Speaking in Tongues

Ahead of this month’s Women’s Group seminar, Educating Your Child in a Non-Native Language, a number of Members in the know discuss the challenges and rewards of raising bilingual children.

Eight-year-old Sophie Leviton puts a spoonful of Rainbow Café peanut butter ice cream in her mouth and ponders the question. As a smile spreads across her face, the young Member replies that the best thing about being bilingual is “being able to talk to different people.”

Though simple, this reason seems a fundamental one for those Japan residents interested in bilingualism and education. More than the potential career or academic benefits, the primary motivation for exposing children to more than one language appears to be to provide them with a portal to a wider world.

Important, too, is the opportunity for personal growth through the linguistic challenge and, for the growing number of families in Japan long-term or who have Japanese family members, a vehicle for children to explore their adopted home and culture.

After experiencing education systems in three countries, Member Christina Siegel was certain that local Japanese school was the best option for her six school-age children when she arrived in Tokyo last year. Although she admits she was nervous about finding the right school for them at first, she believes that a composite, diverse history of schooling can instill adaptability in children and is appreciated by colleges when applying.

“All my children experienced culture shock at school at first, and it was definitely a challenge,” says Siegel, 42. “But the main function of any school is to provide a safe environment where kids can be safely put under stress and flourish, and the Japanese school system achieves that so well.”

Raised in an Irish Gaelic and English environment, before later becoming fluent in French, Siegel says she appreciates the benefits of a bilingual education. As a doctor, she was able to work in a hospital in France and immerse herself in the local community.

“Whether or not you use it later, having another language opens your mind to a different neural network. Things spark in a different way, mainly because it’s about communication,” she says. “Now, even if you don’t travel, you’ll meet people with different languages and cultures all the time.”

For Siegel’s two eldest children, entering a Japanese junior high school presented its own set of hurdles. Not only did they have to quickly acquire Japanese, they have needed to take additional Japanese and English classes to maintain grade-level reading and writing skills. In an age of technology, Siegel says the Internet enables motivated learners to surmount such barriers. After one year of school, meanwhile, her elementary school-age children now understand most of their classes.

Siegel believes all her kids have become more culturally aware through the experience, citing their interest in school lunches, school trips and learning life skills, such as sewing and cooking.

“With a big family like ours, we could easily be in a bubble, having a very similar life to the one we had before we arrived in Japan. The local school is a big factor in the children being part of the community and becoming bicultural, because we want more of those kinds of people in the world,” she says.

Imbuing her son with an outward-looking, international attitude was also key for Sawa Okano when plotting his educational path. Born and raised in New York City, her son, Kogen, could speak Japanese and English fluently when he moved back to Tokyo with his parents at age 4. He soon began to lose his English ability, however.

“I thought about international school but wanted him to have strong language skills and be confident in one language: Japanese,” Sawa, 56, explains. “As he had early exposure to English, which may have developed certain networks in the brain, I thought he could then brush up on his English skills later.”

The Member enrolled him in a local school and, from age 5, sent him to summer camp in New York each year to develop his English through immersion. While it took a little time for Kogen to become accustomed to using English each summer, by the time he returned to Tokyo, his spoken English level was close to that of his mother tongue.

After a number of summers in the United States, Sawa decided to send Kogen to summer school during his junior high school years, first to Switzerland then to Scotland and England. “I wanted to also let him experience European cultures,” explains Sawa, pointing out that her efforts were about “giving him [international] exposure as well as skills.”

Now 20 years old and studying medicine at university in Hokkaido, Kogen describes those “very important” summers abroad as a period of meeting people from different backgrounds and learning how to interact in various cultural settings. Overcoming challenges like adapting to unfamiliar classroom approaches and communicating with native speakers helped boost his confidence.

It is a different education style that prompts some non-Japanese parents to enroll their child in local Japanese school before moving them to international school around grade five, according to education expert and language pathologist Marsha Rosenberg, who will speak at this month’s Educating Your Child in a Non-Native Language seminar.

“I always recommend that kids try to go to school in both languages. Being immersed all day in a setting where you are learning in the language is very different from just learning the language,” explains Rosenberg, adding that Japanese schools teach children how to behave in Japanese social situations.

While Rosenberg, 66, praises Japan’s “amazing early childcare system,” she emphasizes that “for kids who are not Japanese, going to Japanese school is not educationally the best because of the way of teaching and thinking. So much of it is teacher-directed, rather than child-directed. If you wait too long to switch to an international school, it’s hard to get into the learning style of Western education.”

The longtime Member explains that even a few years in Japanese school enables children to absorb an array of social conventions and cultural practices. Her daughter, Kacie Leviton, who attended Japanese school from kindergarten to fifth grade, says the experience shaped her both culturally and linguistically.

“People are often surprised when they see my mannerisms and ability to pick the appropriate keigo [honorific speech] level when I speak, even though I’m not Japanese,” Kacie says. 

“I always explain to them that it’s because my heart is Japanese, but that doesn’t make me less American, either.”

A balanced bilingual, comfortable in both languages and cultures, Kacie, 38, has started her daughter, Sophie, on a similar journey. Sitting in Rainbow Café, mother and daughter effortlessly switch between English and Japanese.

While Kacie and her siblings were the only non-Japanese in their Yokohama elementary school, about one-quarter of
Sophie’s class in Minato Ward are non-Japanese or biracial. And it’s a trend that looks set to grow as more expats seek to raise their children bilingually.

But Rosenberg stresses that such an approach has to be properly thought through and families need to consider their future goals. Since research shows that we have to spend at least 30 percent of our day in a second language for it to develop, Rosenberg encourages parents to be aware of their responsibilities at home for maintaining the child’s reading and writing skills in the non-schooling language.

As experts, students and parents agree, bilingualism is a worthwhile aspiration, with rewards in cultural awareness, personal development and future opportunities. But it is the fruit of hard work, both inside and outside school.

Words: Kathryn Wortley

Educating Your Child in a Non-Native Language
September 24 | 2–4pm