March Goals Review

In my last post on raising a bilingual child, I mentioned that we need to set goals to be more strategic in our bilingual journey. Then I showed our ultimate goals and 2017 goals. To make these yearly goals more manageable, I have decided to set each month a couple of smaller goals and share how it went with you all here on my blog. 

March Goals
For the month of March, the following were our goals:

• Do activities in my son's minority language for 10-15 minutes everyday on the weekdays

• Practice writing 2 letters a week

For the most part, I wanted to make this month a month to make habits, or to establish our routines. I figured once he gets used to our routines and expects to perform tasks in his minority language during certain times of the day, it'd be easier to incorporate other tasks and strategies later. It didn't matter so much what activities we did (working on printouts, reading a book, watching a tv show, etc.) but as a guide, I tried to have him work on one worksheet and 2 letters everyday.

How we did

As you can imagine, the first couple of days were the hardest, meeting my son's resistance. But things started to change at around the 5th day. He stopped refusing to sit down at his table and actually seemed to enjoy working on our workbook. And on a better day, he wanted to do more. I learned that he could practice 3 letters a week if the letters don't have complicated strokes, so for some weeks we practiced three. Overall, we missed only one day during the early days.

It's said, though, that it'll take 66 days to create a habit so our routines have not completely set at the time of this writing. But I have to say it's a lot easier now for him to sit down at his table and do activities together. Of course we have bad days like he's being too silly, tired, or just not in the mood but overall we're making a great progress in incorporating his minority language in our days.

April Goals:

• Keep working on our minority language activities for at least 10-15 minutes everyday on the weekdays
• Learn some word games in his minority language (called "siritori" しりとり)
• Learn to count with an appropriate classifier
• Practice writing 2-3 letters a week

Setting Goals for Our Bilingual Journey

Raising my son to be a bilingual (or multilingual) person has been on the list of our parenting goals for a long time but we haven't been able to be very strategic about it. This year, though, I have set my mind to change that. So when I heard about this 5 day 2017 Language Challenge over at Bilingual Avenue, I took this opportunity and signed myself up. I wasn't able to do it on time but I did complete it (yay!), and I'd like to share some of my thoughts that came up while working on this language challenge.

One of the major purposes of this challenge was to set goals for our bilingual journey. Of course, our ultimate goal is that my son would become equally confident in both languages in every aspect of his language skills and of his life. I've read many times, however, that this is one of the biggest myths about bilingual people, that they are two monolingual speakers in one, but why not aim high, right? :)

More realistically though, I want my son to be able to converse fluently with his family members and friends in Japanese, and to be able to get by on his own when we stay in Japan. Or possibly when he lives in Japan in the future. This includes not only conversational skills but also reading and writing in all three forms of letters, and learning its culture and customs. To achieve this I want him to finish at least 6th grade level at his Japanese language school.

Once I heard of a story of a Japanese person who grew up in an English speaking country. She came back to Japan hoping to get a job while she stayed there. She spoke just like any other Japanese speaking people, but unfortunately couldn't write or read kanjis (one of the three forms of letters in Japanese) very well so she wasn't qualified for most jobs in Japan. As a Japanese nationality, however, she wasn't qualified for those jobs that were open for foreigners either. She was stuck.

Now I hate to use someone else's story as a bad example, but I have to say I'd want my son to be able to use his full potential if he ever lives there without being restricted by his language skills.

To achieve these grand, rather abstract, goals, it'll be helpful to break them into smaller, more practical goals that we could work on an everyday basis and this is what I came up for our 2017 goals.

• Be able to speak his minority language more naturally with larger vocabulary and longer sentences
• Be able to write hiraganas (the first form of letters kids usually learn. He can read them already)
• Be able to read the second form of letters katakanas
• Be able to read basic children's books on his own

In my next post, I'd like to share some thoughts on how we can achieve these goals by looking at what worked and what didn't in our language journey so far.

Weekly Favorites 2/12

Hi everyone. I've started a teacher training program at a local minority language school so I have been reading and thinking a lot about how to become a good teacher. Even though this is only a once a week school, I'd like to offer my best to keep the students' heritage language. Here are a couple of articles that got my attention: 

Education 

In Teachers can use drama to bring writing to life for children I was sad to learn that a lot of children don't enjoy writing anymore because so much emphasis is put on grammar, punctuation and spelling. I think this might become an issue even more when students have to write in their weaker language. It was a good reminder for me to put an emphasis back on the content when I give writing assignments.  

In a similar vein, My Kids Are Straight-A Students And They Know Nothing  tells how context is important for actual learning to happen.

This article Should we share learning objectives with pupils?  actually surprised me because my training manual stated that sharing today's learning objective at the beginning of the class is important, and I thought that would definitely be true. It seems that in some occasions, having the students figure out what they are learning is a useful technique to implement in a lesson. I still have so much to learn!

My son started to learn about continents at his school so I thought this activity will complement what he's learning at school:
7 continents of the world: matching activity for preschoolers/kindergarteners

And speaking of preschoolers, this explains why my son became more sociable, confident young boy since he started his school: Preschoolers' Personality Traits May Be 'Contagious' Among Peers 

Finance
I've also been sorting out our personal finance situation. Here are a couple of articles and a podcast episode that helped me:

5 signs that you're living beyond your means
6 wise strategies to manage your extra income (e.g. raise, tax returns)

Expert Tips for Cutting Credit Card Debt

A Simple Trick to Keep You From Overspending at Costco 

Health
Since I hit that (dreadful) number 40 last year, I feel like I have to intentionally watch my health or I won't feel good. So regular exercise has become my priority: This Is the Type of Workout You Should Be Doing, According to Your Age

But the other day, I think I overdid my exercise and felt really sick with some pain after my workout. It only lasted about 20 minutes but I wanted to know why. You know, exercise is supposed make you feel good! Here's what I found out: Here's What You Need To Know About Feeling Nauseated After Your Workout 

Japanese Language
I was pretty skeptical of those translating apps but this one seems practical enough and promising. I think even my husband can get around Japan with this app. Next time we are able to visit we'll definitely give this app a try. Some of the translations are pretty funny though.
Just how good is Google Word Lens at deciphering Japanese?

If you liked these stories don't forget to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Flipboard to get notified as soon as I share them. Have a great week!

On Bilingualism

Now that I have set my routine and secure some time for more or less regular blogging thanks in part to bullet journaling, I can finally write about something that is dear to my heart: raising a bilingual/multilingual child. I have wanted to write about this topic for a long time, but just couldn't get around to do it for various reasons.

I have always been interested in the process of learning/speaking different languages. I even study the subject for my postgraduate degree. I LOVE reading and talking about anything linguistics (my husband can tell you how many hours I have bored him with this linguistic stuff, haha).

So I had known a thing or two about how to raise a bilingual child even before I had my son . I knew there would be some issues ahead of us but in theory it seemed straightforward enough. I speak the minority language to my son. My husband speaks the community language (English) to him. We could do this.

Of course, just like any other parenting matters, the things that seem straightforward in theory often turn out to be anything but, and raising a bilingual child was no exception for me. I'd like to write about the issues I had faced in the past in a separate post but suffice it to say I'm terrible at this. My 4-year-old son's minority language skill is, I have to say, not as good as his friends of the same age (his English is perfectly fine). But I haven't given up.  Thankfully, where we live now has a Saturday school that teaches in my son's minority language and has been a tremendous help in the past year. And this year I'd like to make more conscious efforts to teach him his minority language. Then I thought one of the ways to make it more conscious is to write about our journey. I have always wanted to write about bilingualism so why not just go ahead and write about it, right?

As a start, here are my 3 personal reasons why I have chosen to raise my son in 2 languages (hopefully more) that can keep me personally accountable to my family's language goals (this prompt was given by Bilingual Avenue podcast episode 152).

1. To be able to experience his other culture directly without relying on translations: I believe that speaking the language helps people understand the culture at a deeper level, and I want my son to experience this.
2. To be able to better communicate with his family members: actually my own parents speak good English so probably this is not a strong enough motivation for us but still I think it's better if my son could speak his minority language fluently.
3. To know that there is a bigger and exciting world out there: even if my son didn't end up speaking his minority language fluently, I think it's valuable for him to learn that people speak different languages and none of them is better or worse than another. 

I think we're in a pretty good position regarding 3. My son tells me excitingly who speaks what language at his school and seems proud that he could "speak" English, Japanese and Spanish :)

What are your 3 reasons? If you're raising a multilingual child or planning to, please let me know in the comment section.

Weekly Favorites 10-10

(Almost) everyday, I share stories I found and liked on the Internet via  Facebook, Twitter and Flipboard, the topics ranging from Cats to Bilingualism to Early Childhood Education to Music and more. Here are those stories in a more convenient weekly roundup form for you. Hope you'll find something that interests you. If you liked these stories don't forget to follow me via one (or more!) of the social media sites above to get notified as soon as I share them:

Health

Get the Most Out of Your Practice (Yoga)

Parenting

Our Sleep Training Nightmare

Teaching Your Child Emotional Agility

Quotes

"I have studied many philosophers and many cats. The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior."

- Hippolyte Taine, French critic and historian