How I try to make my children trilingual

自由が丘、横浜の外語スクールデンハウスのエリックです。

Hello everyone! It’s been a while since I wrote last time… I just came back from Québec, Canada where I spent a month with my family and friends.

My wife is Japanese and  we have three children. We really want them to learn Japanese, French and English so we chose to speak to them each in our mother tongue and me and my wife speak to each other in English to expose them to the language. We don’t want them to watch to much TV but we choose a few bilingual programs and they watch them in English. Some friends’ children complain when they don’t understand, even if they know and like the cartoon or movie characters, but so far, our children don’t. we find some French TV programs on the web. We also have a trilingual library of children books and CDs. We try to give them English and French homework and they go to a public Japanese Elementary school and a Japanese private kindergarten.

I work late in the evening and early at elementary schools a few times a week so I often go 2-3 days without talking much with them or reading them French story books so I think they sometimes feel frustrated not easily being able to explain, for example,  what they did at school. Moreover, I talk like an adult so I really feel it’s important for children’s education to also speak with other children in the language we want them to learn. Speaking with other Japanese children in a group lesson is very good to give them confidence they can do it, too. It gives a little more meaning to their learning than just passing tests to enter a good school, for example.

I’d like to recommend to all those who can afford it, to take a little longer vacation from work before your children go to elementary school and/or become teenagers  and plan a family home stay where your children could have the chance to play with others in the language they’ve been learning. It doesn’t necessarily have to be abroad, a local playground or community center could be enough. Get together with other multicultural and foreign families. Add a little animation from the parents and do the more formal study at home afterwards. My kids certainly seem to have enjoyed playing with their cousins and friends in Canada and in just a few weeks, many expressions came out more naturally from them. I now have to try and keep some more time to spend with them, and prepare activities for them to do when I’m not there.

I’d love to hear ideas from other people in a similar situation so feel free to write!

That’s all for now. See ya!

Éric Busque

関連する投稿

• デンマーク日記① (0)
• trick or treat! (0)
• to be or not to be…　デンマーク郊外ハムレットの旅 (0)
• Sento’s granpa (2)
• 英語の秋 (0)