Episode Twenty Seven - Supporting Multilingual Teens with Yoshito Darmon-Shimamori

Episode Twenty Seven - Supporting Multilingual Teens with Yoshito Darmon-Shimamori:

In this episode we talk to Yoshito Darmon-Shimamori about his new book ‘In Search of the Lost Words’ which is aimed at multilingual teens. We talk about how we can support multilingual teens at home and in the classroom.

Who is Yoshito Darmon-Shimamori? Yoshito is half-French and half-Japanese, and was raised bilingually and bi-culturally in France. He is now a French and Spanish teacher in a secondary school in England, and is raising his two sons to be multilingual, multicultural, and multi-literate.

Growing up, he happily endorsed, and has always felt empowered by his role of "bridge" between the French and Japanese cultures. Helping others communicate and understand each other despite their cultural differences naturally became a passion!

Becoming a dad made him reflect on the values he wanted to pass on to his sons. And more importantly he started thinking about how he could help them be(come) happy, fulfilled, and accomplished individuals.

The answer he found was: "Knowing who you are and being proud of it". For a bi/multilingual child, part of this identity is found in the languages they master. Being able to speak a language can help them connect with people, and to feel part of a culture / community. And knowing how to read and write in that language adds a layer of independence.

As a teenager, not being able to read as easily in Japanese as he could in French, he would see the gap between his command of both his languages grow even bigger. Therefore, with his sons, it has always been a big priority to gift them with the ability to read and write in all their languages.

As he started his Instagram account (@multilingual_dad) to document his multilingual parenting journey, he realised quickly that his expertise in teaching languages could benefit many families. It was also apparent very quickly that the way information is stored on social media, was only helpful up to a certain level.

This is how he came to writing The Parents' Guide to Raising Multi-literate Children and creating this website: https://www.library4multilinguals.com/about-the-library-4-multilinguals

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