Karen And Kazami Nagano Case Study

Karen and Kazami Nagano are raising a two-year-old son and a six-year-old daughter in Tokyo. Karen is a native speaker of English and Kazami is a native speaker of Japanese; each speaks the other’s language well enough to manage an everyday conversation, though with some effort and with a foreign accent. Karen and Kazami would like their children to be bilingual, but they are not sure whether this is a good idea or how to achieve it. Give them your advice.
My suggestion to Karen and Kazami is for them to continue to speak their native languages as well as the others’; their children will pick up on it and learn from hearing them. How is that possible, you ask? Well, there is a theory known as the “critical-age hypothesis” (Fromkin, Rodman and …show more content…
The plan was to teach kids in grades K-8 both English and Mandarin. This plan seemed to work when the children were younger, but toward middle school the program started to falter. Reading simple Chinese letters, doing Mandarin math calculations, and some science experiments contributed to half of the day. Fifth grade and above tended to be the time when students wanted to learn a language of their choice, not just Mandarin and Chinese (Carstens). This proves my example that children can learn and acquire languages by being around …show more content…
Acquisition theories say that adults do not acquire languages as well as children because of external and internal factors, not because of a lack of ability (BBC). Adults and teenagers both have a lot going on in their daily lives. There is school, work, family, children, pets, chores, driving, etc. and yet they are also expected to be learning multiple languages as well. Life brought complications that take up most of a person’s day. Once again, the Nagano’s need not to worry. Their children are two and six years old. They don’t have that much going on in their day to day lives. There is plenty of time between naps and eating for languages to be absorbed and