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Blog postADAM’S NOTE: Over the past few years, Tiara Harris has sometimes shared video clips with me of her super-cute kids speaking Japanese and I came to admire the very proactive efforts she is making so that she and her children can both become bilingual in this language and their native English. As a result of the success she’s experiencing, Tiara is also becoming a growing force at YouTube with a variety of helpful and appealing videos at her Chocolate Sushi Roll channel. Thank you for sharing your
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Blog postJust in time for Christmas!
I WANT TO BE BILINGUAL! is the perfect book for parents—especially new parents and parents of younger kids—who dream of raising bilingual or multilingual children. Written by Adam Beck, author of the popular guide Maximize Your Child’s Bilingual Ability, this playful book is a unique “picture book for adults” with delightful illustrations by Pavel Goldaev. Narrated by a lively baby, the book emphasizes the most important information parents need for realizi -
Blog postFor five weeks in the fall of 2019—from September 2 to October 9—I traveled from Japan to Europe to meet bilingual and multilingual families in person and interview the parents for a new book I’m writing that brings together a range of “success stories” on the subject of raising bilingual and multilingual children. Along with the 15 interviews I conducted in England, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Poland, the Czech Republic, Spain, and Italy, I’m now pursuing additional interviews w
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Blog postFor five weeks in the fall of 2019—from September 2 to October 9—I traveled from Japan to Europe to meet bilingual and multilingual families in person and interview the parents for a new book I’m writing that brings together a range of “success stories” on the subject of raising bilingual and multilingual children. Along with the 15 interviews I conducted in England, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Poland, the Czech Republic, Spain, and Italy, I’m now pursuing additional interviews w
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Blog postFor five weeks in the fall of 2019—from September 2 to October 9—I traveled from Japan to Europe to meet bilingual and multilingual families in person and interview the parents for a new book I’m writing that brings together a range of “success stories” on the subject of raising bilingual and multilingual children. Along with the 15 interviews I conducted in England, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Poland, the Czech Republic, Spain, and Italy, I’m now pursuing additional interviews w
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Blog postFor five weeks in the fall of 2019—from September 2 to October 9—I traveled from Japan to Europe to meet bilingual and multilingual families in person and interview the parents for a new book I’m writing that brings together a range of “success stories” on the subject of raising bilingual and multilingual children. Along with the 15 interviews I conducted in England, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Poland, the Czech Republic, Spain, and Italy, I’m now pursuing additional interviews w
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Blog postFor five weeks in the fall of 2019—from September 2 to October 9—I traveled from Japan to Europe to meet bilingual and multilingual families in person and interview the parents for a new book I’m writing that brings together a range of “success stories” on the subject of raising bilingual and multilingual children. Along with the 15 interviews I conducted in England, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Poland, the Czech Republic, Spain, and Italy, I’m now pursuing additional interviews w
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Blog postFriends, I’m on the road from September 2 to October 9! I’m working on a new book about raising bilingual/multilingual children and I’ll be visiting families across the UK and Europe and interviewing experienced parents about their “secrets of success.”
Here’s where I’ll be…
September 3~10: UK
*I’ll be speaking in person in Newark, England on Sunday, September 8. I’d love to see you at this public talk if you live in the area! Get more details right here.
September -
Blog postOver the years, my family has followed an annual tradition, each August, of driving out to a large blueberry patch that’s located in the countryside about 90 minutes from Hiroshima. We spend much of the day there picking blueberries and breaking for a picnic lunch.
This tradition started when Lulu was two. In fact, we originally stumbled upon the blueberry patch by accident when we were out searching for a larger fruit farm, our original destination.
Here’s Lulu that first yea -
Blog postAs my children get older (my daughter is now 15 and my son is 12), I’m trying to increase the amount of opportunities they have to engage in translation activities: in effect, stretching their ability in two languages simultaneously and deepening their grasp of the more subtle differences between them.
I wish we had more time for writing because this is now the area where more practice is needed, and I’ve found that translation tasks are very effective toward this end. But as I’ve moa -
Blog postADAM’S NOTE: As I’ve stressed over the years (like in this post), one of the keys to realizing our bilingual or multilingual aim is a creative spirit. And this sort of resourceful and proactive approach is particularly important when your circumstances are challenging and working against your success. So today I’m thrilled to present a new guest post by Ana Calabrese because her outlook and her efforts are such an encouraging example of how jumping into this journey with a creative spirit can ge
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Blog postADAM’S NOTE: In this insightful guest post, Marisa Martínez Mira offers a broader perspective on the bilingual journey, based on her own personal and professional experience. To my mind, this sort of broader perspective is so important for keeping up our commitment and our efforts through early childhood, as these are years that can be very challenging for our bilingual or multilingual aim. Thank you for this encouraging reminder, Marisa! (Marisa is also generous with her wise advice at T
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Blog postADAM’S NOTE: Along with your persistent daily efforts to nurture the minority language—in particular, talking to your child as much as you can and reading aloud—I also encourage you to pursue short-term projects, which can provide a powerful boost for language exposure and engagement. Make videotaped interviews or “dramatic” films; create a picture book or comic book; write and perform a short play; sing and record a favorite song (or make up your own); invent a new game and play it together;
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Blog postWant to read some engaging, widely-praised books this summer? Please take a look at my popular nonfiction and fiction for language-loving families! (Yes, bearded dragons included!)
“the ideal guidebook for parents” Maximize Your Child’s Bilingual Ability: Ideas and inspiration for even greater success and joy raising bilingual kids
“A pure gem! Adam Beck has created a truly wonderful and easily readable book that parents everywhere will enjoy and that bilingual families and ch -
Blog postIn the recent post Make the Most of the “Golden Years” of Your Minority Language Influence, I introduced the challenging new stage of my family’s bilingual journey.
Now that my kids—Lulu, nearly 15, and Roy, 12—are both in junior high school and are leading busy, increasingly independent lives in Japanese, I’m afraid my presence in their days, and the English exposure that goes along with it, is far more limited than it was when they were younger. In fact, the balance between the time -
Blog postI won’t bore you with the details, but over the past couple of months, I’ve had continuous troubles with many parts of my digital life, and especially email. In fact, last week my entire email account for Bilingual Monkeys (adam@bilingualmonkeys.com) suddenly disappeared from my computer, with thousands and thousands of messages vanishing in a matter of moments. (Fortunately, I was able to locate a back-up folder and restore most of them, but still, it was a long and distressing day.)
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Blog postOver the years, I’ve amassed big piles of papers that hold teaching materials, creative writing, and ideas for future blog posts, books, and other projects. From time to time I’ll sift through these piles in an attempt to file the papers I want to keep and discard the ones I no longer need.
But the truth is, I never seem to get all the way to the bottom of these stacks and so the piles begin rising again as I add fresh papers. One of my goals in connection with our move last August wa -
Blog postI’m beginning an exciting new book project this month!
My first book, Maximize Your Child’s Bilingual Ability: Ideas and inspiration for even greater success and joy raising bilingual kids (published in 2016), relates my personal story, as an educator and parent, nurturing the language development of hundreds of bilingual and multilingual children, including my own two kids. Through the experiences I share in this widely-praised book, I present a range of key perspectives and principl -
Blog postToday was scheduled to be the last day for my special offer at my Patreon page, the PDF…
“19 Vital Reminders for Bilingual and Multilingual Success”
But I’ve decided to simply make this an ongoing “bonus” for joining me at Patreon. So for everyone who joins me there, now or in the future, I’ll promptly send you this special PDF, which runs 2,305 words and is a crystal-clear blueprint for successfully raising bilingual and multilingual children. In fact, I have no doubt that an -
Blog postCan you spot my son in this photo of his sixth grade class?
The other day my son graduated from elementary school. In Japan, elementary school lasts until sixth grade, then students move on to three years of junior high, then three years of high school.
Since the school year ends in March and starts up again just a few weeks later, in April, this means that Roy will soon be entering his first year at our local junior high school while Lulu will be in her third and final year t -
Blog postUPDATE: Good news! My kids have officially passed their very first proficiency test in English, our minority language! And amazingly, their final scores—a combination of both the reading/writing test and the speaking test—were almost identical! My son’s score was 2445 and my daughter’s was 2439 (out of 2600 total points). Many thanks to you all for cheering them on! They had big smiles when they opened their large envelopes and found the certificates inside! My son turns 12 in March and my d
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Blog postFirst of all, if you want to get your children speaking more in the minority language, here are several key posts that can help you do this…
7 Steps to Get Your Bilingual Child Using the Minority Language More Actively
What to Do When Your Bilingual Child Won’t Speak Your Language
5 Ways for Your Bilingual Child to Interact with Other Speakers of the Minority Language
As the title of this post stresses, I don’t recommend that you try to get your children speaki -
Blog postYou’ll find photos of the happy couple below!
I spent a week in China at the end of January. Despite the fact that I’ve lived in Japan for more than 20 years, and China is a just a few hours away by plane, it was my first time there.
I went to China because a close friend from college was getting married in Beijing and he asked me to be his best man at the wedding. Though he’s American, and lives in New York, he married a Chinese woman that he met through his international tra -
Blog post“Bilingual Lives” is a series of profiles of interesting people who are leading bilingual (or multilingual) lives, both personally and professionally. This series was inspired by the memory of my mother, who began a bilingual life that she later regretted not being able to sustain into her adult years. If you would like your life and work to be featured in this series, please contact me. To successfully raise a bilingual or multilingual child, the main requirement is language exposure: the c
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Blog postWe spent the last week of 2018 in Singapore, a long-overdue family vacation. (That’s me in the photo, licking chilli crab off my fingers.) We had a warm, wonderful week there—Singapore is such a lively multicultural and multilingual place—and it was hard to return to cold Japan and resume our “real lives” here.
Among the busy days of sightseeing, we also had the chance to meet up with a family that I became friends with through this blog. It was actually the second time we met because -
Blog post2018 was a long, tough year for me and it was hard to blog as frequently as I did over the previous five years. (Yes, Bilingual Monkeys is now more than 6 years old!) But I did what I could to keep the site reasonably active and helpful. Setting aside the sad posts I made about my mother and my father, let me round off the year with a list of the “top 12” posts at this blog in 2018. I admit, it’s hard to be purely objective about how I selected and ranked this list of posts. While I took into
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Blog postIt’s been a while since I simply shared news of my family’s own bilingual journey. Despite the heartache of this year for me, I’ve tried to keep up my regular efforts to nurture my children’s progress in our two minority languages, English and Spanish. In this two-part series, I offer updates on the bilingual lives of my daughter (here) and now my son. Two plastic tubs Lately I’ve been sifting through big boxes of old photos: me as a child, my parents and my siblings, my years as a young adu
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Blog postIt’s been a while since I simply shared news of my family’s own bilingual journey. Despite the heartache of this year for me, I’ve tried to keep up my regular efforts to nurture my children’s progress in our two minority languages, English and Spanish. In this two-part series, I offer updates on the bilingual lives of my daughter and my son. First Lulu, then Roy (here). High school on the horizon Lulu is now 14.5 years old, a mostly upbeat young woman. Incredibly (at least to me), she’ll sta
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Blog postWith the passing of my parents in the spring (my mother in March, my father in May), my main message for this year has been…
Make the Most of Your Precious Time with Grandparents, Whether Near or Far
This is important, of course, not only for the language exposure they can potentially provide, but, more fundamentally, for the fleeting chance to nurture a meaningful bond between grandparents and grandchildren.
With this in mind, I arranged for us to take a family trip w -
Blog postBilingual Style is closing at the end of December! Hundreds of unique items, designed especially for bilingual and multilingual families (some in Spanish, too)! Get them now, on sale while they last, and give them for Christmas! Worldwide shipping is available!
Start shopping at Bilingual Style.
You’ll find a variety of cute clothing for babies and children, clothing for adults, and useful items for the home, including coffee mugs, bags, and keychains—all featuring a bilingual -
Blog postWe moved in August and I’m now gradually organizing the many books and papers that I’ve amassed over the 22 years I’ve lived in Hiroshima. One box contains the early board books that I read to my kids—who are now 14 and 11—when they were just babies and toddlers. I’m in the process of repacking the box, to store safely away in a closet, but I thought I might stop and share with you the 10 board books that I read most often to my children (hundreds of times each!) and that I hope they will one
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Blog postWhile many people assume that children will automatically become bilingual if each parent speaks a different language, the reality is often far more challenging. In fact, it’s not uncommon for the parent of the minority language to suddenly experience a large shock, when the child is about 2 or 3, because the majority language seems to be progressing more strongly than the minority language. It may even be the case that the child is actively using the majority language but resists speaking th
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Blog post“Bilingual Lives” is a series of profiles of interesting people who are leading bilingual (or multilingual) lives, both personally and professionally. This series was inspired by the memory of my mother, who began a bilingual life that she later regretted not being able to sustain into her adult years. If you would like your life and work to be featured in this series, please contact me. When Victor Santos contacted me earlier this year, to share the innovative language-learning flashcards t
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Blog postTwo years ago, I shared a creative project that was carried out by Nellie Robertson and her two children. They live in the U.S. and Nellie is originally from Hungary, which means that English is their majority language and Hungarian is their minority language.
The project took place over the course of a full year and involved a stuffed alligator named Alfonzo, who they sent on a worldwide trip to enjoy “homestays” with a number of families (including mine!) who then reported on their -
Blog postIn my last post, 5 Key Ways to Fortify Your Home Environment for Bilingual Success, I revealed the happy news that we were moving to a new house—though just one kilometer from the old one—that’s far more suitable for the next phase of our life as a family. (In fact, it’s not really a “new” house—it’s over 40 years old—but it’s a spacious Japanese-style house with a large Japanese-style garden and an excellent location.)
Well, we made the move last week and are now slowly settling in. -
Blog postWe’re moving next week!
Honestly, I feel like I finally have some happy news to share after delivering so much sad news this year. (See My Mother Has Passed Away and My Father Has Passed Away, Too.)
We live in Hiroshima, Japan and we continue to rent instead of trying to buy. (Not only are the homes here generally too expensive for what you get, their value actually declines so buying a home isn’t the same sort of investment that it might be in another country. For the time be -
Blog postMy funny father (the one on the right).
Last weekend we visited my wife’s parents. They don’t live so far from us—about 90 minutes by car—but I hadn’t seen them in over six months because I’ve been preoccupied with large life changes this year: my parents both passed away in the spring—my mother in March and my father in May—and I was making dazed journeys from Japan to the U.S.
My wife and my kids had paid two or three visits to see her parents during this time, but because I -
Blog post“Bilingual Lives” is a series of profiles of interesting people who are leading bilingual (or multilingual) lives, both personally and professionally. This series was inspired by the memory of my mother, who began a bilingual life that she later regretted not being able to sustain into her adult years. If you would like your life and work to be featured in this series, please contact me. Have you ever thought about writing a children’s book?
I think this idea has crossed the minds of -
Blog postThis has been a tough year for me and my family. My mother passed away in March, then my father passed away in May. Because I’ll be returning to the U.S. again this month for my father’s memorial service—and because I need a break from blogging at this time—I won’t be making any new posts in June.
Actually, right now I’m making a short film about my father’s life for his memorial service. I’m bringing together photos that span from his boyhood to his old age, along with photos of his -
Blog postIf you’re feeling discouraged or frustrated about your bilingual or multilingual aim for your kids, this video can help. It offers a fresh, empowering perspective that comes from a chapter of my popular book Maximize Your Child’s Bilingual Ability: Ideas and inspiration for even greater success and joy raising bilingual kids.
Remember, you can always find friendly support, too, at The Bilingual Zoo, the web’s liveliest community for parents raising bilingual and multilingual children. -
Blog postJust weeks after my mother passed away, my father has now left this world, too. Al Beck, an artist and teacher whose passion for art and education was widely influential, died at 11:15 p.m. on May 16.
He was 87 years old.
In late March, I hurried back to the U.S. to see my mother and say goodbye. She passed away the day after I arrived at my sister’s house.
During that trip, I also traveled to see my father, who was living in a nursing home three hours away. (My parent -
Blog postMy daughter will be 14 in June. My son turned 11 in March. If you’ve been following this blog over the years—when I made my first post in September of 2012, they were just 8 and 5—you know that they’ve had very different inclinations when it comes to reading in English, our minority language.
While both have become competent readers through a variety of long-running efforts—which include reading aloud from birth; flooding our home with books, magazines, and comic books in the target l -
Blog postWant to strengthen your daily efforts, and your long-term success, at raising bilingual or multilingual children? The challenges at The Bilingual Zoo are designed to do just that by offering ideas and inspiration for a range of key actions that can produce very positive results.
(And you don’t have to be a member of The Bilingual Zoo community to take part—access to our forum is open to everyone—but since membership is free, why not?)
The latest challenge involves what’s proba -
Blog postIn this video, I describe important research on success rates for raising bilingual children then explain the implications of this research for parents. The information I share goes right to the heart of successfully nurturing a child’s bilingual (or multilingual) ability and can be found in my widely-praised book Maximize Your Child’s Bilingual Ability: Ideas and inspiration for even greater success and joy raising bilingual kids.
View this video at Bilingual Monkeys TV and subscribe -
Blog post“Bilingual Lives” is a series of profiles of interesting people who are leading bilingual (or multilingual) lives, both personally and professionally. This series was inspired by the memory of my mother, who began a bilingual life that she later regretted not being able to sustain into her adult years. If you would like your life and work to be featured in this series, please contact me. Ever wonder about the value of bilingual books for kids?
Delia Berlin, an author of bilingual pic -
Blog postThis post brings together seven interviews that I’ve given about raising bilingual and multilingual children (and other matters that may surprise you) through podcasts and video.
Podcast Interviews Raising a Bilingual Child – Episode 37
Preschool and Beyond, with host Mike Dlott
Maximize Your Child’s Bilingual Ability – Episode 125
Bilingual Avenue, with host Marianna Du Bosq
How to Raise Happy Bilingual Children – Episode 5
Bilingual Kids Rock, with -
Blog postMy mother, Katrine Aho, has passed away. She died at 7:54 p.m. on March 26.
As sad as her passing is, I’m very glad and grateful that I was able to return from Japan to the U.S. to see her one last time and say goodbye. In fact, I was nearly too late because I had planned to leave Japan on March 30, but then her condition worsened so quickly that I was urged to come sooner.
By the time I got there, on the evening of March 25, it was clear that she had little time left. Her eye -
Blog postBreaking news! This week I was interviewed about raising bilingual children at the popular podcast Preschool and Beyond. The host is Mike Dlott and we had a great discussion. I hope you enjoy it!
And I highly recommend the many other episodes at this podcast, too—it’s a goldmine of practical information about parenting issues.
Listen to the Raising a Bilingual Child podcast episode at the Discovery Child Development Center website.
Or listen to the Raising a Bilingual -
Blog postMy son had a really fun time last weekend—in the minority language—with our latest homestay guest.
If schooling in the minority language isn’t an option for your family, and travel to a minority-language destination is limited (see Bilingual Travelers, an ongoing series at this blog, for personal stories that share the powerful impact of such trips), it’s important to be proactive and resourceful about finding or creating opportunities from your own location so that your children can
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