Susan in Singapore
Jan 7, 2015 17:01:31 GMT 9
Post by Susan on Jan 7, 2015 17:01:31 GMT 9
Hello everyone and nice to "meet" you all!
I have three kids, ages 13, 10 and 5, and about 9 months ago moved from Japan (where they were born and have mostly lived since birth) to Singapore.
Our home is bilingual Japanese/English. Each child is very different. While my 13-year-old daughter seems most comfortable in English (even when she went to a Japanese school), my two boys definitely lean toward Japanese and speak it 90 percent of the time at home.
We are really loving the language opportunities here in Singapore. We decided to send daughter1 (13) to international school, so her education has abruptly switched to English. She has struggled but has stayed on top of her very challenging IB curriculum. She's also started learning Mandarin as a third language. My son1 goes to Japanese school here in Singapore. He preferred this option, and it's a lot cheaper than "international"! Also, we felt it was a positive thing for him to finish his primary education in Japanese. The plus side of a Japanese school in Singapore is much higher quality English education than your typical public school in Japan. He has English class three times a week (in the 4th grade), and classes are divided into levels so he can learn at his own level. My son2 goes to a Japanese kindergarten. We find this works for us as he gets English at home and Japanese at school (although recently during the holidays with his Japanese father home, he's gotten a lot of Japanese at home too!).
Just briefly, our challenges:
For my son1, it is definitely reading and writing that are harder for him. It's a vicious cycle because he doesn't read in English, thus he doesn't improve his vocabulary, making it harder to read and comprehend! He was often a bit anti-English around the ages of 5-7, and so I suppose I did not push it hard enough then! I'm a bit anxious to get him reading independently in English at grade level, but it's slow going. He is receptive to watching movies in English, so we do that often.
For my daughter, we are now working on maintaining her Japanese. At this point, we check out books from a Japanese library, she reads them and writes simple essays on them.
For son2, he's still 5 and everything is fun, fun! We're working on phonics in English at home now.
Looking forward to sharing with everyone!
Susan
I have three kids, ages 13, 10 and 5, and about 9 months ago moved from Japan (where they were born and have mostly lived since birth) to Singapore.
Our home is bilingual Japanese/English. Each child is very different. While my 13-year-old daughter seems most comfortable in English (even when she went to a Japanese school), my two boys definitely lean toward Japanese and speak it 90 percent of the time at home.
We are really loving the language opportunities here in Singapore. We decided to send daughter1 (13) to international school, so her education has abruptly switched to English. She has struggled but has stayed on top of her very challenging IB curriculum. She's also started learning Mandarin as a third language. My son1 goes to Japanese school here in Singapore. He preferred this option, and it's a lot cheaper than "international"! Also, we felt it was a positive thing for him to finish his primary education in Japanese. The plus side of a Japanese school in Singapore is much higher quality English education than your typical public school in Japan. He has English class three times a week (in the 4th grade), and classes are divided into levels so he can learn at his own level. My son2 goes to a Japanese kindergarten. We find this works for us as he gets English at home and Japanese at school (although recently during the holidays with his Japanese father home, he's gotten a lot of Japanese at home too!).
Just briefly, our challenges:
For my son1, it is definitely reading and writing that are harder for him. It's a vicious cycle because he doesn't read in English, thus he doesn't improve his vocabulary, making it harder to read and comprehend! He was often a bit anti-English around the ages of 5-7, and so I suppose I did not push it hard enough then! I'm a bit anxious to get him reading independently in English at grade level, but it's slow going. He is receptive to watching movies in English, so we do that often.
For my daughter, we are now working on maintaining her Japanese. At this point, we check out books from a Japanese library, she reads them and writes simple essays on them.
For son2, he's still 5 and everything is fun, fun! We're working on phonics in English at home now.
Looking forward to sharing with everyone!
Susan
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