| The purpose of this sociolinguistic study was to explore social, cultural, and linguistic factors that may have contributed to the biliteracy maintenance and bicultural identity development at two Chinese heritage language (HL) school communities in southern California. In addition to exploring perceptions of adult decision-makers---the parents, teachers, and administrators of the Chinese heritage language school communities, this study examined Chinese and English language proficiency levels of Chinese-language learners in a bicultural context. The study also sought to determine which influences led individual heritage language learners to their particular successful or unsuccessful learning outcomes.; The researcher developed three questionnaires and conducted multiple interviews and classroom observations to elicit both quantitative and qualitative data for this study. The subjects were 319 parents, 47 teachers, 209 students, eight administrators in two anonymous Chinese heritage language school communities, and eight individual heritage language learners. The data were processed through the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) Version 12.0 and the established interview procedure regulated by the IRB Committee of Texas A&M University-Kingsville.; Major findings show that due to a significant language shift from Chinese to English, the students' bilingual performance at the two heritage language schools did not match the stated goals of the heritage language programs. The shift was caused by a pro-English learning environment directly related to parental language proficiency and preference, and as a consequence, the amount of Chinese input, which functions as a tool of enculturation, was limited. Other factors discouraging Chinese heritage-language learning were the limited number of instructional hours and rather formula-oriented pedagogical approaches at the HL schools.; The statistical measurements detected significant relationships between bilingual maintenance and bicultural identity development, and the students' ages and Chinese-school grades appeared to be major variables contributing to the relationship. The in-depth interviews suggested that factors of age, ethnicity, education, learning environment, and family or personal socio-economic status influence individual HL learners, resulting in a wide range of language learning outcomes and cultural identity development. |
