Teaching Reading to a Developing Bilingual Baby:
A Case Study in Three Stages
Laurel Diane Kamada
Humanities Faculty,
Hirosaki University
Hirosaki, Aomori Prefecture, Japan
This paper summarizes three stages of a case study of the literacy development of the author's English-Japanese bilingual child, which started when the baby was six months of age. In accordance with Cummins' (1989) interdependence principle, it was felt that learning literacy in the minority language (English) first would contribute to, not hinder, literacy in the majority language (Japanese), which would be learned in school later. It was felt that in order to teach literacy at home, the most effective approach would be to start as early as possible. Stage I of the study (0:6 -1:3) focuses on Doman's (1964) method of teaching a pre-verbal infant to read English, although modifications were made to suit the subject. In Stage II (1:3 - 2:2), newer research from the U.S. Office of Education (Adams, 1990a, 1990b) and other reports (Wallace, 1988) provided the basis for revisions in teaching methods that placed more emphasis on context and meaning. With the subject's development of speech production, reading was verified orally for the first time. In Stage III (2:2 - 2:10), several milestones were seen, as 30 words read singly were combined to be read in phrases and simple sentences. Several two-word phrases were induced verbally through reading by combining words that had otherwise not yet been heard. In this stage, half of the Japanese hiragana syllabary was learned and the ability to read at least 10 words in combinations of those kana was demonstrated. Also, the ability to put kana blocks together to form words was shown.
