We filmed a video to give an update on our son Yul’s language process.

Hello everyone! Finally a bilingual update video! We tried to get it as natural as possible but of course can never be completely like a normal conversation at home.

Our bilingual method:

We do “one parent, one language” method but with flexibility.

Nichola speaks English with Yul and Hugh speaks Korean with him. Nichola and Hugh speak mostly English to each other, so Yul constantly hears English conversation.

Within the community Yul is hearing mostly Korean. He goes to a completely Korean daycare/preschool but they also have some English classes a few times a week. Multicultural families are offered free Korean classes for kids in Korea, so he also attends Korean class twice a week. Even though he is a native Korean speaker, he goes to them to make sure there are no gaps in his learning. The teacher also caters to what he needs or what we ask. For example, there is a whole element of culture and manners in Korea that children are taught but what Nichola, as a foreigner, might not be able to instinctively instill in him. So the teacher is making sure they know manners and bowing etc. He really enjoys his Korean classes because the teacher makes them very fun.

Nichola will sometimes use Korean with Yul in public, as a way of showing others that he can speak Korean, and to not just use English with him. It’s a way of signalling that although Yul’s mother is obviously a foreigner, that he is a Korean child, and to treat him as one.

Hugh does the opposite sometimes to show that Yul can speak English too.

Nichola can participate in basic conversations in Korean and can understand the general gist of Korean but has to answer in English at home usually. This is for Yul’s benefit and because the focus on English means she doesn’t have opportunity to develop speaking skills at a higher level yet.

We are working on Yul changing using his own name to “I” at the moment in English. Nichola often corrects him gently, but didn’t during this video. While it’s something that is normal around this age, it’s also something to get kids to adjust to.

At the moment Yul is still working out the difference between English words in English and English loan words in Korean. Sometimes he will say a Korean pronunciation of an English word that is used in Korean, but he wasn’t sure of the English pronunciation in English. That’s something that gets corrected gently as he still needs to know how to pronounce loan words how Koreans do, rather than never saying them at all. He can have a few issues with pronouncing some English sounds that aren’t in Korean, and when quizzed he can say them, but he is still working out how they are used in English and sometimes defaults to the Korean adjustment of that sound. We are keeping an eye on his speech and will make sure he has some evaluations as he gets older.

Yul has not been back to Australia since 2020, so it’s difficult to check his English compared to other Australian kids. We will be visiting next year and will have a better idea of his progress.

(We show videos to Yul before we post them to make sure he is okay with them. He found this one hilarious. He also banged the keyboard and deleted the whole video accidentally! Luckily I managed to undo and get it back and export it, but there may be a random blue square that appears at some point, which I think was because of that haha.)