Taking advantage of staying at home with your children during the COVID-19 crisis
Like so many other parents world wide, you are probably stuck at home with your children during the current COVID-19 crisis. It is a difficult time for everyone.
However, for parents who speak a language other than the school language at home and for their children, this may be a time of opportunity as well.
Janice Nakamura is a child bilingualism researcher, a HaBilNet Supporting Member, and part of a bilingual family living in Japan. In this video she explains how the current COVID-19 crisis has brought an unexpected opportunity for more support for English, the language she speaks to her son.
To find out more about Janice Nakamura's scholarly work, see her 2016 paper on Hidden bilingualism: Ideological influences on the language practices of multilingual migrant mothers in Japan (International Multilingual Research Journal, 10(4), 308–323) here.
Furthermore, in this innovative research, Janice Nakamura reports on how young adults feel about not having learned to speak one of their parents' languages (Nakamura, 2020. Language regrets: mixed-ethnic children's lost opportunity for minority language acquisition in Japan. Multilingua, DOI:10.1515/multi-2019-0040).
More about Janice Nakamura
Janice Nakamura explains how it is difficult to raise bilingual families in Japan
