What role can community contact play in heritage language literacy development? Japanese–English bilingual children in Sydney

Abstract

When linguistic minority parents wish to develop and maintain their children's literacy in heritage languages (HLs), what can they do to help? How and to what extent do the individual contexts of language use and background affect the development and maintenance of HL literacy, compared with the sociocultural context of community? What are the effects of ethnolinguistic community contact on individuals’ language use? This article uses a quantitative approach to investigating these issues, focusing on general and specific aspects of Japanese literacy among school-age children of Japanese heritage in Sydney. The sample consists of two groups of bilinguals who differ in their degree of community contact and attend different Japanese community schools at the weekend. Data on individual factors were collected from parental questionnaires and data on literacy from free-style writings and a written test. Statistical analyses examined the effects of language use, background and community contact on literacy, in addition to the effect of community contact on language use. The results indicate that while language use has a more significant effect than background, community contact contributes most to the development of the HL literacy, especially since it significantly promotes literacy-enhancing private language use.