| In the last three decades, especially after the90s, a growing number of people bornin Mainland China have sought to obtain permanent residency in the United States. Thisgeneration of Chinese immigrants was mainly composed of young people in their20sand30s. In recent years, the momentum of the "China opportunity" and "Chineseidentity" has driven that older generation to send their children to learn Chinese. Often,however, these children resist learning the language of their parents. This paper willanalyze this common problem in view of how the children of these ethnic Chinesefamilies treat their mother tongue, as well as look into these Chinese-American children’slanguage environment, language acquisition age and motivation to learn, and use severalcase studies to determine and solve the fundamental cause of the problem.This paper is divided into five chapters.The first chapter is an introduction of relevant research background, research andanalysis. Research, pointed out the shortcomings of previous studies, the value andsignificance of this study illustrate the study ideas put forward the method of this study.Chapter Two analyzes the theoretical analysis of language acquisition of Chineseand Chinese children’s learning problems. The analysis is from five aspects:(1) theimpact of language transfer;(2) non-target language environment of the Chineselanguage;(3) motivation and learning. The third chapter focuses on analyzing surveys of Chinese American children wholearn Chinese. The first part analyzes the results of interviews with15Chinese families;the second part focuses on the recovery of104questionnaires. The overall analysisshows that most families do not speak or speak little Chinese at home, and that mostchildren know only simple Chinese conversation along with a general level of progressof Chinese. In addition, they learn unenthusiastically and unhappily.The fourth chapter is dedicated to discussion of strategies to help Chinese-American children learn Chinese. To solve the problems Chinese American children havein studying Chinese, the following should be enacted: regular use of the mother tongue,and input the comprehensible information, as soon as possible create a Chinese languageenvironment at home, improve the credit system, meet their learning expectation such asAP Chinese and SATII, focus on cultural awareness, mobilize enthusiasm for studyingand choosing the right Chinese teaching materials.The fifth chapter concludes and summarizes the work of this text and proposesfuture work on this subject. |
