Hello Everyone~
Today I wanted to share the method I am using to teach my daughter Korean and explain the first 3 years of her life learning Korean.
1. Deciding which languages we would speak with our daughter
Before I even got pregnant, I knew I wanted my daughter to be raised bilingually. Unfortunately for me, although both my parents spoke Spanish, I was not raised bilingually. I ended up having a passion for learning languages, and not having been raised bilingual was very saddening to me. I wanted to make sure that my children were given the gift of language. Once I found out I was expecting, I had to decide the languages I would speak with my daughter. My husband’s native language is Korean, and my native language is English. However, I did consider raising my daughter to be trilingual, with my husband speaking Korean, me speaking Spanish, and the school language being English. However, my Spanish fluency was next to nothing, and I felt it would be too much pressure on me to learn Spanish along with my daughter because, at the time, I had a lot going on in my life.
I ended up deciding to raise my daughter bilingually, focusing on Korean and English. My Korean level at the time was probably around Advanced Low. But to be honest, I had never had much experience speaking in casual Korean (반말), and so my Korean at the time was lacking a lot. I didn’t have much experience speaking to children or about topics regarding the home. My Korean was pretty much limited to a few domains of language use. In other words, I could confidently talk about certain topics, such as religion or music, but I didn’t know how to talk about things such as childcare or the weather.
2. Raising Our Daughter Bilingually Started in the Womb
I read that a baby can hear his or her mother’s voice while in the womb. This convinced me that I should start speaking Korean regularly again. I tried to get into the habit of speaking Korean with my husband again. I read some books aloud (occasionally) as well as did something that was quite funny but that I found to be seriously helpful. I started speaking Korean to our dog! While it seems funny, it was great practice for me to get comfortable speaking casual Korean. When I first started talking to our dog in Korean, it felt incredibly awkward! But after nine months of speaking to my dog in casual Korean, I was able to use it with ease. This set me up for a smoother transition to be able to speak in casual Korean with my daughter.
3. We spoke to her in Korean from day one!
From day one, I started speaking in Korean to our daughter. Even after practicing speaking Korean with our dog, it was still incredibly awkward for me to talk to my daughter in Korean. As a parent who is not a native speaker of Korean (or not a confident speaker of Korean), it will feel incredibly awkward to speak Korean to your child. But just trust that it is a part of the process!! I had one resource, which was the ebook from Talk to Me in Korean titled “Parenting Phrases in Korean.” It was a good introduction to vocabulary used in parenting, but it was certainly lacking! I tried my best to use the phrases and vocabulary to speak in Korean with my new-born baby. And actually, it was pretty okay since life with a newborn is quite repetitive. You usually do the same things every day and talk about the same things every day: changing diapers, feeding, putting the baby down for naps, etc. As I spoke Korean with my daughter, it became quite natural within a week or two.
4. Struggling with Korean vs. Educational Quality
The first two years of my daughter’s life were wonderful, but also very much a struggle language-wise. I was very determined to speak Korean to my daughter since I knew that getting a lot of exposure to Korean, the minority language, would be very important to my daughter becoming bilingual. I figured that she would naturally learn English since we live in the USA and she would be going to school in English. The first year was mostly just exciting, realizing one of my dreams of raising my daughter bilingually and speaking Korean with my daughter. I was proud to be raising my daughter to speak Korean, and I was so excited for her to be able to speak Korean as well. But at the same time, sometimes I felt awkward. I would go to the park and be the only one not speaking English to my daughter. But despite the awkwardness, I did my best to be confident speaking Korean in public since I didn’t want my daughter to feel ashamed of speaking Korean in public.
The thing I struggled the most with was feeling that I didn’t want to sacrifice educational quality for the Korean language. The first year of my daughter’s life went pretty smoothly, language-wise. I could say most of the things I needed to tell her, and if I didn’t know how to say something, looking it up was pretty easy. But after her first year, and especially as she got closer to her second birthday, I was feeling really inadequate as a Korean speaker. This was a constant struggle I was having. There were so many things I wanted to teach my daughter about the world that I didn’t have the vocabulary or grammatical skills to say in Korean. The first time I felt this gap was when I went on a walk with my daughter. I wanted to describe the sky, the vegetation, and everything beautiful I was seeing. I wanted to tell her what the people we walked by were doing (mowing the lawn), but I didn’t know how to say it. I felt a pull to teach my daughter about the world, but I didn’t have the words to do so. It was a very painful feeling. I was determined to speak Korean with my daughter, so I did my best to describe what I could in Korean, but I stayed silent about many things I wanted to say. I thought that when I had the time, I would look up how to say these things. But life was messy, and I didn’t have the mental bandwidth to look up most of these things. I looked up how to say “mowing the lawn,” but that was about it. I went on to have this struggle all the way until my daughter turned two.
I was constantly going back and forth in my head on whether I should speak English with my daughter and give up on speaking Korean. My husband speaks Korean, but the amount of time he spends speaking with our daughter is small and would not be enough on its own to give our daughter a good foundation in Korean. So I had a lot of pressure on me to be her main source of the Korean language.
5. Choosing an Appropriate Method
Due to my increasing struggles with my knowledge gaps in Korean, I researched more about bilingual language learning methods. As I researched more, I came to realize that there was a better way for our family to function that would help put my troubled parental heart at ease and still allow me to speak Korean with our daughter. I decided that our family would use a mixed-language learning method. The method would be based on the One Parent One Language (OPOL) method, but it would be customized to maximize my linguistic talents in Korean as well. It is the method we are currently using. My husband always speaks Korean with our daughter. This is to maximize her exposure to native Korean and to allow my husband to be a quality source of Korean for our daughter. I speak English the first half of each weekday, from morning until afternoon, while my husband is gone at work. In the evening, after my daughter’s nap and around when my husband gets home, I switch to Korean. I also speak Korean on the weekends and anytime my husband is with us. When we go to hang out with Koreans (say, family, or friends), I switch to speaking Korean. On top of this, I also plan some time in the mornings to speak Korean to my daughter in specific situations, such as Korean lessons or reading Korean books and singing Korean songs.
6. The Importance of the Mother’s Native Language
When researching bilingualism, I learned just how important a mother’s native language is to her children. The reason that speaking English to my daughter is so important is that this is the only way that I can truly pass on my culture, my knowledge, and myself to her. The only way that I can truly convey all my thoughts as they are is through my native language. Having time to speak in English with my daughter has really helped me to feel at ease and feel that I have time to be able to teach her complex things and about the world in an easy and effortless way. This is also a great time to connect with my daughter and ensure that she is not falling behind due to a lack of exposure to knowledge about the world around her. When I couldn’t say something to my daughter in Korean, there was really no way that I could teach her about that concept. So having the time to be able to explain these things to my daughter completely was really necessary to feel fulfilled as a mother and parent.
However, using this mixed-language method, I am still able to put my linguistic skills to use. I felt that it would be such a waste if I couldn’t use my Korean with my daughter. In this way, I am able to still speak Korean with my daughter and increase her exposure to the minority language. I am so much happier as a parent using this method.
7. Traveling to Korea
I want to include that we traveled to Korea when our daughter was one year old. We spent three weeks with her grandparents in Korea. It was very fun, and she did get some practice speaking Korean. At the time, she was very young, so she wasn’t speaking a ton, but I remember that she did learn a lot while there, and she got a lot of exposure to the language through her grandparents. We also traveled domestically to visit my husband’s family, and my in-laws have come to visit in the U.S.A. two times. Every time that our daughter gets to spend time with her Korean family, it helps a lot in terms of both motivation and linguistic skills. Each time that I spend time with my husband’s family, I learn natural ways to use my Korean and improve the way that I speak with my daughter.
8. Spending Time with Friends, Family, and the Korean Community
We have many Korean friends and family. We also attend church in Korean. Our daughter has many friends who are Korean Americans, and she is able to speak Korean with them. This is huge in terms of her motivation to learn the language. It is only natural to speak a language when both parents and friends are speaking it as well. I am actually glad that I spoke only Korean for the first few years of my daughter’s life (although if I knew what I know now, I may have switched to the mixed method sooner). It really established her Korean foundation. But every week, she goes and spends time with friends who speak Korean, so it has no doubt been a great help to her motivation to learn Korean. She also does video calls with family members often, including her grandparents. I want to make sure she does more video calls, and I want to help increase her interactions with her Korean family, as that will be a huge help in her motivation to continue speaking Korean as she gets older.
One of the main reasons I really want our daughter to speak Korean is that I want her to be able to communicate with her family members, especially her grandparents. My goal with our daughter speaking Korean is that she will be able to have a strong relationship with her grandparents, to be able to communicate what she needs to, and to fully enjoy her culture and identity as a Korean!
9. Next Chapter of English Language Learning: Language learning in children is truly a miracle.
Recently, we have been living together with my parents and my sister. My parents and sister only speak English. So my daughter has just recently really started speaking English. Within a week of living together with my family, she started speaking English. Every day, she is speaking new English phrases. It has been so cute to see her going through the language acquisition steps all over again, but in English. She is almost three, but when she speaks in English, she sounds like she is one or two again. Language learning in children is truly a miracle. Now that we have been living with my family for a month, she is having so many conversations in English and continues to grow immensely in her English learning capabilities. Of course, now I need to step up my game in teaching her Korean more formally, and I hope to share my journey and discoveries along the way with you guys!
10. Bonus: Don’t Forget About Reading
I wanted to share that reading has been very important in our bilingual journey so far. We have been reading to my daughter since she was in the womb, as a newborn, all the way until now. I don’t think that we read to her every single day, but once I made it a part of her bedtime and naptime routine, we have not missed a single day of reading. I make it a point to read her a book right before putting her to take a nap and right before putting her to bed. This is a really easy way to connect with your child, put your child at ease before sleeping, and make sure that you are continuously teaching your child about the world while increasing your child’s language skills. My daughter gets very excited about books, and I am so thankful for that. I do think that making reading fun and a priority can help with this. But reading to my daughter has done wonders for both my and my daughter’s Korean skills. We got books from my mother-in-law for the most part. She got used books for cheap in Korea. Although the books are of mixed quality and mixed genres, they have still been immensely helpful on this journey, and I hope to continue to invest in more Korean books in the future.
If you read this far, thank you so much! Check out Korean at Home for more on raising bilingual Korean children!
-Korean at Home
2024.01
(My daughter is 33 months old as I write this post.)
