Myths and challenges on raising bilingual children in English by non-native parents in Spain

Abstract

English has become a lingua franca in most international settings. Citizens in a globalized world need multilingual profiles in order to enhance their employability (Baker, 2011). Consequently, Spanish-English bilingual programmes have proliferated in Spain to meet such requirements (Lozano-Martínez, 2017). In order to foster their children’s learning experience, some Spanish non-native English-speaking parents have decided to speak to their children in English. Thus, family language planning is crucial to children’s linguistic development. When the socialization scope of the baby goes beyond the family, children’s language awareness is progressively weakened (Zhao, 2018). In this way, what are the challenges? Which preconceived ideas prevent some parents from trying or reinforcing their language planning endeavour? What kind of support is needed, or available, in order to complete an input based on the ‘one person-one language’ strategy (OPOL) which, according to De Houwer (2007) is not enough on its own? In this sense, there are only a few references like those of Saunders (1988) and Jernigan (2015) about non-native speakers who raise their children bilingually. We come across even less references about studies contextualized in Spain as that by Sánchez Torres (2010). Further studies are needed. This paper aims to identifytheaforementionedchallengesandmyths,bymeansofthequantitative analysis of the data obtained from a questionnaire fulfilled by 735 families that allows us to describe the present scenario.