Learning more than one language depends on the language capacity of an individual. However, being in a bilingual environment does not guarantee the same level of bilingual learning, but the level of bilingual capacity is affected by many external fact...
Learning more than one language depends on the language capacity of an individual. However, being in a bilingual environment does not guarantee the same level of bilingual learning, but the level of bilingual capacity is affected by many external factors. Two representative external factors are social context and sociolinguistic context.
Two languages can be both present in a society, but it is difficult to have a good balance of two languages. Thus, children eventually follow the language priorities of the society. Due to these societal circumstances, their language development is affected by internal and external factors. Therefore, in this study, the influences of the place of residence, social status of each language at the place, and amount of language uses of Korean-English bilingual children are investigated.
First language loss occurs in a social context, in which two languages have different social status and minimal L1 support. This usually occurs in immigrant children who speak a language other than that of their family language. In a bilingual society, there exists mainstream and minority language. In the immigrant community, their L1 is not the majority language of the mainstream society. So, L1 may not be supportive as much as they try to keep their own language ethics. In this social situation, two languages could not preserve language balance. So that their L1 could be affected.
As mentioned previously, this status and context issue of each language is judged by the importance placed on using each language within the context of the career and economic status. Social context could also affect L2, their language ethics, and language identity.
On the other hand, there is a bilingual society which has socially higher L2 status. In this society, L2 is a powerful language as much as L1. Bilingual children use their L1 at home and in the social environment. So, L1 is fully supportive for their language development. Also, the importance of L2 is emphasized in education and economic opportunities. Similar with L1 minority community, in higher L2 status society, L2 proficiency is important variable to achieve better careers and social status. Also, they also keep the balance of both languages. In a bilingual society, in which each of language has equal social value, L1 may not be affected. In addition, their L2 ability is maintained at high proficiency.
To summarize, Social context plays a decisive role, and this social context can affect children through internal and external factors that cause L1 loss. There are numerous studies, which suggest that social status is the key factors that influence bilinguals. However, little is known about the Korean-English bilingual ability due to different social contexts. To establish the different social context, the study investigates two groups of Korean-English bilinguals on living in Korea and the United States. Also explored are child’s internal factors (e.g., child social efficacy) and external factors (e.g., amount of L1 input at home).
This study investigates whether social context differences would be apparent in Korean-English bilingual children’s vocabulary and narrative ability and, child’s internal and external factors and vocabulary abilities correlate with those factors.
There are three research questions for this study. Firstly, do social context factors show differences between groups which Korea-English bilingual children who live in Korea and Korean-English bilingual children who live in US? Secondly, do language abilities of each task on each language show differences between groups? Lastly, is there correlation in receptive vocabulary ability and social context factors between groups?
The results of the study are as followed.
Firstly, there was significant difference between two groups on child’s social efficacy. The US group had significantly lower social efficacy. But, there was no significant difference in L1 input. Both groups receive a similar amount of L1 input at home.
Secondly, there was significant difference between two groups on the Korean receptive vocabulary ability. The US group showed significantly lower Korean receptive vocabulary ability than the Korea group. There was no significant difference on the narrative episode ability for both languages. But, there were significant differences on the narrative morphosyntactic abilities for Korean between two groups. The US group performed significantly lower percentage of correct grammar c-unit in Korean than the Korea group. Also, the US group produced significantly lower percentage of complex c-unit in Korean than the Korea group.
Lastly, In the US group, Korean vocabulary correlated only with the amount of L1 input. However, the Korea group did not have correlation between tasks. According to this result, it can be said that L1 minority community bilinguals can be affected L1 ability.
In sum, the results show that different social context influence L1. In Korea, both languages have equal social status so that Korean-English bilinguals have similar abilities and made higher scores than the US group on two languages. On the other hand, In the US, Korean is a minority language. Even though US group was given similar amount of L1 input as the Korean group, their L1 was affected by the social context factor. The results demonstrate that social context is a strong factor that can be considered for understanding language ability of bilinguals.
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