Week 5: Kang's study, A Step from Heaven

I was excited to read Dr. Kang’s study because I have been in three of her TESOL classes and she was the first teacher I had in any TESOL class. Even though I have had Dr. Kang in all of these classes I have never read her published work and I was very curious to examine her work. When I read the title of her study Korean-Immigrant Parents’ Support of Their American-Born Children’s Development and Maintenance of the Home Language I got excited all over again because being an Early Childhood pre-service teacher I always find myself interested in the child, even in class I picture classroom scenarios in an early childhood setting. So needless to say I was looking forward to reading Dr. Kang’s study and I was happy this was assigned to us and that Dr. Kang is going to come into class to discuss it with us. How many articles have we read for countless classes where we never get to ask follow up questions to the author? Today we will get to talk about the article with the author and discuss her work.

Pairing Dr. Kang’s study with A Step from Heaven took what Dr. Kang wrote about and made it real. I pictured Young Ju as a child in these very real households. Last week we read about immigrant narratives and the fear that many have about the loss of identity in a new country and both Kang’s study and A Step from Heaven address this concern. It was interesting to me that Kang suggests that families reflect their language use and teaching strategies in order for their children to obtain and maintain their home language which can be a challenge. This is a major challenge for second language learners because they are living in America and feel like that is a part of their identity now but they still want to hold on to the other side of their identity. It can be confusing for children as we saw in the case of Young Ju. Young Ju did not want to seem “weird” or “different” around her American friends and her parents fear she is losing her Korean heritage. At the same time Young Ju and her mother have many other concerns such as her father’s alcoholism and poverty. I like how the book made it seem real, all of the situations and immigration hardships were true with what we have been studying in class. The book and study went hand in hand and I am looking forward to discussing it with Dr. Kang!

Questions for Dr. Kang

How can immigrant parents successfully advocate a new language and culture while still cultivating their first language and culture?  Is it important for both parents to speak both languages to the child or like in Mrs. Moon’s case is it enough to have just 1 parent speak the second language?