‘We are Korean people and we must speak Korean well:’ parental involvement in five Korean American families with successful heritage language maintenance

ABSTRACT

This study investigated parental involvement in five Korean American families where there was evidence of successful heritage language (HL) maintenance in the second generation. The data in the current study were drawn from interviews of five Korean women who were first-generation immigrants to the U.S. and their daughters who were raised in the U.S. for most or all of their lives and were able to successfully acquire a high degree of competence in their HL. The data were analyzed for evidence of parental involvement in the children’s HL education, which was categorised according to Grolnick and Slowiaczek’s (1994, ‘Parents’ involvement in children's schooling: A multidimensional conceptualization and motivational model.’ Child Development 65: 237–252. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.1994.tb00747.x.) framework. The findings demonstrate that parental involvement in HL education was wide-ranging, taking the form of behavioural involvement (for example, speaking Korean at the home, teaching Korean to their children, watching Korean television shows with their children), cognitive-intellectual involvement (for example, exposing their children to formal Korean language instruction), and personal involvement (for example, explicitly expressing positive attitudes toward the Korean language and culture, expressing high expectations for their children’s Korean language competence).

KEYWORDS:

• Heritage language maintenance
• intergenerational heritage language transmission
• Korean Americans
• bilingualism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).