Heritage language maintenance and identity among the second-generation Chinese-Australian children

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the links between the second-generation Chinese Australians’ heritage language proficiency and perceptions of Chinese identity. Thirty 10–11-year-old children of Chinese immigrants took a Chinese proficiency test and participated in semi-structured interviews. The test revealed a wide range of performance levels in all the four skills except listening among the Chinese-Australian children. It was found that the high-achieving participants expressed aspirations for attaining high levels of Chinese literacy and identified themselves as being half Australian half Chinese. In contrast, the low-achieving participants showed an inclination to communicate in English only and perceived themselves as mainly Australian. The study suggests, to increase chances of heritage language maintenance and cultivation of a bicultural identity, children need substantial support and access to the various resources, avenues, and opportunities to learn Chinese both at family and community levels. This study is significant in providing empirical evidence for the debate of language and identity while awakening the Chinese diaspora to heritage language maintenance.

Notes

1. Mandarin is the modern standard Chinese speech commonly used in mainland China, which is based on the “simplified” script as its writing system (Clyne & Kipp, 1999). The spoken Chinese language discussed throughout this paper, when not otherwise specified, refers to Mandarin.

2. LOTE was employed in the past Australian Censuses as an umbrella term for all the languages other than English spoken at Australian households. Australian LOTE programs differs from the bilingual school programs in the US (Tong, 2014). The Australian Curriculum for Languages nominates LOTE as a compulsory language subject which requires minimum 350 hours of study in primary years (from Foundation to Year 6) and 350 hours in Years 7 to 10. For example, many schools provide Chinese lessons in one 30-minute period per week and some once per fortnight (Orton, 2016b).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Chunxuan Shen

Dr Chunxuan Shen is a Chinese language tutor and research assistant in the School of Languages and Cultures at the University of Queensland. She is also lecturing online through Zhejiang Gongshang University Hangzhou College of Commerce in China. Her research interests include sociolinguistics, Chinese as a heritage language and teaching Chinese as second language. Her doctoral dissertation is “The Role of Parents and Their Children’s Language Maintenance: A Study of Chinese Immigrant Families in Brisbane”.

Wenying Jiang

Dr Wenying Jiang is a Senior Lecturer in Chinese and the Chinese Discipline Coordinator in the School of Languages and Cultures at the University of Queensland. Her research interests include second language acquisition of Chinese, Chinese pedagogy, and technology enhanced language learning. Her mostly and widely cited publications include her monograph Acquisition of Word Order in Chinese as a Foreign Language, her article “Measurements of development of L2 written production: the case of Chinese L2” in Applied Linguistics and her jointly published article with Dr Wei Li entitled “Linking up learners of Chinese with native speakers through WeChat in an Australian tertiary CFL curriculum”.