What happens to the childrens’ English when you move abroad?
It seems that virtually all parents who move to another country just assume that their children will grow up bilingual without any effort on their part. After all, they’ll learn English at home and the native language at school. It’s obvious, isn’t it?
Whilst that might sound logical, in fact that’s rarely what actually happens.
For one thing, unless you teach them to read and write in English then if they’re going to school in, say, France then they’re not going to be able to do either unless it’s taught in the school and even then it’ll be as a foreigner.
Even the spoken language is decidedly dodgy if you think about it. After all, the majority of the language that you use as an adult is language that you learnt at school rather than from your parents and so if your children are going to a school in a foreign language then they simply aren’t going to learn adult English.
In practice, what seems to happen is that, unless the parents work at it, the children grow up speaking the English of about an 8 or 9 year old if they’ve move prior to reaching that age. For those older (and this includes adults!), their English basically stops at the level it was when they moved abroad.
Surely I can’t include adults in that statement? Well, yes. Think about it. If you’d moved here even 10 years ago, chances are you’d not know the English words for Internet, e-mail, etc. So, yes, your English stops developing too.Don’t forget the education that children here won’t get. If they move over between 11 and 18 then they won’t learn the English versions of all those words that they’d have picked up during their GCSE and A-levels. In fact, if they went to age 16 here and tried to move back to do A-levels, they would have a very restricted range of subjects that they’d be able to do. History? No chance: they’d be taught that Nelson was the enemy for instance. Geography: would they know that the Etats-Unis was America? English: no chance, naturally, as they’d have been taught English as a foreign language. In fact, apart from French, it’s doubtful if they would be able to do A-levels.
The effect is much more noticeable in younger children. Try talking to someone who was born abroad to English parents. Unless their parents have done something about it, chances are that you’d find it very difficult to speak to them. Such children are rarely fluent in English.
What can you do about it though?
Up to age 11 it’s fairly easy. Just get the likes of the Ladybird and Usborne books and read to them and let them watch English TV channels. That should keep them fairly much up with the English that they’d have spoken if they’d have remained in the UK.
Beyond that, it’s much harder. I suspect you’d need to send them to a bilingual school (note: international schools are quite different).
Anyway, something to think about. Most people don’t get as far as thinking about it so you’re way ahead already.
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