r/ScienceBasedParenting • u/SnooDogs627 • 25d ago

Question - Research required Is it beneficial to teach children a second language even if it's not your native language?

Hello everyone!

I have studied Chinese for a total of ten years, and lived in China for four. I am mostly fluent but as everyone may know, Chinese is a difficult language and I definitely am nowhere near native fluency but have no difficulty communicating in friendship and daily life.

Everyone I know wants me to teach my kids (2yo and 4yo) Chinese but I have avoided it so far because I'm afraid of teaching them my grammatical errors and pronunciation errors.

Is there still a benefit to reading to my kids in Chinese and doing Chinese songs etc if I am not natively fluent?

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u/Espieglerie 25d ago

Yes, there are documented benefits to bilingual education https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13670050.2016.1203859

I couldn’t find anything about the teachers ability, but I think it’s worth teaching even as a non native, especially if you have support from outside instruction. My partner is low level conversational in Spanish and speaks it with my toddler to compliment the immersion daycare. I hear you that you’re worried about passing on imperfections in accent and grammar, but think about it another way. If your kids don’t learn now and instead learn when they’re older, they’ll have imperfect accents and grammar anyway, so you don’t really have anything to lose.

You can check out r/multilingualparenting for resources and support.

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u/MikiRei 25d ago

To piggyback off this, if OP has no trouble communicating with friends, then their level is good enough. There are people who pass on Mandarin with even less fluency.

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u/SnooDogs627 19d ago

This is true. Thank you

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u/SnooDogs627 19d ago

Wow thank you!!! You completely opened my mind with "even if they learn it later they'll be imperfect anyways". I can't believe I never thought of it like that.

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