Emergent Bilinguals and Educational Challenges at Public Schools in Japan

『母語をなくさない日本語教育は可能か―定住二世児の二言語能力―』(2019年、大阪大学出版会)の英語版。
Emergent Bilinguals and Educational Challenges at Public Schools in Japan: A longitudinal study of first and second-generation Chinese children’s bilingual proficiency

While the number of foreigners living in Japan continues to grow, as if riding the wave of globalization, the number of children whose mother tongue is not Japanese is increasing at Japanese schools. Unlike those who came to Japan after completing their language development, in other words, after mastering their first language and cognitive development in their home countries, "second-generation children" who were born in Japan or came to Japan at an early age are said to be very likely to lose their mother tongue due to the struggle between their mother tongue and the local language.
Language education for "children who need Japanese language instruction" is an urgent issue in Japan's language education policy, and "children for whom Japanese is not their mother tongue" have been referred to as "children with foreign roots" or "foreign children," often with the negative connotation of being "problematic," for a long time.
Publisher: Osaka University Press