Chapter 5: Shared Reading in the Hoikuen: Applying Whole Language Theory and Practice to World Language Learning in Japanese Nursery Schools

In a hoikuen (nursery school) classroom in the Hiroshima prefecture of Japan, 10 children ages 5 and 6 sit in a circle ready for today’s English lesson. I show the children the cover of a new book, Monkey and Me, by Emily Gravett. On the cover there is a young girl with a stuffed monkey.

Upon noticing the monkey, several children call out Sa-ru meaning monkey in Japanese, while a few say “Monkey” in English. After I read the title and turn the page, a child notices a small picture of a banana and says its name, the word being the same in both English and Japanese. I ask the children, “OK?” then turn the page and begin reading the story. The picture features the girl and her monkey jumping across two pages. As I read, some children join in on the chant-like text, “Monkey and me, Monkey and me, Monkey and me, We went to see, We went to see some…” and then a child shouts “Kangaroo!” before I can turn the next page to reveal the mother and baby kangaroos! When the classroom teacher and I ask the child how she knew what animal would appear, she comes up to the book, turns one page back and points to the picture of the girl, hunched over, with the monkey poking out from inside her shirt like a joey in its mother’s pouch, leaping across the page. I had not noticed that the girl and her toy monkey were pantomiming the animals before they appeared on the next page, but the children did, and after a couple pages, I am no longer leading the read-aloud.