Second Language and Literacy Learning in School and at Home: An Ethnographic Study of Chinese Canadian First Graders' Experiences.

Abstract

Based on the theoretical perspectives of socio-constructivism and language socialization, this study reports two Chinese Canadian first grader’s experiences of language and literacy learning in and out of school in a unique sociocultural setting where they were “the mainstream.” The article examines the students’ reading and writing practices in school and at home, as well as their parents’ and teachers’ thoughts, beliefs, resources, and concerns regarding their literacy learning. The findings suggest that there exists great linguistic and cultural discontinuity between the Chinese children’s school and home language and literacy experiences. The children view school and home literacies as separate entities rather than a continuum. Such perceptions further widened the gaps between their development of “school literacy” which is mediated through English language and culture and that of “home literacy” which is mediated through Chinese language and culture. These children’s learning experiences were also influenced by the conflicts between the school’s cultural values and those of their families, which include dissensions on biliteracy expectations, homework, parenting, and instructional approaches (e.g., the use of drawing and free play). Living between two separate worlds of school and home, the students are often burdened with the consequences of the cultural clashes and become “sites of struggle” between teachers and parents, and hence, are placed in a dangerous position for potential failure at school. Editor’s note: All names used in examples are pseudonyms. pages 1–31 Literacy teaching and Learning

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 18 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.