My name is Vicki and I am a 30-something mother married to a Japanese 50-something man and raising my 2 years and almost 7 month year old son here in the remote countryside of Japan. Of course, my goal for my son is to be bilingual with Japanese and English both his mother\father tongues(and if he choses so multi-lingual). I wanted to start this blog long before, but life circumstances and a bit of lazyness did not allow this to happen. To start I would like to put up a little background, so those who chose to follow this bilingual journey will know where it all started.
I first came to Japan in October of 2005 as a Japanese government teacher training scholarship recipient to research about learning disabilities in Japan. (I spoke no Japanese until coming to Japan. The program finished in March of 2007, I went home for a month and then came back to marry my now husband. We were married in the beginning of May and 1 month later I was pregnant with our first child, my son.
I knew before I was pregnant that if I was going to have children, I would natually teach them English. I hope also that my son will be interested in learning spanish and Chinese too in the future as I see that as a wonderful gift for his future prospects in life.
While I was pregnant I read story books aloud as well as books that I was reading, along with playing music to the womb via ear phones on my belly. During that time, my son would always move a lot when he heard music anywhere we were (he especially liked the rap music that played in random stores). His dad was practicing a piano song to play for a school ensemble and my son would always get excited in the womb when dad played piano. He still loves to move and groove to music to this day and is always begging to play piano with his dad.
Since my son was born, as I am pretty much the only English speaker around him, I have gone about each day in a running commentary of what I am doing, seeing, feeling, etc. Now that he can talk, I do not run my mouth as much, but still try to enhance is vocabulary. I guess I kind of talk to him like an adult. Especially now at about 2 and a half years old, because I am amazed at how big of words he can use. He seems to like sophistated sounding words like "Octagon" "mechanic" "thermometer" "electrician" and such.
When words started to form, he would usually use the English nouns and the Japanese grammar structure. For example he would say "hot da" for "it is hot". He started out saying hot, but then went to "ha sui" for the Japanese "atsui" then "ha tsui" and finally would only say atsui, but around the age of 2 years and 3 months he started to use both.
Around the age of 2 years and 5 months he started saying "daddy says .... and mommy says... I will look in my records in order to record in more detail his bilingual development.
As I am really stuck in the countryside and there are not really any English speaking children close by, I rely on myself and DVDs along with trips to the states for his English input. When Taka was 1 year and 3 months, I became pregnant and completely sick where I could not get up, so was kind of forced to have him watch DVDs all day....but through that his English developed greatly. He started out watching Elmo`s World from which he not only learned English but social skills. From Elmo he learned 3 word sentences like "open the door" and "close the door".
I believe that Japanese children begin to speak earlier than their American counterparts. (Many monolingual Japanese children start speaking 2-3 words at 1 and half years and fully speaking by 2 years whereas it seems American children tend to be about a half to 1 year behind that. I have no scientific evidence of that, just what I have observed. I think my son is late compared to Japanese children, but for a bilingual child a little early in his speaking ability. I wonder if it is because of the Japanese influence.
In October of 2008 when Taka was 6 months old, I took him to the states for 3 months. In May of 2010, when he was 2 years and 2 months I took him to the states again for 2 months. He was able to play with his cousins and interact with his grandparents. I will dedicate the next post to his most recent stay in the USA.
Right now, Taka is mostly watching "Blues Clues", "Elmos World", " Barney", "Go Diego Go", "Dora The Explorer", and "The Wiggles" for his English support. I will dedicate a future entry to record his learning from DVDs.
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