How to Let Your Children Become Bilingual:

II thought to write this article as a language expert which I am not. Oh yeah I know little about speech, cognitive and emotional developmental stages and by doing a bit of research could easily bore you to tears. But rather than write this article for researchers or teachers I want to reach parents. Bilingual children have an advantage over monolingual children for many reasons but a very important one is they will continually be ego pumped by adults with phrases like, "Oh how smart you are" or "You are so lucky to speak two languages." Ask Freud if that doesn't build confidence in children. Building confidence might be shadowed by one that shouts, "THEY WILL MAKE MORE MONEY."

Ok, so what makes me the expert? Don't claim to be... but my children are fluent in English and Japanese so I have an idea or two. First you need their background to know contributing factors to bilingualism (is that a word?). Both my children (now 13 and 16) were born and raised to this point in Japan. In addition my wife is Japanese. Alright you are thinking...there it is...marry a foreigner and raise them in another country. Nope, it's not that easy. I know many children who grew up in Japan with a native English-speaking Dad and a Japanese mother who can't speak a lick of English. Why? Often in these cases several variables exist: mother did not become fluent in English, father became fluent in Japanese or mother did not learn English and father was too busy or self-indulgent to interact with the children. In both these cases father and mother were probably too busy to give it much thought and the years rolled by.

So, how did we do it?

First, the Japanese language of course was easy. My children went to Japanese schools and grew up in Japan. However, the target language (English) is a different story. One of the main contributing factors to my children learning English was my own inability to learn Japanese. Oh, I can converse a bit in Japanese but not being fluent my children had to deal with me in English. Often in the case of international marriage one or the other of the languages involved will dominate. The reason for this is one spouse is simply better at learning a foreign language. In my case, my wife learned English and we communicated in English, the children communicated with me in English and they communicated with each other and their mother in Japanese. Sounds complicated for me doesn't it? The answer is yes and no. The continual exposure to Japanese caused my hearing of the language to improve dramatically and so I was able to keep track of the gist of the conversations. Often I would hear in Japanese and comment in English. This caused my children to become quick at shifting from one language to another (a good skill for a later interpreting job).

The title to my article was the hands off approach. Perhaps you are now thinking...so far it sounds like a hands off approach but... didn't your children study English? Actually, I never remember my daughter studying English until she was in high school and preparing for a proficiency exam and my son at thirteen is just beginning. The funny thing is my son is particularly good at colloquialisms and idiomatic phrases and so is the most natural speaker of the two. Why? I did do one thing...now mark this mentally as the most important part of this article. I laid down a law in my house..."no Japanese movies" and "limited Japanese TV". Young families spend a lot of time in front of the boob tube and this is where second language acquisition is lost.

Movies are full of culture, normal conversation, provide an enjoyable learning environment and trigger unconscious learning. Just be careful of content...my son began spouting quotes from Jim Carey movies when he was 4. I'll let you decide if that is appropriate content for your children. For us it was ok.

A lot of people are worried that if too much emphasis is put on second language speaking that proficiency in the native language will be diminished. This is simply not the case. Children live in their native language through their peers, schools and everyday life. Don't worry...you couldn't stop them from learning if you had to.

One final strategy that we used was to get the children into the United States as much as possible (once or twice a year). This gives the children the cultural image of the target language and forces them to use it with people other than their parents.

So, there you have it. The hands-off approach has three points: 1) One parent must speech the target language. 2) Outlaw movies in the native language 3) Get them into the target language environment as much as possible.

Some of you may still go for the old school method (teach them teach them teach them). If so, all I can say is be careful not to develop a dislike for the target language. Well enough said. I wish you all the best in training your children and remember sometimes your laziness in training your children can produce wonderful results.