Konnichiwa from London
Oct 18, 2019 20:01:51 GMT 9
Post by Kotoko O-S on Oct 18, 2019 20:01:51 GMT 9
Hello everyone - I am Kotoko and I live in London with my soon to be 9 yo daughter Aya and English husband David.
I am Japanese in origin but I feel day by day that my Japaneseness does not necessarily dictate me anymore as I face the identity argument of what makes me who I am, literally removing myself from Japan for 26 years or so. I still feel stronger identification with Japanese as my mother tongue compared to English as a language, but I do not feel particularly troubled in English either. I met my husband approximately 20 years ago in Boston, US, and moved to London, thinking "Heck, how could they be so different when they speak the same language!", and I was in for a rude awakening as you can imagine. However, compared to US, English people are a lot similar to Japanese so, once I got the hang, Britain has been good to me.
Fast forward, we now have 8 yo daughter who is excited to turn 9 this November. Aya produced her present list which consists of some Japanese toys (e.g. Japanese cute characters Sumikko Gurashi, Sylvanian Families) and some English/American ones (e.g. Enchantimals, American Doll type affairs). Her predominant language is English and understandably so as she goes to the local state school here in London and her dad is a monolingual with a strong understanding of Japanese (took 2 years of evening courses...). So far, I have aspired to live by the one-parent-one-language principle, and, while literacy is not paramount in her earlier years, Aya has been relatively good in speaking Japanese. We can convey needs, comment and joke in Japanese for example. But nowadays, as she is so interested in abstract concepts (politics in particular like her parents and there is a lot to talk about in UK as well as globally!), I often switch to English to quickly convey my thoughts before I recap in Japanese. So yes, keeping up with her Japanese is my concern without jeopardising her achievement in English.
The school Aya goes to for Japanese is for the kids who are settled here in London. And she goes there every Saturday for two hours. The focus is for them to be associated with Japanese with a positive attitude. The learning speed is definitely slow. My daughter is still doing work for year 1 level when she would be in year 3 in the Japanese educational system. Since she started 4 years ago, she has been good at learning Hiragana (the first set of phonetics) and, as many kids do including myself, she has been struggling with Katakana (the second phonetics). While she is in this situation, she started learning Kanji and she was really interested earlier on but she lost steam now to learn Kanji. (I partly blame last year's teacher for giving them too much homework without bearing kids' sentiments, which has been rectified this year after discussions.) Considering all this, I am ok with the current pace at this school for now as long as she is progressing forward at her speed. I hope for her to get back into learning Kanji at some point.
In general, I feel as though I just can't compete with the level of real life input in English she gets with Japanese when she is learning English full-time. I try my best though with having Japanese TVs and DVDs, lots of books to read to her, going back to Japan every year, talking to her in Japanese, etc. I am hoping from the association with this forum and beyond that I get ideas and methods to maximise this effort and tips to excite my daughter to learn her minority language enough at an academic level. Or, perhaps, even if it is not now that she focuses on written literacy, I would like to be able to draw up a roadmap to that aim.
An interesting twist to our narrative is that we may return to Japan in 3 years' time after all these years. My daughter will be around 11 or 12. As much as I would like to consider she is equally Japanese as she is British, she is foremost culturally a British brought up in Britain with a strong flare of Japanese. As such, I feel it would be cruel to send her to a local Japanese school at this age when her Japanese literacy is not as good as her counterparts, so we are thinking of sending her to an English-speaking international school.
My concern, then, is how much of Japanese and Japanese culture she would learn. Visiting 3 international schools this summer when we were in Tokyo to see what they are like, they all offered Japanese classes as their second language option, and I got the impression that some schools try hard to get kids to speak English rather than Japanese. Also, there will the inevitable amount of input in Japanese by just living, with her Japanese-speaking family (myself and grandparents). So perhaps she will naturally get into Japanese more so than she does now and that incidentally is a good thing. Adam, you were working in an international school in Japan, I would be grateful if you can possibly give me any thoughts in this as I am at my wit's end in this front.
That is, I suppose, for now, enough about me and my bilingual daughter. And sorry about my rambling, which my husband tends to say I do...!
I am Japanese in origin but I feel day by day that my Japaneseness does not necessarily dictate me anymore as I face the identity argument of what makes me who I am, literally removing myself from Japan for 26 years or so. I still feel stronger identification with Japanese as my mother tongue compared to English as a language, but I do not feel particularly troubled in English either. I met my husband approximately 20 years ago in Boston, US, and moved to London, thinking "Heck, how could they be so different when they speak the same language!", and I was in for a rude awakening as you can imagine. However, compared to US, English people are a lot similar to Japanese so, once I got the hang, Britain has been good to me.
Fast forward, we now have 8 yo daughter who is excited to turn 9 this November. Aya produced her present list which consists of some Japanese toys (e.g. Japanese cute characters Sumikko Gurashi, Sylvanian Families) and some English/American ones (e.g. Enchantimals, American Doll type affairs). Her predominant language is English and understandably so as she goes to the local state school here in London and her dad is a monolingual with a strong understanding of Japanese (took 2 years of evening courses...). So far, I have aspired to live by the one-parent-one-language principle, and, while literacy is not paramount in her earlier years, Aya has been relatively good in speaking Japanese. We can convey needs, comment and joke in Japanese for example. But nowadays, as she is so interested in abstract concepts (politics in particular like her parents and there is a lot to talk about in UK as well as globally!), I often switch to English to quickly convey my thoughts before I recap in Japanese. So yes, keeping up with her Japanese is my concern without jeopardising her achievement in English.
The school Aya goes to for Japanese is for the kids who are settled here in London. And she goes there every Saturday for two hours. The focus is for them to be associated with Japanese with a positive attitude. The learning speed is definitely slow. My daughter is still doing work for year 1 level when she would be in year 3 in the Japanese educational system. Since she started 4 years ago, she has been good at learning Hiragana (the first set of phonetics) and, as many kids do including myself, she has been struggling with Katakana (the second phonetics). While she is in this situation, she started learning Kanji and she was really interested earlier on but she lost steam now to learn Kanji. (I partly blame last year's teacher for giving them too much homework without bearing kids' sentiments, which has been rectified this year after discussions.) Considering all this, I am ok with the current pace at this school for now as long as she is progressing forward at her speed. I hope for her to get back into learning Kanji at some point.
In general, I feel as though I just can't compete with the level of real life input in English she gets with Japanese when she is learning English full-time. I try my best though with having Japanese TVs and DVDs, lots of books to read to her, going back to Japan every year, talking to her in Japanese, etc. I am hoping from the association with this forum and beyond that I get ideas and methods to maximise this effort and tips to excite my daughter to learn her minority language enough at an academic level. Or, perhaps, even if it is not now that she focuses on written literacy, I would like to be able to draw up a roadmap to that aim.
An interesting twist to our narrative is that we may return to Japan in 3 years' time after all these years. My daughter will be around 11 or 12. As much as I would like to consider she is equally Japanese as she is British, she is foremost culturally a British brought up in Britain with a strong flare of Japanese. As such, I feel it would be cruel to send her to a local Japanese school at this age when her Japanese literacy is not as good as her counterparts, so we are thinking of sending her to an English-speaking international school.
My concern, then, is how much of Japanese and Japanese culture she would learn. Visiting 3 international schools this summer when we were in Tokyo to see what they are like, they all offered Japanese classes as their second language option, and I got the impression that some schools try hard to get kids to speak English rather than Japanese. Also, there will the inevitable amount of input in Japanese by just living, with her Japanese-speaking family (myself and grandparents). So perhaps she will naturally get into Japanese more so than she does now and that incidentally is a good thing. Adam, you were working in an international school in Japan, I would be grateful if you can possibly give me any thoughts in this as I am at my wit's end in this front.
That is, I suppose, for now, enough about me and my bilingual daughter. And sorry about my rambling, which my husband tends to say I do...!
- a gentle kick up her backside to do things, whether ml related or not). But I just tell her she never complains running is difficult, yet when she began running at around age 2 or so (easy for her to picture as her little sister is 3) she never complained and just kept going and trying and now she runs like the wind. That usually quiets her up.
I guess it is her personality too. But I find the pen-pal idea great. Or your daughter could also write to her grandparents in Tokyo.
The whole purpose is to make learning fun for our kids to want to "play" along and learn.
I feel so strongly about their dual identity, I just can't bear the thought of them not being able to speak or write or feel Spanish (fortunately for the moment it is no longer the case - as it once was with my eldest).
