bilingual children

[Kunio Okuda]

Dear Sneha,

Our answer to your question is 'sooner the better'.
We started one-parent one-language approach when
our daughter was eight months old and she is now
12;7. She is truely bilingual and biliteral in both
Japanese and English.  She has just passed an English
proficiency test at the pre-first level. Only about
8 percent of examinees can pass the test at that level,
and most of them are English teachers and college
students. Our daughter is in the sixth grade of an
elementary school in Japan. She reads a lot and
writes a lot in the two languages.

Kunio and Hisako Okuda

At 5:30 PM 98.12.8, Sneha V Bharadwaj wrote:
> I have come across several bilingual families who have asked me
> following questions :  "At what age do we expose two languages to the NEW
> BORN?"  and "At what age do we seroiusly consider one-parent one-language
> approach"?
>         Can we give parents any definitive answers? Thanks in advance
> to all your replies
> -Sneha Bharadwaj.

.......................................................................................................
Kunio Okuda, Ph.D. <kokuda at ipc.hiroshima-u.ac.jp>
Dept. of Teaching Japanese as a Second Language
School of Education, Hiroshima University,
Higashi-Hiroshima City, JAPAN  739-8523
Phone: 0824-24-6863 /Fax: 0824-22-7134 (Office)
Phone/Fax: 082-878-1553 (Home)