Chinese As A Heritage Language And Its Consequences For Chinese Classes

Globalization, the international market and new possibilities in transportation and communication are shaping our world today. Nations are no longer autonomous:media, national security and economic interests are increasingly interlinked, citizens increasingly multilingual and mobile. The demand for global competence has led to the internationalization of higher education (Spaulding et al.2001:190-191).Within this context heritage languages, brought along with former migrants are no longer seen as a burden but as a resource countries can gain from. Consequently, countries are trying to preserve this repertoire. Before this time it was often wished that immigrants would fully assimilate to their host country, including learning the host language. Adopting to the dominant culture and participating in formal schooling often led to a language shift. For example, in the United States (US) immigrant children, including the ones predominantly using their heritage language before schooling, showed rapid decline of their heritage language skills due to the strong dominance of English and the limited resources for other languages (He2008:1-2). Along with this the concept of heritage language emerged to promote and study language maintenance among migrants. Heritage language teaching is beginning to gain attention in programs in university foreign language departments. During the last decade, a significant body of research has been constructed to deal with the topic of heritage learning. Because of its importance for mostly Western countries, research has mainly been carried out there (i.e. Peyton et al2001a, Hopf2005, Loser2011).While changes in attitude have led to more heritage language learners relearning their heritage language, better opportunities within transport and communication simplify holding ties. This has been observed in current tourism studies. In the research project also conducted within this research framework (Joosten&Kais2012), it was emphasized by overseas Chinese students that they came back to China to learn their heritage language as well as learning about their background.This master thesis tried to interlink these recent developments by looking at overseas Chinese coming back to China for study purposes. Interviews with students as well as teachers were used to create an empirical background to see what students bring with them (i.e. Chinese background, use and proficiency; prior institutional learning; motivation to learn Chinese), how teachers approach these different learners and what consequences this has for Chinese foreign language learning in Chinese universities. In China the interviewed students are learning Mandarin in the Language and Culture Program offered by Zhejiang University. Different from previous researched classrooms, these overseas Chinese have been brought up within different communities, speaking different languages and remained different cultural habits. All factors influence their language development and identity formation. Most students have learned Chinese prior to coming to China. Chinese is, however, a rather flexible term in such a multiple background. None of the interviewee’s parents come from northern China, because Chinese communities are mainly shaped by migrants from the coastal provinces (cf. Wei&Hua2010). Cantonese and also smaller dialects (e.g. Taishanese) are therefore spoken by the participants. While students from Western countries (including France, United States, Canada and Australia) remained speaking Chinese at home, Thai-Chinese students had already all undergone the generational language shift. Maintaining their heritage language to different extends led to varying Mandarin competences among the learners. They were participating in Chinese classes ranging from level two to level six. According to the teachers, however, students also had different language competences. As found in the interviews students were often better in speaking and listening/understanding then in grammar and reading. As stated by the teachers, Zhejiang University copes with these different Chinese competences within one student through placing them into different levels for i.e. reading and speaking. Before being able to participate in classes, students have to take a placement test.Although Zhejiang University already reacts to different competence levels in overseas Chinese learning Chinese by putting them into different language levels within different disciplines of language learning, improvements in the language and culture program according to the needs of Chinese as a heritage language learners can still be made. Once in China overseas Chinese share classes with Chinese as a foreign language learners, as Chinese language instruction in Chinese Universities is still aimed primarily at international exchange students. Because of their different linguistic and cultural competences this can led to difficulties within the classroom:i.e. not trying to use the new learned grammatical patterns or skipping class. As can be seen by their motivations for learning Chinese or coming to China, more insights into their heritage culture and into business Chinese would be a first step. Therefore, extra-curricular activities as already offered should not only be instructed in the level of foreign language learners not knowing too much about China but also on a level, appropriate for students who have already gained basic insights into Chinese culture during childhood. Continuing research within this field is important, on the one hand, to provide a better curriculum for Chinese as a heritage language learners, on the other hand teachers and future teachers can gain from this new framework. Better education and preparation of teachers is usually going hand in hand with their sensitivity towards taught issues. Already if this theory would be included in the education of Chinese as a foreign language, future teachers would know about this problem and might be able to address it more appropriately. As there are already Universities in the US teaching such additional programs, it would not be a new construction from the scrap, but one could gain from their experiences.The Chinese saying-a thousand mile journey begins with a first step-was already used by He (2008) at the end of the introduction of the book "Chinese as a Heritage Language: Fostering Rooted World Citizenry". While the mentioned book is by far the most comprehensive book on development and maintenance of Chinese as a heritage language, this paper can hopefully be seen as yet another small step within this new developed research framework.