Monday, June 26, 2006

BILINGUALISM

1) ▼　More than thirty years ago I attended a junior high school, where a Japanese girl student was transferred from the United States. As was expected, she spoke perfect English. It was my first time to get acquainted with a bilingual who could speak two languages fluently.

2) ▼ “This is real English.” I was impressed. To my surprise, she said to one of the classmates at recess, “Hi! Long time no see.” I heard that they had attended the same Japanese supplementary class in the eastern part of the United States some years before.

3) ▼ But the other one did not show any sign of her experiences in the United States and even read an English textbook with Japanese accent. She might have thought cleverly that it would be better for her not to be different from others in the homogeneous society of Japan.

4) ▼ Nowadays there are many returnee students in Japan. How do they behave themselves now? It is often considered that bilinguals can switch from English to Japanese or vise versa freely. A rage for children’s English class and teaching English at elementary school may be supported by earnest wishes to be bilingual. But in fact things are not so simple.

5) ▼“Asahi Weekly,” a weekly paper for English language learners, featured their frank opinions in the June 25 issue. At a roundtable talk they wondered which nationality they belonged to. Speaking English, they became cheerful and outspoken, but in Japanese they were quite different. They also had to undergo a one-sided view that returnee students were hard to deal with at companies in Japan. They can be never free from worries.

6) ▼ Despite those worries, “what they have experienced in different languages and cultures may help them understand a foreign country wherever they go,” said a reporter of an English language newspaper. We may need to learn those flexibilities from them rather than skills of a foreign language.

Monday, June 05, 2006

DREAM IN BURGEON WAS LOST

1) ▼ I heard a large delightful shout on the way ahead. “Keep at it!” “Up with you!” Cheering voice came from the school ground. On Sunday, I passed by an elementary school in Tokyo, where a sports meet was being held.

2) ▼ It was at the height of a relay race between red and white teams, catching up, outrunning, dropping a baton, picking it up and passing it to the next. I stopped walking to watch them running in real earnest. Children compete against each other or cooperate with each other to achieve something. Their single-minded attitude appealed to people regardless of their difference in physical strength and performances.

3) ▼ On the wall of the school building, there was a sign board with decorative letters aligned sideways. “Win Glory! Toward Your Goal of Dream, Both Red and White.” Children divided into red and white compete against each other to reach goal. It is hard for adults to realize it in everyday life, but competing desperately may become a sweet memory in the future.

4) ▼ At another elementary school I happened to pass by on Sunday a week before, six graders were doing gymnastics in teams at a sports meet. They set up twofold or threefold human tiers. I enjoyed watching each team clasping hand in hand and folding their arms at their own pace rather than they tried to synchronize their movement as a show.

5) ▼ It is a hundred years since the elementary school was established. For many years since the Meiji era, children have never encountered danger as much as they do today even though we are in peacetime. Parents and grandparents who talked to their children or watching their children quietly in the school ground must have wished that a peaceful time they had at the sports meet would continue for good.

6) ▼ I hear that a first grader murdered at Fujisato-machi in Akita prefecture won the first prize in an 80-meter running race at the sports meet held last month. He wanted to be a carpenter when grown up. His dream in burgeon was deprived of by the hideous crime.