Kids at Khayay International Preschool display books written in some of the four languages taught at the school.

TEACHING at the Khayay International Preschool is anything but ordinary. Visit a class on three different days during any given week and you’ll see something unusual taking place: Classes are taught to children in four different languages.

It may sound like a marketing gimmick and the school’s founders and directors, Toru and Hitomi Iwasaki, freely admit children will not emerge from the preschool fluent in English, Myanmar, Japanese and Chinese.

Luckily, that’s not the point. The aim is to best prepare children for learning languages in the future by exposing their growing minds – and ears – to as wide a range of sounds as possible.

Humans hear sounds – or audible wave frequencies that are measured in Hertz (Hz) – ranging from about 100Hz to 15,000Hz, with every language having its own, unique band.

At one of that scale is Russian, which has an extremely broad frequency – from 125Hz to 10,000Hz – while others, like Japanese, make do with a far narrower frequency band.

The Iwasakis believe – and they are back by plenty of empirical and anecdotal evidence – that exposure to the broadest hertz band possible while children’s minds and ears are at their most receptive stage will leave children with a better foundation to learn languages later in life.

“We understand that we are unable to fully teach all of those four languages to the children while they are here. We aim to familiarise them with those sounds so they will be more easily able to recognise them later,” says Mr Iwasaki.

Anyone who has raised a child will be aware just how quickly they learn new things, languages included. Conversely, many people who have tried to learn a language later in life will know it can seem fiendishly tricky – particularly when trying to differentiate similar sounds.

“Children’s brains are very flexible from the age of two onwards and are easily able to recognise more than just their mother language,” he says.

“For many Myanmar children there will be very limited opportunities to learn those other three languages and the language they have picked up here will probably be lost unless they are pursued outside of their next school.

“But we believe that if we teach them these sounds, at this early age, then they will remember them at a later stage.”

It’s fitting that the school was conceived by Toru and Hitomi Iwasaki, since Japanese has a narrow hertz band and the teaching of foreign languages does not start in Japan until a child reaches 12 years of age – just as a normal child’s aural comprehension learning ability is tapering off, according to Thompson and Nelson’s The Developmental Course of Human Brain Development, a research paper published by the University of California, Los Angeles.

Somewhat more anecdotal are Mrs Iwasaki’s early experiences trying to learn English, as well as those of the couple’s children.

“I always wondered why some people are able to speak so many languages and if that was just some kind of talent they had,” Ms Iwasaki says.

“When I was 11 I went on a school camp to Manila that was conducted exclusively in English and I struggled very hard initially. But within two weeks I could make out the words that people were using, even though nobody was actually teaching me,” she said.

Mr Iwasaki’s position at the United Nations meant all three of their daughters were brought up in countries with different languages, which seems to have broadened their aural capacity.

All three are able to speak at least three languages and were brought up in the United States, Africa or Myanmar, depending on where Mr Iwasaki’s UN posting took the family.

While the school instructs in Japanese, English, Myanmar and Chinese, it still manages to maintain a preschool atmosphere. The subjects are exactly what you’d expect and include arts and crafts, singing, physical education and some gentle science.

Discard or ignore the multiple language instruction and you’re left with a top-notch kindergarten in an attractive complex just off Parami Road, not far from the seven mile junction. The classrooms are inviting and comfortable, while the grounds are quiet and safe.

Assigning colours to the preschool’s classrooms, which include soft blues, pinks, greens and oranges, was a labour of love for Mrs Iwasaki and builds on a lifelong fascination with colour. Each colour was chosen to create an emotional link for the children – blue for the youngest children and pink for the oldest class to show confidence and prepare them for the next stage in their education.

All of the rooms are designed for comfort and practicality but with a number of subtle points to encourage learning, even while the children are effectively at play.

A case in point is the library, which includes a growing collection of children’s books published in the four languages.

The centre of the room is taken up by a small tunnel maze and, while unable to properly demonstrate the workings of the maze due to its diminutive proportions, Mr Iwasaki says it teaches children about “resilience competency”.

“They crawl into the maze by themselves and it’s quite confined and dark inside,” he says, pointing to the escape holes cut in the top for children who become overwhelmed by the experience. “And they must navigate their way through to the other end by making the right decisions. But they must always consider on the maze itself because the spaces are small and it’s possible to hit your head if you’re not concentrating on your movement,” he says.

The preschool also contains a science room, an art room and a music room. Ms Iwasaki says she was surprised how quickly the children learn new songs, irrespective of the language. Three repetitions is often enough for the children to remember the words and sing along, she says.

“They remember with the songs that go with the music so quickly,” she adds.
Other subtle learning aids are wall-mounted boxes with objects inside that are placed outside classrooms to assist children identify the particular room.

As might be expected, finding teachers ready to teach in such a unique environment is no easy task, so the Iwasakis have set up a training centre to produce them. Sixteen teachers have so far completed the three-year training program since the centre was established in 2004.

Of those 16 graduate teachers, seven are employed at the school to manage the 12 students currently enrolled at Khayay. But how are those teachers able to teach in so many languages?

“Obviously it would be best if we were able to find teachers who spoke the four languages themselves but this is obviously fairly difficult,” Ms Iwasaki says.

Instead, the teachers rely on “team teaching”. Each teacher specialises in a language other than Myanmar and then devises daily lesson plans in that language.

The other teachers learn the basic words and numbers of the other languages but bring in the specialist teacher for specific lessons. There are also audio CDs to assist teachers and, accordingly, all classrooms have in-built sound systems.

To avoid confusion for both children and teachers, only one language is used during a given day, although misunderstandings are generally clarified in a child’s strongest language, which is usually Myanmar.

Tuition fees are handled by negotiation but are certainly significantly lower than other international-standard preschool centres in Yangon.

“We’d like to make our fees cheaper than [what they are] but there is an investment here that we must continue to pay for and the training we provide [to teachers] at our centre is free,” Toru says.

As for why the Iwasakis picked Myanmar – clearly a question that has been put to them before – Ms Iwasaki says, “It’s because we were already here.”