Second Generation Australians doing LOTE

[kyzoo]

^ Explanation done for me. +1 for outsourcing xD

My parents can hold up a conversation, but it's very broken English. Even though I am purely exposed to Chinese at home, my English still looks down on my Chinese as if it were a tiny ant crawling on the ground.

[*ryan777*]

lol this all contradicts what a lot of my asian friends have been telling me for a while now, but i choose to believe people on VN lol

[IntoTheNewWorld]

Yesh I was born in Vietnam, speak Vietnamese at home, yet still suck incredibly at it.

[kyzoo]

lol this all contradicts what a lot of my asian friends have been telling me for a while now, but i choose to believe people on VN lol

The children of migrants don't pick up their parents' accents - peer influence is more significant.

[ninwa]

My parents (1st generation immigrants) only speak Chinese at home but I did moderately well for VCE English. Remember that outside of the home we are constantly exposed to English and only English - road signs, strangers, advertisements, (most) friends etc. all bombard us with English. That little bit of Chinese at home doesn't stand a chance.

[forumguy]

It's not quite that unfair for non ethnic speakers to do a chosen language. I know a vietnamese guy that did chinese. You know what he did? He went to chinese school when he was younger. The point is most ethnic speakers of a chosen language actually go to weekend schools to study the language from a young age, and yes i've seen white people with no background to that language go to weekend school. Yes speaking at home may give an advantage for the accent in oral exams (no they do not make it up, ethnic speakers memorise too) and make it easier to do listening comprehension but it does not severely disadvantage. Correct me if i am wrong but i have also heard that examiners will be more lenient to non ethnic's (in the chinese exam anyway, for example there was a black kid in the oral exam for Chinese)

Also many asians including myself speak english as a second language, yes i didn't understand english in kindergarten or prep. My english tutor  has told me that she finds that her asian students never seem to understand proverbs, while white kids will have heard all or most of the proverbs fro a young age from her parents. Coming from a mostly Asian school as well, i have noticed that the white people do generally excel at English (and i mean out of the top english/literature students most will be white kids). People get English tutors do they not?

Yeah everyone is forced to do English at a young age but isn't that why English is a compulsory subject? LOTE is optional so those that choose to do a LOTE and is not an ethnic speaker, should have gone to language school at a young age, or get one now so not to complain. A White kid that does chinese language school will excel at it if he/she is interested at a young age to learn about it. Yes he/she will do better than an ethnic chinese speaker (who speaks at home) that did not go chinese school.

Ok.. i only planned to write a few lines O_o

[Eriny]

If the system/schools had more money generally, it wouldn't be a bad idea to have FL and SL (or similar) streams in all the languages, which would be better for people who can speak a language well because instead of learning basic grammar and such, they could actually use VCE to improve their skills.