Hello Stella,

This is the first time I've answered a question on LinkedIn and I'm really pleasantly surprised by the sheer quantity and quality of the responses. I've been an English as a foreign language teacher for 17 years now, mostly teaching in-company classes, but I've also taught children in elementary schools, high schools and academies. I also grew up bi-lingual myself of two U.S. parents who never spoke a word of Spanish to me, but who nevertheless sent me to a Spanish school where I learned this language alone for three years – and now I speak it. This would seem to support what a lot of people recommend that you should do: leave the teaching 100% to the schools. I don't agree with this at all, however, because as an educator, I can tell you that classes are hard enough to teach as it is because of mixed abilities. Throw in mixed language levels like having immigrant children who don't speak the language in a class, and you'd be hard pressed to find teachers who could juggle that. In the end, something's got to give. Joris Van Der Wildt has got it right in his post when he refers to his wife's experience that children who don't speak the language will pay the price for years to come. When I taught in one elementary school, it was my job to teach Natural Sciences, etc. using U.S. textbooks (the ones used for native speaker children) to fourth and fifth graders. To begin with I had mixed levels in the class: some couldn't speak a word of English and a couple had native speaker parents, most couldn't understand the textbook as is because they didn't have the grammar level or the vocabulary level. The point is that if the children don't have the level in English, they miss out on much – or all - of the content of the classes.

Another point that Joris and others make is to speak to your child in your own language. I agree. I think it's your responsibility to teach your own language to your child first. I have a 5-year-old myself (almost six) and a Spanish wife (from Madrid, Spain). I speak to my son only in English and my wife speaks to him only in Spanish. I gather that you don't have this luxury, but let me tell you what has happened to a couple of people I know who tried to teach to teach the local language instead of their own. A friend of my wife's married a German guy and lives there now. She spoke to her daughter in German early on. The mother's passed on her horrible pronunciation, and poor grammar I suppose, to her daughter and now she has to regularly attend some sort of speech therapy classes. What's worse is that she apparently hasn't learned Spanish very well either because she has a terrible time of it whenever she comes back to visit. Then there's the Americans and British people, some of them teachers who I know here, who weakened and started speaking in Spanish to their children and, just as bad, started responding when their children spoke back in Spanish. The hopeless “war” for them was trying to get them to start speaking English again. I myself am pretty ruthless about not understanding anything my son says in Spanish, but then again he can always go to his mother to get what he wants.

In spite of my rejection of most of us mere mortals teaching our own children two languages (even though some people seem to be able to manage it), I do think you can do a lot of other things to give your daughter a head start. A lot of people have mentioned watching cartoons, Sesame Street, etc. and getting out there with other native English speaker children and I agree. Do as much as possible of the socializing because that's where your daughter will see the “need” (there's really no “need” for her to learn English for you). I think that that's obvious. But I think that watching cartoons and so on has actually been understated in this “forum.” I've heard my son saying so many things that had me wondering where on earth he'd learned that until I heard Mowgli say it in Jungle Book or Buzz Lightyear say it in Toy Story 2. By the way, somebody recommended something about watching cartoons in moderation. I disagree because I think children need and enjoy repetition more than adults, and repetition is also essential when learning a foreign language. Let me add that babies listen for years before they start to speak, but people sometimes erroneously believe that a child can learn a foreign language well without listening extensively first.

Finally, a word about pronunciation and not speaking English perfectly, Arnold Schwarzeneger's pronunciation hasn't hurt him at all. Most of my students these days aren't hurt one bit by not speaking English perfectly either even though they're often very important businessmen, etc. Don't worry about your daughter not speaking English perfectly – it took my son till this year to roll the “R” like a native Spaniard and he's just now getting the American “R” - just have faith that it'll come with time.

Regards,

Steven Starry