About Us. Our Language Learning Family!

My Chinese wife lived and worked in London some years before we eventually met there. Since she had a fluent command of English we have always communicated with each other in English. Despite my efforts and hers we always talked together in my native tongue which is English.

Eight months or so after the birth of our son we much wanted to take him to meet his relatives in China. Learning some Mandarin Chinese became important to me and finding a way that worked proved difficult.  So many products and methods I came across just did not work. I started believing that perhaps I was the problem and lacked will-power. What I was learning I was forgetting and often irrelevant to my daily needs.

We needed to spend more and more time in China because of my new family connections there. This involved me needing to travel and at times live independently in a country where few people speak English. Coping with this would have been difficult had it not been for learning Mandarin Chinese.

While in China our son attended pre-school in a Chinese speaking environment, so meeting and talking to the teachers about his day became important. Visits to the drug store or a local clinic for any suitable vaccinations also proved important. There are the more obvious issues of traveling especially with a young child that become important. Getting lost on your own because you got on the wrong train is one issue, but getting lost with a three-year-old can be an interesting challenge.

Being in a toy shop with a child that throws a tantrum because he or she does not want to leave can be embarrassing. When this happens in a Non-English speaking environment, diplomacy may be essential. Explaining to concerned older women that speak no English, that you are not abducting the child sometimes proves important.

I knew I would only be comfortable again, if I did something quickly.

Adding to my vexation, my three-year-old was able to converse with me in English, and talk to everyone else in Chinese. He was like most people of his age unable to read and write but was getting a speedy if not perfect grasp of two languages. Just why was he leaving me behind so quickly?

Copying the way a child learns a language is not too difficult. A simple idea that works in practice. Thankfully there are products on the market that try to do this today and in my case seeing was believing.

Time for action, not a course with three hundred lessons, crossword puzzles and spelling tests that would take three years to complete. Something fast and small, with a beginning, middle and end. Something that would show me with hard evidence that I was making progress everyday.

Above all. Something that would work.

 I hope my suggestions on this site help you.

Good Luck.

Clayton