Bilingual Vocabulary Knowledge and Arrival Age Among Japanese Heritage Language Students at Hoshuukoo

Abstract

This study examines bilingual vocabulary knowledge in relation to arrival age among first language (L1) Japanese students attending hoshuukoo (i.e., supplementary academic schools for Japanese-speaking children) in the United States. It also examines the relationship between L1 Japanese and English as a second language (L2), as motivated by Cummins's (1979Cummins's ( , 1991 notion of linguistic interdependence. One hundred and twenty-two high school students ages 15-18 from eight hoshuukoo took Japanese and English vocabulary tests designed by Ono (1989). Students who came to the United States by age 9 or younger were three grades behind in L1 Japanese and were either ahead of or at their U.S. grade level in English. In contrast, those who arrived at age 10 or older were just one grade behind in Japanese and were two to five years behind in English. High vocabulary knowledge in one language was associated with low knowledge in the other, and the negative correlation between L1 and L2 became statistically nonsignificant when arrival age was controlled. Consequently, arrival age remains an important factor in accounting for hoshuukoo students' bilingual vocabulary learning, and the notion of linguistic interdependence must be reexamined in factors in addition to vocabulary knowledge.Technology (MEXT), the number of elementary and middle school children living abroad for over three months was only 6,662 in 1971, but it has been steadily increasing since then and reached 64,950 in 2012. Roughly speaking, one third of those children reside in North America (21,280), another one third live in Asia (26,498), one sixth stay in Europe (12,069), and the remaining children reside in other parts of the world (MEXT, 2012, n.p.).The statistics also show substantial differences between regions in the types of educational institutions that children of Japanese as a first language (L1) attend. In North America, it is reported that 45.0% of L1 Japanese children attend both local schools and hoshuukoo 1 -extracurricular supplemental schools that provide academic instruction in Japanese, 53.2% attend local school only, and 1.8% attend full-day Japanese school where students receive academic instruction exclusively in Japanese throughout the week. In Asian countries, in contrast, it is reported that 55.5% attend full-day Japanese school, 41.1% attend local school only, and 3.4% attend hoshuukoo. As most hoshuukoo provide only limited hours of instruction during weekends, students who report that they attend hoshuukoo are most likely to attend local school on weekdays. In other words, more than 98% of L1 Japanese children residing in North America receive school instruction mainly in English, their second language (L2), 2 and limited academic instruction in their L1 if they attend hoshuukoo, whereas a majority of L1 Japanese children residing in Asian countries receive school education in Japanese.What does growing up in an L2-dominant environment mean to L1 Japanese children in terms of their language development? What impact does sc...

The Role of Motivation and Learner Variables in L1 and L2 Vocabulary Development in Japanese Heritage Language Speakers in the United States

“…Mori and Calder (), for instance, have examined bilingual academic language proficiency through written vocabulary knowledge and the age of arrival to the United States among first language (L1) Japanese students attending hoshuukoo 1 (i.e., supplementary academic schools for Japanese‐speaking children). They observed reverse bilingual patterns of early and late arrivers: L1 Japanese students who were born in or came to the United States prior to age 9 demonstrated higher vocabulary knowledge in L2 English than in L1 Japanese, whereas those who arrived in the United States after age 10 showed the reverse tendency.…”

The Role of Parental Support and Family Variables in L1 and L2 Vocabulary Development of Japanese Heritage Language Students in the United States

“…Once the parental support factors were identified, partial correlation analysis was performed in order to examine the relationships between the two vocabulary measures, parental support variables, and other selected family variables. Arrival age was used as a control factor in computing partial correlation coefficients since Mori and Calder () showed that arrival age accounted for a large portion of the variance of hoshuukoo students’ bilingual proficiency. To demonstrate the effects of parental support variables and selected family variables on bilingual outcomes, a regression analysis was performed with each vocabulary test measure as the criterion variable and the support and family variables as the predictor variables.…”

“…Just like HL speakers in general, JHL learners demonstrate substantial individual differences in their linguistic and sociocultural profiles (e.g., Kanno, Hasegawa, Ikeda, Ito, & Long, ; Kondo‐Brown, ; Koshiba & Kurata, ). While JHL students tend to become English‐dominant partial bilinguals the longer they reside in the United States (Shibata, ), some of them acquire high proficiency in both L1 Japanese and L2 English (Mori & Calder, ) and others acquire relatively limited proficiency in both languages (Kataoka, Koshiyama, & Shibata, ). While such differential achievement can be partially attributable to individual learner variables, the roles of environmental factors cannot be overestimated since children's achievement is a byproduct of familial, educational, and sociocultural contexts in which bilingual development takes place.…”

Demographics of Adult Heritage Language Speakers in the United States: Differences by Region and Language and Their Implications

“…The definition of HL speakers must be as precise as possible; at the same time, the degree of specificity is constrained by the available data and the purpose behind these definitions. Unless surveys are administered specifically for HL speakers as a target population (e.g., Carreira & Kagan, ; Mori & Calder, ), demographic studies using preexisting data are limited in the options to identify HL speakers. In this study, specificity is limited to the data source, that is, questions concerning race, ethnicity, immigration age, and home language in the U.S. Census and ACS.…”