Does Your Child Need to Learn English First?

“Your child needs more English first.” If you are raising a bilingual or multilingual child, you may have heard this from a school, teacher, or other professional. And instead of ‘English’ there could be any school language that schools and professionals often advise to prioritize before anything else. In this article I will use English as an example since this is often the case in international schools with English as a school language.

Perhaps you were advised to focus only on English for a while. Maybe you were told that your child should become “fluent enough” in English before starting another language. Or perhaps you were encouraged to reduce the use of your home language because English was considered the priority. But does a child really need to master the school language before learning another language?

No. Learning the school language does not require putting other languages, the child’s home language or other world languages, on hold. In fact, for many multilingual children, continuing to develop their home language while acquiring English can be an important part of their overall linguistic development.

Where does the idea of “English first” come from?

The belief that children need to “get their English right” before learning other languages is deeply connected to a monolingual view of language learning. From this perspective, languages are often treated as separate systems, and children are expected to develop one language to a certain level before moving on to the next. This idea is rooted in an outdated view of the bilingual brain, where languages are seen as separate systems stored in distinct “boxes,” with little connection or interaction between them. Rather than functioning as isolated systems, a multilingual person’s languages are interconnected and constantly influence one another. This can create a particular image of what a successful language learner should look like: someone who has a strong, almost monolingual command of English.

But multilingual children do not necessarily develop languages in this way.

A child who speaks Russian at home, learns German at school, and is exposed to English through friends, books, or activities does not have three completely separate language systems in their head. Their languages interact with and influence one another. Their linguistic knowledge is integrated, dynamic, and constantly developing. This is called dynamic bilingualism.

One of the biggest problems with the “English first” approach is that it frames multilingual children through what they lack in English. A child who does not yet have age-appropriate English vocabulary may be described as having a “language problem”, even when they have extensive vocabulary and communication skills in another language. This is what we mean by deficit thinking: focusing primarily on what a child cannot yet do in the school language instead of recognising the knowledge, skills, and linguistic resources they already bring.

An asset-based approach asks a different question: What can this child already do with language, and how can we build on that?

This shift matters.

A child’s home language is not an obstacle that needs to be removed so that English can develop. It is part of the child’s existing linguistic repertoire and can be a valuable resource for learning.

Does learning several languages overload the brain?

This is another common concern.

Parents are sometimes told that learning several languages at the same time will be “too much” or that a child needs to concentrate on one language to avoid confusion. The research says that multilingual brains are perfectly capable of processing and developing several languages. Engagement with home, heritage, and additional languages alongside English or another school language is not inherently detrimental to students’ linguistic or cognitive development. Rather, educational approaches that recognize and support learners’ full linguistic repertoires can create opportunities for richer meaning-making, cognitive flexibility, creativity, and academic development.

This does not mean that every child will develop every language at the same pace or to the same level. Language development depends on exposure, meaningful interaction, opportunities to use the language, the child’s environment, and many other factors.

What multilingual children need is not necessarily fewer languages. They need meaningful opportunities to use the languages they are learning. They need rich interaction, appropriate support, and adults who understand how multilingual development works.