Description
Empowering Asian Language Speakers SymposiumAbstract
Home language maintenance (HLM) plays a crucial role in child development, family cohesion and multilingual development. Since December 2023, the researcher has initiated a project to investigate home language maintenance among Chinese families in Australia. The project collects data from various age groups across different linguistic generations nationwide. The findings indicate that most participants expect the next generations to have good Chinese language skills in speaking and listening, followed by reading and writing. However, only half of them think it is easy for the next generations to learn the Chinese language.
Furthermore, the analysis shows no significant relationship between the time they use Chinese at home and their self-assessed Chinese skills. Instead, most participants attend Chinese activities (e.g., weekend language schools and schools’ Chinese programmes) and use various sources for Chinese learning (e.g., online chat and Chinese storybooks). More than 70% of participants also recognise the Chinese activities and learning sources in schools and communities. However, more than 60% claim no experience of encouragement and support from people in schools and communities, although most participants agree that teachers, parents and schools need to work together to help children maintain their home languages alongside English learning.
At last, about two-thirds of the participants agreed they would learn Chinese if universities provided relevant courses. The results are from a limited number of participants. The researcher hopes that more participants can be attracted to attend the project for a better understanding of Chinese families’ needs and experiences of Chinese language learning in Australia.
| Period | 5 Jul 2024 |
|---|---|
| Held at | University of Queensland, Australia, Queensland |
| Degree of Recognition | National |