Is raising a child bilingually with English worth the effort?

Question

I am half Turkish and German (living in Germany) but did not learn Turkish when I was a boy, because back then it was still discouraged to teach two languages at the same time. Now as an adult it feels a shame to miss out on half the cultural ancestry.

With my first girl on the way I am thus pondering if it would make sense to bring up the child bilingually in English and German. I am sufficiently fluent in English after a year in the US that I feel up to the challenge of being the "English" parent.

On the other hand I am missing hard scientific facts that the effort is worth it. All children in Germany will learn English eventually and I would thus give the kid a headstart.

Can anyone shed some light on the question whether the limited energy of a parent is well spent on raising a child with English in addition to its native tounge.

Answer 1

There are a fair mount of studies out there that show pretty that being bi-lingual is a clear benefit (e.g. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-benefits-of-bilingualism.html?_r=0 )

However, this will depend on how you go about it. Small kids learn best by immersion: i.e.being exposed to situations where the second (or third) language is the natural means of communication and there isn't an alternative. As long as you can create these situations (e.g. enrolling in an English speaking Kindergarten or so) , this is good. Be mindful however, that the interaction should be with people who are either native speakers or very, very good. I'm not quite sure whether one year in the US would qualify and you may have to want that checked by a native speaker (embarrassing, but useful).

We actually pulled our kids out of the German class in US high school because the teacher was doing more damage than good. Horrible accent and limited grammar.

Here is what we did and what worked

• speak German at home, English with friends and at school
• 6 years of an English/Spanish immersion school program that alternates instruction language between English and Spanish, 50% of the class were native Spanish speaking kids.
• Italian in high school, some at home (mother went to high school in Italy and speaks it well) and living with family in Italy for a while

As a result our kids are bi-lingual, tri-lingual, and quadri-lingual respectively.

Answer 2

Ah, this is actually a question about native fluent speakers vs near-native fluent speakers. The excellent English you hear in Germany is near native fluency. They get that by hard work and having a critical mass of English speakers. But the kids that hear the language at home as a family language, they get native fluency, and to them it will feel effortless. For the parent though, it will be work because they have to have discipline themselves to speak the chosen language and monitor if the kid is getting enough exposure to each language they need to learn.

Also another interesting point is that kids often speak the language they hear better than their parents-- this factoid comes from studies of non-deaf parents of deaf children who have to be models for sign language. The children speak better ASL than the parents, even though both parents have lousy ASL. So a child can get native-like fluency even if they have a non-native parent as a model. (I'm sure there is some bounds to this though- it's not magic)

I am a language hobbyist. I study languages for no reasons at all, so that's my bias. I want to say, of course! But someone already has posted that answer.

So I'll post the "no"-- don't do it if you got that nagging voice that says, "this is never going to work" If you already know you are low on motivation or have a shortage of resources, support from family, don't do it. At the low ends of success, there is just receptive fluency, usually because of too little exposure, etc. This is a bigger problem in the US where people just don't have a culture of language learning and have wildly unrealistic ideas about what it means to teach a child a language (like speaking English with a few token Spanish words)

I considered teaching my infant son French, but my French isn't good enough. Instead we're going for Russian, Tagalog and English.

Answer 3

I think it's totally worth the effort but given that you're not a native speaker you may want to seek out additional support from eg a native English speaker nanny or au pair or an English speaking day care. The native speaker aspect I think is important as otherwise your child will pick up the same accents and language mistakes as the teachers. Unless you're so fluent in English that native speakers of English can't tell the difference, you will pass on your idiosyncrasies in English to your child. In that case you may be better off laying a solid foundation I just one language and rely on the school system for your child to pick up English later.