Maintaining a minor language or a heritage language? A case study of maintaining Chinese with preteenagers in Australian interlingual families

ABSTRACT

Drawing on the concept of family language policy (FLP), this paper reports on how four Chinese–English interlingual families maintain the minority language of Chinese with their preteenager children in Australia. The study takes an integrative approach to explore both parents’ and children’s perspectives on language development. While highlighting the increasing role that preteenagers play in the maintenance of a minor heritage language, the findings reveal that successful language maintenance in interlingual families is influenced by many other interacting factors, like language practice, attitude and support from each parent, language status, and the role of community schools. The study has clear implications for bilingual parenting and heritage language education in terms of the importance of a consistent FLP, preteenagers’ self-efficacy, and actual language use in language maintenance.

KEYWORDS:

• Family language policy
• interlingual families
• preteenagers
• language maintenance
• child agency

Introduction

The globalisation has resulted in the mobility of people and more interlingual and intercultural marriages. For example, in Australia, more than one-third of registered marriages are interethnic families and 22.3% of population claims to speak a heritage language at home (ABS 2021). Australia is a multilingual and multicultural country. It is the first English-speaking country to establish a systematic and sustained national language policy. Since late 1970s, the Australian government has implemented multilingual language policy that promotes the development of Languages Other Than English. One of the strategies was to provide support to heritage language schools, also known community school or weekend language schools (Clyne 1991). These community schools have become popular choice for immigrant parents to send their children to learn the language and maintain the heritage. For example, in 2022 there are 23 registered Chinese community schools in Victoria Australia, which accommodated over 15,000 students to study Chinese at weekend. These Chinese community schools are regarded as an important place to the development of children’s literacy (Smith and Li 2022) and to the maintenance of Chinese cultures, identity (Shen and Jiang 2021) and heritage.

In spite of the efforts from the government and community schools, maintaining a heritage language (HL) in a different linguistic environment remains hard, especially for the interlingual families where one parental language is a major one in the society and the other is a minor one: for example, Chinese in an English–Chinese family in Australia. These parents face more unique parenting challenges when maintaining children’s HL in interlingual families (Liao and Huang 2020). In addition to experiencing pressures from mainstream ideologies, public education, and macro language policies (Little 2020), these parents need to consider maintaining a harmonious relationship within the family where their partner does not (agree to) speak the language. Maintenance becomes more challenging when children reach the age, for instance, of preteenager, when they start to think and behave more independently than younger children (Pauwels 2005).

Since last decade, family language policy (FLP) has gained great attention to examining families’ attitudes and practices around HL development. Drawing on the model, many studies have tried to understand parental language planning by focussing on (one of) the parents’ views (e.g. Park and Sarkar 2007), even though some recent research has started to investigate the role of children in the process (e.g. Wilson 2020). Yet, a comprehensive review suggests that interlingual families with diverse linguistic backgrounds are significantly underrepresented in this research literature, which is incongruent with both the present global expansion in family form and the distinctive social reality of these families (Guardado 2017). Contributing to this ongoing work, this paper aims to fill the research gaps. Taking a more integrative approach, by considering not only the views of both parents and preteenager child, but also their language practice, we will examine how each core member in these families contributes to the maintenance of the minor but heritage language to provide knowledge for a comprehensive understanding of FLP in interlinguistic families. The purpose of this study is to explore the answers to the following research questions with a more multidirectional focus, which characterises the most recent wave of FLP research (Wilson 2020):

1. What attitudes are held by each of parents and child in English–Chinese interlingual families towards Chinese HL maintenance?

2. How do these Australian families maintain Chinese?

3. What factors contribute to the maintenance of Chinese in these interlingual families?

Family language policy and influential factors

The FLP model proposed by Spolsky (2009) consists of three interrelated components: language ideology, language practices, and language management. Language ideology is the beliefs and attitudes that family members hold towards particular languages, which decide and influence what language(s) to practice and encourage, or what to discourage and abandon. The notion of language attitude is further conceptualised in a quadrant framework (Little 2020) in relation to HL learning: peripheral vs. essential and pragmatic vs. emotional aspects of HL learning. According to the framework, each of the family members may have very diverse attitudes even though all of them agree to maintain the language. For example, the heritage parent may have an ‘essential/emotional’ attitude while children may regard their heritage language as peripheral and practical for their social networking or future careers.

Parents’ beliefs in a language motivate them to make explicit efforts to maintain or develop a particular language (i.e. language management), such as providing language and cultural contexts, facilities or accessibility, and direct language socialisation and maintenance support. This support includes language use, an implicit language socialisation practice whereby they provide natural speech resources (Blommaert 2008). Language practice at home, in fact, is regarded as one of the strongest predictors of HL maintenance (Park and Sarkar 2007). However, linguistic conduct is not always inconsistent with language attitude (King 2000), especially in situations where there are two or more languages in contact.

As a dynamic socio-cultural practice, FLP is shaped by different socio-cultural and socio-political conditions (Curdt-Christiansen and Huang 2020). While intending to maintain their cultural heritage and linguistic continuity via intergenerational transmission, immigrant families have to deal with societal pressure and public educational needs. They are expected to prioritise school languages and academic subjects in public educational systems, which turned out to frequently obstruct family language management efforts (Smith-Christmas 2018).

Within the family, a successful implementation of FLP is influenced by language-related variables that can either strengthen or weaken a family bond between family members. According to Curdt-Christiansen and Huang (2020), these variables, in contrast to those external to the family, are identified as internal factors, including beliefs, identity, cultural practices, and social norms that parents perceive as important and valuable for family. The parental impact belief is viewed as one of the most influential factors in home language maintenance, as it is directly related to parental involvement and investment in the process of language learning and development, and thus informs FLPs (Curdt-Christiansen 2009).

Apart from parental beliefs, the decision-making process of a family language is also related to the emotional, cultural, and identity needs of family members. Home language not only helps heritage maintenance and strengthens the emotional ties between family members (De Houwer 2015) while home is believed to be the best place to transmit identity and heritage culture (Fogle and King 2013) even if other research also posits that either identity or culture can be interpreted and experienced differently from one member of a family to the other, and from one generation to the next (Little 2020).

The recent FLP research has gradually moved its focus from parents’ language ideologies and management to a more bidirectional perspective from which a child is perceived as much an agent as an object in the process of language socialisation (Nesteruk 2010). These studies demonstrate the role of the child in the modification or negotiation of families’ language practices. While some studies reveal children’s role in preventing HL maintenance (Fogle 2012), most studies still place an emphasis on the role of children as integral actors of FLP in shaping the contexts for their language input (Lanza and Gomes 2020). Not only do children socialise their caregivers to become caregivers, but also socialise their immigrant parents into the larger socio-cultural contexts (Smith-Christmas 2018). The understanding of child agency in the context of family language use is of significance, in that it will enhance the knowledge of what they are doing, and how their actions impact current and future family language use.

HL maintenance in interlingual families with preteenagers

Bilingual or multilingual children are believed to have many advantages, while interlingual families are expected to be more successful in raising bilingual children because they are equipped with the pre-emptive linguistic and cultural resources of each parent’s heritage. However, the transmission and maintenance of a language, especially a minor one, requires significant and intentional efforts from each member of the family. Earlier research (King 2000) has found out the importance of the consistency of parental language choices for children’s HL development, and parental perceptions of FLP in developing better language outcomes for children. This is particularly true of Chinese–English interlingual families in Australia (Liao and Huang 2020) where Chinese parent met many challenges, such as inconsistent parental attitude, little community support, in maintaining Chinese. Other studies have examined the interlingual families in several international contexts, such as Canada (Guardado 2009), Japan (Jackson 2009), and the UK (Okita 2002). They argue the complexity in interlingual families is closely related to the emotionally demanding, time-consuming, and labour-intensive nature of HL development. This is because parents from various cultural origins may often hold differing perspectives on their children’s educational concepts and techniques. In fact, tensions are found within families between parents, and between parents and children, about the maintenance of HL (Little 2020). Parents themselves, sometimes, have opposing ideas on simultaneously growing Chinese and English and had to place Chinese and English against each other, in the fear of ‘losing out to English in a competitive society and a meritocratic educational system’ that places a high value on English skills (Curdt-Christiansen 2014, 47).

Teenage is an important period in a person’s development because of rapid physical, emotional, and cognitive change, and maturation. In fact, it is from the preteenager phase (i.e. 10–12) that children start to think and behave more independently than younger children (Pauwels 2005). In terms of HL maintenance, preteenagers are more likely to resist their parents’ language practice and management than younger children because they start to build up their own social networks, and have closer contact with their peers, which goes beyond the immediate influence of their family (Nesteruk 2010). Parents find that HL maintenance is relatively successful when children are young, and they experience more frustrations once their children reach the preteenager stage. A recent study with Chinese–Australian preteenagers (Shen and Jiang 2021) also posits successful HL maintenance requires more support and accessibilities to various resources and opportunities. These studies unveiled the challenges in HL maintenance for preteenagers. This study will extend the knowledge of scholarship by integrating the perspective from this group of children to explore how they exert their agency to interact with FLP (Fogle 2012). This perspective is of great significance as it is influential to but separate from conventional views of parents and will bring a comprehensive picture of FLP within an interlingual family.

The study

To maximise the understanding of how interlingual family maintain Chinese among preteenager children, a collective case study approach (Stake 2005) was employed to gather views from different cases of families (including all core family members within each family, i.e. both parents and their child who learns Chinese). Using multiple cases, we intended to provide cross-case analysis on the themes to explore how Chinese was maintained in these interlingual families by examining the complex interplay of ‘linguistic, social, cultural, political, and affective dimensions of experience and performance’ (Duff 2014, 5).

Four families were selected as the focal participatory families against the following criterion: (1) all participants participate voluntarily (including both parents and the child); (2) these families are interlingual (i.e. one parent speaking Chinese as L1 and the other parent (only) speaking English); (3) each family has a child aged 10–12 years who was studying Chinese at the time of data collection. To reflect these children’s actual Chinese language proficiency in a more objective manner, an interview was conducted with their Chinese teacher as a supplementary data source. All participants’ profile can be seen in Table 1.

Table 1. Profile of participants and data collection method.

F	Participant	Age	Ethnic background	Linguistic background	Chinese proficiency (listening, speaking, reading and writing)^a	Language practice at home	Highest education level	Profession	Data collection method
1	Mother (M1C)	40–50	Chinese	Mandarin/English	Native	Mostly in Chinese: with child English only: with spouse	Bachelor	Costume designer	Survey Interview (56′48″)
	Father (F1E)	40–50	Australian	English	N/A	English only	Diploma	Electrician	Survey Interview (13′27″)
	Child(boy) (C1B)	11	–	English, Chinese, (Italian)^b	9, 8, 6, 4 (out of 10)	Mostly in Chinese: with mother English only: with father	Year 6	–	Survey Language use journals: 242 words
2	Mother (M2E)	30–40	Australian	English	N/A	English only	Bachelor	Research assistant	Survey Interview (18′21″)
	Father (F2C)	30–40	Chinese	Mandarin/English	Native	In mixed Chinese and English: with child English only: with spouse	Bachelor	Not working	Survey Interview (48′32″)
	Child (boy)(C2B)	12	–	English, Chinese, (Italian)^b	6, 5, 8, 8 (out of 10)	Mostly in English: with father English only: with mother	Year 6	–	Survey Language use journals: 258 words
3	Mother (M3C)	40–50	Malaysian Chinese	Mandarin/English	Native	Mostly in Chinese: with child English only: with spouse	Bachelor	Pharmacist	Survey Interview (53′16″)
	Father (F3E)	30–40	Australian	English	N/A	English only	PhD	Lecturer	Survey Interview (17′34″)
	Child (girl) (C3G)	11	–	English, Chinese, (French)^b	7, 7, 8, 8 (out of 10)	Mostly in Chinese: with mother English only: with father	Year 6	–	Survey Language use journals: 235 words
4	Mother (M4C)	40–50	Chinese	Mandarin/English	Native	Mostly in Chinese: with child English only: with spouse	Bachelor	Accountant	Survey Interview (54′28″)
	Father (F4E)	40–50	Australian	English	N/A	English only	Bachelor	Company manager	Survey Interview (20′37″)
	Child (girl) (C4G)	11	–	English, Chinese	6, 5, 4, 4 (out of 10)	Mostly in English: with mother English only: with father	Year 6	–	Survey Language use journals: 228 words
5	Chinese teacher	40–50	Chinese	Mandarin/English	N/A	N/A	Bachelor	Chinese teacher (more than 10 years)	Interview (53′42″)

^a Teacher’s evaluation.

^b The language that the child learns in day school.

Participants

Seen from Table 1, we can see that all parents were middle aged, have tertiary qualifications, and a full-time job (except the father in Family 2). Within each family, one parent had Chinese heritage and spoke both Chinese and English, while their spouse could only speak English, even though some said they knew a few simple Chinese words like ‘nihao’ (hello) or ‘xiexie’ (thank you). All children were preteenagers, aged 11–12 and had been learning Chinese for five or six years in a Chinese community school, while three of them were also studying another language in their day school. We coded each participant for the purpose of confidentiality and easy reference by including their parental role, family number, linguistic background or child gender. For example, M1C means the mother from Family 1 (Chinese) while C1B refers to the child from Family 1 (boy). The Chinese teacher, holding a bachelor’s degree, had been teaching Chinese in Australia for almost 10 years and taught Chinese to all four participating children in 2020.

Data collection and instrument

In this case study, a variety of data collection methods were used, including parents’ survey and interview, children’s survey and language use journals, and teacher’s interview (see Table 1 for details) to entail a more holistic perspective from parents, children, and teacher. Each of the instruments will be explained in detail below.

All participants were recruited through a Chinese community school in Victoria, Australia, which enabled to reach wider participants with interlingual family background. Prior to the recruitment, the project was approved for meeting all the ethical requirements and standards. All participants signed the consent form before participating in the study while parents signed the forms for both themselves and their children as an approval for the participation. The participating children in the study were not directly approached by the researcher; instead, the survey link and the language journal were forwarded to them by their participating parents.

The data collection lasted about one month. Firstly, voluntary parents completed a survey which was used to collect basic demographic information and their language use. Secondly, semi-structured interviews, a useful method for gaining insightful data for case study, were conducted separately with each parent in their preferred language (either English or Chinese) to allow each parent to express their ideas optimally (Dörnyei 2007). The interview questions covered their attitudes towards learning Chinese in Australia, Chinese language use, challenges they perceived in maintaining Chinese, and strategies they adopted to help with the maintenance. All eight parents (four Chinese parents and four non-Chinese parents) were interviewed, which ranged from 10 to 20 min for each non-Chinese parent and from 45 to 60 min for each Chinese parent. In general, Chinese parents were much more extensive in their answers than their non-Chinese partners. The interview with the Chinese teacher was conducted in Chinese language and lasted about an hour. During teacher’s interview, the teacher was mainly requested to provide information on each child’s Chinese performance in the school, by evaluating four language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) and accounting for the reasons for the evaluations.

However, interview was not used for collecting data from children as this would have required them to be accompanied by an adult for ethical considerations. To elicit a more independent perspective, a detailed online questionnaire in English was employed with children upon their parents’ review and approval. The questionnaire gathered closed and open information on children’s perceptions, and practices surrounding their Chinese language use at home and school, as well as their views of their parents’ attitudes to learning Chinese. Most questions were answered using a Likert scale or a multiple-choice question, while 10 questions were open-ended, encouraging children to share more details. To triangulate the data and get a complete view of actual language use, each child was requested to keep a language use journal (Dörnyei 2007) for a fortnight, in which they recorded their daily use of Chinese using a given format (including how long they used Chinese, in what context, and with whom) in English. Each journal was about 200–260 words long.

Data analysis

In the data analysis, the approach of thematic analysis was employed to explore the answers to the research questions, including language attitudes, language use, and the factors that may affect the language maintenance because this is an effective strategy to discover patterns and develop themes from qualitative data (Dörnyei 2007). All the interviews were transcribed verbatim and two Chinese native speakers checked the accuracy of transcripts, respectively. To keep the nuances and subtleties of the original expressions used by the participants, the transcripts of the interviews conducted in Chinese were analysed in the original language first. The selected quotes were translated into English after the analysis (Nesteruk 2010). Although the data from children and parents were in different formats, all the data (i.e. parents’ and teacher’s interview transcripts, children’s answers to survey questions, children’s journal entries) were analysed carefully and categorised based on synthetised themes, such as what attitude each party held towards Chinese and Chinese learning, and how Chinese was used and maintained at home and at school. The identified themes were used as the main tool to explore the commonalities and differences within and across the families in terms of how FLP was conducted.

Main findings and discussion

Parents’ perceptions, family relation and language maintenance in interlingual families

Each parent from the families held consistent views on maintaining Chinese, such as for the sake of maintaining heritage, as an instrumental function for a future career, or for the cognitive benefits of learning a new language. However, their ideas on whether, and to what extent, Chinese should be maintained were dissimilar, sometimes even contradictory. For example, the non-Chinese fathers from Families 1 and 3 had a very strong negative attitude to their children’s learning of Chinese, while their Chinese-background partners held a strong belief in Chinese. The non-Chinese-background parents were not supportive of the maintenance of Chinese, as the children had noticed, ‘Dad [does] not support’ (C3G) and ‘Dad is mad when I speak Chinese’ (C1B). Apart from emotional reasons (e.g. ‘lonely and unhappy when they are speaking Chinese at home’ (F1E)), the two fathers’ objections against Chinese were associated with their perception of the role of the Chinese in Australia and in the children’s life. Chinese was considered peripheral in Australia because ‘we just use English … He is an Australian, not a Chinese’ (F1E) or inferior to other activities: ‘It’s not any big mistake … but the kid lost many things rather than benefits … she cannot play any sports and cannot spend time with friends’ (F3E). In contrast, Chinese parents from the four families had an emotional and essential attitude (Little 2020) towards maintaining their heritage but less-important language: they all attached great importance to their own heritage and identity, and thus hoped to transmit the culture through the language. They believed ‘My child should study Chinese because I have the Chinese language and culture background’ (M3C). The strong impact belief played a prominent role in the maintenance of the language, which was noticed and appreciated by their child. All four children admitted the first reason for them to learn Chinese was because their Chinese parent ‘told me to’ (C1B, C3G) and ‘it is mum’s choice’ (C4G). In Family 3, the girl explicitly acknowledged her mother’s efforts on Chinese and would like to continue with Chinese (C3G: ‘mum is very supportive … I will keep learning because my mum spent 7 years of money on it’).

Despite different beliefs in passing on the minor heritage language, parents in these interlingual families still tended to maintain a harmonious family relationship. There was a dilemma among most non-Chinese parents: they tended to ‘say “yes” to show respect towards her decision’ (F1E) even though they didn’t really agree with their child(ren) learning Chinese (F1E, F3E). Even in the family where the non-Chinese parent agreed their child(ren) should learn Chinese (Family 4), what might have mattered to the father was still a ‘better life’, as explicated in the interview, ‘to better understand their mother’s decision so to have a better family life’. These non-Chinese parents’ considerations of a harmonious family relationship were not one directional. In Family 1, Chinese mother said frankly ‘When my husband is home, [we] speak English only, or [we] will isolate him’. One reason why C2B could not understand nor speak Chinese very well (based on own and teacher’s evaluation) was due to the limited use of Chinese in the family out of father’s concern for the wife’s feelings as he expressed explicitly, ‘We don’t speak mandarin very often at home because my wife doesn't speak Mandarin and I need to consider her feelings’. From the data, we can see, family relationships may have impacted FLP ideology, management, and language use in these interlingual families. On the contrary, which language to use, and to what extent, was, in these families, an important contributing factor to the development of a cohesive family relationship (De Houwer 2015).

Learning and socialising with the language: the role of Chinese community school

Studies suggest that for the continued development of a family’s HL, parental input is not sufficient by itself; broader linguistic input from peers and the support of the larger community are also necessary (Unsworth 2016). In the study, all parents reported that there was no other community support, except for the Chinese community school. All four children attended weekend Chinese community school from the ages of five or six years old because their Chinese parents regarded it as an important place for them to immerse themselves in the Chinese language (M1C), to learn about Chinese culture (M1C, M3C), or to maintain Chinese in a more systematic way (M4C) because of the curriculum and good teachers (F2C). Parents from Families 1, 2, and 3 witnessed their children’s progress in Chinese literacy, their increased confidence in learning and speaking, and their interpersonal abilities. M1C noticed her boy’s improvement in Chinese, as well as his enhanced overall social skills after attending the school. She expressed frankly, ‘He now speaks and thinks better than before, and when he expresses his opinion, things are clearly listed … He has achieved a lot. After studying in the Chinese school, whenever I am with my child, we use Chinese to communicate’. It is worth noting that C3G was forced to go to school when she was young, but since Year 4, she had become eager to go to the school every week. She explained that ‘going to Chinese weekend school is a good opportunity to meet her [the best friend]’ because ‘we are in different day schools’. Socialising with her best friend became an important motive for the girl to go to Chinese school, and to learn the language. This was also observed by the teacher that ‘she has a very good friend, from a Chinese interethnic family. They encourage each other and plan to continue learning Chinese in future together … It’s a very rare friendship’. Making friends and socialising with friends has become more important for the preteenagers (e.g. Nesteruk 2010). In this way, a Chinese school serves as both a language learning and a social gathering space.

Home exposure and language use in the interlingual families were quite limited (Language use journal: ranging from half an hour to three hours a week). However, each participating child had an extra 3–4 h exposure to the language through attending a weekly 3-h class at the weekend, and completing assigned homework in 1–2 h. A good example can be evidenced in Family 2 where ‘Most Chinese learning revolves around assignments’ (F2C). The efforts on the written assignment may in fact have contributed to the boy’s good literacy level (Table 1, reading and writing skills respectively: 8, 8 out of 10). In fact, the father took this as a good opportunity to practice speaking Mandarin with his son because he felt ‘it is hard to ask him to speak Chinese’. C3G was also assessed as having a high level of literacy (8, 8 out of 10 in reading and writing skills). This was partially due to her mother’s regular checking of her school homework, and partially due to her own commitment to the work because ‘she is always praised by the teacher, she has a sense of achievement and is happy’ (M3C). It is worth noting that both F2C and M3C mentioned their child was happy when they were praised by their teacher. In the way, children’s happiness and self-efficacy were prompted by the appraisal of an expert in the language (i.e. a teacher) (Usher and Pajares 2006). The high level of self-efficacy then contributed to their performance and continuing efforts in learning the language (Bandura 2009), In contrast, C1B and C4G’s lower level of Chinese reading and writing skills (respectively 6, 4; 4, 4) might be related to their low motivation and reluctance to complete quality homework in a regular way. In particular, C4G was observed as a passive and demotivated learner by the teacher because she never turned on her video camera and did not answer questions when the classes were delivered online.

Chinese community schools provided support for children’s Chinese learning; however, as a matter of fact, the degree to which community school contributed to these children’s language learning was largely determined by how the family perceived the school and supported school tasks in action. Family 4 was a typical example of relying much on the school. While the three families found many benefits that Chinese community school brought to their children, C4M admitted that ‘[she] ‘has not made much progress’. One reason why the child was sent to the school was because the mother found ‘it is very difficult to teach own children, send her to school, a teacher can help and urge her to learn’ (Interview with the mother). When commenting on the child’s case, the teacher also noted

some parents think that Chinese is important and [that the child needs] to learn it, so they just send their children to Chinese schools, and then ignore them. They think that whether their children learn Chinese well or not is the responsibility of the teachers or the schools.

In fact, the child tried to study and do the homework, but she did not get much help when needed. Therefore, ‘most of time I don’t like it because I have to do a lot of homework. I have to sit there for a long time … I get stuck, and mom is away, or I don’t want to ask because she is very busy doing something else, or not in the right mood’. The parent’s failure in supporting the girl in her language use and schoolwork may gradually have led to her poorer language performance and lower motivation to learn. From the study, we can see children still need support and guidance before the learning autonomy is fully developed over time.

Language use, self-efficacy, and child agency

From the data, parents’ persistent use of Chinese proved to be important as a source and a stimulus for the children to acquire and maintain the language. The successful case was evidenced in Families 1 and 3. According to the data, all four Chinese parents tried to speak the language with the child as much as possible, with the mothers from Families 1 and 3 being more persistent, even though their partners held very opposing views towards Chinese learning. M1C tried to squeeze in opportunities to speak Chinese with the child, for example, when the father ‘was not home or after he fell asleep, I go to my son’s room and tell him Chinese stories’. The mother from Family 3 ‘speak[s] Chinese to me’ almost every day (C3G’s language use journal) and was ‘very strict … to check every piece of her homework every week’ (teacher interview). The Chinese parents’ commitment may have contributed to their children’s higher proficiency in oral skills (Table 1: 9, 8 out of 10 for C1B’s listening, speaking; 7, 7 for C3G’s) as compared with the children from the other two families (C2B: 6, 5 and C4G: 6, 5, respectively, for listening and speaking) where they used less Chinese even though their spouse held a more positive view towards Chinese. In this case, we can see language behaviour and linguistic reality were not always a reflection of attitude even though attitudes may have an influence on HL maintenance.

Thus, we can see that central to a coherent FLP is the actual language practice, and particularly how these preteenagers used the language. In this sense, they were no longer the receiver, but the active and creative agent (Fogle and King 2013) in every day’s interaction. Though all four children considered Chinese important (all chose 5 out of 6 in response to the question about the importance of Chinese) for either intrinsic (e.g. Chinese culture, food, festivals) or instrumental reasons (future career prospects), their actual use of the language in daily life varied. According to their self-reported language use journals, the children from Families 1 and 3 used Chinese more frequently in a more active way. Both children had longer time in listening to or speaking Chinese at home (roughly two to three hours of speaking and listening a week). More noticeably, apart from responding to their parent’s Chinese questions, the two children took the initiative to speak Chinese with their parents or grandparents, for instance, talking about school life (F1B, F3G), movies (F3G), and Chinese festivals (F1B and F3G).

This clearly contrasted with the children from Families 2 and 4 who reported that they used limited Chinese at home (less than one hour of speaking and listening a week) because their Chinese parent was too busy (Family 4) or were reluctant to speak Chinese with them (Family 2). Additionally, the two children chose to respond to Chinese questions from their parents in English much more frequently. The children’s linguistic capabilities may have determined what language they would speak in the family. C2B was regarded as a hardworking student by the teacher, who had a high level of literacy skills but poor oral skills, partially because Chinese was not spoken much at home and there was ‘no other support’ (M2E). The boy acknowledged that ‘sometimes I don’t like it [Chinese] because my speaking is bad and [I] cannot understand what the teacher said and what the classmates laughed [at] in class’. Similarly, C4G responded to her mum’s Chinese questions in English consistently. Her self-assessment of interest in Chinese was the lowest among the four children (3 out of 6 while other three children chose 4 or 5). Interestingly, she ‘find(s) it (Chinese) hard when you don’t’ understand something’. In these cases, we can see linguistic abilities and self-efficacy were closely interrelated: the children did not use the language much, and as a result, they lacked the confidence to use it. The lower level of self-efficacy, then, prevented them from speaking Chinese much, for example, C4G ‘rarely speaks in class … speaking to me in English' (Teacher interview). In the survey, both C2B and C4G chose 2 out of 6 to express their aversion to listening to or speaking Chinese. The two children from Families 1 and 3, on the other hand, were enthusiastic about speaking and listening to Chinese (both gave a score of 5 out of 6), and were observed to have excellent oral skills, which testifies a virtuous cycle between linguistic performance and self-efficacy.

The connection between language use and children’s confidence was also found in other aspects of language use. For example, M3C noticed ‘([she] slowly understands more vocabulary, then she feels more interested in reading. Sometimes [she] laughs while reading)’. The increasing knowledge of vocabulary enabled the girl to read Chinese independently, which boosted her interest in reading. All the above examples demonstrated the positive interrelation between self-efficacy and a child’s agency in using the language: the more proficient they were with the language, the more confident they were; in turn, the level of confidence would motivate or demotivate them to learn. It should be noted that the children’s self-efficacy was not only boosted by the teachers’ verbal feedback, but more importantly was built up by their own mastery experience (Bandura 2009) where they were an integral actor contributing to – or impairing – the FLP (Fogle 2012).

Language status and instrumentality of the language

Instrumentality is an important factor that influenced how parents and children perceived the language. According to the Chinese parents, the language was rendered as a carrier for the transmission of their heritage culture, and as a tool for communication with their extensive family. They also pointed out the language was a useful linguistic capital for the child’s future employment (e.g. ‘be helpful for future employment’, M1C and M4C; or ‘be more competitive for securing a job’, M3C), which was echoed by the non-Chinese parent in Family 2 as well as the children from Families 1, 2, and 3. This implied their beliefs in the high status of Chinese in the global or Australian local market. Their decision on maintaining the language was related, at least partially, to the economic and political power of the language and the source country of the language – China. The status of a heritage/minority language, in fact, is a critical factor for its survival in a given society (Curdt-Christiansen and Huang 2020). While it may be easier for parents to implement home language development policies with a high-status language, as evidenced from the data; parents (e.g. F1E and F3E) may, in contrast, make the opposite decisions when they perceive it as a ‘low’ or peripheral language.

Conclusions

In the study, all four children in the interlingual families have maintained Chinese, but to varying degrees. C3G was the most successful case, with C1B and C2B progressing well in oral and literacy, respectively, while C4G made least progress among the four children in terms of actual language performance and motivation. From the study, we can see Chinese parents’ strong beliefs in the usefulness of the language for the transmission of heritage culture, and their children’s future were the initial driver for the maintenance of Chinese in an English-dominant family/society even though conflicting parental attitudes in the interlingual families, will lead to inadequate actions on language management and use, and in many cases the minor language might be sacrificed for the sake of a cohesive family relationship. This project has evidenced that a successful FLP is dependent more on effective language management and use, while parents’ positive language ideologies without corresponding support in their actions will lead to limited progress. In other words, not only parents’ impact belief, but more importantly, their continuous commitment and implementation of the language practice, is a guarantee of sufficient language input, as well as a fundamental stimulus for the genuine learning to occur.

Despite the significance of parental role in shaping FLPs, how the core agent of learning (i.e. the child) perceives the language and their own capabilities in performing the task, and how they enact their agency in the learning process determines the extent to which the HL is maintained, and therefore informs the FLP in a more direct manner. In the project, we can see child agency is triggered not only by their desire to inherit their parent’s heritage culture, but more by their self-efficacy and happiness in learning and using the language. On the one hand, these preteenagers derive their confidence in learning the language from the significant others’ feedback and their prior successful mastery experience. On the other hand, such confidence enables them to play an active and integral role in taking initiatives in the process of learning. It is worth noting that for preteenagers, friendship has become an important motivator to inspire their learning (e.g. C3G). Weekend community school, in this sense, apart from its cultural and linguistic affordance, has provided a venue for the children to socialise with their peers of the same age and similar ethnic background, and this may have motivated them to continue with the language.

This case study is a miniature, reflecting the challenges and strategies used to maintain a heritage, but minor language in interlingual families. In this process, HL maintenance is no longer a single concept or behaviour of a family, but a dynamic process influenced by many factors, either at a macro level (e.g. language status) or at a micro level (e.g. the role of community school, parental attitudes, and influence from peers). Throughout the process, each family member’s unique set of personality traits and individualised experience has interacted with the others’, contributing to the development of FLP to varying degrees.

On a practical level, whether and how interlingual families maintain the minor language successfully will contribute to the development of multilingual and multicultural society. In this sense, this study has clear implications for bilingual parenting, curriculum development in community language school and heritage language education in general. In particular, this study will help to raise parents’ awareness from immigrant (interlingual) families of the importance of a consistent family language policy, which could have a direct impact on children's bi/multilingual language development. It also helps to further educators’ understanding of the challenges of HL maintenance faced by the families. More importantly, the results would draw parents’ and educators’ attention to the increasing role that preteenagers play in language maintenance. Their self-efficacy and language practices are the key to the successful language maintenance.

Despite a relatively small sample, the project has attempted to contribute to the ongoing discussion of FLP and HL maintenance, by exploring the factors influencing how a minor heritage language is maintained in an English-dominant setting. Apart from deepening research into the complexities, possibilities, and limits of HL development in interlingual families, future research should also investigate how parents and children manage and negotiate language use in the process of language maintenance, with particular attention to how the factors relating to children, such as age, language aptitude, and affective aspects interact with family (including siblings, extensive family) and other socio-cultural factors.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hui Huang

Hui Huang holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics and is a senior lecturer in the School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics at Monash University. Her research interests and publications cover the areas of second language acquisition and sociolinguistics, particularly the teaching of Chinese as a second/heritage language, ICT in language teaching, cross-cultural communication, and immigrant identity.

Wanyu Liao

Wanyu Liao is pursuing doctoral studies in the School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics at Monash University, Australia. Her research interests include teaching Chinese as a heritage language, heritage language maintenance, children’s heritage language learning.