How did you ensure your mixed child learnt English?

[BiggusDickus]

@tando

@BiggusDickus

We chose the one language at home, the other language outside option any it worked fine.

Assuming English is the language at home. Do you speak Mandarin outside? Or vise versa?

We haven’t been too strict about it. English is generally spoken at home and Mandarin generally spoken outdoors. However, English is only spoken anywhere with me.

[DutchMan]

We spoke a weird mixture of Chinese and English at home, ignoring Dutch as that wasn’t a common language. Often switching in mid-sentence. The kids went to kindergarten & primary school and spoke Chinese and Taiwanese with family. The odd holiday overseas, they spoke sufficient English to communicate with their Dutch grandparents.

Then we moved when they were around 8/9 years old to the Netherlands, and they learned Dutch in just under a year by going to the local primary school; they lost a year but otherwise very little support was given. But as everything around them changed to Dutch, so they just picked it up. These days nobody thinks they are not Dutch. And of course, Youtube is all English, and secondary school in the Netherlands has plenty.

Chinese in Holland was harder, Taiwanese Saturday school was a lot of work as it was a long drive, so we quit that after a year or so. But it was good for meeting people. After secondary school, the eldest spend a year in Taiwan at ShiDa; mostly to relearn writing it and being able to write a decent article. The second one is about to go, but, COVID. So she will have to wait a while longer.

It all kind of worked out fine.

[Deca]

@tando

When your Mandarin is below average, your partner’s option is limited.

This was in relation to the language spoken to the child, not between parents. Heard plenty of stories of where both parents are immigrants, and then speak the majority language to their child in the mistaken belief this will help the child “learn faster”.

[TT]

@Deca

Research shows it is best to tie the language to the person, ie one parent, one language when talking to the child. Rather than one language at home, one outside. If the same parent switches language depending on being at home or outside, that can confuse language learning.

I would also be curious to see actual research about this, if it does exist. The closest I could find in 10 minutes of searching was this (which isn’t really relevant)

The-use-of-teacher-codeswitching-for-young-EFL-learners.pdf

[Deca]

Dont have the book here atm, read it 8-10 years ago, was a study on trilingualism and bilingualism, title was “trilingual” something, not really helpful I know. Author originally from HK, but living in the US.

[tempogain]

@Deca

Research shows it is best to tie the language to the person, ie one parent, one language when talking to the child. Rather than one language at home, one outside. If the same parent switches language depending on being at home or outside, that can confuse language learning. Small children are constantly constructing language rules in their brains.

Also, if your partner’s English is only average, speaking English could in fact be a negative. It would be better if he/she kept to Mandarin.

In terms of comprehensible input theory, it’s not clear to me why any of this would be true.

[BiggusDickus]

@tempogain

@Deca

Research shows it is best to tie the language to the person, ie one parent, one language when talking to the child. Rather than one language at home, one outside. If the same parent switches language depending on being at home or outside, that can confuse language learning. Small children are constantly constructing language rules in their brains.

Also, if your partner’s English is only average, speaking English could in fact be a negative. It would be better if he/she kept to Mandarin.

In terms of comprehensible input theory, it’s not clear to me why any of this would be true.

I agree with the second paragraph. Poor input is probably best avoided, if possible.

It would be incredibly difficult research to conduct. My feeling is most of these takes on bilingualism are theories.

[tempogain]

It depends, “average” input may cause some bad habits but it’s surely better than no input, and I would guess the combination of 1 native + 1 average input could lead to a better result than 1 native depending on the amounts of interaction involved. Probably no matter how it broke down the additional input would be better.

[BiggusDickus]

@tempogain

It depends, “average” input may cause some bad habits but it’s surely better than no input, and I would guess the combination of 1 native + 1 average input could lead to a better result than 1 native depending on the amounts of interaction involved.

Yeah, I think with enough input from the native speaker the child wouldn’t adopt the errors from the non native speaker.

[tempogain]

Yes, and if the input from the native speaker was limited, the input from the non-native speaker would become more valuable and better than nothing.

IME, I may be wrong, if the input is primarily only from one native speaking parent it will be very hard to get to some kind of native-level grammar accuracy and fluency (though a highly functional level is certainly possible). Maybe others’ experience is different.

[Andrew0409]

As someone who grew up in a bilingual home, I think kids are a lot smarter and adaptable than adults give them credit for sometimes. My dad spoke Chinese while my mom spoke Korean to me and I could understand both just fine. Although I mostly spoke Chinese with my mom back and some Korean. Nothing was forced, as far as I know, they didn’t make any rules about it. It just worked out that way.

Oddly enough, we all just switched to English at home at some point when we moved to the US. Again, nothing was forced. It just naturally became that way.

I don’t think parents should be too overly concerned about confusing their children.

The hard part is probably as they grow up and become older. My Chinese regressed quite a bit because I never used it in the US, same with my Korean. It’s hard to make an effort as you get older to keep it up with so much going on.