Exploring Immigrant Parents’ Language Attitudes and Bilingual Children’s English and Heritage Language Vocabulary

• In Event: Friday Roundtable Session 4:55 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Putting English Language Learners First: Strategies to Bolster Literacy Acquisition (Table 26)

Abstract

Adjusting to a new culture and learning a language can influence immigrants’ attitudes. Parents’ attitudes have been linked to their language interactions and, eventually, their children’s language development. Research shows that immigrant parents tend to encourage children to maintain their heritage language (HL). However, bilingual children often show HL attrition. Wehttps://convention2.allacademic.com/images/icons/popup_closex_button.gif examined parents’ language attitudes and children’s vocabulary in English and HL in Chinese-American (CA) and Mexican-American (MA) families with elementary school-aged children. Results show that MA parents considered it more important for their children to learn to speak, read, and write in their HL than CA parents. MA parents were more satisfied with their children’s proficiency in both languages. For both groups, language attitudes were associated with children’s vocabulary.

Authors

• Maria Belen Buttiler, University of California - Davis

• Qing Zhou, University of California - Berkeley

• Yuuko Uchikoshi, University of California - Davis