be easy. I'd probably go for Spanish, Italian, Indonesian or German - just for relative ease.

Angela said...

Then she will have another person she has to listen to.

Smiles!

Violet said...

Angela: true!