There is no doubt that the world is more flat and people are more multicultural and movable than 10 or 20 years ago. If you take a look at my case, I am a Spanish who meet a Taiwanese in New York and now I am forming a family in Taipei.
During my childhood I didn’t learn any other language than my two natives’ languages (Catalan and Spanish), I started to study English with 20 years and since then I am still struggling trying to improve my language skills (English and Chinese). However, there is a way to avoid my long learning journey. As thousands of studies demonstrated, learning a language as a kid is a lot easier and faster than as adult, the main reason is because the brain’s cognitive flexibility decreases with age.
Living in Taiwan for more than 2 years, I realized the importance that the Taiwanese parents give to the early education of their children and specially to learn languages, mainly English. For example, last April I went to the Toddlers Fair in the World Trade Center in Taipei, it was astonishing see that 70% of the Area was focused on books’ subscriptions with a lot of bilingual books. Another fact is that in almost any street you can find an English cram school or an English kindergarten.
During my research I found that there is a lot of competition about English kindergarten, but I also found that there is no competition regarding other languages kindergarten besides the French and German section of the Taipei European School, with a prohibitive price. The lack of competition for trilingual kindergarten, plus the recent inflow of people with Spanish background that came to Taipei recently due to the ICDF program, makes me believe that there is a profitable niche to exploit in a trilingual kindergarten.
Based in my estimation and the information obtained through the contact with the Spanish Speaking Countries’ embassies the approximate number of children between 0 and 6 years with one Spanish Speaking parent is around 100 (around 20 Embassies in Taiwan with an average of 5 children per embassy). Our target would be acquire around 40% of this market and use it as a hook to attract Taiwanese families interested in a multicultural experience for their children and other foreign families (targeting North American) interested in helping their children to boost their language skills.
Hola Baby Kindergarten is a local Taiwanese company with 34 employees, 9 of them foreigners, created to help Taiwanese children to understand and learn from other cultures and to arouse interest to learning languages. The school is planned to be located in Tianmu neighborhood in Taipei with three different departments (Chinese, English and Spanish), each one in a different floor with different cultural decoration and motives to create three different worlds. Furthermore, each Department works independently in deciding their own individual activities under a general curriculum and monitored by a Committee formed by all the departmental heads and the Director.
The parents are given a wide range of flexible plans to choose for their children, part-time or full-time. They may choose just one language plan for their children (Chinese, English or Spanish) or they may choose bilingual or trilingual schedule. However, even if the parents choose the one language schedule their children will also have a daily involvement in activities with other departments and cultures with the activity “Explore New Cultures”. Other factors we consider important in our school are the involvement of the parents in the children education, through the “Saturday Family Activities”; and to build up confidence to have an outgoing and sociable child through the “Monthly Theater Activities” and a curriculum full of fun and sharing activities.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:CHENGCHI/G0099933034 |
| Creators | 蕭少晟, Nabau, Albert Iglesias |
| Publisher | 國立政治大學 |
| Source Sets | National Chengchi University Libraries |
| Language | 英文 |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Rights | Copyright © nccu library on behalf of the copyright holders |
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