Is OPOL the best method, or just the only one possible most of the time?

raggedyman

New member
Hello, I have been following this sub for a while a I have a question I want to ask; is almost everyone doing & defending OPOL because it is the best method, or because it is effectively the best method that they can do personnally?

I have been raised by a French/German couple that spoke to me only in French and my mother tongue is definitely French, my German sucks as a result unfortunately. Fast forward today my wife is Japanese and we have two young children. I really don't want to make the same "mistake" my parents made and teach my kids both languages (FR/JP) as a "native language".

However my wife and I are not using OPOL, we are not using any 'method' per se but what naturally turned into "speak both language interchangeably as much as possible so that both languages seems equally important and necessary and fun in any and all situations"... So far it seems that my son is indeed learning both languages in parallel, and even though he does have a hard time speaking only one of the two languages, his grammar and structure turning into some kind of weird creole, in terms of vocabulary and understanding he is really great with both.

I am wondering if this non-method of ours will cause problems in the long run and if OPOL is really the way to go... Hence my question; do some people do OPOL because they can't speak the other language 'natively' enough, or is it just objectively a great method? and I ask this without judgment, and not as an humble brag either; my Japanese is far from perfect and neither is my wife's French, but I feel that this was the most natural way for us to do it, and I want to correct our method before it's too late if necessary (kids are 3.5 y.o. and a few months old).

Thank you for your input, it's been great following this sub so far :)
 
@raggedyman The OPOL pattern is actually not supported by significant research (in terms of large study population size) over mixed approaches like the one you are using. The largest study I know of was over several thousand families in the region between Belgium and the Netherlands where many families are multilingual. I'm not finding the paper quickly but pm me if you want and I can keep digging.

The conclusion was basically that exposure to the language in the home was essential. Whether one parent spoke the language or it was mixed between both didn't seem to matter in the long term. OPOL does seem to help hasten language acquisition, but I the long term what matters is if the child uses the language independently in their life. This cements language ability and helps them to define a language that might have previously been part of a creole they spontaneously developed.

My hypothesis is that it's important for the child to hear and reproduce all the phonemes of their languages, and that they are exposed to sufficient vocabulary and model of syntax to establish a base on which to build each language completely later in childhood (or their life). OPOL isn't really essential for this. It is probably slightly helpful, especially at a young age and especially where the language is rare. But, their continued independent use of the language as they grow is more important than whether you use OPOL or a mixed approach.

We started OPOL because we both have a single mother language and it comes naturally. Now (our daughter has just turned 4) we are starting to mix more. I actually think it's important for her to see many people speaking both languages, as a moral encouragement.

The hardest thing is actually that she doesn't want to speak differently than the other kids at her school! We are in a comical state where she doesn't believe that she speaks the minority language but then spends hours playing alone while speaking it.

OPOL isn't perfect, and your success is a good thing that reminds us how flexible children are.
 
@clwill4867 This is a little off-topic, but are you sure it was between Belgium and the Netherlands? Not a lot of bilinguality on a mother tongue-level there since nearly everybody only speaks Dutch at home... Maybe you mean the French/Dutch language border inside Belgium?
 
@clwill4867 Thank you very much for your answer and input.

My son doesn't go to school yet so we will see what added challenge this will bring to the table! But it is reassuring to know that our non-method can maybe work. We try to make exposure as fun as possible in both languages, and to show respect for each other's culture & language my wife and I, so I hope that my kids will see that and get inspired to learn both languages to a fluent level together with us :)
 
@raggedyman There's no one best method; there's the best method for your situation and your children's stage of development. I think OPOL is best for when children are infants and toddlers, but it loses some of its utility when your child starts leaving the home for education, at which point it seems more effective to reinforce the minority language inside the home as much as possible. E.g. in your case, if you were living in Japan and your children were going to Japanese schools, it would be more effective for your wife to use French inside the home as much as she is willing or able to do so in order to reinforce the minority language. I also think there is a benefit to the children in seeing their parents also make an effort to study and use the other language. Nothing convinces your kid something is important like you doing it yourself.
 
@dramatic444 This is what I wanted to say too. Our situation is similar to OP in that my husband and I use both our languages with our son. My husband sometimes speaks English (my L1) with him, and I sometimes speak Hungarian (husband’s L1). BUT we only do this because our “minority language” happens to be English, and I know my son will not lack exposure or motivation to acquire English. If we lived anywhere other than Hungary, we would speak Hungarian exclusively at home. (I have thought carefully about this because we have talked about living elsewhere, and I am a language teacher, so language acquisition fascinates me). If my native language was anything other than English, we would speak it at home.
 
@dramatic444 Thank you very much for your input! this feels like what we believe as well. We are trying to show our children that we both have a respect and appreciation for the other's culture and language, so that our children will also want to learn both. And we do insist a little bit on the minority language, I think :)
 
@raggedyman I can't find the source anymore, but I've read the important thing is to keep the language consistent in a sentence.
We mix at home too, but try not to mix too much within a conversation, because it's usually due to laziness on our part if we can't think of a word at the moment or whatever.

I grew up English/German (living in Austria), we mostly speak English with our kids and our 2y/o understands both but speaks mostly English. I think she'll pick up more German once she's in kindergarten, but I'm not worried about it
 
@katrina2017 Thank you for your input.

Roger that. We do indeed sometimes take the easy path and mix up the two languages mid-sentence for convenience's sake... I feel the pandemic and the lack of outside contact has just made it worse in the past few months u_u I'll try to be more careful.
 
@raggedyman I'm not an expert, but as an opol follower for me the advantages are:

Exposure: we both ensure the kids get exposure to both languages. The minority language is especially important, if I mixed in the majority language the kids would get less exposure

Consistency: the fact that we speak the same language all the time ensures they get exposed to more situations in that language

Importance: speaking my native language to my kids is also a way for me to transmit the importance of my language and culture - and to make it theirs

So, not objectively better, but for sure best for us.
 
@amelia97 Thank you for your input, these are great points.

I wanted to say regarding importance, one thing that I remember from my father is the lack of importance he put on German. As a child maybe I thought, if my father doesn't speak it, maybe I don't need to speak it either. Now as a grown-up, I am a bit sad about that. This is why maybe I insist (too much?) showing my son (and daughter, but she is very young) my appreciation of her mother's culture, and vice-versa. But you are right that I couldn't not speak French to him either, because it is part of my identity and it is important to me.

Have a good day :)
 
@raggedyman So - we implement a kind of OPOL hybrid at home (we’re actually a trilingual family living in a country which speaks my native language, where I also do more of the childcare so OPOL wasn’t appropriate) But first of all I want to say - I’ve seen several studies which have shown that the most important factors in helping children gain fluency in a language is amount of exposure and opportunities to use the language, I can probably dig out the citations if you’re interested but don’t have them off the top of my head. So it’s about working out strategies which are going to help achieve adequate exposure for your children and your family situation, and for some parents OPOL ticks that box and for others it doesn’t work as well! There are of course other factors but I haven’t seen any research which specifically show better results from OPOL than any other method, with the same level of exposure.

Advantages of OPOL from my perspective:
1 - Quality of the language input: if you’re doing OPOL it’s likely each parent is native speaker in the language so the child is only hearing correct and natural language. Language complexity will likely develop naturally as the child grows up and it ensures lengthy and rich conversation in the target languages
2 - providing both parents are spending similar amounts of time with the children then it ensures roughly equal exposure
3 - it provides children with the incentive to speak in a language - if conversations with Mum are only ever in Japanese, (as they get a bit older and become aware of what language they are speaking) they are more likely to make an effort to speak to Mum in Japanese even if they have to think a bit more to phrase it, because they always interact with Mum in Japanese, and Mum is more likely to model language in Japanese/notice language gaps quickly than if changing between languages all the time
4 - depending on the relative fluency in the language it’s more natural and will lead to a a lot more cultural awareness and sharing
5 - clear distinction from the get go that these are different languages or that you’ll say the same thing in different ways to different people.
6 - avoiding mid-sentence mixing, this may or may not be a problem for yourselves but language switching is fine for teaching children, providing you’re both able to form complex and accurate structures in both languages, but if one (or both of you ) isn’t, then you could be inadvertently passing on this hybrid language where you throw in words/idioms or structures from your native language to the child

Disadvantages of OPOL (again from my point of view):
1 - Depending how your family life is divided up it means that children may miss out on exposure to a language in one area, because that parent isn’t usually home or involved in that type of activity
2 - if you aren’t spending equal amounts of time with the children, then you’re inadvertently exposing the child to much more exposure to one language than another
3 - conversations are more natural when you’re mixing languages - depending on how you approach OPOL the child might well be used to having a conversation in two languages at once, but I can never fully get my head round how group conversations work using a strict OPOL method unless both parents are fluent. And if parents are used to mixing languages between themselves it’s going to feel a lot more natural for having whole family interactions - which I think is a big thing.
4- and I think this is quite a huge factor in favour of both parents speaking both languages, if you and your wife are living in, for example, a Japanese speaking country. The adaptability to decide that overall your daughter is having more exposure to Japanese, and you need to speak in French 70% of 100% of the time at home (or vice versa) gives you a lot more flexibility and more certainty of your child attaining a good level of French by adulthood. For example, you can notice that your child is reluctant to speak in Japanese and decide to spend two weeks speaking in nothing but Japanese to give her a boost.

It’s absolutely normal for children to speak this kind of ‘creole’ at that age when they’re growing up bilingual, I wouldn’t worry about it too much, but depending on the language outside of the home, it’s quite possible that she’ll end up favouring one language over another, but by both parents speaking both I think you’re giving yourself some extra options to combat that.

To give you an example of my own perspective - we live in English speaking country, with some english speaking childcare, we speak in Spanish between the two of us and when we are together as a family, I speak half in spanish half in English when I’m alone with the children and my husband speaks in Catalan with the children when he’s alone with them (or at least means to but sometimes I don’t think he even notices if he speaks spanish or Catalan).

I’d say both children seem to understand all three languages, but they mostly speak spanish or English, it’s disappointing as eldest daughter originally spoke all 3 when we lived in Catalonia but as her exposure decreased so has her usage; it’s not a major concern for us though as she still understands and it is closely related to Spanish so we figure she will be able to pick it up easily later. I worry that at almost 4, my daughter should be able to distinguish better between who speaks Spanish vs who speaks English, but I think due to the mixing I don’t know if she thinks everyone is multilingual or if she’s not worked out that they’re different languages - but compared with other bilingual families I know she definitely mixes more and doesn’t distinguish as well who to speak which language to. My eldest daughter understood the Catalan word for water as specifically bath water for a time because her Dad does bath time but it must not have been used out of that context very much, that was the main one but I’ve noticed a few differences in her vocabulary just through what she’s been exposed to through what her Dad does with her vs what I do. I decided from the get-go even when living in Catalonia to not speak to my children in Catalan, because I’m not completely fluent and do use translated spanish structures or might throw in a spanish word when I get stuck, but this may be politically motivated depending on your point of view because amongst Catalan native speakers they are very aware of the influence of Spanish on their language, but it may not seem like such a big deal if you’re talking about languages which don’t have such a charged history of oppression, because nobody ever had a problem understanding me in Catalan but it’s quite a hot topic politically so I decided to steer clear. (Although no doubt in a few years if the girls don’t speak Catalan properly I’ll get in trouble for not using more Catalan at home!)

Ultimately, I think for everyone raising bilingual or multilingual family it’s about weighing up the pros and cons of each method and doing what will work best for you as a family!
 
@victorgrant Thank you for your long and detailled answer and input, much appreciated :) We do try to insist a little bit more on the minority language at the moment, but we are not 100% sure where we are gonna live in the long run, so it isn't crystal clear which of the two languages is the minority one yet, which adds to the difficulty heh.
 
@victorgrant I am one of these people as well (verbose, not linguistic career) and I try very hard online to limit my sentences heh. I feel ya.

But for today, I was the one asking and you were generous with your time and words, sodon't apologize - thank you again, have a good day :)
 
@raggedyman I’m in a similar position, using Japanese and English. I speak well enough, so I use Japanese when useful (reading children’s books or when doing FaceTime with the in-laws).

I personally think OPOL is the norm since it’s more common to have two native speakers of their own language with beginner to intermediate level in their partner’s L1.

Our kid is still only 15 months, so I’ve been mixing, same as my wife. I’ve seen this called 2P2L before, and it works for us, since we switched languages long before having a kid.

I try to correct my wife if she uses improper grammar though, and vice-versa, since I want the input to be of high quality, not broken grammar.

Once the kid is older, I’m hoping to spend part of the year in Japan and part of it where we live, so they’ll have good exposure to both languages.
 
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