How to Use Bilingual Thinking to Improve Children's Competitiveness

Concord College UK（ 英国康德学院 ） is a well-known private secondary school.According to Financial Times , it once ranked first among the private boarding schools in the UK . Rachel Borland, the principal of Shanghai Concord Bilingual Experimental School （ 上海康德双语实验学校）, introduced what a good bilingual education should be when being interviewed by Wechat Public Number （公众号） TBEducation（外滩教育）.

Rachel said that the goal of bilingual schools is to train children to master the skills of changing from Chinese to English or from English to Chinese at an early age. The first step to accomplish this transformation is to move from "speaking English" to "thinking in English". She added that a child who was learning English would first translate the question into Chinese, come up with the answer, and then translate the answer into English to answer it. "Thinking in English" refers to "getting rid of the process of translating in the brain and thinking and expressing in English directly. If you ask questions in Chinese, think of the questions in Chinese and answer them in Chinese.

However, thinking and expressing solely in English a very idealized state under the condition of insufficient linguistic foundation. So in Concord Bilingual Experimental School, "Children in Primary School have Chinese lessons in the morning but English classes in the afternoon." First of all, we should give enough  experience for children to infiltrate（浸入）in two languages in the younger age stage to lay a good foundation for language. In junior high school, help students to complete the transformation of thinking mode, and then strengthen the training.

So how does Concord Bilingual Experimental School help the school children to realize the transformation?

First of all, there is a section called "On the spot" in the classroom. In the course of class, the teacher will tell the students something, then ask questions on the spot. The students have 30 seconds to think, and then answer the questions in English and Chinese. Rachel said, "When I want you to talk about plants, you need to answer in English and Chinese, so in your brain, this kind of conversion happens, constantly changing, changing either from Chinese to English or from English to Chinese."

”Secondly, Concord Bilingual Experimental School adopts a curriculum arrangement alternating Chinese and English（中英文交换的课程安排）. In the form of teaching, the English class focuses on the guidance of perceptual knowledge, while the Chinese class pays more attention to the training of rational logical thinking. In these two courses, students'brains are constantly shifting. This kind of training is similar to going to the gym. "When your brain is experiencing this activity all the time, it's like exercising in the gym. Then your whole brain will have a huge vocabulary and two-language thinking patterns.

These are the concrete ways Concord Bilingual Experimental School can help students to realize bilingual thinking transformation. I hope it can inspire you.