By Alex Case

As English is becoming more and more important for academic and business success, some more ambitious parents are going as far as switching to only speaking to their own children in their (usually less than perfect) English. Unless you are going to move to an English-speaking country in the very near future I would definitely not recommend this, as it could ruin your relationship with your child and they might anyway reject the language later if they don't need it and/ or it they feel it is stopping them being accepted by their friends. There are plenty of much easier and more sensible ways of learning and practising English with a young child outside class, some of which are explained in this article.

In bilingual families, parents often find that the child learns the distinction between the two languages more quickly if each parent always speaks just one language, so that one becomes "Daddy's language" and the other "Mummy's language". Again, I'd suggest caution about adopting this approach if it meant one parent struggling to communicate in English and so distancing them from their own children. Having an English-speaking nanny is much more natural, but of course beyond the budget of most of us. You can use the idea of having a clear distinction between languages in more sensible ways, however.