Bilingualism of Korean-Canadian Children

Download or read book Bilingualism of Korean-Canadian Children written by Soon Young Jang and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the midst of immigrant children's prevalent subtractive bilingualism, this doctoral inquiry investigates multiple levels of supporting factors of Korean-Canadian children's heritage language learning and the ways they support bilingual learning of these children, by looking at Grace Church, a multi-generational Korean ethnic church, as a case. This is an ethnographic study, which involves yearlong classroom observations and interviews with church leaders, teachers, parents, and children. Additional data sources include curriculum materials, children's artifacts, Korean government documents and websites, as well as records of school meetings and school associations' conferences. Employing Bourdieu's theoretical and analytic tools, such as field, habitus, and capital (1991), this study also examines how the Korean and English languages are positioned at various levels within and beyond the church. Additionally, due to the shift made in my positionality from an observer to a participant observer, this study explores the outcomes of pedagogical changes guided by theoretical underpinnings, such as translanguaging (García, 2009), culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1994), funds of knowledge (Moll, 1992), and the third space (Gutiérrez, Baquedano-López, Tejeda, 1999). This study unveils that Grace Hangul hakgyo is a field in which the aims of the Korean government and Korean Canadian immigrants intersect vis-à-vis heritage language education. For the Korean government, it is ultimately a field for strengthening national resources and for the congregants of Grace Church, it is mainly for their heritage language and culture maintenance. In this study, the positions of Korean and English within Grace Church are revealed in the Korean and English ministries, which are closely linked to immigrant generations, and in the language use and socialization of children in the grade 3 and 4 focus class. The positions of Korean and English within Grace Church are unquestionably influenced by the status of those languages beyond the church, displaying the close relationship between language and identity at many levels of interacting fields. Finally, this study showcases how translanguaging, culturally relevant pedagogy, funds of knowledge can be utilized as a means for creating the third space in heritage language learning contexts, which is an underexamined area in the field of bilingual education.