At It Again

1st quarter school grades are in and my son has a 'B' for his Japanese class.

This  has set his mother off again who thinks that with his background (he learned to speak Japanese before he spoke English, and thanks to her being here, he has excellent aural comprehension) , he should be pulling down 'A's'.

With a slight nod to her, he is somewhat lazy and could put forth more effort; but the same thing could be said for the rest of his course load too.

We had a debate a few years ago about what he should take for his foreign language credit. His mother wanted him to take Spanish. I argued that with all the Hispanic kids here who are truly bilingual, that even if our son did become proficient in the language, he'd just be  one of many. many.

Second, while he has advantages over other kids, he never really learned to read and write and his his spoken level is like this:

Mother: ね、りんごを切った。食べる?

Him: いらん。

So, he's got great comprehension, but he'd be at a loss to handle  敬語 or other formal forms of Japanese, which is why he is taking Japanese instead of Spanish.  And I'm happy with the 'B' myself. If was below that, I'd have a problem and so would he.