Heritage Language Development: Focus on East Asian Immigrants (review)

This book is a timely contribution to the debate on preserving heritage languages (HLs) in Canada and the United States, where the increasing number of East Asian immigrants within the last 20 years has become an important feature of demographic change. Specifically, Heritage Language Development: Focus on East Asian Immigrants, an edited volume, is an attempt to recognize the voices of people from linguistic minorities, for most of the book's contributors are researchers of East Asian background. The book consists of an introductory chapter and three sections, each of which has a specific focus. Chapter 1 presents the book's two major intents - to address multiple factors influencing East Asian HL development, and to seek environments and practices that best serve HL development. The volume fulfils its first intent; however, its discussion of its second intent is inadequate.

The first section (chapters 2-4) addresses immigrant families' roles in their children's HL development. Chapter 2 is Li's cross-case analysis of data from two ethnographic studies conducted in Vancouver and Saskatoon. Li documents two Chinese immigrant children's HL loss, based on her observations of their literacy practices and her interviews with their parents. In chapter 3, Sakamoto's life-history research collects narrative accounts of five Japanese families in Toronto that present parents' views of and concerns for their children's HL learning. Sakamoto found that the children learn their HL and English separately, and that this separation can cause HL attrition. Both Li and Sakamoto found that because of discrimination against HLs, parents may encourage their children to learn English at the cost of their HL. Li argues that parents should be informed that children's proficiency in their HL can facilitate their learning in English. Chapter 4 is Park's ethnographic and sociolinguistic study of how six Korean American families in the New York metropolitan area transmit their HL and cultural nuances to their young children. The strength of these three studies is their qualitative research methods and direct and in-depth observation-based data. This strength makes it possible for educators, researchers, and immigrant families of various backgrounds to learn what may be useful for them both from the stories documented and from the researchers' analyses of these stories.

The second section (chapters 5-7) addresses the role of educational institutions in HL development. In chapter 5, based on questionnaires and interviews given to 31 Grade 7 to 11 Japanese HL students in California, Chinen and Tucker relate their finding that the students' language socialization experiences at their HL school promoted their HL learning; the researchers provide a compelling self-critique of their own study. In chapter 6, Shin describes the negative effects of No Child Left Behind policies on HL development and documents her interviews with immigrant parents and with English and HL teachers. This chapter can help immigrant parents gain an in-depth understanding of policy issues relating to their children's education; however, it does not suggest how the policies could be changed to serve HL development.

Chapter 7 compares the influence of multiple issues on students' biliteracy development among three bilingual programs, one in Japan and the other two in the United States. This chapter is overly ambitious in the number of topics addressed; it even raises issues that the author does not revisit, such as the language dissimilarity between English and Japanese.

The last section (chapters 8-10) discusses a number of associated and predictive factors related to HL development. In chapter 8, based on a survey and a self-administered Korean language-proficiency test given to 120 Korean-American college students, Kim finds that the degree and frequency of HL use is the best predictor of HL proficiency. In chapter 9, drawing on data from a questionnaire given to 115 high school students at two Chinese HL schools in Canada, Man concludes that students' language use and behaviour are the result of multiple factors interacting at different...