No magic formula for fluency

For three years, I taught a once-a-week 50-minute English class for Japanese elementary grade students. One of the first things I said to the students and their parents was, “You will not learn English by simply coming to this class once a week. If this 50-minute class is the only English that you are exposed to, that simply is not enough.” I dashed the parents’ hopes that I had any magic formula that will suddenly make their children fluent in English. I was blunt but honest.

I gave the kids written homework. I had them review new vocabulary at home in preparation for in-class games. I requested the parents to sit with their children and read something in English for 10 minutes every day. I sent them home with a stamp card to keep track of the task. The kids dragged their feet — there were no tests or grades.  The parents did not push. I suppose the parents thought, Hey, what are we paying you (me, the teacher) for if we have to be the ones to work with our kids? Except for the lone kid who religiously did the homework, the rest of the class could barely understand basic conversation or string a simple English sentence together at the end of our three years together.

Children of English-speaking parents who go to Japanese elementary school appear to have it much easier. Mere exposure to an English speaking home environment, no doubt, facilitates fluency. However, reading and writing are two skills that do not come naturally even to native speakers. While I consider myself fluent in Filipino, reading a Filipino text is slow and arduous. I can scribble a quick note in Filipino to a friend, but have no confidence in drafting anything longer or more formal than that.  The same goes for Chinese.

I knew my kids were not going to learn level-appropriate English at their Japanese elementary school and I wasn’t going to spend money to enroll them in any English language program. If they were to keep up with their peers in other English-speaking countries, it will be up to us, their parents. As of this writing, my older two children, ages 12 and 9 can read English books recommended for their ages. My 12-year old finished reading about the Great Wall of China and my 9-year old finished an account of the events of 9-11. Their spelling still needs a lot of work but they have a surprisingly wide vocabulary that they can recognize in text and know how to use in speech. This is no small feat considering they learn everything, math, science, history, social studies, art, and music in Japanese at the local elementary school. 

In an illustrated biography of Barack Obama that my daughter and I were reading together, this little tidbit caught my attention. While living in Jakarta, Indonesia, Barack’s mom, Ann, was concerned that her son might fall behind in English. Everyday, she woke him up at four in the morning to give him English lessons before school. Barack, like any kid, would try anything to get out of those lessons but Ann never listened to his excuses. “This is no picnic for me either, Buster,” she told him.

This is the same challenge for English-speaking families living in Japan. 

Here are two things  we do that I believe has helped our kids. The key is to do these consistently because in and of themselves, they are small things that do not have any dramatic or instant effect, but done regularly, can be pretty significant.

1. Read to me

If your children attend public elementary school in Japan, chances are, you will have listened to them complete their 音読 homework and sign their 音読 card. Reading aloud, even a simple text, has many benefits: it reinforces the flow of the language. You intuitively learn what a smooth sentence is, speed up word recognition and correct kanji/spelling (seeing the word so many times, you get a feel of what looks correct or wrong), and check on pronunciation.

Taking from this Japanese standard method of instruction, I have my kids do English 音読 with me or their dad for 10 minutes every day. Again, 10 minutes is not long, but done every single day, adds up. 

The kids pick a book from the library that they want to read. This bit is important. My daughter and my son have very different interests. It is important that they pick a topic or a story that they will want to read or learn more about so that our 10 minute time together is something they actually look forward to. Right now, they have chosen very different books. My daughter is reading about how Walt Disney World in Florida was built, while my son is into the California Gold Rush and Minecraft (he insisted on doing an extra 5 minutes for us to read a Minecraft story together). This time is fun for me too because I am learning things I never knew myself. 

2. And I’ll read to you (Bedtime story, wake-up story) 

I reread a post about reading to my children that I wrote back in 2013 when I was a stay-at-home: at that time, I read to my kids five times a day! Now that they spend most of their waking hours in school, I read to them twice: 20-30 minutes before bed, and 15-20 minutes upon waking up (this means waking them up a bit earlier than the time they need to get ready for school). This has become so much of an established ritual in our home that in the event that we have to skip story time for one reason or another, it feels like something is not right. 

“I like waking up with a story,” my daughter says.

When I read, I often stop when we come across a fairly difficult word to check if they understood its meaning.  It is worth repeating what Anne E. Cunningham and Keith E. Stanovich wrote in their article in the Journal of Direct Instruction entitled What reading does for the mind 

What is immediately apparent is how lexically impoverished is most speech, as compared to written language. … The relative rarity of the words in children’s books is, in fact, greater than that in all of the adult conversation… Indeed, the words used in children’s books are considerably rarer than those in the speech on prime-time adult television.

From short stand-alone stories, we have graduated to chapter books. I know I have struck gold (in finding a great author) when I stop reading at the 20 or 30 minute mark and the kids plead, “One more sentence please!”

This is true of the Harry Potter series, books by Roald Dahl, Louis Sachar, Beverly Cleary, Peter Brown (the Wild Robot), and our most recent favorite, David Walliams. David Walliams is particularly brilliant because he has managed to make me laugh then cry in the same sentence (I recommend his book Mr. Stink for this experience). 

When we find a good book, reading together is something I do not have to push onto the kids. They ask to be read to and look forward to story time, and if we, because of time constraints, cannot read, they are disappointed. And there is something else that happens.

My partner also listens in at story time. He is usually at work by the time we have our wake-up story (the man takes the first train of the day!) so he listens in by voice call. When he is traveling, he coordinates his schedule to be available at story time by voice call — sometimes, that might mean almost midnight in Stockholm when it is almost 7 a.m. in Tokyo. We were reading David Walliam’s Grandpa’s Great Escape and my husband was traveling overseas when he wrote me, 

Reflecting this morning while listening to you in story time, this daily shared experience connects us together in a way that is not overly direct and we get a chance to laugh and share a tear together. I know I yearned for connection growing up. I never imagined it could be like this and relatively easy. It does require time management for both of us. But the pay off is what we wanted from a marriage and family: loving connection. I have a place. I am loved.” (June 20, 2022)

Writer Kate DiCamillo wrote something similar, in response to the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

I have come to understand that there is an unspoken promise between my readers and me. The promise is this: I will tell you the truth and I will not leave you. We are in this together. When a book is read aloud… that promise is deepened and multiplied a thousand-fold. A story read aloud creates a place of connection and empathy, a community. It creates a safe place…. In this way, we bear witness to each other’s lives. It’s magical. 

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Photo by Mark Zamora, Unsplash