Russian Japanese Children's Bilingualism: Bilingualism Problems in Modern Japanese Society.
On October 19th in Tokyo University of Foreign Languages a scientific methodological conference was held, the theme of the conference was Russian Japanese children's bilingualism - bilingualism in Japanese society where I had an opportunity to make a report.
It was not the first conference in Japan devoted to the problems of teaching Russian to children where one of the parents is a Russian native.
Apart from looking into general problems of Russian Japanese bilingualism, a great deal of attention was paid to the factors influencing the formation of skills of learning Russian and to studying peculiarities of lingual and social environment of children and, of course, the adaptation of biligual child to Japanese society, in particular in school.
The first conference was held in 2012 with initiative and support of the Japanese association of Teaching Russian and its Problems Studies (日本ロシア語教育研究会 -«Rokeken»). The association planned to investigate the situation with teaching Russian to bilingual children. This year a conference was organised by the Association of Teachers of Russian speaking schools in Japan with the support of Rokeken association.
Such attention to Russian and bilingual children is not random. Today in Japan, anywhere from Hokkaido to Okinava, there are a lot of children born in mixed Russian Japanese marriages.
Starting from the 1990s a lot of Russian nationals moved to Japan for various reasons, some had families. At present there is a whole generation of children in the country speaking both languages with varying degree of success.
Unfortunately, there is no statistics on numbers of those children and on the degree of knowledge of their parants' languages. It is solely known that there are 7000-10000 Russian nationals residing in Japan but there are many more Russian speakers.
The conference was remarkably interesting and diverse.
Scientific and methodological reports of professors, Ph.D. students, teachers and parents, open classes, presentations of Russian schools were very impressive.
A number of improtant questions were touched upon. For instanse, professor U. Kobayasi's report conveyed the problems of bilingual children and their parants.
Ph.D. Student of Ochanomizu university N. Timoshenko interviewed parants in mixed families living in various parts of Japan and shared her thoughts about special role of parents in developing language skills in their children, about social status of the Russian language in Japan and how to create interest in learning language.
During report of the teacher I. Savelieva about bilingual children's pronounciation mistakes and the ways of fixing them parents invited to the conference started making notes on logopaedic exercises.
I particularly remember a remarkable report of honorary professor of Tokai University (Tokyo) Yamasita Mariko who talked about advantages of bilingualism and difficulties of a Russian speaking child socialising in Japanese environment based on her own experience. It appeared that professor Ymasita was born in Harbin in mixed family, her mother was Russian and her father was Japanese. All her life since she was 12 she has lived in Japan. I admired Ms. Yamasita's beautiful and rich, absolutely accent free Russian. Such level of pronounciation can be found only in old films starring M. Zharov and A. Vertinskiy. Listening to her I emotionally and aesthetically enjoyed her speech. Professor Yamasita mentioned her mather and grandmather with special warmth and gratitude who helped her to learn Russian and absorb rich Russian culture.
Through the interpreter Mr. Sigiura made a very unusual and vivid report about his sad experience as Japanese father. He has a Russian wife and 3 children, the oldest is 11, none of the children speaks Russian. Russian speaking mother was so much preoccupied with fitting into the Japanese language and cultural environment that she always spoke Japanese to her children. As a result, none of the children has any interest in the Russian language and culture. Now the parants are trying to catch up starting to teach the children Russian but they do not quite understand why they should learn it. The father realised only now the mistake that himself and his wife made depriving their children from naturally speaking both languages from birth and from learning the heritage of the two countries. Mr. Sigiura in his report made an indisputable conclusion - do not follow in my steps and do not forget about second inherited language.
Apart from scientists, methodologists and all the professionals in the field, there were many Russian speaking parants present. And that was valuable and pleasant.Many of them came with families and children.
Wisely, there was a group organised for kids supervised by qulified staff so that the reports could be heard and discussed without interruption. Children had a chance to participate and to be on stage for a short period of time during open class of Russian school "Rosinka" conducted by T. Schipkova. Interestingly, many of them were not shy at all and felt at ease although there were about a hundred guests present.
Presentation of Zhanna Takahasi, the director of Russian school "Raduga", Tokyo, went down well with parents who had been totally engaged and you could see their smiling faces and hear good feedback.
My report was based on more than 10 years of experience working with bilingual children. I outlined the factors that can help children to learn Russian, gave recommendations to Russian speaking parents and gave examples from my own pedagogical experience.
In my opinion, the strongest motivation to learn language is relationship between parants, the degree of how close they are because communication starts long before the child starts to speak. And it solely depends on the Russian speaking parents (in most of the cases mother) wheather this communication becomes "kitchen language" or transforms into real and full information and thought exchange that would create interest in the language.
Summerising the conference, everyone agreed upon necessity and practicality of teaching Russian and Russian culture to children from mixed families.
Majority of new generation of bilingual children has not yet started their adult life and all responsibility for what kind of people they become entering adult life is placed on parents and teachers. It might sound pompous but it would be desirable for our countries to get closer and achieve maximum and full understanding through such children.