Role of Immigrant Parents' Attitudes and Practices in Emergent Bilingual Students' Language Use and Translanguaging Performance

Introduction

Researchers have reported that immigrant parent involvement is one of the most significant factors in children’s academic performance and language learning in the U.S. (Murphy, 2014; Dixon, Zhao, Quiroz, & Shin, 2012). Yet, many of immigrant parents believe that their children’s language and literacy skills in their heritage language (HL) have little direct relevance to their U.S. school performance, while the mastery of English directly impacts their children’s success in school (Hinton, 2008; Yilmaz, 2016). The parents’ desire for their children to have educational success and prestigious careers in the future lead them to immerse their children in English only instruction (Shin, 2010; Tse, 2001). However, several researchers reported that when emergent bilingual children of immigrant parents attended U.S. classrooms taught only in English, the children often lost or did not continue to develop their HL (Hinton, 2008; Ro & Cheatham, 2009; Shin, 2005; Tse, 2001). Research showed that language shift or “the replacement of one language by another as the primary means of communication and socialization within a community” (Mesthrie, Swann, Deumert, & Leap, 2001, p. 253) had not only occurred with Latinx children (Gandara & Hopkins, 2010; Suarez-Orozco, Suarez-Orozco & Todorova, 2008) but also with Korean children in the U.S. (Lee & Joeng, 2013).

Since the Immigration Act of 1965, the number of Korean immigrants to the U.S. has grown rapidly; throughout the 1980s, approximately 1 million Korean immigrants resided in the U.S., and the number has continued to increase (U.S. Census Bureau, 2016). Korean immigrant parents often decline bilingual education services (Lee & Joeng, 2013; Jeon, 2008). Many of them believe that their children’s Korean literacy skills have little direct relevance to their U.S. school performance, while the mastery of English directly impacts their children’s success in school (Hinton, 2008; Shin, 2005). The parents’ desire for their children to have educational success and prestigious careers in the future lead them to immerse their children in English only instruction (Shin, 2010; Tse, 2001; Yilmaz, 2016). Although Korean parents may not support their children’s enrollment in bilingual education, they often hold positive attitudes toward their children’s HL development and consider the role of HL schools to be critical for their children’s HL learning (Polinsky, 2018; Shin, 2010). Many of them financially support Korean HL schools, which their children attend on weekends (Chung, 2008; Lee & García, 2020). However, the extent to which Korean immigrant parents’ attitudes and supports influence on their emergent bilingual children’s language use and development is a question that has not received much attention in the bilingual/biliteracy research to date (Lee & García, 2020).

Given the HL loss phenomenon among Korean children of immigrant families in the U.S., this study examines Korean emergent bilingual students’ language use and translanguaging practices in a HL classroom. In addition, to extend our understanding of immigrant families’ vital roles in their children’s establishment of bilingualism, the study further explores the role of immigrant Korean families’ language practices and attitudes towards their children’s bilingualism. The following research question guided my inquiry: What was the relationship between the parents’ attitudes toward bilingualism and their children’s language use and translanguaging performance in an HL classroom? In order to seek the research question, I first provide the students’ classroom language use including their translanguaging performance and then discuss the parents’ views and practices towards their children’s development of bilingualism.