27.1079, Review: Applied Ling; Lang Acq; Socioling: Curdt-Christiansen, Hancock (2014)

Tue Mar 1 16:15:01 UTC 2016

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-1079. Tue Mar 01 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.1079, Review: Applied Ling; Lang Acq; Socioling: Curdt-Christiansen, Hancock (2014)

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Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2016 11:14:39
From: Siyan Hou [hou42 at purdue.edu]
Subject: Learning Chinese in Diasporic Communities

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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/25/25-3195.html

EDITOR: Xiao Lan  Curdt-Christiansen
EDITOR: Andy  Hancock
TITLE: Learning Chinese in Diasporic Communities
SUBTITLE: Many pathways to being Chinese
SERIES TITLE: AILA Applied Linguistics Series 12
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2014

REVIEWER: Siyan Hou, Purdue University

Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

“Learning Chinese in Diasporic Communities: Many Pathways to Being Chinese”
edited by Xiao Lan Curdt-Christiansen and Andy Hancock collects 11 papers by
scholars and researchers in the field of Chinese language education and social
contexts. The main target reader population of this edited volume is claimed
to be researchers, educators, students, and practitioners in the area of
Chinese language education and bilingual education. It is claimed to be
accessible as well to non-specialists in Chinese teaching such as scholars and
students in sociology, political science, anthropology, language policy, and
sociolinguistics.

According to the editors, the main purpose of this book is to seek the extent
to which sociocultural and linguistic environments may influence how children
and young adults in diasporic areas acquire the Chinese language. The central
argument of this book is that learning the “Chinese language is an ideological
struggle, which intertwines with sociocultural values, political power issues,
economic opportunities, and identity formation.” (Curdt-Christiansen &
Hancock, 2014) 

The book is composed of four parts, with each part consisting of two to four
chapters addressing one theme. Part I, “Family socialization patterns in
language learning and literacy practices” consists of two chapters. The first
chapter, “Language socialization into Chinese language and ‘Chineseness’ in
diaspora communities” by Patricia Duff provides a  synthesis of the research
on the socialization of children in diasporic Chinese families through
languages. Besides an overview of socialization principles, the author mainly
examines the socialization of speakers of Chinese heritage languages. Special
attention is paid to language patterns such as code-switching in both
traditional Chinese diaspora families and mixed heritage families. Duff
recommends that future research should focus more on the similarities and
differences in language learning and use across different social contexts as
well as different timescales. Curdt-Christiansen’s chapter, “Family language
policy: Is learning Chinese at odds with learning English?” investigates the
planning and development of family language policies (FLP) in 20 bilingual
families in Singapore through interviews and participant observations.
Particularly, the author focuses on the way parents perceive the Chinese
language, and the influence of their beliefs on the language practices in
those families. The author further expands the view of FLP to show how FLP is
connected to and shaped by nonlinguistic forces such as the national language
policy and the educational system.

Part II, “Complementary/heritage Chinese Schools in Diasporas” contains four
chapters. In this part, efforts are made to explore the pedagogical progress 
of Chinese heritage children and young people who are learning Chinese outside
the mainstream schools around the world. In the first chapter, Andy Hancock
conducted a critical analysis on the Chinese complementary school in Scotland
by adopting Hornberger’s (2003) Continua of Biliteracy. Through classroom
observations and interview, the following issues are examined: how the context
of overall language policies influences children’s biliteracy experience, how
the content of teachers’ instruction helps children to value the Chinese
culture, how teachers adapt their instructional media to arouse children’s
interest in Chinese literacy, and how children develop their language learning
process through biliterate resources.

In her chapter named “Chinese heritage language schools in the United States,”
Chan Lü also researched  biliteracy  through classroom observations in a
Chinese Heritage language school in the United States. The author depicts both
traditional teaching practices such as having learners read aloud, and
bringing games into weekend classes to generate learners’ interest. The author
concludes with some suggestions for language instruction in Chinese heritage
language schools, such as to develop partnerships with mainstream educators
and the parents. Chapter Three, “Learning and teaching Chinese in the
Netherlands: The metapragmatics of a polycentric language” by Jingling Li and
Kasper Juffermans investigates the effects as well as the conditions of how
language is used. By analyzing transcripts from a complementary school
classroom in the Netherlands, the authors examines the notion of “Chinese” as
well as how the use of different Chinese language varieties shifts along with
the continuous changes in economy, politics, and demography. The author also
points out that as a consequence, teachers, parents, and young people are
constantly constructing their social identities in migration contexts.

The last chapter in this section, “Language and literacy teaching, learning
and socialization in the Chinese complementary school classroom” by Li Wei and
Zhu Hua investigates classroom interactions in the context of Chinese
complementary schools in Britain. By analyzing classroom interactions, the
authors examine the way teachers take advantage of language teaching to impart
cultural norms to pupils, and the pupils’ reactions to this socializing
education. Echoing what Li and Juffermans mentioned in the previous chapter,
the authors argue for a change in teaching ideologies among generations, which
is inevitable with migration and globalization. The classroom observations
also reveal differences between the teachers’ and students’ understanding of
the language and culture. Through the learning process, the students are also
constantly negotiating their identities. The authors conclude with a statement
valuing the complementary/heritage schools as important research sites for
further research in multilingualism in the context of Chinese diasporic
communities.

Part III, “Bilingual Chinese Education Models” includes three chapters
focusing on state or privately funded bilingual programs across the world.
Wang Xiaomei’s “Chinese education in Malaysia” takes a historical approach to
review the development of Chinese language education in Malaysia.
Specifically, the author discusses the medium of instruction, syllabus,
curriculum allocation, and learning outcomes during each developmental phase.
Through the critical discussions, the author highlights the achievements of
Malaysian Chinese education, and points out challenges and issues related to
the the present syllabus and curriculum of Chinese teaching in Malaysia.

The second chapter, “Conflicting goals of language-in-education planning in
Singapore: Chinese character education as a case” by Zhao Shouhui and Zhang
Dongbo examined the diasporic community in Singapore, where a special
bilingual educational model is adopted. Through quantitative analysis of
Chinese language teachers’ and students’ perceptions, a critical evaluation of
multiple dimensions of the official policies and instructional guides on
Chinese character teaching and learning in Singapore primary schools is
provided. The author calls for a reformed evaluation of the role and status of
characters in Chinese language education in Singapore.

Shen Chen and Yuzhe Zhang’s chapter, “Chinese language teaching in Australia”,
discusses the teaching and learning of Chinese in Australia. The authors
provide an investigation of the Australian governments’ language policies
across the past two decades, and display the changes Chinese language teaching
and learning has experienced in order to accommodate to the social and policy
changes. Through analyzing, this study reveals several problems in the field
of curriculum design and implementation. The authors further provide several
suggestions to develop Chinese language teaching and learning in order to meet
the social, economic and political demands in Australia.

The last part of this book, Part IV, focuses on the issue of Chinese language,
culture and identity, and is composed of two chapters about how individuals
perceive the issues of identity, language attitudes and ideology in the
process of Chinese language learning. In their first chapter, “Speaking of
identity? British-Chinese young people’s perspectives on language and ethnic
identity,” Becky Francis, Ada Mau and Louise Archer investigate two groups of
young people in Britain: those enrolled in British-Chinese complementary
schools and the Chinese/mixed heritage speakers who viewed themselves as not
able to speak Chinese. A post-structural approach is adopted to analyze how
these young adults negotiate the relations between language and ethnic
identity. Interesting patterns are revealed, as those who are attending
Chinese complementary school view knowing their heritage language as crucial
to the Chinese identity, while those who are not able to speak Chinese tend to
regard the connection to the Chinese culture as having Chinese ethnicity. 

Duanduan Li and Patricia Duff’s chapter, “Chinese language learning by
adolescents and young adults in the Chinese diaspora”, also looks at
motivations of learning Chinese and how it interacts with ethnicity and
identity construction. This chapter starts with a critical review of previous
research in this field and argues against a  view of the motivation of Chinese
heritage language learning as static and linear. The authors present a
qualitative study with young adults from a Chinese language program in a
university in Canada, analyzing their diverse experiences, including
transnational migration histories, achievements/motivation and negotiation of
identity. The authors further suggest that the approach of storytelling may
shed light on curriculum design as well as pedagogy and materials development.

EVALUATION

This book is among the first attempts to bring scholars and researchers
together to set a research base for learning and teaching Chinese in a
different context—the Chinese diasporic communities across the globe. The
topics discussed are diverse and interesting, and at the same time share the
same central focus: to seek different patterns adopted by people in diverse
Chinese diasporic communities in the process of learning, being, and becoming
“Chinese”. Studies in this book cover many Chinese diasporic communities such
as those in Singapore, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States to
explore how sociocultural elements such as language policies, economic power,
and educational experiences affect the process of constructing heritage
languages. Organizing articles into four major themes also makes it a good
resource book with logical organization. As is claimed by the editors, this
book would be interesting not only for language teachers and researchers, but
also for those in other fields of social science including but not limited to
political science, sociology, and sociolinguistics.

Most of the chapters in this book are well written and easy to follow, but
some papers may be somewhat difficult to understand because of  a lot of
educational and linguistic jargon used without clear explanations. While
specialized terminology is unavoidable, a little more explanation would be
helpful, especially in a book intended for a fairly broad range of readers. 

In addition, although the chapters in this book address Chinese diasporic
communities in a variety of countries, it would be more comprehensive if it
included studies targeting Chinese language teaching and learning in regions
such as Hong Kong and Macau, which used to be colonies of western countries
and are now under the trilingual and biliterate language policy after transfer
of sovereignty to the People’s Republic of China (Shum, Tsung, and Gao, 2011).

Last but not the least, the editors in the preface state that this volume
tries to seek “similarities and differences among different Chinese diasporic
communities around the world” (p. VII). However, similarities are barely
mentioned in the book, whereas  the differences are apparent in the 
individual chapters. Therefore, it would be nice if the editors could end this
volume with a final chapter explicitly discussing both the similarities and
differences among different Chinese diasporic communities.

REFERENCES

Shum, M. S., Tsung, L, & Gao, F. (2011). Teaching and learning (through)
Putonghua: From the perspective of Hong Kong teachers. In L. Tsung & K.
Cruickshank. (2011). Teaching and Learning Chinese in Global Context. New
York: Continuum.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

I am a PhD student in School of Languages and Cultures at Purdue University.
My research interests include second language acquisition in Chinese, second
language pragmatics, and technology enhanced language teaching.

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