Immigrant Children's Heritage Language Learning and Language Identity

• Main Authors: Chang, Hsiu-Ying, 張琇瑩
• Other Authors: Chun, Chen-Cheng
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2011
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/98871290301640937347

碩士 === 國立高雄師範大學 === 華語文教學研究所 === 99 === In the past, studies related to immigrant childrens were less discussed with the issue of heritage language and language identity. The respect for the diversity of ethnic language and culture which refers to multicultural education is valued by educational environment and researches gradually as the number of immigrant children in elementary schools has been increasing in recent years. According to previous statement, this study aims to explore the relevance of immigrant children’s heritage language learning and family heritage language use to language identity in Taiwanese eduacational environment. This study tries to answer the following research questions:(1)What are the factors influencing the heritage language learning of immigrant children?(2)What is the relevance of heritage language learning to language identity in immigrant children’s families?(3)What is the correlation between family heritage language use to language identity in immigrant children’s families? The research contexts of this study include the elementary school where researcher works at and transnational immigrant families, focusing on 18 parents as well as 22 immigrant childrens of transnational immigrant families. Data collection in this study are drawn from in-depth interview of qualitative research methodology. The interview data are then encoded to compare, organize, and generalize the results. The three major findings of this study are as follows: Firstly, community, school, and family are the external environmental factors influencing immigrant children’s heritage language learning, and then language and affection are the internal cognitive factors. Secondly, language use of family and community as well as language learning of school could enhance immigrant children’s motivation to heritage language learning and shape immigrant children’s self identity , and further, heritage language learning could construct the immigrant children’s resources of family, school, and future. Thirdly, heritage language use of immigrant children is directly influenced by intergenerational family heritage language and heritage language use of immigrant and grandparents. Futhurmore, heritage language use of immigrant childrens is indirectly influenced by family language policy. This study has three conclusions emerged. Firstly, school environment is crucial to the immigrant children’s heritage language learning. Secondly, heritage language loss in immigrant children’s families is the result from mainstream language identity. Thirdly, Heritage language identity in immigrant children’s families is revealed by the interaction relationship between parents and children. Finally, it is recommended by the researcher that when planning issues of immigrant children’s education, we should consider heritage language as a language resource; moreover, taking advices from experts and teachers in different fields to practice the related research and teaching activities as well as building up the entire supporting network for immigrant children.