If your family speaks Korean, Japanese, French or any other language at home and your child attends a Vietnamese–English bilingual preschool, the home language will not survive on goodwill alone. It survives when the child hears it for a substantial share of waking hours, from people who matter to them, in situations where it is the only language that works. Count your weekly hours in each language, protect the home language in specific daily routines, give your child a reason to use it, and link up with other families who speak it.
This guide is for expat and mixed-nationality families in Ho Chi Minh City whose child, aged roughly one to six, is spending eight or nine hours a day in two school languages while the family language competes for the evenings and weekends. It explains why the school languages tend to win, what research says about exposure thresholds, and what you can realistically do in a working family's week. It does not cover how a school organises its own two languages in class; ask the school about that directly.
Why the school languages tend to win by default
A child who starts a full-day bilingual preschool at two or three is suddenly surrounded by Vietnamese and English for most of the hours they are awake and alert. Teachers, classmates, songs, play and conflict over toys all happen in those two languages. At home, the family language gets the tired hours: the rushed breakfast, the drive, dinner, bath and bed. On a weekday that can be two or three hours, much of it spent on routines rather than conversation.
Children are practical language learners. They put effort into the language that gets them what they want: a turn on the slide, a friend's attention, a teacher's help. If every adult at home also understands English or Vietnamese, the child soon notices that the home language is optional. Answering in English still gets the snack. Nothing goes wrong, so the habit sets in quietly, and many parents only notice it a year later when the child understands everything but answers in another language.
There is also a status effect. Preschoolers pick up which languages are used by the people they admire. If English is the language of the cool older children and of cartoons, and Vietnamese is the language of the playground and the teacher, the home language can start to feel like something only parents use. None of this is a failure of parenting. It is the normal pull of the majority environment, and knowing about it early is what lets you push back in time.
Run an exposure audit before you change anything
Before adopting a strategy, write down a typical week, hour by hour, and note which language your child is actually hearing and speaking. Most families are surprised. The table below is a hypothetical example for a Korean-speaking mother, an English-speaking father and a child in a full-day Vietnamese–English preschool.
| Time block (hypothetical example) | Hours per week | Main language heard | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Preschool, Monday to Friday | about 45 | Vietnamese and English | Includes nap; active talk is lower than the hours suggest |
| Weekday mornings and evenings with mother | about 10 | Korean | Much of it is routine: dressing, food, bath |
| Weekday evenings with father | about 6 | English | Father switches to English when tired |
| Weekends, family together | about 20 | Mostly English | The shared parental language takes over |
| Helper or grandparent care | about 5 | Vietnamese | Extra Vietnamese the parents may not hear |
| Screens and audio | about 5 | Mostly English | Passive; adds little speaking practice |
In this example Korean reaches only about a tenth of the child's waking week, and almost none of it comes from anyone other than the mother. That is the kind of pattern that leads to a child who understands Korean but stops speaking it. The point of the audit is not guilt. It shows exactly which blocks you can move, such as weekend mornings, the drive to school or bedtime stories, and gives you a baseline to check against three months later.
What research says about how much is enough
There is no magic number, but researchers have found useful patterns. Barbara Zurer Pearson and colleagues, studying bilingual children in Miami in the 1990s, reported that children who heard a language for less than about a fifth to a quarter of their time were much less likely to speak it, even if they understood it. Pearson later turned this work into a practical book for parents, Raising a Bilingual Child (2008). Treat the figure as a warning sign, not a target: comfortably above it is safer.
Annick De Houwer surveyed close to two thousand bilingual families in Flanders and published the results in 2007. Roughly one in four children growing up with two home languages ended up speaking only the majority language. The families most likely to raise an active speaker of the minority language were those where both parents used it at home, or where one parent used both languages and the other used only the minority language. Families where the minority language was carried by just one parent had lower success rates.
Quantity is not everything. Studies by Erika Hoff and others on bilingual toddlers show that vocabulary in each language tracks the amount and richness of input in that language, and that input from fluent speakers in real conversation counts for more than background speech. For a family in Saigon this means two practical things: the home language needs more hours than it naturally gets, and those hours work best as conversation, storytelling and play rather than instructions shouted across the kitchen.
Create a real need for the home language
Make one adult the home-language person, firmly but warmly. Children speak the language a person expects, not the one they merely hear. If the Korean-speaking mother answers in Korean even when spoken to in English, and gently recasts the child's English sentence into Korean before carrying on, the child learns that Korean is the language of that relationship.
Give the language its own territory. Some routines belong to the home language and never switch: bedtime stories, the weekend breakfast, the bath song, the walk to the market. Fixed territory is easier to keep than a vague rule to use the language more.
Bring in other speakers. A language spoken by only one person feels like a private code. Grandparents on video calls, a babysitter who speaks it, family friends and playdates with children from the same community show your child that the language is used by many people, including other children.
Avoid testing and correcting. Asking a child to say a word in the home language or correcting grammar in front of others turns the language into an exam. Recasting, which means repeating the idea correctly and moving on, keeps the conversation going and the pressure low.
Celebrate use, not perfection. A mixed sentence with two home-language words is progress. Respond warmly to the meaning, add the missing words naturally, and keep the exchange alive.
Books, songs, screens and early reading in the home script
Reading aloud is one of the most efficient ways to add rich home-language input. Books use vocabulary that daily routines never reach: animals your child has never seen, feelings, time words, connectives such as because and although. Even ten minutes a night adds up to more than an hour a week of dense language. If books in your language are hard to find in Ho Chi Minh City, families often pool them, swap them in community groups or bring a suitcase back after each trip home.
Songs and rhymes stick because rhythm makes words memorable. They are especially useful for children under three, who learn fixed phrases before they build sentences. Screens are a weaker tool. A well-known study by Patricia Kuhl and colleagues, published in 2003, found that nine-month-old American infants exposed to Mandarin through live interaction with a speaker kept their sensitivity to Mandarin speech sounds, while infants shown the same speaker on video or audio did not. Cartoons in the home language can help with motivation and cultural references, but they do not replace a person talking with your child.
Should a preschooler start learning to read the home script? There is no need to rush, and formal lessons are not appropriate for toddlers. Playing with letters, pointing out words in a picture book and writing a child's name in two scripts are low-pressure ways to show that the language also lives on paper. Many families find that an interest in reading in the home language arrives naturally between four and six, especially if older children in the community already read it.
Weekend classes, playgroups and community in Ho Chi Minh City
Saigon has sizeable Korean, Japanese, French, Chinese, Indian and other communities, and many of them run weekend classes, playgroups, cultural associations or parent networks. Some are organised around a national school or a consulate, others are informal groups of parents who take turns hosting. Because these groups change often, the most reliable way to find current options is to ask other parents from your community, the cultural or community association of your country, and your embassy or consulate's community notices.
For preschoolers, a weekly playgroup is often worth more than a formal class. What a three-year-old needs is to hear other children speak the language and to discover that it works for playing, arguing and making friends. A class that focuses on worksheets can backfire if the child experiences the language as homework. Look for groups with songs, crafts, stories, festivals and plenty of free play.
When comparing options, ask practical questions. How old are the other children, and do they actually speak the language to each other or switch to English in the corner? Is the group led by fluent speakers? How far is it from home on a Saturday morning in traffic, and will you realistically keep going in the rainy season? A group that is a little less impressive but twenty minutes away often wins over a better one that takes an hour each way.
A 12-week plan for a busy family
Change is easier when it is small and fixed. This plan assumes one parent speaks the home language and both parents work. Adjust the blocks to your week.
- Week 1: run the exposure audit for seven days and agree, as parents, which language each adult will speak to the child in which situation.
- Weeks 2 to 3: give the home language two protected routines, for example breakfast and bedtime, and keep them even on bad days.
- Weeks 2 to 4: start a nightly read-aloud of at least ten minutes in the home language, rotating a small stack of books so favourites repeat.
- Weeks 4 to 6: schedule one regular contact with other speakers each week, such as a grandparent video call at a fixed time or a playdate.
- Weeks 6 to 8: practise responding in the home language when your child answers in English, with recasting rather than correction.
- Weeks 8 to 10: add one outing a fortnight where the home language is the only one used, such as a community event, a restaurant or a shop run by speakers.
- Weeks 10 to 12: repeat the audit, compare the hours with week 1, and note whether your child is producing more home-language words or sentences.
Keep the school informed in a sentence or two that your child is growing up with a third language at home, so teachers understand an occasional word they do not recognise. Expect progress to be uneven. Holidays back home, a new friend from the community or a beloved book can produce sudden jumps, while busy months at work can cause slides. What matters is the direction over a year, not any single week.
Câu hỏi thường gặp
Will adding a third language confuse my child or slow down their English and Vietnamese?
Research on bilingual and multilingual children does not show that extra languages cause confusion or language disorders. Vocabulary in each language may be smaller than a monolingual child's for a while, because input is split, but total vocabulary across languages is usually comparable. If you have concerns about overall development, ask a qualified professional to assess all of your child's languages.
Should the home-language parent pretend not to understand English?
Pretending is hard to keep up and children quickly see through it. It works better to answer consistently in the home language, recast what the child said, and create routines and relationships where the home language is the natural choice. The aim is to make the language useful and warm, not to create a contest.
Is it too late if my four-year-old already answers only in English?
No. Many children who have become passive speakers return to active use when exposure increases and they find a reason to speak, such as a long holiday with grandparents or friends who speak the language. Increase input first, keep expectations relaxed, and look for situations where the home language is genuinely needed.
How many hours a week does the home language need?
There is no exact figure that fits every child. Studies by Barbara Zurer Pearson and colleagues suggest that children hearing a language for less than roughly a fifth to a quarter of their waking time are much less likely to speak it. Aim comfortably above that, and favour conversation and stories over background speech.
Can a helper or nanny speak our home language instead of us?
If you can find a fluent caregiver who speaks your language, that can add valuable hours and a second speaker in the child's life. What matters is that the caregiver speaks it naturally and warmly, plays and talks rather than only giving instructions, and stays consistent over months rather than weeks.
Do we need to tell the preschool about our home language?
Yes, briefly. Teachers can then recognise that a word they do not understand is meaningful, avoid suggesting that you stop using it, and let you know if your child seems to be struggling in class. Ask how the school usually supports children who speak a language that no teacher speaks.