Early Home and Community Support in Later Chinese Heritage Language Literacy Development

Abstract

AbstractPrior language and literacy support from home, community and heritage language (HL) schools provides young HL learners with linguistic and metalinguistic foundations for language and literacy development (Chinen & Tucker Heritage Language Journal 3:27-59, 2005; Koda et al. Chinese as a heritage language: Fostering rooted world citizenry (pp. 125–135). University of Hawai’i, National Foreign Language Resource Center. 2008; Mori & Calder Foreign Language Annals 46:290-310, 2013). To date, few studies have explored the contribution of early language experiences to later HL literacy development. The current study aimed to investigate the role of learner-external and input-based language and literacy support in adult HL literacy development. Two hundred and nine Chinese as a heritage language (CHL) learners participated in the study. They completed a language and literacy background survey as well as a series of Chinese reading measurements. Drawing upon multivariate analyses, the results demonstrated that early language and literacy experiences as a whole contributed to later HL reading development. More specifically, language and literacy experiences in the community had a more salient effect on CHL literacy development than did home-based experiences. The study underscored the importance of crossing boundaries between learner-internal linguistic capacities and learner-external sociocultural contexts in HL literacy maintenance.KeywordsOral and print inputHeritage language development and maintenanceHeritage language schoolsBilingual and biliteracy