Awesome. Is your children’s first language not English?
Or you just want to them to be able to interact?
I’m in Thailand. Many people speak English here but definitely not everyone and definitely note everyone natively.
But tons of westerners.
Discussion
My kid is bilingual in Japanese and English but his English exposure is limited to me and my wife (we speak English at home). He is not as fluent in English as in Japanese I’d say. I want him to be 100% fluent. I think he’ll get there just by interacting with us, but I’d rather he get additional exposure outside of family and in a native English environment.
Gotcha. So cool btw. I love Japan and the culture.
The language is from another universe to me
I was there last year
My experience with immigrant families (including my own) is that children almost never achieve full fluency in their parents’ mother tongue. They may be able to communicate effectively with their parents and reach a reasonable proficiency in the language, but they will consistently retain a noticeable accent. I have observed this with Portuguese (myself and several friends), as well as French, English, and German.
If you want a child to develop true fluency in English, send them to an English-speaking country before their teenage years. I have seen children up to about age 15 lose their accent this way. However, those who moved after 18 generally retained their accent and never reached full fluency.
i don't think that reaching a 100% fluent level in another language is possible with just interacting with the same people as different people might have a slight difference way of speaking.
each place has their own unique twist in the way a language is structured and also slight different pronunciations.
traveling is the only way to 100% solve it, but if that's not possible interacting with media (like youtube videos, books, etc) in said language might help with less cost.
Even more so if those are related to things they like as it gives them a bigger incentive to want to understand them