Sections of the Article

The Study

Based on the assumption that parents are important in children's education and that LM parents have an even greater role in their children's adjustment in a foreign country, the present study explores how LM parents can help their children become bilingual at home. It addresses the issue from two perspectives: (1) LM parents' attitudes toward L1/L2 and the cultures (valuing the heritage and respecting the new), and (2) Parent-child interactions (family talk aiming at keeping up L1 and bridging the generation gap; academic study confirming the interdependent hypothesis of L1 and L2; a dual-language nurturing home environment including parents' own involvement in learning by means of L1 and L2, and concurrent use of the two languages at home).

The participant was my daughter, Amy. As soon as she arrived in Hawaii, USA, from Mainland China in July 1998, I began observing how she reacted to the new environment and how she adjusted to it. Over a five-month period (July-November, 1998) I kept a journal of what she did (about 35,000 words either in English or in Chinese), sometimes on the spot and sometimes upon recollection, and tape-recorded the conversations between us on three tapes. Amy was 12 when she came to Hawaii. She had finished fifth grade with a limited English vocabulary, which included pronouns, names of the seven days of a week, and the four seasons, etc. She had some idea of "be+noun/adjective," and the simple present and simple past tenses. But they had never become automatic in her linguistic production. When the study began, she just registered as a sixth grader in a local public school in Honolulu. Since it was the first time she had ever been abroad, I witnessed how she was excited by the new environment, shocked by the new culture, and struggled to learn the new language. I also noticed how her first language (Chinese) and second language (English) interacted with and promoted each other in her daily life and academic study. Some daily happenings and utterances between us were related to purposeful language practice and some were simply every day occurrences in natural settings of transition to a new culture. A crucial feature of families as educators is that much education in the home takes place on a moment-to-moment basis, including both those processes that are deliberate, systematic, and sustained, and those fleeting actions that take place at the margins of awareness (Delgado-Gaitan, 1990). This study was basically an observation of interactions between Amy and me in regard to bilingual education at home.

Attitudes Toward Both Languages and Cultures

Verhoeven (1987) stated: "For ethnic minority children, the linguistic models within the family and the linguistic support obtainable in the neighborhood can be expected to be dependent on their parents' attitudes toward L1 maintenance and L2 acquisition" (p. 90). Being away from our home country and its language and culture, we may easily lose the feeling of our mother tongue. Our children's attitudes toward, and the maintenance of their L1 depend mostly on how we parents look upon our L1, when, how often, and with whom we communicate in L1, and with what we associate L1, especially when our L1 is marginalized in the new culture.

The second day after Amy got to Honolulu, we went shopping in a supermarket. Curious about the names and products on the shelves, she asked me a lot of questions in Chinese in a somewhat childish loud voice that drew some glances from other customers. I asked her to be quiet and she didn't ask any more questions. Later I found that whenever we were in public places, Amy would either keep silent or stumble in English. I thought it was a good way for her to practice English. One day I went to pick her up at school and spoke to her in Chinese while her classmates were around. She became angry with me and refused to say anything. Back at home, she said to me, "You told me not to speak Chinese at the supermarket, but why did you do so at my school? My classmates will laugh at me." I was surprised. I didn't expect that she interpreted my advice for being quiet as a signal of no Chinese. "I just wanted you to show courtesy to other customers by not talking too loudly. There is nothing wrong in being Chinese and speaking the Chinese language!" "Yes, there is!" she replied. "In class, whenever my teacher asks who gives this or that incorrect answer, the boy next to me always points at me and says `the Chinese girl,' but it is not me!" Then she burst into tears. This time I was shocked. I hadn't imagined that she would have experienced this at school.

I thought hard and consulted with my husband in Canada. Since at the time I was the only parent with Amy, my attitude toward our identity, our primary language, and our culture would shape, to a great extent, the ways she looked at them and the patterns of actions she took. I started by bringing the fact to her conscious awareness that there are different races of humankind just as there are different species of plants in the world, and that no particular race or language is inherently inferior or superior to the others. I said to her, "As the Chinese, we should respect ourselves. If we look down upon ourselves, how could we expect others to treat us as equals? We were born and brought up with our language, our culture, and they are part of our identity and our life." At home, I spoke to Amy in Chinese except for the time allotted for practicing English in the evening or on weekends. We observed the traditional Chinese festivals and sang Chinese songs. We visited friends from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Mainland China, and communicated in Chinese when we met them. Together we read books about famous Chinese people and important events in Chinese history. If we came across a new or less familiar Chinese character or idiom, we would write it down and consult a Chinese dictionary. However, being good at L1 and familiar with our own culture is not enough. We should also be open-minded, receptive, and respectful to other languages and cultures so that we can look at ourselves and others from an unbiased perspective. This leads to the issue of parents' attitudes toward L2 and its culture.

English as a functional official language is used almost everywhere in Hawaii. It brings to LM parents and children not only new linguistic symbols, but also the new culture and values. Learning the language and accepting the culture with its values all at the same time is not an easy task for us. Whether to refrain from it with a closed mind, or to take on the task with open arms reflects the parents' attitude toward the target language and affects the speed and quality of our children's L2 acquisition.

Ever since we came here, we've often felt out of place and have had difficulty accomplishing simple tasks because we were not good at the language and because we did't know the way we should have behaved. I wanted to be friendly but often ended up embarrassing myself with pragmatic failures. I kept silent when it was better to be sociable and communicative. Amy and I share the same feeling that there is an invisible wall between the outside world and us. Our experience here shows us that to adapt ourselves to the new culture is much more difficult and takes a much longer time than we had thought. As a mother, I have to be realistic about our situation and do what I can to help my daughter's transition.

One day while I was sorting the laundry by color, Amy said that she didn't like the way her classmates were dressed because it was not colorful, and that the school lunch wasn't as delicious as Chinese food. I asked her how a Hawaiian girl would feel if she went to China. Upon this Amy smiled understandingly. By coming to a foreign country we came to realize that it is the way we were brought up that tends to predetermine our likes and dislikes; it is our habits that make us prone to comment unfavorably on those things different from ours. The new language and the new culture helped us know different people, different ways of doing things, and enriched our experience. While we took buses, I often reminded Amy to observe how Hawaiian people show courtesy to each other and how the surroundings are beautified with trees, flowers, and grass. I also told Amy stories about how friendly Hawaiian people are to wildlife. One weekend, we watched a TV program about the history of Hawaii. Though not good at English, Amy could understand the main idea of it with my help. On November 3 she got up quite early to watch the news about the local election. She became excited whenever she saw a name she had seen posted on the roadside. I was glad that she began to enjoy her new life.

We came in July when the fall semester hadn't begun yet. I asked Amy to keep a journal of what we did every day in English. Actually, she just dictated what I said or copied what I wrote since she knew little English. She considered it a daily burden and preferred to do it in Chinese. I supported her writing in Chinese, but at the same time insisted on her writing something in English every day. It is admitted difficult for the Chinese to learn English because "the Chinese and English languages differ on important linguistic dimensions, some of which question theories about linguistic universals" (Aaronson & Ferres, 1987, p. 75). On the other hand, sharp differences between these two languages can help learners prevent negative transfer from L1 to L2.

I bought Amy a series of English textbooks for children by L. G. Alexander with translation and notes in Chinese. She already had a solid foundation in Chinese and a little knowledge of English, so she managed to learn the text by herself with the help of the translation and notes. At certain times in the evening, I would give some assistance. She was learning English, and at the same time she was maintaining and developing her Chinese. Now she often says that English is much easier to read and write than Chinese but the latter is closer to her mind. In her I find strong evidence that a good mastery of L1 and parental supportive attitude toward L2 is facilitative to a child's acquisition of L2. In her first school report Amy got an A for both writing and spelling, A^- for reading, A⁺ for math and a B for social studies, PE, and music. In the second report, she got straight As. Grades are not the only criteria in measuring her L2 proficiency, but they did encourage her and make her self-confident and interested in learning the new language.

As schooling is the major means of formal education, LM children's bilingual progress is also influenced by how their parents evaluate the schooling systems in the host country. Comer (1986) stated that the knowledge parents have about, the respect they show to, and the trust they have in the people at school have a profound impact on the children, and that "in a climate of good parent-teacher relationship, students are more responsive to the academic and behavioral expectations of the school staff"(p. 445). Most of the research on the relationship between parental involvement and academic achievement shows that parents who participate in their children's schooling experiences have a positive impact on their children's attitudes toward schooling and, ultimately, school success (Faltis, 1995). The potential effects of parents' reaction to school activities, content class instruction, ESL programs, homework, etc., is hard to measure, but it is readily in their children's linguistic progress.

Personally, I find we can't really know our children without getting acquainted with their school life because they spend weekdays in school with their teachers, classmates, and other school personnel, and because most of their academic activities are carried out in school. I've been to Amy's school at the Back to School Night, for the parent-teacher conference, and for picnics. I've also observed the pullout ESL class during a one-week period. Every Thursday I have access to a newsletter, forms, notes, or flyers from Amy's school. By getting informed about and involved in school-related activities, I've come to know the differences between the Chinese and U.S. educational systems and I understand the school's expectations of the students. And now I have become better equipped to help Amy adapt to the new situation. As a means to know why Amy didn't like her pullout ESL class, I did the classroom observation. This ESL class was of great help to some children, but not all the LM students enjoyed it. First, it was looked down upon by their classmates as a class for the "dumb;" second, the diversity of the ESL students' English proficiency, language background, age, and grade level made it hard for the teacher to structure the ESL class; third and most importantly, the students missed a lot of content instruction and course requirements in the mainstream class by attending the pullout ESL class, so students lagged even further behind in the grade-appropriate tasks. Upon her own request and on the condition that she passed some oral tests, Amy was exited from the ESL class two months later. Now she does all the work her classmates do without delay. When she needs additional assistance in understanding homework requirements or the meaning of a particular word, she goes to her teacher in school, consults English-Chinese dictionaries, or asks me for help at home. Through the conference with her teacher, I found the teacher had a very heavy schedule. It's unreasonable to demand anything more from him for a few LM students in his class. Besides, the teacher couldn't know all the primary languages of these students. So a more practical way to help the LM students become bilingual is the parents' involvement.

Amy has an American-born Chinese classmate whose parents came to Hawaii from China in the mid-eighties. This girl is biliterate and has helped Amy a lot. At the Back to School Night I had a chance to talk with her mother. When asked why she was taking so much trouble to bring up her child bilingually, the mother said her purpose for a bilingual upbringing was two-fold: to pass down the heritage and to empower the child with what parents can offer so that the child could have more chances of success in her career. When recalling the long and hard process, she said that without steadfast commitment and consistency from her husband and her, the bilingual upbringing plan could have easily flown out of the window. What de Jong (1986) concluded from her study fits very well here: "It always needs a certain commitment on behalf of the parents to see to it that their own language and culture are passed on to their children" and "it always needs an effort on the part of parents to see to it that their children become or remain bilingual" (p. 23).

There is a big difference between Amy's process of becoming bilingual and her classmate's. Amy learned Chinese in China and is learning English in Hawaii, both out of necessity. In her case, instrumental as well as integrative motivations have a strong impact. As she learns the two languages in the successive model (L2 is introduced after L1 is established), it is cognitively easier for her. Some studies have confirmed the interdependency hypothesis (Cummins, 1981) that literacy skills and academic ability can be transferred from L1 to L2. Her classmate, on the other hand, learned English and Chinese simultaneously in Hawaii where there isn't much application for the Chinese language. She was almost completely depending on her parents for the Chinese input and practice. The language to her is an enrichment rather than a necessity. From this respect, and given the complexity of the Chinese language system, it is not hard to imagine how much her parents must have devoted to bringing her up bilingually.

Learning L2 and improving L1 require cognitive skills, and the performance of these skills is affected by factors like motivation, devotion, and consistency. There were some moments when we doubted whether it was worthwhile to start a new life in a foreign country or whether it was necessary to keep up the Chinese language in an English-speaking country. The doubt and hesitation watered down our enthusiasm in home bilingual activities. However, Amy always got excited and studied effectively when I perked up and assured her of the advantage of being bilingual. It is evidenced from my experience that children are quite flexible and easily influenced by the people around them. Therefore LM parents' favorable attitude toward L1 and L2 and their cultures is a prerequisite to the success of bilingual education at home.

Parent-child Interactions

Many LM parents are concerned about their children's bilingual education. But how could they turn these concerns into effective actions? It is not something that can be done once and for all. It is implemented in every day parent-child contacts. My five-month observation and interactions with Amy proved that family talk in the primary language is an important way to maintain and develop L1 for children. The talk refers to more than just daily conversations. It can be thematic, covering a specific topic at a time (e.g., John Glenn's return to space after more than 30 years); it can be exploratory, digging deep into each other's minds (e.g., personal immediate/long-term goals, worries/desires); it can be an educational game, playing while talking (e.g., magic squares, math puzzles, etc.). This kind of talk in L1 enlarges children's vocabulary, improves their ability to express themselves logically, and helps them appreciate the flavor of the language.

Family talk in L1 is also an effective means to bridge the gap between generations, especially for those parents who can't communicate in L2. It is "how parents impart their culture to their children and enable them to become the kind of men and women they want them to be" (Fillmore, 1991, p. 343), and it is how children reveal their true feelings to their parents and communicate with them as close friends and seek help from them as consultants. Communication between parents and children may become limited as children develop fluency in a second language and begin to lose competence in their first language while parents are still struggling to learn the second language. As the means of communication are lost, parents are less able to socialize their children in the values, beliefs, and practices that are important to the family. Consequently, rifts may develop and families may lose the intimacy that comes from shared beliefs and understandings. This accounts for one of the reasons why some LM parents feel helpless over their children's bilingual education and academic progress.

Almost every weekday after school on our way home, Amy would tell me in our L1 what happened in her school. I would elicit her views and opinions and she would ask for my advice. Of course, she didn't always follow it. I would give her a chance to try and fail or to prove that I was wrong. Sometimes when I was too occupied with my own thoughts to listen to her attentively, Amy would feel neglected and keep to herself. Gradually there was a psychological distance between us though we were physically together every day. Realizing the situation, I would try to make it up to her by talking with her and telling her how I felt if we didn't have heart-to-heart talks. My frankness moved her and drew her closer to me. Our talks minimized the gap between us.

Furthermore, parent-child interactions may have a critical impact on children's academic studies. "If minority language students are to achieve the goals of education, academic learning cannot be put on hold until students have acquired proficiency in English" (Met, 1994, p. 159). Research has shown that postponing or interrupting academic development is likely to promote academic failure in the long-term. As it usually takes 5-7 years for LM students to catch up in academic communicative proficiency, they cannot afford the lost time in on-grade-level academic work during the period while they are learning English to a level comparable to their native-English peers (Thomas & Collier, 1997). Owing to the great diversity of LM children's backgrounds, schools may not always be able to address each individual's needs. Therefore it is up to the parents to get familiar with their children's textbooks in the host country and with the corresponding teaching materials from their home country. It is better to introduce new concepts—especially those which are crucial to the young child's intellectual development—in the primary language in order to develop the conceptual apparatus required to make L2 context-reduced input comprehensible (Cummins, 1981). Once a concept has been consolidated and proper concept relationships have been formed at home, it can then be further consolidated in the second language at school. The consolidation in turn helps the child to form additional concept relationships, giving rise to further second language stimuli which can spill over once more into the home language (Dodson, 1985).

During the first month of Amy's schooling here, we often read together her text books in English side by side with textbooks in Chinese. Sometimes we wrote home, asking our relatives to mail us relevant books in Chinese. Bit by bit, Amy could do the two kinds of teaching materials by herself, and now she can do the two separately. As she browses the content in L1 first (math, geography, etc.), she often gets prepared for what is to be taught in class. The other day she came home, telling me, "Mom, do you remember the word `reciprocal' you used in explaining the word `mutual' in my success journal? Today I came across this word again in my math class. In dividing a fraction with another fraction, the teacher asked us to multiply it with the reciprocal of the other. I immediately knew the meaning of the word here (upside-down) because I had known how to solve this kind of problem from my Chinese math book." Apparently Amy's knowledge in L1 had been positively transferred to L2 in the math content area. Without the help of L1, LM children may lose ground when they have to deal with cognitively demanding tasks of understanding L2 and context-reduced, age-appropriate content at the same time. Explanations of the content in the primary language can help LM children understand the content while learning the terminology in L1. Then the familiarity with the content can in turn help them learn content terminology in L2 and result in more comprehensive and insightful mastery of the content. This cycle confirms the argument that "experience with either language can promote development of the proficiency underlying both languages" (Cummins, 1981, p. 25).

Still, another important parent-child interaction regarding bilingual education is a dual-language nurturing home environment. Whether parents study by means of both L1 and L2 at home, how parents combine the two languages and cultures and make them complementary to each other at home can have a great impact on their children's way of becoming bilingual. Amy feels happy if I study side by side with her, even if I don't give her any help. She often tells me how she feels when she wakes up at night to see me still study under the lamp. Sometimes she is surprised that I remember to answer her questions by consulting the encyclopedia for children. I do often feel that I am too tired, too busy, or too slow to learn. But thinking of the fact that my study makes my daughter love learning, I would do some reading, writing, or thinking by myself every day and share what I've learned with her if it is comprehensible to her.

Two-language nurturing home environments may exist in both oral and written forms. Ever since we came to Hawaii, we have been writing to our home country regularly. We are also lucky to have a very kind American friend who has helped us tremendously, and with whom we correspond by mail, talk over the phone, or have face to face chats. Now Amy is also used to the unstated yet actually practiced family regulation that she has to write compositions both in Chinese and English whenever we go sightseeing or anything important happens around us. By writing regularly in English and in Chinese, Amy puts into practice what she has learned and actually experiments with two languages. Writing "emphasizes the cognitive nature of literacy acquisition—that is, the child's active role in coming to understand and use written language" (Hudelson, 1994, p. 137). Parents can also encourage their children to speak two languages concurrently, one in school and the other at home or code-switch when necessary and helpful. "The ability to switch easily from one language to the other is an important factor in the development of the bilingual child" (Dodson, 1985, p. 13). In switching, the child develops the linguistic ability and flexibility to adapt swiftly to different needs, interlocutors, and contexts. It is good to speak L1 at home, and it is also a practical way for parents to practice English with their children in content-embedded situations (e.g., describing the room arrangement or solving math problems) where paralinguistic and situational clues make salient the meaning expressed in the language which they are learning. What is typical in using two languages simultaneously or alternatively is that it can arouse children's metalinguistic awareness to find similarities and disparities between L1 and L2, and to understand linguistic patterns and rules within each language, thus promoting the acquisition of the two.

According to my observations, the daily need to use both L1 and L2 makes the two languages active in Amy's repertoire. While we are doing house chores, Amy and I often question each other on how to translate a sentence, a phrase, or an idiom from L1 into L2, or vice versa, and what the difference is. One day she remarked: "I find some ambiguity in Chinese if I say `wo ai ni ma ma' which can mean both `I love you, mom,' or `I love your mom.'" But in English there is no such ambiguity. When she has problems with English grammar, Amy would ask me in Chinese. Early in October there was a conversation between us:

Amy's utterance here is a mix of English and Chinese. She was trying to practice L2 by using L1 to fill in the gaps where she was not yet proficient. Considering her limited L2 vocabulary, I answered her question in L1, which was helpful in promoting her metalinguistic awareness. Goodz (1994) commented on the relationship between the language used at home and academic success in school:

What is essential in developing L2 and maintaining or developing L1 at the same time is that the children feel the need to use two languages in every day life. In order to supply this need, it is advisable that parents flexibly implement a parent-child plan at home that is instrumental to the children's academic achievement and bilingual education.

Summary

For many newly arrived LM parents and children in the United States, the English language and its accompanying culture may be overwhelming and baffling. The children are faced with a whole range of new knowledge both at school and outside school. They may feel a sense of separation from, and loss of their past. They may experience wonder, doubt, disappointment, rejection, and other negative feelings. They may find it very difficult to begin a new language and later find it very hard to maintain the primary language. They may find themselves at the intersection of two cultures while belonging to neither of them. Parents are on the front line in these situations and must be a tower of strength and understanding for their children and help them to sort things out. The present study mainly addressed the issue from two perspectives, based on my own experience with my daughter in Hawaii over a five-month period: (1) LM parents' attitudes toward L1/L2 and the cultures (valuing the heritage and respecting the new), and (2) Parent-child interactions (family talk aiming at keeping up L1 and bridging the generation gap; academic study confirming the interdependent hypothesis of L1 and L2; two-language nurturing home environment including parents' own involvement in learning by means of L1 and L2, and concurrent use of the two languages at home). The study showed that parental positive attitudes and supportive interactions at home are beneficial to children's bilingual process.

Nevertheless, there are some limitations to this study. First, this was a case study of only one participant. Amy's personal characteristics and background make the experience described less generalizable. When Amy came to Hawaii, she had already had a solid foundation in her first language. Literacy ability and cognitive experience in L1, according to Cummins (1981), can be transferred to the process of second language learning. In terms of age, she was only 12 with a large capacity to learn and with much to learn not only linguistically, but also socially and scientifically. The strong L1 linguistic background and the flexible pre-teenage stage contributed greatly to Amy's process of bilingual education. Second, as the only observer, as well as Amy's mother and intimate interactant, I may have influenced her and the study to a certain degree. I majored in English as a Second Language (ESL), which enabled me to know more about ESL for LM children and to help Amy learn English. It might be much harder for LM parents who don't know their L2 to bring up their children bilingually. Besides, the observation may be biased with a mother's subjectivity, and the interpretation of the interactions between Amy and me may not be totally objective. Finally, because of the constraints of time, this study fell short in presenting a whole picture of Amy's progress in bilingual education. There may be differences between the early and later stages, and it is hard to say whether her L1 proficiency could be comparable to her peers back in China after she stays in a foreign country for several years. There will definitely be twists and turns on the way.

Bringing up children bilingually may take years or decades to accomplish. Family contexts in which LM children are brought up may vary greatly, and it is impossible to prescribe exactly what LM parents should do in bilingual upbringing. However, even for those parents who don't know anything about English or their L2, their attitudes toward L1/L2 and the cultures will have an important impact on their children's view about and the process of becoming bilingual, because parents' opinions are embodied in parent-child interactions in every facet of family life. Though this was only a case study and just the beginning of a child's long journey of becoming bilingual, it is hoped that it could enhance the awareness of LM parents about our importance in our children's bilingual education at home.

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