Helping your children learn a second language is an invaluable gift that can open a child’s mind to new ideas and cultures and open doors to new interests and opportunities. However, nothing in life worth doing is easy and it’s certainly true when it comes to teaching your kids a second language. The key to effectively teaching your children a second, or more languages, really boils down to how well you implement one or more of the following four strategies. The four strategies are learning a language isolated by speaker, location, time or activity. It’s crucial to learn and use each language in isolation because children imitate speech as it is actually used and mixing languages dilutes the relevance. That is, you need to avoid your child speaking more than one language within the same sentences or within the same conversation and keep the language highly relevant. If languages are not isolated enough, children end up speaking a mixture of languages and their speech is often non-intelligible to others. Also, if a language has little to do with the speaker/listener, then the language in question most probably has zero longevity. I’ll explain these strategies, the pros and cons to each and I’ll provide suggestions on how and when to use each of them.
Strategy 1: Learn a language based on speaker
The most widely used strategy for teaching a child a second language is to designate a speaker, or source, of one language and a different speaker of a second language to interact with the child. In many families, mom speaks one language and dad speaks another, known commonly as one parent one language (OPOL). This way, the child has consistent, highly relevant language interaction in two languages. The motivation to speak both languages is strong because the child has strong ties to parents speaking the two languages. A family has to decide which language one parent uses and which language the other parent uses. Parents must also agree on which language they will speak amongst themselves and when.
Typically, it’s easiest for each parent to speak his or her native language with the child and continue using the language the couple more often communicate in between themselves for scenarios when all members of the family are together. For example, a mom from Mexico speaks Spanish to her child and dad from the USA speaks English to the child. If dad knows Spanish at a high enough level and the family lives in the USA, the common family language can be Spanish and the community language is English. That would result in the kid knowing both Spanish and English at a high level. If dad doesn’t speak Spanish, mom would have to double down efforts to support her kid speaking Spanish and the family language would be English.
The Pros:
It’s easier for speakers using their native languages because it feels more natural and means less effort.
Children learn from a native or native-like speaker so the results are excellent.
The relationships between parents and children are based in native languages which can mean stronger connections.
The likelihood of maintaining a high proficiency of the language throughout the child’s life is higher.
The Cons:
Some, even family members, can be left out of conversations. If a spouse doesn’t speak the second language to some level, the spouse doesn’t understand the conversation between the other parent and child.
When speaking a language to your child that others don’t understand, there is social pressure to switch to the community or more commonly spoken language.
Because parents each speak a different language to their children, the parents don’t get enough language practice using the other spouse’s language. A parent sacrifices the time he could be practicing his spouse’s language to instead speak to his child in his native language.
The line between when to use each language is blurred. When parent and child are interacting, one language is used but if the second parent enters the conversation, the common language may change.
The actual time each language is practiced may be skewed compared to the second language. Mom spends more time with kids when they’re little, for example, so dad’s language gets “neglected” until the weekend or after work when kids are more tired.
BEST FOR:
Families in which mother and father have different native languages. Mom speaks with children in her native language and dad speaks with them in his.
Strategy 2: Learn a language based on location
In this situation, when languages are spoken is determine by where the child is at the time. Oftentimes, one language is spoken at home and a second language is spoken in kindergarten, school or work. This is usually the case when a family lives in a different country than where the parents grew up. The home language is the native language of the parents and the community language is that of the country they’re living in. Good examples are: a British family living in Spain, a Hispanic family in the United States, an American expat family living abroad and so on. The best results are reached when the family has close ties to all languages being learned because if an American family spends 2-3 years in Latin America, the child would have learned Spanish well enough during that time. However, as soon as the family moves back to the USA, another strategy is needed for continual support of the child’s development of Spanish. In that case, strategy 2 ceases to be the best approach while living in the USA unless the child attends a Spanish immersion school, for example.
The Pros:
Languages are clearly isolated so there’s no confusion when to use which language.
It takes less effort to keep up speaking in each language because it’s a natural division.
The likelihood of maintaining a high level of each language is high due to the relevance of the languages in the child’s life, unless the family moves away or changes schools.
A more uniform family experience that is based in one language.
The Cons:
Locations can change. You move to a different country or kids attend a different kindergarten or school with an emphasis in a different language.
Different strengths and weaknesses in various areas of language like active vocabulary, register, reading and writing because the languages are usually used in different situations such as informal at home and formal at school.
In order to develop reading and writing in the language used at home, parents need to participate in activities to support that. Getting kids to do writing exercises at home in addition to homework from school is tough.
When speaking a language to your child that others don’t understand, there is social pressure to switch to the community or more commonly spoken language.
BEST FOR:
When the native language spoken at home is different from the community language outside the home.
Strategy 3: Learn a language based on a schedule
If you speak more than one language and you want your child to learn them as well, choose a schedule when you speak each language. This approach takes lots of discipline and speakers need to feel very comfortable with each language, almost native-like to pull it off. The number of people who speak multiple languages to a high level and are comfortable in all aspects of language like speaking, reading, writing is in the minority. If you speak two or three languages, using an every-other-day approach is an option. You can also choose weekdays for one language and weekends for another. Some use a one-week on one-week off schedule which also can work well. Either way you choose to divide the languages, it is essential that you are consistent.
This strategy is one that people abandon faster than any other strategies, but don’t always think you have to go at it alone. Let’s say your level of both English and Chinese is native-like and you want your kid to grow up speaking both languages. To support your schedule of speaking to your child in both languages, I highly recommend adding elements of other strategies like 1 and 4. Schedule visits with Chinese grandparents, friends, other Chinese speakers during the Chinese-speaking period. Choose some of your favorite childhood cartoons or books to share while speaking in Chinese. Use resources to support your efforts and you will feel a huge weight lifted off your shoulders.
The Pros:
Each language gets an adequate amount of input. That is, you dedicate enough time and effort to each language so that the results of each will be fairly even.
A child will be more well-rounded in his language abilities because it’s part of at-home life as well as used outside the home.
There’s no confusion when to use which language. Stick to the schedule.
The Cons:
It’s probably the most difficult approach to keep consistent at. Parents are only human and sometimes we have bad days and feel like speaking a certain language. With this approach, you need to push through that and stick to the schedule to reach the results you set out for in the beginning.
When speaking a language to your child that others don’t understand, there is social pressure to switch to the community or more commonly spoken language.
BEST FOR:
This approach is best for confident speakers of multiple languages. If a parent is not a proficient speaker of one of the languages on the schedule, this will most likely lead to abandoning this strategy over time, especially as the child’s language ability grows and it becomes harder for the parent to support more complex language activities and discussions.
Strategy 4: Learn a language based on activities
Choose activities that use a specific language. This is the approach we all take when learning our native language, except we do every activity in our first language. It’s also the most effective because it’s highly relevant to the learner. We can designate certain languages to use for reading books, playing games, activities like coloring, playing with play doh, going about our daily routine, watching cartoons and so many more. A good option to start introducing a second language to a two-year-old, for example, is to pick up some books for toddlers in that language. Read through those stories each day for 15 to 30 minutes. The bright illustrations and depictions of the stories will typically hold the child’s attention for a little while as the child hears the new sounds in context. Books with flaps to discover things are great for active exploration.
When I wanted to start teaching my youngest daughter German at about 2.5 years old, she promptly rejected my efforts to just speak with her in German. She loved listening to music and dancing so I chose numerous videos on youtube that played children’s songs but also acted out the words of the songs in the videos in order to provide context and meaning to the new sounds. This was extremely effective. I picked up books for toddlers in German and slowly introduced them as well. It seemed like a slow process, but as a result, my daughter’s vocabulary in German grew and by the time she started going to German kindergarten, she made a much smoother transition. Using activities that are highly contextual can prove one of the most effective ways to introduce a new language to your child.
The Pros:
Great for introducing another language at a later age, for example, 2-6 years old.
Multiple speakers of the language can lead activities with children. Either parent, if both speak the second language, can lead the activity or even a teacher or tutor with less resistance from the child.
A parent doesn’t have to speak the second language proficiently or even that well because the materials will provide support in the grammar, pronunciation, etc.
At some points, you’ll find your child run to you with a book or song for you to read it or play it.
Social pressure to speak the community language is minimized because the activities are usually held in a home environment.
The Cons:
Takes patience to start slow and gradually build up to more complex activities.
Need to know where to get the materials whether they are online or physical products.
Takes more effort in intentionally planning out your approach and the activities that you’ll participate in.
Requires more of the parent’s time or costs more if a teacher or tutor is needed for support.
BEST FOR:
Parents who want to introduce new languages to their children not right after birth, but at 2, 3 years old or later. This is also a great approach for parents who don’t have a good command of a language and need materials to help them along in teaching their child a second or third language.
Things to consider:
Due to the complex nature of teaching and learning a second or third language, it takes lots of motivation to provide continual support to children during the process. It’s usually not enough to just want your child to know another language. If there are no real ties to the language such as parents and/or relatives to speak the language with, nobody else around speaks the language or you never travel to places where the language is spoken, it will be difficult to keep up with the language.
It’s not like riding a bike. You need to constantly provide more and more language input and not only the same type over and over. Conversations, games, activities must differ to build upon language learned previously. Many people start out teaching their kids a second language from birth or at a young age, but as life gets busier and language ability grows, the child doesn’t get the support he or she needs to continue to develop the second language. Either the parent’s language ability isn’t good enough, there are no opportunities to hire tutors or there’s nobody around to speak the second language with.
Parents also need to weigh the pros and cons of what they are compromising on when they choose to speak to their children in a non-native language. Learning a second or third language is wonderful, but it’s not worth it when it puts stress on the bond between parent and child. It’s best to find someone else to take on this role, such as a teacher or tutor.
Speaking of roles, parents have a specific role in the family. Sometimes that role clashes with that of a teacher. The needs of a child are to feel loved and belonging, and one main way to express those feelings and emotions is through spoken language. Parent and child connect when discussing issues, concerns, fears, doubts, etc. If parents insist on practicing a non-native language at the time when a child needs emotional support, there will be natural resistance and attempts to return to the child’s dominant language. And bear in mind, there is almost always a dominant or preferred language.
Time is limited, which means you cannot expect to teach your child five languages and he be equally and highly proficient in all of them. Even if you speak 5 languages fluently, it’s unrealistic time-wise and for the sake of your sanity to dedicate what’s needed in order to reach native-like proficiency in each of the five languages. You will need to compromise. One language will become the dominant language, maybe two at certain periods of life. Another one or two languages can be native or native-like but at some point or another, there won’t be enough time in the day to dedicate to keeping up on all five of them and make room for hobbies, interests, school and work. The best approach is to choose two or three languages that are the most relevant in your child’s life and focus on those. For the remaining languages, if you insist that your children learn them, find teachers, tutors or activities to practice them on a regular basis, if possible.
Everyone understands that the specifics of each family are different and complex so choosing only one strategy to implement is most likely not the best approach. It is expected that families will be using a combination of the strategies above, depending on the family’s location, preferences, background, motivation, goals, the number of languages and, most importantly, the commitment to the endeavor. The most powerful way to maximize results and reach the language goals set for your family are undoubtedly by implementing multiple strategies at once or changing strategies as some are best suited for certain stages of the language learning process.
Here is an example of how my wife and I have implemented multiple strategies over the years to teach our three children English, Russian and German. My language abilities are as follows: English (native), Russian (proficient) and German (conversational). My wife speaks Russian (native), English (proficient) and German (conversational). In our family, we have always used strategy 1, specifically, one parent one language. I speak to the kids exclusively in English and my wife uses Russian. When we wanted to start German, because neither of us are comfortable enough to speak German constantly with our children and we started when both our daughters were about 2.5 years old, we chose to implement strategy 4. We gathered materials to watch cartoons in German, sing German songs and read books in German. In our case, we both feel confident enough to be able to read them stories in German. Were this not the case, we would have relied on a combination of the kids’ oma (German grandma), relatives in Germany and teachers.
Speaking German just for the sake of communicating with our kids was swiftly rejected. To be fair, we did kind of spring it on the girls to learn German in order to attend German kindergarten. We also had periodic help from German speakers outside the home like relatives, oma and some friends. One effective rule that we employed is that we allowed our girls to watch three cartoon each day as long as they watched one in each language. That meant watching and listening to cartoons, usually of their choice, for 20 minutes in English, 2o minutes in German and 20 minutes in Russian . They really wanted to watch cartoons so they agreed to watch some in German even if they didn’t understand everything at first. It proved an effective approach over time. Once the girls started kindergarten, we implemented strategy 2 as well. The German kindergarten and school took on the majority of the rest of the work for teaching our girls German, although we continued doing some activities in German at home, especially when they were excited about them.
At the beginning of our journey, we lived in Moscow, Russia and the kids’ dominant language was Russian. I worked odd hours and English started becoming more passive until I intentionally started doing more activities with my girls in English. Our family made a weak attempt at implementing strategy 3 and it ultimately proved to be too difficult for us and our life-style. In the end, we had effectively put strategies 1, 2 and 4 into practice and seen very positive results. At one point, we even had an au pair from France who spent about 15-20 hours per week with our girls when they were ages 4 and 1, and although there was some progress, we eventually decided that we should stop learning French for the moment. Neither of us spoke French (we still don’t) and we never really planned to do anything with French nor did we have any relatives who spoke French. For the time being, we live in Germany where English is the dominant language among the kids because I work from home, German is a close second and Russian has now fallen a bit behind although mom speaks to the kids in Russian still. There will always be some differences in language abilities, but as long as your goals and expectations are in line with your actions, you’ll reap the rewards of your hard work. It’s up to you to decide which strategies are best and when.
Once you’ve decided on the most important languages you want to teach your child, be confident, stick to the plan and do not give into social pressure. When speaking a language to your child that others don’t understand, there is social pressure to switch to the community language. This is nonsense. If you are addressing your own child, there is no reason you should feel compelled to change languages so that others don’t get offended or feel included. However, when addressing others, you can switch to their language. There is nothing rude about that. If you feel the need to explain to others why you speak a different language to your child, you can point out the benefits of speaking multiple languages. It’s your native language, you want your child to be able to communicate with relatives abroad like grandparents, it’s stimulating mental exercise to speak multiple languages, it yields great opportunities in the future, children are more open-minded, children learn a different perspective from a different culture, and many other advantages. As a fellow parent raising kids bilingual, I wish you lots of luck in your mission!
