And if you’re a non-English parent but speak English consider talking to your child in English from the very beginning. There are many different ways to approach this, one relatively simple way is to have one parent speak their native language while the other speaks English (called “one parent one language”). Even if your pronunciation isn’t perfect it will still yield very good results.
Source: I’m a parent of a 3yo who now understands speaks both English and Polish. Me and my wife are Polish and only I speak English. Apart from speaking we also use English audio in all TV content she watches and buy books that contains both English and Polish text.
Edit: as pointed out below I should’ve clarified that this applies when you live in a non-English country where your child does not have any other way to learn English (over here you can’t really learn English in schools - not enough hours, plus it starts way too late anyways).
> And if you’re a non-English parent but speak English consider talking to your child in English from the very beginning.
If you are living in a place where people don't speak your mother tongue but English is spoken everywhere and is the main medium of education, don't do this. The kids will pick-up English anyway because they will be exposed to it for 8 hours daily at school but if you don't speak with them in your mother tongue, they will never pick it up. The older they get, the harder it is. First hand experience.
They need English at home too, a lot happens in those early years where there's no schooling and it'd be way better to know English well going into school (what ever level that happens to be at) too.
My daycare has a lot of non-native people who do not speak the local, native language with their child, at all. Still, all children (age 3, they're usually in daycare since age 1) speak the local language fluidly, thanks to how much they they spend in daycare.
No, it’s not necessary to speak X at home if you live in an X speaking country, and it may even be harmful: often children will not pick up language Y if only one parent speaks it and the other parent speaks X.
Bilingual children whose parents don’t speak the language of the community at home may learn languages slightly slower but they quickly catch up once they make friends who only speak X.
Not really. The tv content alone is all in English, the books you buy are in English, the people you talk to are speaking English. In a way or another, they get English (I have two children and we speak Italian at home, they both know English).
By the way, something nobody mentioned, once your kid learns English in an English speaking country, your English gets better (assuming you are non-native). My daughter started correcting my pronunciation and it's getting way better
I would say the opposite; talk to your child only in your native language. Kids will learn English by themselves in school anyway, and if they don't learn your language from you, they for sure won't learn it elsewhere.
Source: as a kid I was in that situation, at first my parent spoke only in English with me and I started to forget Portuguese. After my parents realized that they pivoted to speaking Portuguese. I learned English fine at school and never had problems with either languages. Now I'm a parent of a 2yo and 1yo and am speaking Portuguese with both.
> Kids will learn English by themselves in school anyway
If you live in an English speaking country then sure. Over here it’s almost impossible to learn English in school, you only get a few hours per week of English classes.
It depends on the kid and on the type of “immersion” (for lack of a better word). I grew up in Romania in the ‘90s, when we had 2 hours of English per week starting with the 5th grade. I turned up fine when it comes to speaking/writing/reading the language, of course that I’ll always carry an accent when speaking it but I don’t care.
Looking back at it, after 3 decades, what helped me learn the language was that immersion I mentioned, i.e. I was watching English TV programs (Cartoon Network, Eurosport, MTV Europe) for a big part of the day, without that I wouldn’t have been able to pick it up so easily.
My experience is that it’s very easy to expose kids to English in a non-English country - just let them consume all their entertainment (Netflix, games, books) in English right from the start. You don’t need to do anything special other than that.
Do be mindful of the kid though. One of my wife's coworkers wanted to teach their kid multiple languages, I think the final count was 4 total (they wanted both the parent's native tongues, German which is where they were going to live after their visas expired in the US and of course English), while living in the US and it just made the kid confused and angry. Granted that's way more than just doing two but it could still back fire with the kid if it's too much.
I would clarify this is for parents residing in non-English speaking countries. Because over here in the States folks are doing the opposite: spending thousands a month to send their children to language immersion schools to not speak English.
Source: I’m a parent of a 3yo who now understands speaks both English and Polish. Me and my wife are Polish and only I speak English. Apart from speaking we also use English audio in all TV content she watches and buy books that contains both English and Polish text.
Edit: as pointed out below I should’ve clarified that this applies when you live in a non-English country where your child does not have any other way to learn English (over here you can’t really learn English in schools - not enough hours, plus it starts way too late anyways).