More and more English-educated Chinese Singaporean parents are realizing the importance for their children to be not only good at the all-important English language, but also at Chinese. China has become a great political and economic superpower and they want their children to become bilingual.

It is common knowledge that, to master any language,  especially one’s mother tongue, one must begin from childhood. But there are challenges and barriers for children of English-speaking homes to succeed in their journey towards bilingualism.

Take my family as an example. While my wife and I are products of English education, we had some foundation (»ù´¡) in Chinese which we kept up in our working life. But the language of communication in our home is mainly English.