[quote]Gambit_Lost wrote:
Thanks! You whole post was awesome. I’ll check out this book.
One random question: How much should we ‘‘separate’’ the languages? I’ve heard about people using different rooms or ‘‘levels’’ of the house. For example, first floor is English, the second floor is Spanish.
I’m also worried about having ‘‘enough’’ of a Japanese environment for my kids. We have the converse problem as you have in Kansai. If my job DOES land us here, there is VERY little Japanese around. I’m hoping to nab a job in a location with more J-expats, but if we can’t, then I’m wondering about how to make books and TV/movies enough. More skype with the inlaws? Maybe I just have to move to the east or west coast (USA).
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Hi again.
Sorry I missed this–I only pop onto this site intermittently anymore these days.
As to your questions:
If it were me, living in Japan, the entire house would be English. I would let the outside environment and the in-laws’ places take care of the Japanese. That being said, you could try the levels and see how it works for you.
One of my parents last year had two children in the kindergarten, one in K-3 (5-6 years old) and one in my class (K-1 - 3-4 years old). She had them have ‘‘English time’’ at home where they were supposed to speak English to each other, watch English-language DVDs and TV, and do their homework. That little girl was one of my best students, somewhat shy, but very intelligent and had great handwriting, especially for a 3-year-old.
Creating a Japanese environment in the US will of course be tricky, unless you’re in an area like you describe. For your information, the north Dallas area also has a fairly large Japanese ex-pat community, as does Ohio (around the Toyota facility there, I think). I don’t know your situation, obviously, but you could have your wife and child visit Japan during the summer vacation. It is possible to enroll your child in daycare or short-term school for those few months, which would expose them to both the language and the culture.
The lady who was the Japanese teacher at my university used to do this, as well as enroll her kids in Saturday school (in Dallas) for Japanese language, history, and other subjects. One of my friends (same guy who I mentioned in my first post, actually) also makes a point to take his kids back to the US during summer and winter vacation so they have a chance to visit their grandparents and experience summertime and Christmas in the US (where it is actually a real holiday, lol).
Anyway, if you are in the US it will fall more heavily to your wife getting the kids to speak Japanese, so you might have to reverse all of the other suggestions for that situation. If you are strict and, and this is the important bit here, consistent, you should be able to teach your kids to speak to you in English and to your wife in Japanese until they’re old enough to recognize the difference and make that choice logically.
So, for my final thought, remember this caveat: I do not have children, yet. I am only a kindergarten/ESL teacher offering advice from the perspective of an educator. Of course, one day I may have kids, and I will be in this situation, so I think about it a lot.
Good luck.