Professor Wei described his own and others' experience of bringing up children to be bilingual. He noted that it is particularly difficult if both parents have the same first language (in his case, Cantonese) and the child is growing up in another language environment. It is actually easier if the two parents have different languages. He explained that unfortunately, and as a terrible generalisation, many Asian and Chinese parents only have friends who are Asian or Chinese themselves. Therefore they speak only their own language, and stick within their own community. (In particular, they are noticeably absent from parent meetings at schools.) Their children, however, have an entirely different experience. They learn English principally with their friends, school, TV, so their experience is of a culture entirely separate from their parents. They want to feel included with their peer-group, so they try particularly had to master English rather than their parents' language. This creates a language-generation gap. The children feel no need to learn their parents' language, and see no advantage in doing so. Of course, they can understand and speak their parents language, but do not code-switch between the two languages. Therefore they are actually monolingual in two languages, rather than being bilingual in two or more languages.

The meeting concluded with discussion of families experiences and concerns in this area. The meeting felt that Professor Wei's explanation and advice on bilingualism was positive and very helpful.