Minority Language Proficiency of Multicultural Adolescents: The Effects of Bicultural Acceptance Attitudes, Parents’ Educational Support, and the Use of the Minority Language at Home

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the factors that influence multicultural adolescents’ proficiency in their mother’s native language, or their immigrant mother’s native language. A hierarchical regression analysis was performed on data from the survey answered by 1,028 multicultural adolescents aged 15 years old and whose mothers were from foreign countries for the 6th Multicultural Adolescents Panel Study(MAPS) conducted by the National Youth Policy Institute (NYPI) in 2016. The main results are as follows. First, multicultural adolescents’ minority language proficiency was generally low and significant differences were observed according to their gender, parents’ educational level, household income, and mother’s native country. More specifically, a higher proficiency in minority language was found for girls than boys, adolescents with a higher parental educational level, adolescents with a higher income, and adolescents whose mothers were from Japan or China, compared with those from the Philippines, Thailand, or Vietnam. Second, a significant positive correlation was observed between multicultural adolescents’ minority language proficiency and 1) foreign culture acceptance, 2) parent’s educational support, and 3) the use of the minority language at home. Third, foreign culture acceptance, parents’ educational support, and the use of the minority language at home were predictors of multicultural adolescents’ minority language proficiency. The study is meaningful in that it examined multicultural adolescents’ minority language proficiency, elucidating their bilingual development, whereas previous studies have only focused on their proficiency in Korean, which is the majority language.

Maternal Involvement in Education, Bicultural Acceptance, and School Adjustment: An Autoregressive Cross-Lagged Modeling Study among Adolescents from Multicultural Families

“…Therefore, Hypothesis 1 was supported. This result is congruent with the findings of earlier studies indicating that maternal home-and schoolbased involvement in education has positive influences on their adolescent children's school adjustment [26][27][28]31] and bicultural acceptance [27,42,43] in multicultural families. In particular, this study comprehensively analyzed maternal school-and home-based involvement.…”

“…Therefore, when migrant parents actively participate in school activities and provide support for their children's school adjustment, the children are more likely to show favorable attitudes toward the dominant culture [27,42]. Furthermore, higher levels of support from parents in multicultural families were associated with their children's positive attitudes toward their parents' attributes and cultural backgrounds [27,43].…”

School and Bicultural Factors as Mediators between Immigrant Mothers’ Acculturative Stress and Adolescents’ Depression in Korea

“…Nho and Hong [ 23 ], by considering the characteristics of multicultural families in Korea, proposed the concept of “bicultural acceptance,” defined as one’s acceptance of both the mainstream culture (the Korean culture) and heritage culture (i.e., the culture of the immigrant mother’s native country). The degree of bicultural acceptance in the children of multicultural families is influenced by the mother’s acculturation, parenting behaviors, and the children’s school adjustment [ 24 , 25 , 26 ], and this has been suggested to affect depression [ 27 ].…”

“…Mothers’ school involvement and adolescents’ bicultural acceptance may also play serial mediation roles in the relationship between mothers’ acculturative stress and adolescents’ depression. When immigrant parents show more interest in education and have higher school involvement, adolescents’ bicultural acceptance is higher [ 25 , 41 , 42 ]. School is a major environment wherein the children of immigrant and multicultural families interact with peers and adults from mainstream cultural backgrounds.…”

Effects of Perceived Discrimination on Multicultural Adolescents’ Ethnic Identity Conflict: A Moderated Mediation Effect of Parent-Child Open Communication through Bicultural Competence

“…이때 당사자가 지각한 차별은 실제 행해진 차별의 정도보 다 개인에게 미치는 영향력이 더 크다고 알려져 있고 (Flores et al, 2008), 청소년기에는 자아중심적 인지적 특성이 발달함에 따 라 타인의 평가와 시선에 대한 민감성이 높아진다 (Galotti, 2017;Kang et al, 2022). 따라서 청소년기에 지각하는 차별은 다문 화 청소년이 자신에 대한 부정적 자아상을 발달하는 데에 영향 을 미칠 수 있으며 (Son, 2020), 두 문화 내에서 적절히 기능하는 데 어려움을 초래할 수 있다 (Carrera & Wei, 2014;Lee & Lim, 2015;Park & Lee, 2019) (Kim et al, 2013), 자녀의 외국인 부모의 모어 구사 능력 (Kang et al, 2021), 외국인 부모의 출신국 (Lee & Kang, 2011)…”