Annotated Bibliography on Chinese Heritage Language Learners

Dixon, L. Quentin, Jing Zhao, Blanca G. Quiroz and Jee-Young Shin. "Home and
Community Factors Influencing Bilingual children’s Ethnic Language Vocabulary
Development." International Journal of Bilingualism 16.4 (2012): 541-65. Print.

Summary:

Dixon et. al. examined the roles home and community play in the growth of bilingual Chinese,
Malay and Indian K2 children’s ethnic language vocabulary in Singapore.

Their research showed that parent language, one of the home factors, was an important predictor of
the development of children’s ethnic language vocabulary. Children whose family used only the
ethnic language in communication achieved much higher scores on the Peabody Picture
Vocabulary Test-III translated than those who were exposed to a mix of their ethnic language and
other language or other language only at home. Television programs in the ethnic language and
other language also has a positive effect on the increase of children’s ethnic language vocabulary
than those entirely in other language. Their study also suggested that the community support of the
ethnic language has a positive effect on children’s vocabulary building, with the Malay language
group having stronger cultural identity than Chinese and Tamil language groups scoring the
highest among the three as family monthly income rises.

The authors have selected their K2 children from the PCF kindergarten centers in different areas
across Singapore, painting a relatively objective panoramic picture of the effect of home and
community factors on the growth of children’s ethnic language vocabulary among the Malay,
Chinese and Tamil language groups in Singapore. This provides a good starting point for a
possible longitudinal study to see if as the children grow older and as Chinese continues to be one
of the education languages, some correlations in this study will change and more factors need to be
put into account. In addition, while comparisons are made between the three bilingual groups in
this research, each group deserves to be further studied in detail regarding heritage language
acquisition. It will be especially interesting to take a closer look at the home factors of Chinese
families in Singapore, since unlike Malay families where Malay is proficiently spoken by parents,
most Chinese parents are only native speakers of a Chinese dialect. Mandarin has to be learned by
them as well.

Melo-Pfeifer, Sílvia. "The Role of the Family in Heritage Language use and Learning:
Impact on Heritage Language Policies." International Journal of Bilingual Education &
Bilingualism 18.1 (2015): 26-44. Print.

1
Summary:

By analyzing drawings by children and responses by students in the discussion forum regarding
their perception of the Portuguese language and their Portuguese roots, the author depicted the
essential role of family involvement in the using and sustaining of Heritage Language (HL).

The author’s evaluation concerning children and youngsters’ answers to respective questions,
“Draw yourself speaking the language you know” and “What does it mean to have Portuguese
roots?”, specified three roles a family plays in the acquisition and maintenance of HL. First, the
attachment HL learners have towards their family guarantees the inheritance of family and cultural
identity, customs and language. Second, family provides the space for the initial HL exposure,
interaction and acquisition to occur and allows the learners’ linguistic cognition to mature over
time. Third, family serves as a resourceful channel through which the learners’ use of HL is
enabled and encouraged in much wider and pragmatic contexts.

This study has implications not only on Portuguese Heritage Language (PHL) programs but also
on HL or foreign language (FL) programs in general. The philosophy of most foreign language
programs involves using authentic teaching and learning materials, contextualizing the behavior of
foreign language acquisition and providing opportunities to expand language and cultural capacity.
Not contrary to this philosophy, the author seems to further suggest that HL learners have a bigger
demand for a more authentic, contextualized and enriching experience in a foreign language
program. And family involvement in the HL/FL programs can be an answer to such a demand and
thus be seen as a unique asset to those programs. But then, issues such as the guidelines for family
involvement, the qualifications of HL speaking family members and their actual impact on HL/FL
programs will require further research investigation.

Mu, Guanglun Michael, and Karen Dooley. "Coming into an Inheritance: Family Support
and Chinese Heritage Language Learning." International Journal of Bilingual
Education & Bilingualism 18.4 (2015): 501-15. Print.

Summary:

Mu and Dooley’s study examined the effect family has on heritage learners’ Chinese proficiency,
and provided an interpretation for the dynamics between the two using the Bourdieusian
perspective.

2
Through the study of a survey of 230 young Chinese Australians, Mu and Dooley have come to the
following conclusion: Chinese Heritage Language (CHL) learners’ proficiency is correlated with
their family’s overall support of their language learning effort, its CHL use policy at home and the
time devoted to formal language training. Their quantitative evidence has validated the previous
assumptions about the contribution family gives to the success of CHL learning. In addition, they
identified in their subsequent interviews with five of the participants three forms of family
inculcation, namely family encouragement, informal home instruction and family investment in
CHL schools. They also theorized an explanation from a Bourdieusian point of view for CHL
learner’s attitude transition from “resistance to commitment”, using the term “habitus realization”.

The authors’ Bourdieusian analysis regarding CHL learners’ change of language attitude focuses
more on the their gradual internalization of the dispositions and values held by their families,
which is understandable because the information collected from interviewing CHL learners has
more to do with their personal experiences and thoughts and less with an objective evaluation of
the formal and informal language instruction the learners have received. In other words, the
external factors are less discussed in the article. To complement it, future research can work on
finding out factors other than parental force or difficulty of Chinese writing that give rise to CHL
learners’ negative attitude towards the heritage language. These factors, especially those related to
the current foreign language or heritage language programs, can have significant implications on
future program structural reform and pedagogical improvement. Specifically, it will be interesting
to compare the language programs offered by formal institutions and those offered by weekend
schools.

Zhang, Dongbo, and Keiko Koda. "Home Literacy Environment and Word Knowledge
Development: A Study of Young Learners of Chinese as a Heritage Language."
Bilingual Research Journal 34.1 (2011): 4-18. Print.

Summary:

Zhang and Koda examined factors such as parent-child language use as well as independent and
joint reading at home, and produced preliminary results regarding their effect on heritage
children’s Chinese word knowledge in terms of character structure and broadness of vocabulary.

Their research found that the more use of Chinese at home by parents, the broader the vocabulary
the learners tend to have. But they also pointed out that parental use of Chinese does not guarantee
an understanding of the structures of characters. Moreover, regardless of how reading is conducted,
independently or jointly, their study showed that school-related reading has a much higher
frequency than non-school-related reading. And strong positive correlations can be found between

3
school-related reading and heritage children’s knowledge about Chinese characters and words.

On the one hand, Zhang and Koda’s results indicate that given the time heritage learners spent at
home reading school-related materials, they are likely to have a better command of Chinese word
knowledge if teachers of Chinese language make good judgment as to what should be entailed in
each reading assignment and how these assignments are organized in the long run. On the other
hand, the implications of their research are limited first of all due to the small number of
participants involved and to the fact that all of them go to the same grade level in the same
weekend Chinese school. Therefore, the findings can’t be readily generalized to heritage language
learners who have more years of language experience and who receive both weekend and weekday
school instruction. Secondly, the mere analysis of the frequency of different forms of home reading
practices does not include in the picture important information such as the vocabulary
sophistication of the materials being read, the specific methods parents or children themselves
adopt when reading at home and the time devoted to reading per day or per week. Thirdly, the
family background, structure and belief about learning Chinese heritage language, which are left
out in this study, may add another significant layer to its results.