Don't overemphasize English while neglecting the importance of our native language!

Recently, an article shared online about a child's learning achievements sparked heated discussions. Everyone was very happy to see a child achieve such great accomplishments.

However, the following schedule completely dropped everyone's jaws. Let's take a look together first:

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Let's compare this with an extremely radical example: Apple CEO Tim Cook.

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Around 5 a.m., he does his morning workout at the gym, using his Apple Watch to track his exercise and body metrics.

At 8 a.m., he returns to the office to officially begin work.

However!! Even a workaholic like Tim Cook still maintains 7 hours of sleep each day. He is in bed before 9 p.m. to ensure he gets adequate rest, and then wakes up punctually at 3:45 a.m. to start a new day.

The key is not to compete over who wakes up earlier; the point is whether one gets enough rest.

But is simply getting 7 or 8 hours of sleep enough? Perhaps we should also pay attention to sleep quality and daily stress.

During the critical growth stages of elementary and junior high school students, sleep and proper rest are absolutely essential. However, we are not child health educators, so for detailed health-related information, parents are advised to consult professionals.

Returning to the field of language learning, our teaching team at OurScool Kids believes that developing mother-tongue proficiency is crucial.

That's right, even as English teachers, we believe that proficiency in one's "native language" (referring to Chinese language and literature here) is extremely important!

Many parents think that just being able to speak Chinese is enough and that only English matters, but this is actually a misconception.

Language is a medium for social communication and interaction, as well as a carrier of culture.

Many people in society use Chinese to communicate and live their daily lives, but without the cultivation of language competence and the nurturing of literary and cultural literacy, they lack the ability to express ideas accurately, solve problems, and reflect critically.

Moreover, with the increasing time spent on smartphones and watching short-form videos, modern people's abilities in literacy, handwriting, reading, writing, and even the use of phonetic symbols are gradually deteriorating. We still hope everyone can inspire creativity, broaden life horizons, cultivate abilities for reflection, reasoning, and critical thinking, foster healthy interpersonal relationships, appreciate the meaning of life, understand and respect multiculturalism, care for the contemporary environment, and develop an international perspective through reading, appreciating, and creating various texts.

Returning to the extreme child schedule above, looking at it as bystanders, we feel that they miss out on a lot of parent-child bonding time, family reading time, and time for cultivating their native language.

This article aims to remind parents: English learning is important, but the development of native language literacy should not be neglected.