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Essay

Little learners

By Samantha Loong


小さな学習者たち

低年齢の外国語教育には賛否両論があるが、自身が多言語の中で育った筆者は、賛成の立場を取る。年齢が低いほどスポンジのような吸収力があり、言葉は「学ぶ」よりも「遊ぶ」感覚の中で自然と身に付くと考えている。

An Australian friend of mine often shares amusing excerpts of conversations she has with her young children. Her eldest spent his early years in Tokyo and picked up a fair amount of Japanese. Even though they have since moved back to Australia, he still uses the odd Japanese word when he talks. I love how babies and children are like sponges when it comes to languages. They are fearless, curious and experimental — the ultimate language learners.

Some parents worry that exposing their children to a variety of languages will "confuse" the poor child. Having seen children grow up in multilingual environments — and having grown up in a multilingual environment myself — I wholeheartedly disagree. My early childhood consisted of being surrounded by people speaking a mixture of English, Hainanese, Cantonese, Mandarin, Malay and a hybrid of these languages. I remember speaking in Cantonese and a little Hainanese to my grandparents, and English to everyone else. When I was older, I asked my parents why they never spoke Cantonese to me as I've always been frustrated that my Cantonese is stuck at the level of a 5-year-old's. They told me that they — and everyone else — did try to speak to me in Cantonese but I would just reply in English. I don't remember this, but apparently when I was very young, if the person talking to me was more comfortable speaking in English, I would somehow know to use English with them. With any other elder folk, I somehow knew they weren't so good with English, so I would switch to Cantonese or Hainanese. Who knew I was so smart! Had I been exposed to as much listening, reading and writing of Cantonese as I was English, my Cantonese would probably be as good as my English.

Children are much smarter than we give them credit for. Switching languages comes naturally to them. When I taught English to several Japanese children aged 7 and younger, I was amazed at how naturally they used English. Some already had several years of English exposure, and others less. But the moment they entered the classroom, they knew that it was English Time and did not utter a word of Japanese, even when playing with their Japanese classmates. I was even a bit embarrassed when one little girl — who seemed to have decided that she would be my teaching assistant — started repeating sayings typical to me: "C'mon people!" She began to yell at her classmates, who had gone a bit wild and had started running around the classroom, slowly creating a human tornado.

To these kids, they weren't really "learning" a language. They were playing with it. They were getting used to it. That's what learning should be — making a habit of something so that it becomes natural to you. Watching children explore languages is quite inspiring when it comes to learning. For them, there appears to be no right or wrong and in a way, they're right — every use of a language, even mixed in with another language, is better than not using that language at all.



Shukan ST: APRIL 13, 2012

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