Amanda Hsiung Blodgett is the founder of Miss Panda Chinese, Miss Panda Chinese helps children everywhere learn Mandarin Chinese in a fun and engaging way by presenting kids songs and stories in Chinese that are easy to learn and fun to listen to. Amanda is a Mandarin Chinese instructor and the mother of two young bilingual children. She is a native Mandarin Chinese speaker and a trained Mandarin Chinese instructor. Amanda has an extensive teaching experience with kids around the world specifically in Taiwan, Morocco, Canada and the United States. 

We discuss how her career in language started, raising her kids bilingual, growing up in Taiwan and living in Turkmenistan, and the importance of leaning another language for her.

In this episode of Bilingual Kids Rock Podcast:

00:36 Introduction to Bilingual Parents Connect

2:13 Introduction to Amanda, founder of Miss Panda Chinese

4:30 Amanda’s journey to her language career

6:41 Learning English in Taiwan as a child

8:36 Growing up in Taiwan and the languages/dialects in the country

11:10 Amanda’s reasons why she raise her kids bilingual

12:45 Does her husband speak Chinese?

13:30 Living in Turkmenistan

14:45 Switching languages in the family

17:27 Minority language has a stronger lead in her fmaily

19:00 How learning another language changed when her kids started going to school

21:20 Adding another language in the school’s curriculum

27:17 Teaching kids how to speak Chinese

30:00 Learning also about the culture and adding it in the curriculum

34:00 Importance of learning another language to a parent

36:21 Is Chinese the hardest language to learn and what is Amanda’s thoughts on it?

44:10 Having fun when learning another language

45:05 How important is traveling for Amanda

49:43 Best way to teach children is to lead an example

51:08 “It’s so contagious, it’s like happiness” – having fun when teaching another language

56:51 Where to find Amanda – Ms. Panda and for people who are interested in learning Chinese

57:46 Closing remarks

Items mentioned in this episode:

Should parents push children to learn minority language?

How to foster children’s pride in their minority language and culture?

Code switching vs. Borrowing in bilingual children

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