English education for children

my speech "When ?What? and How?"

"You should speak in Japanese.

Otherwise you'll forget Japanese."

Megumi's mother shouted when Megumi and her sister were talking in English.

I read a story about Megumi aged 7 in a newspaper. She has been studying English since she was 6 months.

Megumi's mother and father can't understand what their daughters talk about in English.

When Megumi was 6 months old,they bought English education materials worth about 500,000yen. The materials included campact discs ,videos of English songs and stories and a machine that reads aloud English words printed on cards.

They wanted their daughter to be a good speaker of English.She listened to English as a lullaby.

She understood 100 English words when she was three. She entered a special kindergarten where she could learn English with native English teachers when she was three.

After that parents decided to make her watch TV programs in English.They thought she needed to listen to English more.

When she started to speak in English ,her English teacher encouraged her to write a diary in English. At first she only wrote "I ate a meal." So her teacher asked her "With whom? Where?" Then she tried to write a longer sentence . Her teacher also checked her grammatical mistakes.

She passed the second grade Step Test last autumn. She'll challenge the pre-first Step Test soon.

Megumi was so lucky that she could meet good English teachers and materials and passed the Step Tests. Maybe she has a special ability to learn language.

One teacher at her kindergarten says some small children feel some stress when they have to speak in English. Megumi likes to speak English better than Japanese.

It is her good point but it will be her weak point in the future. She can't commmunicate with people around her in Japanese well , even though she's in Japan.

I believe communication among family members and friends is more important for children than passing the Step Tests. Children learn a lot how to think and how to live through talking with people around them.

Some companies of English education materials advertise their products with exaggerated praiss and we think young children have to learn English using those materials as early as possible. Actually we don't know when to give ,what to give and how to give those materials to small children.

When I tought English to 3 years old children ,I used cards .(I show some cards to people.)Children could listen to English and copy their voice using these cards. They loved these cards and imitated correct pronunciation of English easily.

They learned English moving their bodies ,listening to songs and stories in English ,meeting native speakers and doing some games . I told them "Let's go to a zoo together. We can see many animals here. I'll pretend to be a big elephant .I have a long nose and big ears. Let's do it together. Now we are rabbits. We can hop.Hop,hop,hop!!"

I sometimes said to myself "Are hopping and pretending to be animals good for them ?" after sweatting in my class room. Now I think children learn a lot through playing in English. Now they are high school students . Some of them want to go abroad to study English more as they know studying English is fun.

Parents can give their children good places and materials to learn English but they shouldn't force their them to live in a limited small world saying "You have to speak in English even at home to be a good speaker of English."

It is very dangerous for children to learn English so hard before speaking mother tongue well.They can't learn both their mother tongue and English at the same time.

I read another story about Japanese children whose parents wanted them to speak in English at home while they were in America. Parents thought it was a good chance for their children to learn English. In fact their children forgot Japanese and didn't learn English well. People call them "semilingual". Some semilinguals dropped out of schools because of poor skill of language.

Young mothers in Japan don't know real imformation about English education for small children. They should think about when to teach,what to teach and how to teach their children English more . They should teach their children beautuful and polite Japanese before teaching English."