It has been almost two decades since I moved here to
the States. It’s not much of a stretch
to say that there have been moments I got homesick and missed REAL ,
indigenous Korean dish. Even the Californian signature sunshine could not
always fawn over aliens like us, the
students from someone else’s country. My husband and I were no snowbirds who had picked the Southern
California to soak up the sun away
from the cold weather. We needed to buckle
down as two poor students with a preschooler son. Burning the midnight oil
as graduate students and trying hard to be good parents night and day have
depleted our energy sometimes.
The most difficult thing to face back then was how to
maintain our young one’s mother tongue in the country where English is spoken
as the major medium of
communication. Along with coping with our little son’s separation anxiety as he started to attend a preschool, we had to
decide whether to teach him how to speak, read, and write in Korean language
just as much as he was doing in English at school. His two preschool teachers
strongly recommended that we should talk to him only in English even at home
for the purpose of improving his English language. All things considered, my husband and I could not get our heads around the teachers’
stupid idea of giving up on teaching our son his native language. We thought
their big idea of living only in the target language with our little boy was no
more than their irrevocable parapraxis.
Everyday, they gave my son time-out just because he wasn’t able to speak in
English in class. He was only a two-and-a-half-year-old boy tossed into a
battlefield where he was supposed to survive with someone else’s language.
Although it went against the grain with
the teachers, we spoke, sang, read, and wrote in Korean with our son at home.
Yes, the teachers had not twisted our
arms, and we continued to live in our own native language. Quite against
the groundless thought that several different languages are incompatible in one
little child’s life, most children absorb things just like sponges, which would
help them develop into a multilingual, multicultural people. Thankfully, our
son also showed the case of facilitative
(not debilitative) bilingual and was also able to pick up both Korean and
English at the same great proficiency level pretty soon. Ziggety! As might be expected of any parent, we were keen to help our son grow up to be
a person who is culturally permeable
with proper acculturation all along.
No matter where we live or stay, home is where your
heart is as long as you can accept both cultures and languages. To us, both
Korea and America are our dear homes. We are not landlopers or secondary citizens eclipsed by the native people anywhere. Hope no one out there is confined to the thought that there
is only one place we call home.
Expressions
It’s not much of a stretch to say
that….: (phrase) It’s not that hard to believe that…..
fawn over somebody: (verb)
to attend to somebody too excessively/ to flatter somebody
snowbird: (noun)
One who moves from a cold to a warm place in the winter
soak up the sun:
(verb) to absorb or take in the sunray while lying on the beach
buckle down:
(verb) to start working hard
medium: (noun)
a means or agency for communicating or diffusing information, news, etc, to the
public: E.g., In this EFL class, English is the only medium of communication.
separation anxiety:
(noun) a feeling of strong fear and anxiety that is experienced by a young
child when the child is separated from a parent
(with) all things considered: (adverbial phrase) taking everything into
account/ after carefully thinking about all things
get one’s head around ….:
(verb) to understand …..
parapraxis:
(noun) minor error/ mistake/ slip of the tongue
go against the grain with somebody:
(verb) to disagree with somebody
No comments:
Post a Comment