MIAMI UNIVERSITY The Graduate School
Certificate for Approving the Dissertation
We hereby approve the Dissertation
of
Seyma Inan
Candidate for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
______
Yvette R. Harris, Director
______
Christopher Wolfe, Reader
______
Lily Halsted, Reader
______
Darrel Davis, Graduate School Representative
ABSTRACT
INFLUENCE OF TURKISH IMMIGRANT PARENT ACCULTURATION STRATEGIES AND LANGUAGE ATTITUDES ON CHILDREN’S BILINGUAL DEVELOPMENT: AN EMBEDDED MIXED METHODS STUDY
by
Seyma Inan
A rapid migration of people to the US is changing the linguistic and cultural landscape of society. In turn, linguistic and cultural diversity have grown as the number of immigrants increases in the US. To date, only a few studies provide an in-depth look at children’s bilingual development with the focus on aspects of multilingual households and bicultural environments in the US (Harris & Almutairi, 2016; Kalia, 2007). One way to understand the influence of acculturation and language attitudes on children's bilingual development is to examine immigrant families. There seems to be little well-documented research that has been done on the influence of the association between acculturation and attitudes toward preserving heritage culture and language among Turkish immigrant parents in the US (Nisanci, 2019). The current study explored the relationship between parental demographic variables (e.g., parents' educational level, child's age) and children's heritage language proficiency (Becker, 2013) using both Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory and Berry’s Acculturation Model. Fifty-two (52) Turkish parents age (M = 38.15, SD = 4.84) and their children age from 5 to 11 years (M = 8.23, SD = 2.18) living in various states (e.g., Ohio, Connecticut) participated in this study. The parents were administered a package of questionnaires and children’s Turkish productivity samples were elicited for proficiency evaluation via a Turkish expressive vocabulary test (TIFALDI). The findings illustrate that parental language attitudes were negatively correlated with marginalization, assimilation, and integration attitudes but positively correlated with separation attitudes. Notable factors that influenced children’s heritage language proficiency were also identified. Children’s age was negatively associated with heritage language proficiency. Conversely, actively speaking Turkish with siblings at home, was positively correlated to children’s Turkish proficiency. However, the amount of reading and watching movies in Turkish did not predict children’s Turkish proficiency. The current research suggests that exposure to the majority language decreases heritage language proficiency. In turn, older children of immigrants lack the motivation to maintain the heritage language. Although immigrant parents seem to be the primary heritage language educators providing a supportive language home environment, their efforts may be hindered by the lack of heritage language exposure in other environments. Therefore, the current study suggests that school curriculum designers, teachers, and researchers should be involved in creating effective and supportive environments for immigrant families that promote the importance of preservation of heritage culture and language as part of bilingual education (Bayram & Wright, 2016).
INFLUENCE OF TURKISH IMMIGRANT PARENTS ACCULTURATION STRATEGIES AND LANGUAGE ATTITUDES ON CHILDREN’S BILINGUAL DEVELOPMENT PROCESS: AN EMBEDDED MIXED METHODS STUDY
A DISSERTATION
Presented to the Faculty of
Miami University in partial
fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
The Department of Psychology
by
Seyma Inan
The Graduate School Miami University Oxford, Ohio
2021
Dissertation Director: Yvette R. Harris
©
Seyma Inan
2021
TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION ...... 1 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM ...... 1 THEORETICAL MODELS ON IMMIGRATION EXPERIENCE: SOCIO-CULTURAL THEORY AND ACCULTURATION THEORY ...... 2 ACCULTURATION EXPERIENCES AMONG IMMIGRANT FAMILIES ...... 3 DUAL-LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS: BILINGUALISM, HERITAGE LANGUAGE, AND PARENTAL LANGUAGE ATTITUDES ...... 4 Bilingualism ...... 5 Heritage Language as Part of Bilingualism ...... 5 Benefits and Drawbacks of Dual-Language Maintenance ...... 7 Language Attitudes of Parents: Raising Children in Bilingual Settings ...... 8 HISTORY OF BILINGUALISM IN THE U.S...... 9 The History of Turkish Migration to the U.S...... 10 PARENTING AND CULTURE...... 11 Parenting in Turkish Culture ...... 11 RATIONALE AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY ...... 12 Limitations of the Literature ...... 13 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY...... 13 RESEARCH QUESTIONS ...... 14 The Quantitative Research Questions: ...... 14 The Qualitative Research Question: ...... 15 CHAPTER TWO (METHOD) ...... 16 QUANTITATIVE PHASE ...... 16 Research Design ...... 16 Description of Participants ...... 16 PARENTS AND CHILDREN MEASURES...... 17 General Family Demographics Questionnaire ...... 17 The Parents of Bilingual Children Questionnaire (PaBiQ) ...... 17 Acculturation Attitudes Questionnaire ...... 17 Language Attitudes Questionnaire ...... 18 Children Outcomes: Language Skills, TIFALDI ...... 18 TRANSLATION PROCESS ...... 19 RESEARCH PROCEDURES ...... 19 STATISTICAL DATA ANALYSIS ...... 20 QUALITATIVE PHASE ...... 20 Interview with Parents ...... 20 Research Procedures ...... 21 Sample Size and Rationale ...... 21 Transcribing, Translating, and Coding the Interviews ...... 21 Interview Data Analysis ...... 22 CHAPTER 3 (RESULTS) ...... 24
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QUANTITATIVE FINDINGS ...... 24 3.1. Descriptive Statistics of the Study ...... 24 3.2. Parental language attitudes and acculturation attitudes (assimilation, separation, marginalization, and integration) ...... 24 3.3. Association between parental language attitudes and acculturation attitudes (assimilation, separation, marginalization, and integration) with children’s heritage language proficiency ...... 24 3.4 Association between parental demographic variables and length of living in the U.S. with children’s heritage language proficiency ...... 24 3.5 The types of acculturation attitudes (assimilation, marginalization, separation, or integration) Turkish speaking parents engage in the most in the U.S...... 25 3.6 Association between language environment, child’s expressive him/herself in Turkish orally (i.e., pronunciation, finding the right word, etc.) with children’s heritage language proficiency...... 25 QUALITATIVE FINDINGS ...... 26 Introducing the Participants: Parents Demographics and Narrative Styles ...... 26 1) Benefits and drawbacks of raising bilingual children ...... 26 B) Barriers to raising bilingual children ...... 29 C) Intertwining of language and cultural relationships ...... 32 2) PARENTAL ATTITUDES TOWARD MAINTAINING CHILDREN’S HERITAGE LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENTAL PROCESS ...... 35 Adjustments of parents to diminishing Heritage Language (i.e., attempting to refuse to speak Turkish with parents)...... 35 3) PARENTAL STRATEGIES TO MAINTAIN HL AMONG CHILDREN ...... 40 Parents’ efforts to enhance children’s HL development ...... 40 Language practices and resources ...... 42 4) PARENTS ACCULTURATION EXPERIENCES ...... 43 Adaptation to the U.S. (i.e., awareness of raising a bilingual child as immigrant parents) 43 Culture versus religion (i.e., experiencing Turkish culture in their perspectives) ...... 47 Social aspects of acculturation experiences (i.e., discrimination, unfamiliarity, embarrassment)...... 49 CHAPTER FOUR: DISCUSSION ...... 52 QUANTITATIVE FINDINGS ...... 52 Parental language attitudes, acculturation experiences, and children’s heritage language development ...... 52 Factors that Impact Heritage Language Development Process Children...... 54 QUALITATIVE FINDINGS ...... 56 Perception of Dual-Language Experience of Turkish Families on the Research Questions 57 EXPERIENCING THE ACCULTURATION PROCESS AS TURKISH-SPEAKING PARENTS IN THE U.S... 58 CONCLUSION...... 60 STRENGTHS AND LIMITATIONS ...... 62 IMPLICATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH ...... 63 REFERENCES...... 65
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LIST OF TABLES TABLE 1. TIMELINE FOR THE STUDY ...... 77 TABLE 2. A SAMPLE FROM AN INTERVIEW WITH A PARENT ...... 77 TABLE 3 – PARENT DEMOGRAPHICS FOR QUALITATIVE STUDY PARTICIPANTS (N = 20) ...... 78 TABLE 4. INTERVIEW QUESTIONS ...... 79 TABLE 5. A SAMPLE FROM A BACK-UP TRANSLATION PROCESS FOR ONE INTERVIEW FROM TURKISH TO ENGLISH ...... 79 TABLE 6. PARTICIPANT CHARACTERISTICS (N = 52) ...... 81 TABLE 7. BIVARIATE CORRELATIONS BETWEEN RELEVANT VARIABLES (N = 52) ...... 81 TABLE 8 – MULTIPLE REGRESSION ANALYSIS SUMMARY FOR FACTORS PREDICTING CHILDREN’S HERITAGE LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY ...... 81 TABLE 9 - MEANS, STANDARD DEVIATIONS, AND INTERCORRELATIONS FOR CHILDREN’S HERITAGE LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY AND PREDICTOR VARIABLES (N = 52) ...... 82 TABLE 10 – MULTIPLE REGRESSION ANALYSIS SUMMARY FOR FACTORS PREDICTING CHILDREN’S HERITAGE LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY (N = 52)...... 82 TABLE 11 - MEANS, STANDARD DEVIATIONS, AND INTERCORRELATIONS FOR CHILDREN’S HERITAGE LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY AND PREDICTOR VARIABLES (N = 52) ...... 83 TABLE 12 – MEAN SCORES ON FOUR ACCULTURATION ATTITUDES (ASSIMILATION, MARGINALIZATION, SEPARATION, AND INTEGRATION) (N = 52) ...... 83 TABLE 13 – MULTIPLE REGRESSION SUMMARY FOR FACTORS PREDICTING CHILDREN’S HERITAGE LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY (N = 52) ...... 84 TABLE 14 - MEANS, STANDARD DEVIATIONS, AND INTERCORRELATIONS FOR CHILDREN’S HERITAGE LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY AND PREDICTOR VARIABLES (N = 52) ...... 84
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LIST OF FIGURES
FIGURE (1). FACTORS THAT IMPACT RAISING BILINGUAL CHILDREN AS A TURKISH-SPEAKING IMMIGRANT PARENT ...... 85 FIGURE (2). PARENTAL ATTITUDES AND PRESERVING HERITAGE LANGUAGE AND CULTURE ...... 86 FIGURE (3). PARENTAL EFFORTS AND LANGUAGE ACTIVITIES IN TURKISH ...... 86 FIGURE (4). MULTICULTURAL EXPERIENCES, SOCIAL PRESSURE, PARENTING ...... 87 FIGURE 5. PARENTAL ATTITUDES AND STRATEGIES TOWARD MAINTAINING HERITAGE LANGUAGE ...... 88 FIGURE 6. EXPERIENCING ACCULTURATION PROCESS AS IMMIGRANT PARENTS ...... 88
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DEDICATION
I am dedicating my dissertation to my beloved families, for their simultaneous support, prayers, contributions, and bearing with me throughout the journey of graduate school.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My praises and gratitude go to the Almighty God. Without his mercy and compassion, my participation in this doctoral program at Miami University would have been impossible and futile. I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my dear advisor deeply, Dr. Yvette R. Harris, who patiently read, analyzed and provided crucial support and encouragement to accomplish this dissertation. I thank my advisor, Dr. Harris, who has become like a mother to me and always took care of every need I have had during my life in Miami. She was definitely an incredible female role model who has given inspirable and valuable ideas and thoughts that make my studies unique and fruitful so that I was able to finish my doctoral journey with much confidence. To committee members, Drs. Wolfe, Halsted, and David, who have given me superb scientific guidance, many insightful suggestions, and demonstrated a sincere interest in my work. I am fortunate to have such a group of intelligent scientists, who are also student advocates, on my committee. Each of them contributed significant insights and thoughtful feedback to my doctoral studies that helped me grow as a social scientist. I would like to acknowledge my friends, Asuman Inan, Meryem Osmanlioglu, Humeyra Turner, and Ali Mermer, for their guidance and emotional support while working on my doctoral dissertation. Special thanks go to George Woodbury for his extreme contributions and assistance to my statistical work; Esra Olgun for her generous support to find my participants for the study. I would like to thank my little 12-year-old babysitter, Maryam Ozdemir, who has been incredible helpers in taking care of my two-year-old daughter while I was writing up my dissertation. I would like to send my gratitude to Melike NurSultan Akkaya, Edibe Uner, and Nurefsan Aydin for being inconceivable resources for my interview transcriptions, coding, and translations, which were extremely required serious work to finish. I would like to express the deepest gratitude to my family. Mom, Dad, Ahmet, and Ali, you have all provided support, encouragement, and interest in my dissertation thesis work. Finally, I would like to thank my husband, Mehmet Emin. You have been continually supportive of my graduate education. Thank you for all the little things you had done, like bringing me dinner when I worked late nights. You are always patient with me when I am frustrated, you celebrate with me even when the littlest things go right, and you are there whenever I need you just to listen. Last but not least, I also would like to thank my daughter, Erva, for being the best emotional supporter by looking at myself with a big smile and cute face whenever I felt burnout during my dissertation process. You have inspired me to understand the value of my research as a bilingual child.
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CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION Statement of Problem Immigration has a tremendous impact on individuals' personal and social lives, especially on families (Gebrekidan, 2014). An unprecedented and rapid migration of people to the U.S. has changed the linguistic and cultural landscape of society. Hence, language and cultural diversity have grown as the number of immigrants increases in the U.S. According to the American Community Survey (ACS), the estimated number of foreign-born individuals living in the U.S. is 40 million (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010). To date, the native language of at least one in five children/adolescents in U.S. households is something other than English (Hoff, 2018). It is predicted that by the year of 2040, one in every three children in the U.S. will speak English and at least one other language (Suárez-Orozco, Suárez-Orozco, & Todorova, 2009). These early bilinguals are called, heritage language speakers, and they are known as early bilinguals who acquire a heritage language in a bilingual setting where a majority language is spoken by the community (Montrul, 2015). Thus, early bilingualism has become a natural phenomenon among immigrant families and is gradually becoming a norm in U.S. society. Immigrant parents tend to face challenges when raising children in the context of new cultural and linguistic environments (Barret, Kuperminc & Lewis, 2013; Gebrekidan, 2014; Hoff, 2018; Nisanci, 2016). Their children are exposed to the majority country's culture and language while simultaneously being exposed to families' heritage culture and language (Hoff, 2018). Accordingly, these parents develop a need to adjust their parenting attitudes to raise their children in such a diverse environment (Su & Hynie, 2011). They change and adapt to the host society's values and regulations to raise their children (Gebrekidan, 2014). It is vital to note that a growing body of literature on acculturation within a family context highlights the diversity in acculturation experiences within and across ethnic groups (e.g., Weaver & Kim, 2008; Choi, He, & Harachi, 2008; Filmore, 2000). These works of literature emphasize the connection between acculturation problems and the quality of parent-child relationships (Tardif-Williams & Fisher, 2009). Acculturation is defined as the changes in values and practices that occur as the result of interacting with two or more cultural groups (Ayçiçeği-Dinn, & Caldwell-Harris, 2011; Schofield, Parke, Kim, & Coltrane, 2008). It is a changing process for newcomers in beliefs, attitudes, and language use due to interacting with at least two different cultures. Thereby, children of immigrant parents are also inevitably affected by the life-changing event of immigration (Berry & Vedder, 2016). In terms of diversity, most of the scholarly work focusing on the immigrant experiences of the U.S. immigrants typically examines the Latino and Asian American populations (i.e., Place & Hoff, 2013; Kalia, Daneri & Wilbourn, 2017; Su & Hynie, 2011). Although exploring the experience of these groups contributes attributed to the understanding of overall immigrant encounters in the U.S. (Isik-Ercan, 2014), introducing different ethnic minority groups to the literature will help researchers uncover the unique challenges of each immigrant group. Furthermore, immigration experiences can be good examples for connection because those experiences influence parenting practices (Gebrekidan, 2014; Berry & Vedder, 2016). Parenting has a substantial influence on children's well-being (Harris & Almutairi, 2016; Isik- Ercan, 2014). Facing mainstream cultural norms and resulting cultural conflicts may elevate the stress arising from the acculturation attitudes, impacting parenting quality (Yu, Cheach, & Calvin, 2016; Berry & Vedder, 2016). These unique challenges may prompt parents to fear "losing their children" to American society (Nisanci, 2019; Stodolska, 2008). Those fears may lead parents to raise several considerations (Ashbourne, Baobaid, & Azizova, 2012), such as
1 preserving heritage culture and language to keep healthy relationships with their children in a new society. Diversity exists within immigrant populations (e.g., Latino, Asian, Arab Americans in the U.S.), and each community brings its own culture and language to the host country (Miller, 2016). Thus, each immigrant parent may use different strategies to become active advocates of their children’s heritage language development (Lee & Gupta, 2020) and their behaviors may carry different meanings in different cultures. Focusing on the experiences of smaller minority family groups, such as Turkish groups, can increase the knowledge of researchers and allow them to coordinate intervention programs that mitigate challenges and conflicts in the multilinguistic and multicultural families. Theoretical Models on Immigration Experience: Socio-Cultural Theory and Acculturation Theory The present study draws on Vygotskian socio-cultural theory (1978) and Berry's acculturation theory (1997) to conceptualize Turkish immigrant families' experiences in U.S. More specifically, Turkish parents' unique experiences while rearing children within different cultures, ideas, and languages will be scrutinized in a framework of socio-cultural and acculturation theory. Vygotsky's sociocultural theory is known as one of the most influential cognitive development theories due to viewing human development as a social and dynamic process within a cultural and historical framework (Kermani & Brenner, 2002). Practically speaking, Vygotsky's theory focuses on developmental processes that take place through interactive participation in cultural and linguistic settings, including family life and institutional concepts such as community-related social activities and schools (Ohta, 2017; Lantolf, Thorne, & Poehner, 2015). For instance, words are shaped within cultural frameworks and concepts. The production of language is strongly linked to the accumulation of cultural practices (Rogoff, 2003). Especially since Vygotsky's theory relates linguistic development within socio-cultural factors, the language developmental process for children of immigrants follows slightly different steps than their counterparts. Vygotsky highlighted that social interaction plays a crucial role in the development of a child's cognition (i.e., language) (Daneshfar & Moharami, 2018). Through interaction, language begins developing in a cultural context. Moreover, Vygotsky proposed that individuals have the capacity to create physical and symbolic tools to connect with their surroundings. Physical tools are outwardly (social interaction) directed, and symbolic tools are inwardly (thinking) or cognitively required. Regularly interacting with multicultural environments by using multiple languages may expand the cultural contexts of those individuals who use different languages for communication purposes. Vygotsky's theory also emphasizes individual differences in a child’s ability to acquire knowledge. He stressed that children are born with essential mental capacities such as memory that are gradually reshaped within cultural contexts. For example, each culture prepares intellectual development tools, such as thinking that children construct language foundation from interactive communication with their parents and others in society. This process is known as "higher mental functions" (Levykh, 2008). According to Vygotsky (1978), children are active learners who internalize the language development process within specific cultural contexts and socio-cultural settings. While bilingual children of immigrants preserve their heritage language, they lack the heritage cultural context, impacting their heritage language development skills. Sometimes, their majority language
2 deteriorates due to acquiring two languages at the same time. Thereby, both heritage and majority cultures transmit various strategies that guide children on thinking, values, and beliefs that impact their cognitive-developmental process (Salkind, 2004). Berry's acculturation theory (1997) has been developed and used within the field of psychology. His theory has been very influential in acculturation research. The type of question such as "What happens to an individual's well-being who is born and raised in one culture and then s/he attempts to live in a new culture?" leads to a growing amount of research on the adaptation process of immigrant families and their children (Berry & Vedder, 2016; Berry, 2003). The concept of acculturation refers to the experiences of cultural changes resulting from migrating to a new culture. The most cited and classical definitions of acculturation are as follows: 1) "The phenomena which result when groups of individuals from different cultures come into the first-hand contact with subsequent changes in the original culture patterns of either or both groups." (Redfield, Linton, & Herkovits, 1936, p.149). 2) "Dual process of cultural and psychological change occurs due to contact between two or more cultural groups and their members. At the group level, it involves changes in social structures, institutions, and cultural practices. At the individual level, it encompasses changes in a person's behavioral repertoire." (Berry, 2006, p. 13). The fourfold paradigm of acculturation theory classifies four acculturation strategies as a response to new "stress-inducing" (Berry, 1997; 2003): 1) assimilation, not wishing to maintain cultural identity or seek daily interactions with other cultures, 2) separation/segregation, to wishing to avoid interacting with others and only holding one's own culture, 3) integration, maintaining both one's own culture and interacting in the larger society, and 4) marginalization, little interest in persevering ethnic culture and in having relations with mainstream cultures (Berry, 1997). Berry's four acculturation strategies have been used to examine immigrant populations and the integration strategy was found as the most effective and successful adaption among various acculturating groups (Tardif-Williams & Fisher, 2009; Berry, 2003). However, potential variations should be considered instead of focusing on the integration strategy, over assimilation, separation, and marginalization. For example, immigrants may prefer to utilize different acculturation strategies to find the most fitting one when settling in host countries. Also, their separation attitudes can be the result of the maintenance of their heritage culture and language. Thus, Berry's acculturation theory (1997) received several criticisms, such as from Bhatia and Ram (2001). Bhatia and Ram (2001) argue that immigrant individuals tend to have different acculturation attitudes based on where they come from. If immigrants come from Europe to the U.S., their strategy will be different than people coming from Africa to the U.S. They also criticized Berry's acculturation theory for suggesting that integration attitudes are seemingly the best-fitting attitudes for immigrants. They stated that other socio-political factors play a crucial role during the newcomers' acculturation process. Furthermore, the growing body of studies on acculturation focuses on cultural changes in parental practices and parent-child relations (Tardif-Williams &Fisher, 2009). Various studies on immigrant families have found a link between parents' language attitudes and children's language proficiency (Becker, 2013; Gathercole & Thomas, 2009; Suarez-Orozco et al., 2008).
Acculturation Experiences among Immigrant Families When immigrant parents migrate from their own cultures to the U.S., they endure an acculturation process while interacting with two or more cultural groups (Schofield, Parke, Kim, & Coltrane, 2008). This process is one of the complex processes that may preserve heritage
3 culture and language for immigrant families (Gebrekidan, 2014). The acculturation model proposed by Berry (1997) was formulated with first-generation immigrants and second- generation immigrants. First-generation immigrants tend to hold their heritage culture and language and pass them on to their children. However, second-generation immigrants are continuously exposed to North American culture and language, which results in adapting to the mainstream culture and language. Previous research (Nesteruk, 2010) found that diverse cultural groups showed various acculturation attitudes regarding their reasons to migrate to the U.S. For instance, they may choose to move to the U.S. for educational, economic, or political reasons (Atmaca-Süslü, 2014). These groups can be categorized as labor migrants, skilled professionals, or undocumented/documented refugees (Portes &Rumbaut, 2006). Nesteruk (2010) also proposes that the homogeneity of immigrant families (e.g., educational level, legal status, reasons for migration, length of being in the country, age of arrival to the state) makes a considerable difference to the host country. Furthermore, the diversity between immigrant families affects the different acculturation attitudes, which influences parental language attitudes, whether positively or negatively. Therefore, it may make the acculturation process stressful for parents to establish a new lifestyle in the host country for their children (Tardif-Williams & Fisher, 2009). Previous research indicates that parental language attitudes and acculturation attitudes differ from ethnic groups to racial groups (Pong, Hao, & Gardner, 2005). Thus, specifying the ethnic groups may uncover various unique challenges and conflicts different ethnic groups (e.g., Turkish) confront in the U.S. Moreover, cultural differences during the immigration process impact parenting (Gebrekidan, 2014). Some parents feel the need for extensive changes and adaptation of their parenting strategies under current cultural climates (Gebrekidan, 2014). Children of immigrant parents develop cognitive (i.e., language) and social (integrating multicultural environment) skills under adjusted parenting guidance, which is consistent with Vygotsky's sociocultural theory (Vygotsky, 1978). His theory demonstrates that social and home settings shape parenting and individual development between parents and their children. Expanding upon Vygotsky's theory (1978), it might be the case that problems between parents and their children may occur when children begin to acculturate to the mainstream cultural environment more than their parents (i.e., heritage culture and language). Dual-Language Development Process: Bilingualism, Heritage Language, and Parental Language Attitudes Acculturation researchers assert that language follows a similar process of cultural change (Tardif & Geva, 2006). In the U.S., the most common bilingual environments can be seen among immigrant family households, specifically children of immigrants (Hoff, 2018; Halsted, 2013). The development of language skills in the bilingual immigrant may be different from their non-immigrant monolingual counterparts in language skills (Hoff, 2018; 2013). During early language development, they may have to deal with multicultural and multilinguistic atmospheres in their daily routines. As Vygotsky's sociocultural theory (1978) states, children develop language proficiency within a cultural context while receiving their parents' facilitation in everyday interactions. Children of immigrants represent the fastest and the largest growing group of children in the U.S. (Toppelberg & Collin, 2010). Thereby, statistically speaking, one out of every five children come from immigrant families in the U.S. (Migration Policy Institute, 2012). It is
4 naturally expected to see that approximately 20% of children in the U.S. are exposed to at least one additional language other than English at home (Halsted, 2013; Kohnert; Shin, H. B. & Kominski, 2010; Tienda & Haskin, 2011). Bilingualism "Bilingualism is a matter of both degree and definition," as Halsted (2015, p.38) states. According to Bialystok (2012), bilingualism is a life-long experience that each bilingual individual has based on their situation. This definition covers the fact that most bilinguals are from immigrant groups in the U.S., and they bring their heritage language to the host country. Heritage language speakers are known as early bilinguals who acquire a heritage language in a bilingual setting where a majority language is spoken by the community (Montrul, 2015). Thus, providing explicit definitions of what heritage language is and what bilingualism means in this context will clarify any misconceptions in this complex topic. There is no clear definition of bilingualism (Lust, Flynn, Park, Kang, Yang, & Kim, 2016). A broad definition of bilingualism can be knowledge of more than one language (Trask, 2007), although language proficiency can vary. Since linguistic knowledge consists of multidimensional aspects at the sociolinguistic (social factors) and psycholinguistic (processing and use) levels (Montrul, 2015), various kinds of bilinguals (dominant versus balanced, early versus late, simultaneous versus sequential) have been identified in some research (e.g., Flege, MacKay, & Piske, 2002; Peal & Lambert, 1962). Since children of immigrants are exposed to their parents' heritage language and the majority language of the host country, they constitute a substantial number of children who are considered to be bilingual in the U.S. (Toppelberg & Collin, 2010). In the context of the current study, bilingualism is referred to as multi/bilingual children of immigrant families who have been exposed to "more than one language" (Lust et al., 2016, p.154). Furthermore, bilingual researchers (Baker, 1997; Bialystok & Hakuta 1994) agree that bilinguals can be either simultaneous or sequential. Simultaneous bilinguals are exposed to both languages frequently since birth. Sequential bilinguals are taught their parents' heritage language first in the household and then adopt the majority language during later childhood or adolescence (Halsted, 2015). Although the exact age period of sequential bilingualism is still debatable (e.g., Kalia, Wilbourn, & Ghio, 2014), the Critical Period Hypothesis can explain roughly the native- like proficiency level of both languages (Lenneberg, 1967; Penfield & Roberts, 1959). The Critical Period Hypothesis states that there is a period that individuals reach native competence while acquiring a language, and an optimum period for language acquisition is from early childhood to adolescence (Abello-Contesse, 2009). Hakuta, Bialystok, & Wiley (2003) evaluate the Critical Period hypothesis and state that this hypothesis was initially proposed by Penfield and Roberts (1959) using the neurolinguistic approach. It was followed by Lenneberg (1967), who claimed that extending to second-language acquisition could be possible through maturational aspects of the brain. Typical findings of bilingual research on first and second language acquisition (Johnson & Newport, 1989; 1991) show that the proficiency scores tend to decline as the age of initial exposure increases to the second language. In other words, before puberty (defined as 15 years old), individuals can reach native-like proficiency in their second language. Heritage Language as Part of Bilingualism A heritage language is defined as a language brought from the home country to the new country and is used in the household. Speakers of heritage languages present a particular case of bilingualism because heritage languages are acquired by children "due to a close connection to
5 family members (Melo-Pfeifer, 2015, p.27). Within the discipline of bilingualism, a heritage language is a community language brought by groups of immigrants who migrate to a host country within multilingual settings is considered as a heritage language (Bayram & Wright, 2016). Hornberger and Wang (2008) define heritage language as, "In the U.S. context, heritage language learners are individuals who have familial or ancestral ties to the particular language that is not English (p. 27)." The words 'Community, ancestral, ethnic, immigrant, minority, home, and non-official” (Duff, 2008, p.71; Fairclough & Belpoliti, 2016, p.186) are used to describe heritage language. Examples of heritage languages in the U.S. can be immigrant groups' home languages spoken in the U.S., such as Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, and Hindi. Besides, various definitions and characterizations of heritage language exist in literature; for instance, heritage language speakers are known as bilinguals whose mother tongue is a minority language in a majority language context (Bayram & Wright, 2016). Immigrant parents wish to maintain their heritage language within their new societal environment in the U.S. (Bayram & Wright, 2016). Some immigrant families prefer to adapt to the majority language within their households for several reasons, such as language policies under social pressures. This idea was best illustrated by Ghimenton (2015, p.117), who said, "If the members of a society or public institutions view a language negatively, it is unlikely that parents of this community would want to transmit this particular language to their children.” In addition, children's academic achievement in schools and parents' educational levels can also contribute to parents' preference to adapt to the majority language in home settings (Nesteruk, 2010). Chinese parents in Montreal, Canada show positive attitudes toward heritage language maintenance by providing an environment for their children to improve their language proficiency in the heritage language (Curdt-Christianse, 2009). On the other hand, some ethnic groups (i.e., Maltese immigrants in Melbourne) tend to favor assimilation to the majority language due to economic benefits (Borland, 2006). Interestingly, within the same ethnic group or family, parents may show different preferences/attitudes to the development of heritage language (Canagarajah, 2008). These preferences/attitudes depend on environmental factors, such as discouraging bilingualism or not welcoming immigrants (Fitzgerald, 1993). Therefore, parents' preferences/attitudes toward heritage language maintenance are dynamic, not static. Numerous research fields can examine the dynamic experiences of language maintenance experiences. Consequently, it is imperative to investigate language attitudes among diverse groups in the U.S. Children of immigrant parents are exposed to at least two languages from birth (Hoff, 2018). This exposure may delay their second language acquisition. Therefore, once bilingual children of immigrant parents start attending school, they lag behind their monolingual children due to insufficient exposure to the second language (Hoff & Core, 2013). Each language exposure plays a crucial role in determining proficiency in both languages (Hoff, 2018). However, bilingual children do not always lag behind monolingual children in grammar and phonology, only in vocabulary because bilingual children store two different words for one individual object (Oller, Pearson, & Cobo, 2007). They tend to have more vital receptive skills than expressive skills in one of their languages (Ribot & Hoff, 2014) due to their diminished exposure to each language (Hoff, 2018). Thus, these research studies provide evidence that language growth is dependent upon the quantity of language input. Bilingual children receive less input in each language because the input is divided into two languages; their dual language development is slower than their monolingual counterparts. There is strong evidence that it is
6 normal for dual-language learners to lag behind monolingual children due to acquiring two languages simultaneously (Hoff, 2018). If vocabulary capacity in both languages is calculated totally, the vocabulary capacity is equal to or greater than monolingual children's vocabulary capacity in their language (Barac & Bialystok, 2012). Benefits and Drawbacks of Dual-Language Maintenance The level of children's proficiency in their heritage language impacts parent-child relationships (Oh & Fuligni, 2010). Immigrant families have challenges maintaining their heritage language because their children see it as a low prestige language, which is spoken by fewer individuals in the host country. In contrast, English is a highly prestigious language in science, job marketing, and technology. Since children are aware of English's prestige level, they question the reason for striving to learn the heritage language (Halsted, 2015). In other words, children of immigrant families may not be motivated to work on their heritage language. The motivation usually comes from the awareness of dual language maintenance benefits. However, some individuals find the motivation for maintaining heritage language. They are aware of the possible advantages of preserving heritage language to keep their cultural identity alive. One of the benefits of preserving heritage language is that it opens many doors in the job market, social networking, community relations, and heritage descent bonding (e.g., De Houwer, 2009). In the last three decades, bilingual researchers have well-documented clear advantages of bilingualism: improved executive functioning at an early age, better recognition memory among older bilinguals, delay of natural decline of cognitive function as a result of aging, and delay of Alzheimer's disease (Bialystok, 2010, Bialystok et al.,2014; Barac & Bialystok, 2012; Barac et al., 2014; Kroll & Bialystok, 2013; Kroll, Dussias). Likewise, bilingualism's advantages are associated with having higher self-esteem, abstract thinking skills, and academic success (Han, 2012). Bialystok (2017) asserts that experience has a remarkable power to modify cognitive and brain structures. Active engagement activities, such as language use, can be part of the impact. Thus, language use also modifies brain and cognitive development in humans, especially for children. Being aware of the advantages of bilingualism is not enough to preserve heritage language due to the host country's attitude toward heritage language. Bialystok (2018) states that context plays a crucial role in maintaining heritage language in which education takes place. For instance, attitudes toward bilingualism in the U.S. educational system are different from those in European countries. Perhaps, the historical background of bilingualism in both countries plays a crucial role in understanding language attitudes differences between the countries (Fitzgerals, 1993). As Baker (2011) points out, studies conducted with immigrant bilingual individuals in one context may have little relevance in other contexts. Hence, the current research focused on contexts that address immigrants' language experiences in bilingual settings, particularly in the U.S. (Bialystok, 2018). Thus, attitudes in a host country also contributes to preserving heritage language. A host country's attitude toward the importance of preserving heritage language serves as integrative external support to an immigrant family. In addition, the family internally supports their heritage language a primary socialization unit (Park, 2013; De Houwer, 2009; Fitzgerals, 1993). Children of immigrant parents usually do not receive formal education in their heritage language; thus, it may become a double burden on children to discuss complex issues with their parents as they grow (Birman & Poff, 2011). Through heritage language, children of immigrants obtain a primary tool of communication with family members. When conflicts or problems occur in schools, children of immigrants will need more guidance from their parents. Lack of or limited
7 communication may lower the quality of parent-child relationships among immigrants' children, leading to lower self-esteem and isolation. They may end up living two different cultural worlds in the same household; consequently, children of immigrants may not have a balanced lifestyle between households and school environments (Birman & Poff, 2011). Compared to their children, most immigrant parents are inevitably more acculturated to their heritage culture and language. However, acculturation theory (Berry, 1997) suggests the integration strategy positively impacts immigrant parents and their children while engaging in two different cultural and linguistic environments. Research on immigrant parent-child relations (Smokowski, Rose, & Bacallao, 2008) has found that parents who communicate in their heritage language have lower family conflicts and higher adaptation in the host country. The factors that impact the developmental process of bilingual children with immigrant backgrounds vary. Studies that have done substantial work on immigrant parents and their efforts to maintain their heritage language and culture have found that most immigrant parents apply strategies to cultivate their children's dual language development. However, some factors, such as parental age, household income, parental education, child's age, and length of living in the U.S., play crucial roles in maintaining children's dual language proficiency, specifically their heritage language. The amount of effort parents dedicates to preserving heritage language depends on several factors, such as how many people in the world actively use a particular language. Since English has many speakers globally, it is considered a prestigious language (Halsted, 2013; Leeman & Serafini, 2016). On the other hand, heritage languages are usually spoken by a small number of people in the community. The perception that their heritage language is non- prestigious may demotivate immigrant children from maintaining it (Halsted, 2013). Consequently, the lack of the social contexts and social values affects how children of immigrants can attach emotionally to their spoken language. Because various social aspects and contexts impact language development (Vygotsky, 1978), it is crucial to understand the dynamics of language under the lens of sociolinguistic environmental factors (Nagy, 2017). For example, each language has a unique mechanism that follows the social process. Whenever people use a heritage language, they reconnect with situations, memories, history of past interactions, and history of individual attitudes towards events or certain people. These experiences are lost by simply translating into another language (Wei, 2008, p. 13). Due to all social and emotional connections embedded in specific language usage, immigrant families are often concerned about the loss of their heritage language and feel the need to develop strategies not to lose the social and emotional bonds embedded in it (Nagy, 2017). Therefore, language choice becomes not only a matter of expressing their basic communication needs but also an act of identity for multilingual immigrants (Walters, 1987). Language Attitudes of Parents: Raising Children in Bilingual Settings Bilingualism is an active process in that bilingual individuals always find themselves exposed to more than one language (Bialystok, 2012). Immigrant parents and their children have to actively manage at least two languages through immigration and acculturation experiences, depending on the family structure (Halsted, 2013). Most studies on bilingualism in early child language development show that the acquisition of heritage language development tends to be interrupted once children begin attending to formal school in their host country (Halsted, 2015; Hoff & Place, 2013). Initially, heritage language speakers may be more proficient in their first language (L1) during early childhood. But L1 can become underdeveloped once their second language (L2), the majority language, emerges.
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As a consequence of this experience, these learners are expected to adopt skills to switch between two languages (Polinsky & Kagan, 2007). Therefore, how immigrant parents facilitate their children’s development in both languages needs to be discussed. These facilitation methods represent the language attitudes of the parents and research shows that they contribute to the proficiency of heritage language within immigrant households. Behaviors that parents show are called language attitudes and play a crucial role in family relations (Park & Sarkar, 2007; Pearson, 2007). Language attitudes are described as "a construct underlying the feelings people have about their language or others' languages" (Cherciov, 2013, p. 716). Language attitudes can create a "supportive home environment" that boosts language acquisition in both languages (Park., 2013, p.39). Thus, parents have to incorporate a "family language policy" (Ghimenton, 2015, p. 117; Schwartz & Moin, 2012, p. 35). Parents provide activities to boost their children's heritage language proficiency, such as organizing home literacy programs, taking children to cultural centers, and visiting the home country. With this type of organization, children can be exposed to their heritage language through multiple speakers in various environments (e.g., Place & Hoff, 2011). Therefore, the current study investigated whether the heritage language development of Turkish immigrant children growing up in a bilingual environment is related to their parents' language attitudes (i.e., Makarova et al., 2017). The history of bilingualism in the U.S. suggests possible factors that triggers positive or negative language attitudes in immigration parents. History of Bilingualism in the U.S. Heritage language preservation is often an essential part of keeping one's cultural identity alive, especially among immigrant individuals living in a host country. The U.S. is becoming increasingly diverse, partially due to bilingual immigrants” (Hoff, 2013). Thus, it is difficult for bicultural and bilingual families in the U.S. to preserve their heritage culture and language. To identify their challenges, it is necessary to examine the history of immigrants in the U.S. and attitudes toward their culture and language. Acculturation, immigration, and adaptation usually come with learning a host country's language (Berry, 1997). In the U.S., immigrant families have been facing difficulties such as feeling overwhelmed between language and culture (i.e., Su & Hynie, 2010; Sevinc & Dewaele, 2018; Oh & Fuligni, 2010; Filmore, 2000), academic difficulties (i.e., Hoff, 2013; Hoff & Core, 2013) and social pressure (i.e., the feeling of embarrassment) (Halsted, 2014). Filmore (2000) asserts that immigrant parents have to deal with family language loss with their children. As stated by Halsted (2014), the U.S. is surprisingly behind other countries in providing bilingual environments for immigrant populations. This is due to the unique historical background of the U.S. (Fitzgerald, 1993). Depending on the immigration policy and welcoming environment of host countries (Bialystok, 2012), immigrant parents may not have enough supports from educators and teachers that instruct their children in a school environment (Leeman & Serafini, 2016). A long history of linguistic diversity exists in the U.S., with many languages having been spoken by indigenous and immigrants (Leeman & Serafini, 2018), and before the late nineteenth century, multilingualism was widely accepted (Fitzgerals, 1993; Pavlenko, 2002). Viewing bilingualism in the U.S. with a historical lens is crucial to understanding possible factors associated with various attitudes toward linguistic diversity. The development of views on bilingualism in the US. can be seen from pre-colonial times to the present. From pre-colonial times to the mid-1800s, bilingualism was seen as an advantage for teaching and spreading the gospel. Before the arrival of the first Europeans, over 500
9 languages were spoken. Bilingualism was also supported and protected by politicians, as founders initially declined that the proposal about English would be the official language in the U.S. They viewed this proposal as "incompatible with the spirit of freedom," as declared in the Constitution (Hakuta, 1986, p. 165). Maintaining native language and culture was considered as a right. Intellectuals, social, and religious organizations encouraged people to preserve their heritage languages (Fitzgerals, 1993; Casanova & Arias, 1993). In the mid-1880s, attitudes toward welcoming linguistic diversity in the U.S. began to change. Several factors influenced these changing attitudes, for example, from around 1880 until about 1920, English only sentiments grew markedly and gradually presaged the English language's dominant role. The spirit of nationalism slowly appeared due to the Spanish- American War and World War I. Many states began prohibiting public instruction in languages other than English. Such factors influenced the climate of bilingualism in the country (Fitzgerals, 1993). From the 1920s to today, bilingualism has been mostly associated with outsider groups The increasing the number of immigrants arriving in the U.S. has triggered the declining of acceptance of bilingualism. Gradually, the U.S. has become a nation that does not encourage bilingualism with negative portrayals of minority languages and a lack of support for immigrant children to preserve their heritage language in their home. In this context, immigrant children started losing their bilingualism. By the third generation, immigrant children tend to shift to English dominant or monolingualism (Hoff, 2018). During the 1930s, an English-as-a-second language (ESL) methodology was born (Crawford, 1989). National movements and politicians strongly advocated supporting individual efforts to learn English, and the Office of Civil rights were no longer support bilingualism (Fitzgerals, 1993). Fitzgerals (1993) articulated in his article why current attitudes toward bilingualism in the U.S. have shifted from the early colonial years:
"Peak immigration can be associated with a decline in acceptance of bilingualism. Increasing immigration likely creates a feeling of instability among citizens. The feeling of instability could be due to an unsettling aura of change, increased job competition, and a general inability to communicate with the newcomers."
It is critical to understand how heritage language is positioned in social contexts by examining the history of multilingualism in the U.S. (Leeman & Serafini, 2018). Thus, investigating the history of a specific heritage language is one way of promoting the benefits of linguistic diversity in the U.S. Thus, the current study examines the history of Turkish immigrants' arrival to the U.S. to provide an insightful contribution to the literature. In turn, researchers and educators can develop critical strategies for each linguistic community in the U.S.
The History of Turkish Migration to the U.S. Turkish immigration to the U.S. began much earlier than the Immigration Act of 1965 (Reimers, 1985). Immigration from Turkey to the U.S. can be differentiated into three waves: 1820-1921, 1950-1970, and post-1970 (Balgamis & Karpat, 2008). In the first wave, American teachers and preachers in missionary schools in the Ottoman Empire encouraged Turkish students to pursue further education in the U.S. People who came in the first wave either returned to their home country or assimilated into the American culture. Those who assimilated have no connections to Turkish immigrants in the second and third waves (Balgamis & Karpat, 2010). For example, Balgamis and Karpat (2010) gave an example of an older woman whose father has
10 migrated to the U.S. in the first wave around 1911 to study medicine. He married an American and remained in the U.S. Although the older woman carries a Turkish name, she could not speak her heritage language. In the second wave of Turkish immigration (1950-1970), the number of Turkish immigrants arriving in the U.S. was low due to restrictive U.S. immigration policy. The relationships between Turkey and the U.S. improved after World War II, and this provided opportunities for professional development in the military, engineering, and medicine. After completing their degrees, many of the second-wave immigrants stayed in the U.S. for their children's education. They became highly educated and were remarkably successful in areas such as medicine, academia, economy, and sociology (Balgamis & Karpat, 2010). Their children followed their parents' guidance in education and became as successful as their parents as well (Atmaca-Süslü, 2014). A very well-known example of this wave is Mehmet Oz, known as Dr. Oz. His father is Dr. Mustafa Oz, who immigrated to the U.S. in 1955 as a medical resident. The third and final wave is from around 1970 until today. Approximately 200,000 Turks immigrated to the U.S. during this time, With the last wave, Turkish immigrants established community organizations, such as Turkish cultural/community centers in several cities, especially in New York City, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Chicago (Balgamis & Karpat, 2010). Although the Turkish population is rapidly growing in the U.S. from the first wave to the third wave, little is known about the current Turkish-American families' experiences as immigrants in the U.S. (Isik-Ercan, 2014; Nisanci, 2019). There has been almost no research on Turkish parent- child relations in the field of Developmental Psychology. Therefore, it is vital to investigate a specific minority immigrant groups as families with unique cultural practices and to determine how those particular practices impact their experience with raising bilingual children in the U.S. In sum, according to Atmaca-Süslü (2014), Turkish Americans are a rapidly growing immigrant group in the U.S. According to the 2010 census, there are an estimated 195, 283 Turkish immigrants in the U.S. (U.S. Census, 2010), of which 47, 565 are 18 years old or younger. More than half of this population has at least a bachelor's or graduate degree. The median family income is around $63,000 (U.S. Census, 2010). Parenting and Culture A substantial number of past research studies have assessed parenting among ethnic minority groups in the U.S. (i.e., Kwon, & De Gagne, 2017; Kiang, L., & Buchanan, 2017; Juang, Shen, Kim, & Wang, 2016). Those studies examined the roles of parents in their children’s development in various social contexts, including family structure, socioeconomic background, educational level. In this equation, culture plays an influential role that shapes familial identity, values, and parental attitudes (Sen, Yavuz-Muren, Yagmurlu, 2014; Slaughter- Defoe, 1995). Researchers, educators, psychologists, linguistics, economists, policymakers can benefit from cross-cultural studies on parentings. Those benefits will identify universal aspects of parenting and contextual characteristics of parenting between cultures (Sen et al., 2014). However, those studies have not truly emphasized enough about the effects of bicultural and bilingual households in immigrant contexts on families (e.g., Nisanci, 2019).
Parenting in Turkish Culture Due to Turkey’s history and geography, it is neither European nor Asian; neither Western nor Eastern. (Sen et al., 2014). Turkey's geographic characteristic is defined by the merging of two continents (Europe and Asia) in Istanbul allows diverse ethnicities, cultures, and religions.
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However, Aydin (2000) states that although Turks strive to be individualist societies, they practice collectivism in daily life. Many scholarly works on the role of culture in parenting highlight individualism versus collectivism. Turkey, however, can fit in both of these two categories. To date, Turkey is ranked halfway (37th out of 93 countries) between these two cultures (Hofstede, Hofstede, & Minkov, 2010). Consequently, measures used to evaluate parenting styles (Baumrind, 1978) may not address core Turkish parenting strategies or techniques for some cultures, such as Turkey. Kagitcibasi (1982) defined Turkish culture as a heterogeneous culture that includes diverse ethnicities, cultures, and religions due to the country’s historical background (e.g., the Ottoman Empire). Thus, the combination of Berry's (1997) acculturation theory and Vygotsky's (1978) perspectives may clarify to understand the unique experiences of Turkish immigrant parents in the U.S. Studies on the experiences of Turkish immigrant families are usually conducted in European countries, such as Germany. These families are typically low-income families, and their children exhibit several challenges, such as academic, language, and adaptation to the host country (e.g., Gungor, 2007; Akoglu & Yagmur, 2016; Vedder & Oortwijn, 2009). Compared to Turkish immigrants who migrate to Germany (Isik-Ercan, 2014; Windle, 2004), Turkish immigrants who migrate to the U.S. have higher education and socioeconomic background (U.S. Census Bureau, 2011). Thus, their children tend to have higher English proficiency and academic achievement. They also tend to have diverse cultural, religious, and linguistic backgrounds (Isik- Ercan, 2014). That said, research focusing on Turkish families in the U.S. and the rest of the western world is very limited. Only a few studies in a collection of disciplines (social work, anthropology, education, and geography) have examined Turkish parents and school-aged children (e.g., Atmaca-Süslü, 2014; Isik-Ercan, 2014; Nisanci, 2019; Tatar, 2015). Those studies' broad focus has been to analyze how Turkish immigrant parents deal with their ethnic, religious, and American identity. Rationale and Significance of the Study The early years of life are a crucial developmental period for growing children due to the relationships between parents and their children (Hoff & Core, 2013; Harris & Almutairi, 2016). Since young children's psychological well-being is linked to their parents' well-being, any experience that both children and parents have may directly affect parent-child relationships. The developmental process of children of immigrants differs from monolingual children, and bilingual children's language skills are highly dependent on the variability of their language experience (Hoff & Core, 2013). To date, only a few studies provide an in-depth look at children's dual-language proficiency development with the focus on aspects of multilinguistic households (Kalia, 2007) and multicultural environments (Harris & Almutairi, 2016). Most studies on language development (i.e., Reese, Robertson, Divers, & Schaughency, 2015) have only examined middle- class Caucasian parents. Recent studies on language development and parent-child relations have focused on diverse populations (e.g., among White, Black, and Latino families; Rowe, Denmark, Harden, & Stapleton, 2016,). Yet, little is known about the experiences of racially and culturally diverse immigrant parents while raising multilinguistic and multicultural children in the U.S. (Harris & Almutairi, 2016; Nisanci, 2019). Each immigrant group has unique background and experiences in a host country (Nesteruk 2010). Therefore, the current study selected the Turkish population due to as their unique acculturation experiences as a minority immigrant group in the
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U.S. In turn, those experiences may shape their parental language attitudes toward heritage and majority language development processes. Studying Turkish immigrant populations is increasingly significant because of their growing numbers in the U.S. (Atmaca-Süslü, 2014). Statistically speaking, every year, approximately 4,000 Turks immigrate to the country (Akcapar, 2009). With the third wave of Turkish immigrants to the U.S., Turkish community centers are extensively growing to meet this growing population (Nisanci, 2019). There is substantial literature on the experiences of Spanish- speaking immigrant adolescents and children in the U.S. However, a few studies have explored Turkish children/adolescents and their families in the U.S. For instance, Atmaca-Süslü (2014) examined middle and high school age Turkish immigrant children, utilizing a mixed-methods approach. Tatar (2015) explored Turkish American immigrant parents' language strategies and language ideologies among their children aged between 4-14 by through qualitative analysis. Isik-Ercan (2014) examined Turkish K-12 students' educational experiences and their families and how they negotiate their cultural identities in the U.S through qualitative study. Nisanci (2019) investigated Turkish parental monitoring and the relations with their adolescent children aged 12-19 through qualitative research. Limitations of the Literature In summary, research has provided evidence for insight into Turkish immigrant parents' experiences in the U.S. More specifically, tentative evidence exists for a link between immigrant parents' acculturation experiences and language attitudes in the U.S. However, Turkish immigrant families are still understudied and not well-captured (Isik-Ercan, 2014; Nisanci, 2019; Tatar, 2015). Also, previous studies mostly used either a qualitative or quantitative method design. In contrast, the current study applied mixed methods techniques to capture possible factors that impact children's dual languages' developmental process. Children's heritage language proficiency, parents' acculturation attitudes, and parents' language attitudes were assessed through a quantitative methodology, whereas parental experiences were evaluated through a qualitative method as semi-structured interviews. To the researcher’s knowledge, this study is the first to study Turkish immigrant parents' acculturation experiences and their children's heritage language development in the U.S. Therefore, it has the potential to pave the way for additional research on this topic. Considering all the limitations mentioned above, further research with bilingual children developing normally is necessary. Researchers may more thoroughly understand the relationship between heritage language development and immigration effects. Further research may also produce individual differences or alternative parenting factors that affect bilingualism development, helping establish guidelines or interventions to increase. Purpose of the Study This study aims to uncover a variety of challenges Turkish immigrant families encounter while raising bilingual children in the U.S. Statistically speaking, children of immigrants are the fastest-growing groups, with ¼ of every child in the U.S. having one foreign-born parent (Hoff, 2018). Previous studies have found a strong association between immigrant parents and their children's health disparities (Mendoza, 2009), such as language and cultural barriers. Therefore, this research aims to fill the gap in the literature by investigating the consequences of acculturation and dual-language experiences in families. The vast majority of immigrant parents plan to stay in the U.S. to provide better education to their children. Consequently, parents will need to adjust their parenting strategies to increase the quality of relations between parents and their children while settling into a new environment. Diverse countries with a high immigrant population, such as America, should
13 conduct ongoing research about minority groups of parent-child interaction. The reason is that this type of research needs to increase the comprehensive understanding of the effects of family and social atmospheres on children's psychological well-being. Most cross-cultural literature studies suggest that each culture differs in their attitudes about pride toward, and passion for preserving heritage and language (Baker, 1997; Halsted, 2013) depending on the contexts (Bialystok, 2018). Surprisingly, only a little research (e.g., Isik- Ercan, 2014; Nisanci, 2019) has been conducted on this population, focusing on Turkish immigrant family relations. Contrary to the Turkish population in European countries (Isik- Ercan, 2014), Turkish immigrants in the U.S. tend to have a much higher educational and financial background (Isik-Ercan, 2014; U.S. Census Bureau, 2011). Understanding of such diverse community background (culturally, linguistically) in the U.S., in turn, help researchers obtain an in-depth understanding of diversity within various cultural practices. Therefore, the current study aims to fill this gap in the literature by investigating how Turkish immigrant families in the U.S. to observe how they manage acculturation and preserve their heritage language while raising their multi/bilingual children. In the U.S., children of immigrant parents are one of the most vulnerable groups to face psychological problems (Daglar et al., 2011; Kia-Keating, 2006). Some studies have shown that children of immigrants tend to face more emotional and behavioral problems than non- immigrants. The attempts by parents to preserve heritage culture and language in a host country may lead to parent-child conflicts in children and adolescents. Furthermore, conflicts between parents and children may prompt the children not to interact with their parents' (heritage) language but instead adopt the majority language (Halsted, 2013; Miller, 1993). Hence, this mixed-methods study aimed to examine the association between acculturation (i.e., adaptation) and language attitudes that immigrant parents experience. An embedded mixed-method design was used, in which one data set provides a supportive, secondary role to a primary data set. The primary purpose of this study is to explore the effects of parental languages and acculturation attitudes on children’s heritage language proficiency. In addition, the current study will examine the relationships between parental demographic variables (e.g., parental age, parents' educational level, length of time in the U.S., child's age) and children's heritage language proficiency (Becker, 2013). This will test Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory and Berry’s acculturation theory, which predict that parental demographic variables can influence children’s heritage language development positively. A secondary purpose was to gather qualitative data. Tardif-Williams &Fisher (2009) suggests that parents' language attitudes and acculturation experiences are usually best captured by applying qualitative methodologies to understand the influence of those experiences on children's dual-language development, specifically heritage language development. Thereby, the current study employed qualitative analysis to capture parents' language attitudes and acculturation attitudes through semi-structured interviews. Lastly, recent research on Turkish immigrants has focused on the children aged between 5-11. Although most of the studies generalize the aged range based on the developmental changes (Harter, 2003), the current research aims to understand parents of younger children's experiences before the children reach many complex developmental stages.
Research Questions Seven research questions guided this mixed-methods design. The first five were addressed quantitatively, and the final two were addressed qualitatively (Creswell, 2009). The Quantitative Research Questions:
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1) How are Turkish-speaking parents’ attitudes about language and acculturation related? 2) How strongly do Turkish-speaking parents’ attitudes about language and acculturation predict children’s heritage language proficiency? 3) Which acculturation attitudes do Turkish-speaking parents engage in the most? 4) How strongly are demographic variables and length of living in the U.S. related to children’s heritage language proficiency? 5) How strongly do language environment, child's expressive him/herself in Turkish orally (i.e., pronunciation, finding the right word, etc.) related predictors associated with children's heritage language proficiency? The Qualitative Research Question: 6) How do Turkish-speaking immigrant parents perceive their children's dual language development process in the U.S.? 7) How do Turkish-speaking immigrant parents experience the acculturation process (i.e., adaptation to American society) in the U.S.
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CHAPTER TWO (METHOD) The current study applied a mixed-method research approach (Tashakkori & Teddlie, 1998), which is defined as an "expansive, creative, inclusive, pluralistic, and complementary form of research" (Atmaca-Süslü, 2014, p.41; Johnson & Onwuegbuzie, 2004). The motivation to apply the mixed-method approach came from the complexity of the experiences of Turkish- speaking immigrant families with regards to family, language attitudes, and acculturation attitudes in bilingual context. Since mixed-methods research can provide additional strengths that compensate for the weakness of both quantitative and qualitative research, mixing the datasets enhanced the understanding of the experiences of Turkish immigrant parents while raising bilingual children in the U.S. Data collection and analysis procedures were guided by Vygotsky's sociocultural theory (Vygotsky, 1978), Berry's acculturation theory (Berry, 1997;2006), and grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006). Applying quantitative research methods was essential for the current study to explain the relationship between variables (Clark, Creswell, Green, & Shope, 2008), with the focus of prediction, replicability of variables, objectivity, and generalizability of results (Harwell, 2011). However, it is difficult to use quantitative methods to address contexts in which the voice of Turkish-speaking parents may not be directly heard in quantitative research. Thus, the qualitative research can enhance the quantitative data and provide a holistic perspective on complex system that is hard to be explained by a few variables or linear relationships (Atmaca-Süslü, 2014; Creswell, 2007; Creswell & Creswell, 2017). In turn, researchers, policy makers, and practitioners can use this diverse evidence to better identity the problems of Turkish-speaking immigrant families in the U.S. plan possible interventions within the contexts of bilingualism and immigration. The primary researcher began this study in August 2019 and concluded in August 2020. The timeline is illustrated in Table 1.
Quantitative Phase Research Design Description of Participants 52 Turkish parents (M = 38.15, SD = 4.84) and their children (M = 8.23, SD = 2.18) living in various states (i.e., Ohio, Connecticut) participated in this study, of which 20 children were girls and 32 were boys. The children ranged in age from 5 to 11 years, with a mean of 8 years. 75% of parents had more than one child, 25% from the sample had one sibling, 44% were two siblings, 19% were three siblings, 10% were four siblings, and 2% were five siblings. The mothers ranged in age from 28 to 49 years, with a mean age of 38 years. The father ranged in age from 32 to 53 years, with a mean age of 41 years. The majority of mothers (approximately 48%) from the sample had earned bachelor's degrees, 4% had earned associate degrees, 17% had earned master's degrees, 15% had earned doctoral degrees, and 15% had completed their high school education. The majority of fathers (approximately 42%) from the sample had earned doctoral degrees, 27% had earned master's degrees, 25% had earned bachelor's degrees, and 6% had completed their high school education. The total family income was greater than $125,000 for 33% of the families, between $74,000 to 125,000 for another 33% of the families, between $50,000 and $75,000 for 21% of the families, between 25,000 to 50,000 for 12% of the families, and less than, $25,000 for the remaining 2% of families. Mothers were employed in the following fields: academia (5), industry/business (9), medical field (2), self-employment (e.g., designer, accouter, art) (9), stay-at-home mother or student (17), and teacher (10). Fathers were employed in the following field: academia (12), industry/business (25), medical field (1), self-
16 employment (e.g., designer, accouter, art) (8), and teacher (6). The mother's age of arrival in the U.S. ranged between 18 to 36 years with a mean age of 26. The father's age of arrival in the U.S. ranged from 0 to 40 years with a mean age of 25. The length of time parents lived in the U.S. ranged from 2 years to 22 years (M = 14.10, SD = 6.17). The majority of children were born in the U.S. (6 out of 52). Six immigrant children arrived in the U.S. before the age of three (range:2 to 5 years).
Parents and Children Measures General Family Demographics Questionnaire Parents completed a demographic questionnaire consisting of 13 questions about age, education, the parent's place of birth, employment status, and a number of siblings and length of time in the U.S. (Appendix A). The Parents of Bilingual Children Questionnaire (PaBiQ) The current study used the Parents of Bilingual Children Questionnaire (PaBiQ; Tuller, 2015) to obtain much deeper demographic information from immigrant families. The questionnaire has several translations/adaptations, including Turkish and English. The Turkish version of the PaBiQ was also available for parents who wanted to fill out the questionnaire in Turkish (COST Action IS0804, 2011). The short version of a longer questionnaire piloted by research groups in several countries within COST Action IS0804 was based on the ALEQ (Paradis, 2011) and the ALDeQ (Paradis et al., 2010). It is vital to note that the PaBiQ is not designed to determine if a child is bilingual or not and determine whether a child is a language impaired. The PaBiQ questionnaire is designed to be administered in person by a trained interviewer (a student, usually with SLT training). But some research groups have conducted phone interviews or had parents fill the form in themselves. One group has even set up an online form. No reliability validity data are available for the PaBiQ (Tuller, 2015). In terms of scoring, each team has tailored to the scores to their own needs. The purposes of the PaBiQ are to gather: 1) Information allowing for interpretation of language measures (PPVT & TIFALDI), 2) Information about L1 skills in cases where L1 cannot be tested, 3) Information for determining which language(s) might be appropriate, where relevant, for therapy The PaBiQ consists of 31 questions, which are grouped into sections including: general information about the child (4 questions), child early history (7 questions), current Language Skills (5 questions), comparison between languages used at home (3 questions), languages spoken in other contexts (3 questions), demographic information about the mother and the father (8 questions), and difficulties in the language (1 question). Parents are asked to respond to both yes-no prompts such as, "Has your child ever had any hearing problems or frequent ear infections?" and to five-point scale prompts from not very well, such as "Compared to other children the same age, how do you think your child expresses him/herself in? They are asked to respond on a Likert scales to assess the extent 0 (never) to 4 (very often), such as "In general, before your child was four years old, she is exposed to…" (Abbot-Smith, Patera, Luniewska, Spruce, & Haman, 2018). (Appendix B). Acculturation Attitudes Questionnaire Parents' acculturation experiences were measured by a modified version of the 32-item Acculturation Attitudes Scale (Ataca and Berry, 2002). The 32-item scale included nine attitude domains: child-rearing style, children's values, children's moving out, friendship, social activity,
17 food, holiday celebration, language use, decoration, lifestyle, and culture. There were eight statements regarding each acculturation attitude (assimilation, separation, marginalization, and integration). Statements 1, 2, 10, 11, 14, 19, 27, and 29 on the survey measured assimilation (e.g., "I would like my children to learn American values and customs more than Turkish values and customs"). Statements 4, 7, 12, 18, 20, 22, 26, and 32 measured separation (e.g., "I expect my children to live with me until they get married"). Statements 5, 8, 13, 17, 21, 24, 28, and 30 measured marginalization (e.g., "Most of the time I don’t care which way I live"). Statements 3, 6, 9, 15, 16, 23, 25, and 31 measured integration (e.g., “I would like my children to be raised in both the American and the Turkish ways"). The 32 items were randomly ordered in the scale and responses ranged from "strongly disagree" (1) to "strongly agree" (5). Turkish translation of the questionnaire was available for parents who preferred to answer in Turkish (Appendix C). In the original scale, Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficients for each attitude were reported as .83 for assimilation, .89 for separation, .84 for integration, and .78 for marginalization. The Cronbach alpha reliability coefficients in the 32-item modified version of the acculturation attitudes scale (M = 85.35, SD = 10.525, N of items = 32) in the present study appeared to have average internal consistency, α = 679. Language Attitudes Questionnaire Parents also answered a modified version of the Language Attitudes Questionnaire (Makarova et al., 2017), which was designed to measure how they maintain their heritage language. This questionnaire assessed the parent's knowledge of Turkish, English, and other languages the parents use within and outside the family. It also assessed each child’s use of language within and outside the family, the child's exposure to language, the child’s community contact, and the parent's language attitudes. The questionnaire consists of twenty-eight a daily basis yes/no types (e.g., Do you think your child is exposed enough into Turkish child speaking environment?), multiple-choice questions (e.g., What language(s) do you speak to your spouse/partner at home daily?), and short questions (e.g., Are there any concerns about your child's Turkish?) (Appendix D). In the present study, the 34-item modified version of the language attitudes scale (M = 56.19, SD = 5.061) in the present study appeared to have average internal consistency, α = .660. Children Outcomes: Language Skills, TIFALDI Each child’s competency in Turkish and English was assessed via standardized language development tests. Acceptable measures of language proficiency in both Turkish and English do not exist (Ertanir et al., 2018), so the following tests are specifically designed and normed for monolingual children. TIFALDI (Berument & Guven, 2010). Although the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) offers a few foreign language translations for multi/bilingual children to measure their expressive vocabulary, it is not designed to target cultural norms in a specific culture. In 1972, PPVT was adapted to Turkish, and this translated version has been used to measure the expressive vocabulary of children aged 2 to 11years. However, these are serious concerns about outdated norms with the Turkish PPVT. For instance, Berument and Guven (2010) provide an example of a normally developing four-year-old child's raw score. When it is converted to their age equivalent, it can come up as 7 years 6 months, and the standard score as 187.5. Due to these issues, TIFALDI was invented to assess Turkish-speaking children's expressive vocabulary skills in clinical settings and for research purposes (Berument & Guven, 2010). It can be used to assess the expressive vocabulary skills of children aged 2 to 13 year old. The test manual reports
18 moderate internal consistency (.88 to .96) and alternate form reliability estimates (.70 to .94) for the standardization sample. Translation Process Only a few study materials (recruitment e-mail, consent form, demographic and language attitudes questionnaires) were translated from English to Turkish. Acculturation Attitudes (Bektas, Demir, & Bowden, 2009) and Parents of Bilingual Children (Tuller, 2015) questionnaires were already available in English and Turkish. The researcher performed back- translation with two bilingual researchers who hold degrees in psychology and western language degrees. The bilingual researchers translated all materials and acted as cultural translators of the concepts that the participants tried to communicate. Every question was carefully checked to address ambiguous wording and to guarantee the same meaning in both languages. The aim was to ensure conceptual and linguistic equivalence in the final form of the questionnaires. In the first step, the researcher translated the questionnaire's items from English to Turkish transparently. The translators discussed any discrepancies in the two translations based on clarity and culturally appropriate sentence structures in the next step. There were only minor disagreements occurred between the translators. In the final step, after discussing a few translated items, the translators reached an agreement on the final Turkish version of the items. The same methodology was applied after the interviews were transcribed in Turkish and then translated into English. The discussion facilitated preserving each item's appropriate length and avoided repeating ideas within a single item. The translated language attitudes questionnaire, demographic questionnaire, consent form, and recruitment e-mail were verified after applying the translations to the pilot sample (three parents out of the study sample). Five parents who participated in the pilot study were native in Turkish and fluent in English. The researcher requested them to fill out both English and Turkish versions of the questionnaires, including the consent form. Two of them participated in the interview. They reported that they did not have any issue with the English and Turkish versions of questionnaires, the consent form, the recruitment e-mail, and the interview questions. Research Procedures After obtaining approval from the Institutional Research Board (IRB) at Miami University, 52 parents and their children were recruited through sharing research flyers on social media as sent out via e-mails (Appendix G). Several inclusion criteria were used: bilingual (Turkish–English) or multilingual children (Turkish–English plus additional language(s), the children were required to be aged between 5 and 11 years old, at least one parent must have been born in Turkey and they must speak Turkish as a native language, at least one parent must have been born in Turkey and they must speak Turkish as a native language, at least one parent must be a first-generation immigrant (was not born and raised in the United States), the parents must both have lived in the U.S. for at least two years, the children must be US-born or have been living in the U.S. for at least two years, and the children must not have any known physical or mental disability. The age range was selected because it guarantees that the children have been exposed to Turkish and American cultures and to English as a second language for six months to one year. The age-group selection was also based on the widely accepted notion that necessary language skills are formed by five in general (Ambridge & Lieven, 2011). In addition to that, native-like language acquisition is only possible if sufficient exposure is provided before the age of puberty (the critical period hypothesis, e.g., Lenneberg, 1967; Penfield & Roberts, 1959). Recruitment strategies included formal networks (cultural centers) and informal networks (social media and e-mail groups). Using multiple sampling strategies helped the researcher reach
19 participants with diverse backgrounds. Although finding participants was not easy, the researcher aimed at recruiting parents with various demographic backgrounds, such as across education level. The reason behind these criteria is that parental education or socioeconomic level may impact parenting practices and experiences; therefore, their diverse demographic background leads them to have rich ideas of raising bilingual children while preserving heritage language and culture in the U.S. Before the data collection, participants received all materials, including consent forms, through a password-protected (for confidentiality reasons) online survey link using Qualtrics (See Appendix F for Participant Parents and Children Informed Letter of Consent form). After verbal instructions, they were administered a packet of questionnaires including General Family Demographics (Appendix A), Parents of Bilingual Children (Appendix B; Tuller, 2015), Acculturation Attitudes (Appendix C; Ataca and Berry, 2002), and Parenting Language Attitudes (Appendix D; Makarova et al., 2017). Both English and Turkish versions of the questionnaires were available to participants, but all of the parents preferred the Turkish version. Children's Turkish productivity samples were elicited for proficiency evaluation via a Turkish expressive vocabulary test (TIFALDI). The vocabulary test was not intimidating for children and enabled a multi-level assessment of the child's speech output. On a computer screen, the children were asked to provide a label for pictured items appropriate for Turkish culture. During the vocabulary assessment, the researcher purposely spoke only Turkish with the children on purpose. The primary researcher conducted the expressive vocabulary test in a quiet area at the participants’ home or at an otherwise convenient place for both the parents and their children. The parents' participation was typically about 30-35 minutes, and the children’s was 15-20 minutes. Upon the completion of the study, participants were compensated $20 for their participation in the research. Statistical Data Analysis A reliability analysis using Cronbach’s alpha was conducted before further analysis of the data. The 34-item modified version of the language attitudes scale (M = 56.19, SD = 5.061) appeared to have average internal consistency, α = .660. The 32-item modified version of the acculturation attitudes scale (M = 85.35, SD = 10.525) appeared to have average internal consistency, α = 679. Several statistical analyses were conducted to examine the main research problems. First, assumptions associated with the statistical calculations were checked. The distribution of the variables was checked through the frequency table, and results indicated that acculturation attitudes, language attitudes, and parents of bilingual children's questionnaires were positively skewed. The analyses used in the present study were correlations, multiple regression analyses, repeated measures. All the analyses were carried out using Statistical Package for Social sciences (SPSS) for Mac 13.5 software.
Qualitative Phase Interview with Parents The qualitative part of the current study involved gathering in-depth accounts of the ''reality'' of parents' experiences, including the strategies, practices, and challenges they encounter while raising their multi/bilingual children in the U.S. Interview data allowed the researcher to investigate subjective viewpoints through both open-ended questions and structured questions, while also guaranteeing flexibility through optional follow-up comments and
20 questions as needs. The primary researcher also developed an interviewer's guide by using reviews of the relevant and current literature (Flick, 2009). Before the interview, each participant signed a consent form (Appendix E). The qualitative data consisted of audio-recorded semi-structured interviews with a set of nine questions in Turkish. The interview duration took approximately 15-20 minutes was questions conducted by the primary researcher who is a native of Turkish and fluent in English. The majority of the interviews were done in Turkish since the primary researcher shared the same language (Turkish), and they had the preference to be interviewed in their native language. Only 4 out of 20 preferred answering the interview questions in English, and they were fathers. The researcher had the opportunity to invite three more fathers in person, yet they declined to participate. All interviews occurred in the participants' homes or cultural centers. Participants were invited to discuss their experiences about raising a bilingual child as immigrant parents in the U.S., the parents' acculturation process, their children's use of their heritage languages in their settings, and any strategies the parents use to maintain their heritage languages. During the interview, if the participants did not articulate their answers well enough to any of the interview questions, the primary researcher asked clarifying questions such as "Can you also elaborate on how you see Turkish language ties to Turkish culture? What do you mean by positive effects on language development? Can you provide me an example that you have experienced with your children in the U.S.?" The interview part added additional 15-20 minutes to the duration of the study. Upon completing the study, participants also received an extra $10 if they participated in the study's interview part. Table 2 illustrates a sample from a semi-structured interview. Sample Size and Rationale The numbers of participants included in the study was chosen to obtain rich data and in- depth analysis (Charmaz, 2006). The interview procedure aimed to address the following research question with nine interview questions. Table 3 illustrates a brief demographic background of each participant, and Table 4 shows nine interview questions. 6) How do Turkish-speaking immigrant parents experience the acculturation process (e.g., adaptation to American society) and perceive their children's language experiences in the U.S.? Transcribing, Translating, and Coding the Interviews The audio-recorded interviews were conducted by the primary researcher. The interview transcriptions were translated by the same bilingual researchers who back-translated the questionnaires. The same translating methodology as the quantitative measures was applied after the interviews were transcribed in Turkish and translated into English. Table 5 below illustrates a sample from the back-translation process from Turkish to English, and highlights in the narratives represent back-translation. Both the transcriber and also a second coder of the transcribed interviews have a bachelor's degrees in psychology from Bogazici University and are graduate students at the department of guidance and psychological counseling at Marmara University in Turkey. The second coder additionally has both transcriptions and coding experience in self-defining autobiographical memories. She read the interview transcriptions in both Turkish and English. The primary researcher trained her on confidentially, the details of the data collection process, theoretical framework, and the study's paradigm. All the forms related to the study, including the informed consent forms, the parents' questionnaires, and the printed transcriptions, were stored in a locked cabinet in Dr. Harris's research laboratory in the Psychology building at Miami University. Digitally recorded and
21 transcribed electronic documents were also saved in password-protected files in the primary researcher's password-protected, encrypted laptop. Only the transcriber and the second coder, who helped the primary researcher in the data analysis process, had access to the electronic and hard copy transcribed files. All names or other identifiers were removed and replaced with I.D.s. On a separate sheet, each participant and family unit were assigned I.D.s. Instead of the participants' names, these I.D.s were used on the transcribed documents and the audio files. The transcriber and the second coder who helped the primary researcher (the first coder) in transcribing and coding the interviews kept all research documents in their password- protected, encrypted laptop. Since the second coder had no access to the participant-ID list, she did not encrypt her computer. The digital audio files and transcripts of the interviews shared with her were labeled only with the family's project I.D. code number. To obtain the trustworthiness of the study for both the transcripts and translation in both languages and to avoid any type of bias in the transcriptions, the following criteria proposed by Guba and Lincoln (1981) within the qualitative paradigm were applied: credibility, fittingness, audibility, and confirmability. Furthermore, an additional bilingual research assistant reviewed the transcriptions and translation, who was blind to the study's purpose. 1) The transcriber and coders were required to read the qualitative data analysis's coding manual and evaluate the coding system (fittingness). 2) The transcriber and coders met and discussed the differences in coding to ensure the validity of the coding transcripts (credibility). 3) The transcriber and coders simultaneously listened to the audio-recordings and read the transcriptions in Turkish and English to review them with the original Turkish version (audibility). 4) The transcriber and coders practiced coding by using the pilot sample's audio-taped interview data and confirmed the coding by participants (confirmability). Interview Data Analysis The current study used grounded theory to code transcript-based thematic analysis (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). The grounded theory was used to tell a collective story and piece together a theoretical narrative that can be interpretable (Charmaz & Belgrave, 2012). The grounded theory was a well-suited analysis for the current study’s aim The significant stages of data analysis described by Charmaz are coding and memo- writing. In qualitative data analysis, the interview transcriptions were analyzed, and labels were assigned to the words, phrases, sentences, or paragraphs. These labels were called codes. The coding process started as soon as the first interview was conducted. Thus, the first transcribed each interview as soon as possible after the interview was completed. Charmaz (2006) elaborates four phases of coding for grounded theory: Initial coding, focused coding, axial coding, and theoretical coding. Based on the initial coding phase, the data were analyzed quickly and line-by-line to study the data closely and to begin conceptualizing ideas. Focused coding was the second primary coding phase, where the primary researcher developed more directed, selective, and conceptual codes (Charmaz, 2006). In this phase, the primary researcher started to synthesize, separate, and sort the interviews. Based on the axial coding phase, the categories were connected to subcategories and the category's dimensions. Based on the last phase of theoretical coding, possible relationships were specified among categories in an integrative way. After following each phase of coding, the most significant themes in the interview were identified.
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The primary researcher used memo-writing before (pre-writing) and after each interview to develop ideas, to analyze initial and focused codes, to move from focused codes to conceptual categories, and to highlight relationships between categories.The main themes and potential concepts in the transcripts were used to serve as tools across the interview-coding. The primary researcher compiled interview transcriptions with the focus of main themes corresponding to each concept and checked all significant aspects of the participants' responses by re-reading them. Thus, memos helped with analysis and self-reflexivity during writing each phase of coding.
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CHAPTER 3 (Results) Quantitative Findings This chapter includes the results obtained by analyzing the quantitative data, including correlations, multiple regression analyses, and repeated measures ANOVA analyses. Each section focuses on one of the five research questions. Before conducting each statistical analysis, appropriate assumptions were checked. The distribution of the variables was checked through the frequency table, and results indicated that acculturation attitudes, language attitudes, and parents of bilingual children's questionnaires were positively skewed. 3.1. Descriptive Statistics of the Study Table 6 shows the means and standard deviations of parent’s age, child’s age, length of living in the U.S., parental language attitudes, acculturation attitudes, child’s expression him/herself in Turkish, Turkish language used at home with siblings, the number of native speaker friends in family’s social environment, the amount of reading books in Turkish, the amount of watching videos, movies, TV in Turkish, and the children’s heritage language proficiency.
3.2. Parental language attitudes and acculturation attitudes (assimilation, separation, marginalization, and integration) A Pearson product-moment r correlation was used to determine the relationship between parental language attitudes and acculturation attitudes (assimilation, separation, marginalization, and integration). Language attitudes were negatively correlated with marginalization, assimilation, and integration attitudes (p < .05). However, language attitudes were positively correlated with separation attitudes (p < .05). Table 7 shows the bivariate correlations of parental language attitudes and acculturation attitudes (integration, marginalization, separation, and assimilation).
3.3. Association between parental language attitudes and acculturation attitudes (assimilation, separation, marginalization, and integration) with children’s heritage language proficiency A multiple linear regression analysis was conducted to predict children’s heritage language proficiency based on parental language attitudes and acculturation attitudes (assimilation, separation, marginalization, and integration). A residual analysis indicated that the multiple linear regression model's assumptions were met, and the results showed that the regression model was significant, F (5, 46) = 2.66, p = .034, with an R2 of .23. In the model, assimilation attitudes were negatively associated with children’s heritage language proficiency (β = -.70, p = .007) (Table 8). However, none of the other predictors (separation attitude, integration attitude, and marginalization attitude) were significantly associated with children’s heritage language after controlling for the other variables (p > .05) (Table 9). Due to correlations among the predictors in the multiple linear regression model, variance inflation factors (VIFs) were checked for possible impact on the standard errors of the regression parameters. The VIFs ranged from 1.59 to 3.60, an acceptable range (Hair, Babin, Anderson, Tatham, 2010). Stepwise regressions were also performed. The results of the stepwise regressions confirmed the results of the full model.
3.4 Association between parental demographic variables and length of living in the U.S. with children’s heritage language proficiency
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A multiple linear regression analysis was conducted to predict children’s heritage language proficiency based on parental age, household income, parental education, child’s age, and length of living in the U.S. A residual analysis indicated that the multiple linear regression model's assumptions were met, and the results indicate that the regression model was found significant F (5, 46) = 4.31, p = .003, with an R2 of .32. In the model, it was found that a child’s age was negatively associated with children’s heritage language proficiency (β = -.36, p = .020), meaning that older children were less proficient in Turkish than younger children (Table 11). However, none of the other predictors (parental age, household income, parental education, and length of living in the U.S) were significantly associated with children’s heritage language after controlling for the other variables (p > .05) (Table 10). Due to correlations among the predictors in the multiple linear regression model, variance inflation factors (VIFs) were checked for possible impact on the standard errors of the regression parameters. The VIFs ranged from 1.45 to 1.37, an acceptable range (Hair et al., 2010). The stepwise regressions were also performed, and the results of the stepwise regressions confirmed the results of the full model.
3.5 The types of acculturation attitudes (assimilation, marginalization, separation, or integration) Turkish-speaking parents engage in the most in the U.S. A repeated-measures ANOVA was conducted to investigate differences in acculturation attitudes immigrant parents engage in the most in the U.S. Mauchly's Test of Sphericity indicated a violation of sphericity, χ2(5) = 94.11, p < .001, and therefore, a Greenhouse-Geisser correction was used. The difference between the means of assimilation, marginalization, separation, and integration was statistically significant, F (3, 153) = 128.85, p < .001. The results of Bonferroni- corrected multiple paired t-tests (Table 12) indicated that separation attitudes (M = 3.84, SD = 0.71) and integration (M = 3.37, SD = 0.91) were reported higher than marginalization (M = 1.81, SD = 0.52), and assimilation (M = 1.66, SD = 0.54).
3.6 Association between language environment, child’s expressive him/herself in Turkish orally (i.e., pronunciation, finding the right word, etc.) with children’s heritage language proficiency A multiple linear regression analysis was conducted to predict children’s heritage language proficiency based on child’s expressive him/herself orally in Turkish, Turkish language used at home with siblings, the number of native speaker friends in the family’s social environment, the amount of reading books in Turkish, and the amount of watching videos, movies, TV in Turkish. A residual analysis indicated that the multiple linear regression model's assumptions were met, and the results indicate that the regression model was found significant F (5, 40) = 10.101, p <. 001), with a R2 of .56. The model found that a child’s expressive him/herself orally in Turkish was positively associated with children’s heritage language proficiency (β = .59, p < .000). Turkish language used at home with siblings was positively associated with children’s heritage language proficiency (β = .34, p = .007) (Table 13). Moreover, none of the other predictors the number of native speaker friends in family’s social environment, the amount of reading books in Turkish, and the amount of watching videos, movies, TV in Turkish) were significantly associated with children’s heritage language (p > .05) (Table 14). Due to correlations among the predictors in the multiple linear regression model, variance inflation factors (VIFs) were checked for possible impact on the standard errors of the regression parameters. The VIFs ranged from 1.27 to 1.95, an acceptable range (Hair et al., 2010). In
25 addition, the stepwise regressions were also performed, and the results of the stepwise regressions confirmed the results of the full model. Qualitative Findings The qualitative part of the study aims to answer the following research question: 6) How do Turkish-speaking immigrant parents perceive their children’s dual language experiences (heritage and dominant languages) in the U.S.? 7) How do Turkish-speaking immigrant parents experience the acculturation process (e.g., adaptation to American society) in the U.S.? This section introduces the parents’ demographics and narratives. The narratives are organized according to several main content areas: 1) benefits and drawbacks of raising bilingual children, 2) parents attitudes’ toward maintaining children’s heritage language developmental process, 3) parental strategies to maintain heritage language among children, and 4) parents acculturation experiences. In addition, common and distinctive themes across families are also displayed as figures to represent summaries of parents’ narratives. Introducing the Participants: Parents Demographics and Narrative Styles The need for relatively detailed descriptions of the participants is conditioned by the subjective and intersubjective character of narrative and talk about language (e.g., Laihonen, 2008). All participants’ names were changed to ensure anonymity. An overall analysis of the interviews reveals that most Turkish immigrant parents share similar views about the importance of transmitting heritage language to their offspring. They make efforts to facilitate their children's heritage language development while promoting the importance of raising bilingual children in the U.S. However, these efforts do not come easily. Some of them report several challenges, such as lack of supports, motivation, and times. While Turkish immigrant parents make extra efforts to raise bilingual children, outcomes of those efforts are not always desirable. Despite knowing the benefits of bilingualism, environmental factors may impact children's performance in linguistic proficiency. Thus, each narrative of the parents in the study will be examined under the framework of Vygotsky's sociocultural theory (Vygotsky, 1978) and Berry's acculturation theory (Berry, 1997). These two theories will help us understand the process of raising bilingual children with an immigrant background. The grounded theory (Charmaz, 2003) was used to analyze the interview coding process. The second coder transcribed the interviews in Turkish. After the first bilingual researcher translated the narratives from Turkish to English, the second bilingual researcher back-translated them. Four themes emerged in the interview transcripts: 1) the benefits and drawbacks of raising bilingual children, 2) parental attitudes toward maintaining children’s heritage language developmental, 3) parental strategies to maintain heritage language among children, and 4) parents acculturation experiences. The themes that emerged from the interviews were based on the quantitative stage of the current study and previous studies (e.g., Nesturuk, 2010; Nisanci, 2019; Bogdan & Biklen, 2007, Moin, Scwartz, & Leikin, 2013). 1) Benefits and drawbacks of raising bilingual children A) Advantages of raising bilingual children In this section, I discuss Turkish immigrant parents’ experiences raising bilingual children as immigrant parents. Bilingualism and immigration are very complex concepts and topics. Thus, the qualitative analysis aimed to listen to immigrant parents’ unique experiences in raising bilingual children in the U.S. Qualitative analysis provides a more in-depth approach than otherwise, quantitative analysis might not capture well enough.
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A large number of Turkish immigrant parents consider bilingualism necessary for their children. In other words, the parents consider their children’s Turkish-English development a privilege in their children's personal and social lives. Maintaining heritage language development in the host country is a reality for bilingual individuals with an immigrant background (Hoff, 2013). The development process of bilingualism comes with abundant benefits and drawbacks. Therefore, the parents value maintaining their children's heritage language as a part of their children’s bilingual development. In the interview, each parent provided very similar answers to the benefits/drawbacks of raising bilingual children in the U.S. Mehmet, whose child is 5-year-old, sees raising bilingual children as a privilege due to the advantages of actively speaking two languages. To understand the positive sides of children's bilingual development, parents should inform themselves about bilingualism's benefits and drawbacks. As Mehmet clearly said in the interview, cognitive and social benefits encourage him as a parent to maintain his child’s heritage language.
Being bilingual has many cognitive benefits. Learning another language exposes an individual to another culture, as well. When you start learning another language, you also know the culture along with it. That leads them to have a better understanding of the world. Based on my limited knowledge, multilingual people's brains tend to work differently from monolingual people in ways that make multilingual people more creative. Bilinguals also have less mental decline as they get older. (Mehmet)
Another father, Enes, whose child is 7-year-olds, also sees bilingualism as an important factor in character development. Since language comes with culture, each language can give a child into a more abundant cultural resources a world citizen. Sometimes, immigrant parents worry about teaching their heritage language to their children to avoid language confusion. However, this parent thought the opposite. The more they master languages at earlier ages, the more flexible they are to acquire another language. This is a belief supported by some empirical studies state (e.g., Bialystok, 2016).
I believe being multicultural is a positive factor for character development. A multicultural child has a richer cultural resource (tradition, language, literature, etc.) that he/she can experience for character development. Also, he/she can understand and appreciate the differences between cultures, and as a result, can be more tolerant of different cultures and world views. Mastering two languages at an early age will facilitate learning additional languages in terms of learning new languages. When a child tackles learning a foreign language at an early age, later on, he/she can more easily learn a new foreign language. (Enes)
Proficiency in two languages brings bilinguals opportunities for bilinguals, such as living in a foreign country. Children of immigrants can choose or prefer to live in either the host country or the home country. This door is open only if these children are exposed to resources (i.e., books, history of the home country, etc.) to feel more comfortable living in either country.
If managed correctly, speaking two languages should enable her to effectively connect to both cultures as a Muslim Turkish-American with the flexibility to choose where to live. Based on what life brings, I would like to enable her to live either in the U.S. or Turkey.
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With that in mind, I can probably give a few examples of how learning Turkish (not just speaking, but also reading) has been helping my kids. We can find books about Turkey, or Islam, in great abundance in Turkish. The language provides entry to those knowledge sources. We regularly read those books together. I hope that my kids will interface with more advanced cultural and religious literature written in Turkish on time. (Zubeyir)
Sule is a mother of a 9-year old. Her husband is not a Turk and that means that her child is also exposed a third language. However, she prefers not to give up maintaining the Turkish language for her child in order to have her child feel the energy of each different language. For instance, when her child communicates in Turkish with relatives in Turkey, the mother believes that her child will experience something very novel; Without Turkish, her child wouldn’t.
With two languages, two worlds exist which expand a child’s horizon. I can speak English, but my mother tongue is Turkish, and there is different energy there. I want to be able to communicate with my child like that. He also needs to speak Turkish to directly relate with her mother, aunt, relatives, and cousins on my side. (Sule)
Humeyra, whose child is 11-years old, echos other parents in valuing the more abundant resources that come with bilingualism. She doesn’t want her child to be deprived of such a valuable opportunity. A multicultural and multilinguistic household/environment prepares children of immigrants to enter a vast world and increases their intellectual views.
I want my child to speak Turkish because there is a vast world out there for her. There are relatives, a sense of life, music, books, culture. I don't want him to be missing out on these experiences. It is also essential for us to understand each other. I do not want him to be deprived of such a valuable opportunity. I would also like him to laugh and cry at the same things from a different perspective. (Humeyra)
Elif, a mother of 9-years old, brought the flexibility to shift from one task to another due to practicing two languages simultaneously. As Bialystok (2016) argues, bilingual individuals have greater executive function skills than monolingual individuals due to actively using this skill. Specifically, each language teaches children two different grammar structures, which make them change their perspective more flexible than their monolingual peers. Thus, Elif’s point was that the process of bilingual development contributes to children’s other developmental skills (i.e., switching from one task to another).
Research has repeatedly shown that even children who learn more languages have higher IQs. It can be much more practical for them to shift from one task to another. For example, English and Turkish are different in terms of grammatical formation, so this will teach them to change their perspective. In middle school, kids are introduced to a second language. Not that something that started at a middle school level will give the child a second language, but it contributes so much to their development while observing it. That’s why I’m trying my very best to make sure she doesn’t forget. (Elif)
Narin, another parent, formulated her approaches in a precise “opportunities” manner: opening up more job marketing across countries and quickly adapting to a new culture.
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Speaking other languages brings more opportunities. So, in the future, if there happens to be an opportunity that could make them want to live in Turkey, as long as they speak Turkish, they can live and work there. We have come across an example of this. There are three adult children we know, the eldest who graduated from university, stayed here. Her middle son graduated from the University of Cincinnati with a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture but could not find a job. He went to Turkey, became an English teacher there, and now he's earning his life this way. Of course, there was an adaptation process because he was born here, but knowing Turkish provided him this job opportunity. But it was an interesting example for us because he could not find a job here even if he knew how to speak Turkish. (Narin)
Sumeyye, another parent, believes acquiring two languages allows one to reach out to different audiences. Thus, bilingual individuals can expand their horizons by efficiently communicating to people of diverse backgrounds.
Because the more languages s/he knows, the more s/he can appeal to different audiences. I also think that their vision expands. Because learning a foreign language means getting closer to other cultures. Besides that, of course, we live in another country. I already want her to speak the language of this country. At the same time, I also want her to be able to talk to her mother tongue. (Sumeyye)
B) Barriers to raising bilingual children Although parents narrated possible advantages of maintaining heritage language while their children learn the host country's dominant language, they reported that they had faced challenges at different levels. Ipek, whose child is 11-years old, admitted that raising a bilingual child in the U.S. is not easy. It is important to note that her child is not only bilingual but also trilingual. Before migrating to the U.S, they lived in France for a while when her child was little. She also wants to maintain her child’s French proficiency because her child is already very fluent. She also argued that one language usually takes the dominant role over another due to exposure to a specific language.
I think there are difficulties because it is challenging to execute two languages simultaneously. After all, I grew up in the same way. I grew up between two languages, and some things, for example, are more dominant in one language, but you could know some words better in the other language. So despite being able to express yourself eventually, there are obstacles in the end. (Ipek)
Ahmet also has similar concerns to Ipek – thar bilingualism may lead to not fully mastering either language. He is concerned that if children struggle with multiple languages, their language development may be impeded. Ahmet also shared similar reasons for why learning two languages at the same time makes children more challenged. For instance, it takes extra time for those children to adapt to a new environment at school. Ahmet articulated this challenge as a “catch up” process. During this catch-up process, some may go through a silent
29 period due to a lack of English proficiency. Research has also noted a “Silent period” for bilingual children to express themselves in a second language (Le Pichon & de Jonge, 2016).
I believe talking in two languages opens up someone’s horizons in terms of the ability to express someone’s thoughts. But I am not 100% sure if the same is true for kids all the time. There is always the risk for the kids to struggle between the two languages, as they won’t master them both fully (or at least one) and learning both together may be a blocker to learning itself. (Ahmet)
They learn Turkish at home by default (due to being exposed to Turkish all the time), our children don’t have much grasp of the English language by the time they are ready for childcare/preschool. It makes it more challenging for them to adapt to a new environment where the language is spoken, something they do not know much. It forces them to learn English a little later than their peers since they are doing a little bit caught up. Speaking two languages may limit their vocabulary in both languages as they use words interchangeably sometimes. (Mehmet)
Sumeyye’s provided a good example of not being able to master both languages well, especially when they switch between languages. It is not uncommon to see bilingual children mix grammar in those languages.
Instead of conjugating a Turkish word according to the Turkish grammar, she adds -ing to the end. She can make grammar mistakes switching between languages. For example, she struggles with the accent, wording, subject-verb agreements, and inverted Turkish sentences. We did not bother with it too much and didn't consider sending her to Turkish schools. Nor did we bother with teaching Turkish grammar of any kind. She only learned from our daily conversations. I think we can become better if we can be exposed to Turkish more over time. It negatively affects language development at first, because they speak incorrectly and not using correct grammar. But I think she will learn the grammatical structure. Maybe even later, she can learn a third language quickly because she already speaks two. (Sumeyye)
Humeyra’s made a point about the difference between immigrant Turks who live in Germany and those who live in America. The experiences Turks have in the U.S. are different than those in Germany, as Humeyra stated in her interview. She brought up the differences between these two groups in those countries because immigrant parents usually visit their home country as frequently as possible to maintain their heritage language and culture. But this option may not work for Turkish immigrants in the U.S due to several obstacles such as owning a house in Turkey to feel more comfortable to go with family members and having enough time to spend some good times in Turkey.
The profile of Turkish immigrants in the U.S. is not the same as Turkish immigrants in Germany. For instance, we don’t own houses in Turkey, while Turkish immigrants who work for a very long time in Germany tend to own a home in Turkey because they visit there frequently. On the other hand, we go as guests when we visit Turkey. It's not so easy to stay over in places after about 17 years, as a family of 5. Everyone is working and
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all. I think we would disturb their lives if we stayed for two weeks at my sister's house as four guests. You can maybe go to your mother's house to stay, though. (Humeyra)
The struggle to maintain the heritage language or to raise bilingual children is a reality for many immigrant parents. However, some factors are not under their control, such as their environment. Tuba shows extreme efforts to raise her children as bilingual. She admitted that she thinks the efforts of parents to teach Turkish is not enough for children to develop Turkish proficiency. For a long time, her family couldn’t interact with other Turkish speakers due to where they lived. Thus, the grandparents came over to look after children while they were at work. Although having grandparents helped her child improve their heritage language until the age of two, some difficulties emerged once the child started going to daycare. Interestingly enough, a rabbit in a cage comforted him when he felt lonely during this process. Narin started this process very beautifully, “My son would stay quiet, the rabbit would stay quiet.” What that means is that children of immigrants want to feel understood. It is, therefore, very crucial to have someone who understands the psychology of bilingual children. In Narin’s case, they had a teacher in the daycare who had a linguistic background. This teacher motivated the parents and helped their children feel more comfortable until they could express themselves in English. During this process, parents and community supports (i.e., teachers at school) play an essential role in cultivating language development for children with a multilinguistic background. In a nutshell, parents struggle to raise bilingual children despite the benefits of two different vocabularies.
We specifically wanted our children to speak two languages, and we put in a lot of effort for this to happen. We lived in Wisconsin before, and there were no Turkish people over there. We thought they couldn't learn from anyone but us. They learned Turkish first; their grandparents came to look after them. The kids stayed home for two years. Then they started daycare at the age of two. They only knew Turkish then. They didn't speak a word of English. (Narin).
Narin’s struggling is a practical example of why some Turkish immigrant families simply more cannot do to maintain their children’s proficiency in Turkish in the face of external factors. Especially if Turkish immigrant parents are both full-time working parents, they may find a preferential environment for the development of the dominant language in their children. Narin, as a full-time working mother, experienced this process.
Despite Turkish being their mother tongue, since we are working parents, they were exposed to English more often. So English is now their mother tongue, and Turkish became their second language. Their exposure to Turkish vocabulary at home is limited so naturally, and they can't learn better since they aren't educated in Turkish. I think it still is a good thing in terms of their language development because they know every object in two languages, there are two words for everything. So, it seems like their capacities are growing for certain things. At least, that’s what I hope is happening. (Narin)
Immigrants need external help from the hosting country. Narin’s son’s experience in the daycare is an excellent example of external support coming from a schoolteacher. Simple support
31 motivates minority groups to both integrate into society and to maintain their heritage language and culture.
When a child starts daycare without knowing the primary language spoken, they experience great difficulty at first. They're suddenly in an only English-speaking environment while they weren't exposed to it before. There was a rabbit in the daycare where Levent went. Levent was always next to the rabbit cage. Levent would stay quiet; the rabbit would stay quiet. He would carefully observe his surroundings for a long time. Interestingly, one of the teachers in the daycare had a linguistic background. “First, he will listen and collect words. He will start speaking after he has collected enough words,” he said. We were worried our child would never communicate with anyone and eventually push him into depression. One can't help but imagine all the possible worst scenarios that could happen. But we were relieved after hearing this. (Narin)
C) Intertwining of language and cultural relationships Some parents firmly believe that culture is intertwined with language. In other words, they think that maintaining heritage culture or cultural ties can only occur through working on the language that is spoken by its people, which aligns with Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory (Vygotsky, 1978). Cultural roots in language and language reflect the culture from one generation to the next (Emitt & Pollock, 1997). Sule, whose spouse is not a Turk, reported that language could help children create an identify and sense of belonging. Sule’s child is not only exposed to English but also two different heritage languages, and she believes that each language can help her son have more comprehensive views of life. Additionally, she asserts that maintaining two or more languages helps children not be nationalist, but more welcoming of the differences between cultures. Cultural identity… It is a complicated topic. As far as I know, I am sure that he can communicate with people in Turkey. Not only can he speak the language, but also, he feels he belongs to Turkey. He also feels like he belongs to America and Pakistan (where his father is from). In a nutshell, wherever he goes, he feels at home. However, although he feels this belonging to Turkey, I am not teaching him nationalism. I distinguish between being a callous nationalist individual and feeling a sense of belongingness. If I were to raise him in Turkey, I’d be meticulous about this topic. For instance, he does not feel very proud of being a Turk, such as some historical events in Turkey. He does not associate any significant historical events with his identity as a Turk. I don’t show any efforts to expose those events to him. I don’t know what I would do if I were in Turkey, though. (Sule)
Sinem believes in the richness that exists in different cultures. She described the importance of teaching a second language to her daughter through a cultural lens. The only way to make a culture stay alive is to actively pass its language to the next generation. In this way, they can increase their sense of belonging. This sense of belonging is especially important for the U.S. immigrant population. If children do not experience appreciation and love, they cannot feel that they are a part of the host culture.
Each language opens a new door to a different culture. Therefore, teaching a second language is not a problem for me because she can understand a different culture through
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its language. A language can only stay alive when actively used in a generation. It's also an essential means of communication with her Turkish-speaking family members. She feels a sense of belonging when she attends events that expose her to the language used in our culture. In other words, by knowing the language of the event she’s attending, she will be able to feel comfortable when it comes to interacting with people there. This way, she can embrace that culture because language is a door that sparks love and appreciation for the culture. (Sinem)
Interestingly, some parents individually emphasized that they are not nationalists when they want their children to maintain their heritage roots. They believe that each language comes with its cultural richness so that maintaining heritage language means having a tool to access these resources. Elif also brought up a significant example from South Africa to show the importance of keeping each culture alive through its language
My child is a Turk. Just because she was born here, it doesn't mean she is from here. However, I don't deny she is from here at the same time. This is the reality of children of immigrants. Although I have a fragile sense of nationalism, most Turkish friends think I am assimilated into the American culture. To destroy a nation, for instance, what happened when apartheid started in South Africa? Each tribe was given a different language. Then, they started fighting against each other. I am trying to say that language makes your roots stronger, so we have to speak the language if we identify as Turks. Thus, we should maintain and teach Turkish to ourselves and our kids. (Elif)
Ahmet pointed out that preserving ethnic identity should come first, then language maintenance. In other words, the language can serve as a tool to transmit heritage roots, specifically culture. For example, a person who expresses his feelings toward his mother in his native language will have different experiences if he does in his second language due to the language's context.
I think when I am thinking about culture, I am not thinking about it separate from identity. Turkish culture and Turkish identity go side by side. Culture is usually very contextual, related to one’s surroundings. Turkish culture without the Turkish language is only ceremonial, something to remember about in the past. The Turkish language provides the context for the culture. I don’t think it is quite possible to transmit Turkish culture/identity without the language itself. The references in the language reflect the thought process that developed over thousands of years. An English translation of the same experience is not always possible. I think preserving ethnic identity comes first, and only after that, language maintenance. (Ahmet)
Despite expressing himself in English, Mehmet also prefers to use his mother tongue when communicating with his children. Heritage language allows children to build relationships with their grandparents and relatives who don’t know English.
Learning and speaking Turkish is a gateway/key to making them interested in Turkish culture and Turkish history. Communicating with grandparents and relatives in Turkey in Turkish during our yearly visits is also a great feeling as a parent whose mother tongue is
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Turkish. When the dominant language spoken at home is Turkish (which children pick up naturally as they get exposed), I like communicating with my children in my native language than my adopted country's language. (Mehmet)
Enes is another parent who supports the maintaining ethnic identity through teaching Turkish to children. Specifically, he provided a few examples of reaching out to the beauties of resources embedded in Turkish culture. Since each language comes with its grammar structure and culture, children can enrich their capacities by exposing themselves to two different cultures through languages.
Firstly, I want him to communicate with me effectively. Moreover, he will be able to explore the beauties of Turkish culture, literature, and traditions. He may benefit from these resources to enrich his life vision and character. The unique features of Turkish will help my child increase his thinking capacity and communication skills. For instance, each language has a different set of idioms and proverbs. Each language typically has a rich vocabulary in specific topics, e.g., relative names in Turkish, and science and technology in English. I think language is a significant component that defines identity. By speaking Turkish, he will connect with the Turkish culture and community, which let him maintain his ethnic identity. (Enes)
A language barrier is one of the obstacles that prevent individuals from connecting with other cultures. Immigrant parents face this barrier in two ways: 1) learning the dominant culture to integrate into the host culture, 2) maintaining the heritage language to stay connected in their heritage culture. Zubeyir provided an example of the second method from his 15-year-old niece. He believes that language and culture are intertwined with anyone that helps individuals build cultural identity. In other words, they can feel a sense of belonging to each culture.
I see the Turkish language as an enabler that will expose my kids to the culture source, whether in the form of literature or comfortable visits to Turkey without a language barrier. It also enables them to connect with their relatives back in Turkey and allows them to live in Turkey if they choose to do so. Here is a counterexample: The cases where a lack of language preservation leads to alienation from the culture. I have a 15- year-old niece born and raised in the US, without visiting Turkey for the past few years as her Turkish language skills deteriorated, her ability to connect with her visiting grandparents, any literature in Turkish, and even her parents. Since all the 'human sources' of culture had their cultural identity built up with language intertwined, conveying those values has proven to be a challenge. (Zubeyir)
Overall, Turkish immigrant parents value raising their children as bilinguals due to the cognitive (e.g., brain development) and social (e.g., global opportunities) benefits. Also, parents value the relative advantages of bilingualism in the U.S. Therefore, they make an extra effort to foster their children’s dual-language development. But challenges at different levels do occur when maintaining two or more languages in their households. For instance, they believe one language tends to take a dominant role due to differences in exposure to one language over another. Children who are exposed to heritage language earlier seem to have to go through a “catch-up” process and/or a “silent period” to grasp another language in schools (Le Pichon &
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Jonge, 2016). Especially, if the parents work, those problems may be inevitable. Finally, besides all other benefits and drawbacks of raising bilingual children, parents value spending extra times to maintain their children’s heritage culture and language because they believe language and culture are intertwined. Figure 1 indicates possible factors that influence raising bilingual children for those parents.
2) Parental attitudes toward maintaining children’s heritage language developmental process A) Adjustments of parents to diminishing Heritage Language (i.e., attempting to refuse to speak Turkish with parents). One of the four themes that emerged from the interviews concerns parental attitudes toward maintaining children’s heritage language development. Within this overarching theme, three subthemes describe how successful immigrant parents are at transmitting their heritage language. The parents also reported possible reactions and attitudes they acquire when their children do not respond to their efforts. For example, if they face any outcome that seems to be disappointing them, what types of adjustments and expectations do they have to overcome unwanted results? When children are exposed to the dominant language, this language becomes their native language. Thus, Turkish immigrant parents sometimes feel obligated to speak with their children to communicate in Turkish. Melike stated that she is not happy when she sees her husband speaking English with their children. She worries there are times when children feel more comfortable to expressing themselves in English. But if parents force their children to say the same sentences in Turkish, their children may not be motivated to work on Turkish. Once when her daughter said, "never mind", Melike asked her daughter to explain her story in Turkish. But her daughter refused to repeat whatever she had said to her mom. Then, the mother changed her attitude and asked her again, "Okay, say it in English, let me understand what you want to say, after that, I can help you with the Turkish." This approach is one of the positive attitudes parents can have if their children refuse to speak Turkish due to struggling to express themselves.
The kids have developed a habit of not speaking Turkish, especially with their father. Sometimes there are instances where he doesn't know how to explain something. This happened last week with Serra. She was speaking English, and I was standing a little far from her, so I said, “I don't understand sweaty, can you say that again? Say it in Turkish.” But she said, "Never mind," and quit trying. So, I said, "Okay, say it in English, let me understand what you want to say, after that, I can help you with the Turkish." I make her do corrections so she can ask me, or I help her with a word if she doesn't know it like by giving suggestions of how to say something when she struggles. (Melike)
Ahmet’s experiences are very similar to Melike. Ahmet said that his child does not refuse to speak Turkish but feels frustrated when expressing himself in that language. Usually, when children become more fluent or dominant in a second language, it is much easier for them to use the second language in daily conversation. The reality for bilingual children is that they have two different linguistic environments, and this switching comes with a price. Parental attitudes can play a crucial role in making the “switching process” smooth and easy. One of the common language attitudes is responding in Turkish when their children express themselves in English. If
35 this process does not help the children, the parents then feel the need to speak with them in English.
What might happen, though, is that child first speaks in English, and then asked to say that in Turkish, and after a few attempts, may not be able to do that proficiently, or do it with some help. This may lead to frustration, rather than refusal. If they cannot express, ask them questions by giving them options, like, “are you trying to explain x y or z?” If this doesn’t work, ask them what English word they mean, and they don’t know the Turkish equivalent. Doing that word by word helped them construct the Turkish sentence they were trying to come up with. When none of this works, then ask them to say that it in English, then we translate it to Turkish for them and ask them to repeat what they heard. (Ahmet)
Enes, whose son is 7-years old, has not yet observed his son feel frustrated or refuse to speak Turkish with his parents. He believes that he has established healthy communication with his son in Turkish. His son knows that the best way to wants to communicate with his parents is through Turkish. Enes also added that if his son were ever to refuse to talk back Turkish with them in Turkish. Enes would try to explain to his son the benefits of practicing Turkish.
He has never refused to speak Turkish yet. A critical factor in that is that he was fluent in Turkish before starting to learn English. I established my communication with him in Turkish, and he also prefers Turkish while speaking with me. If he refused to speak Turkish with me, I would explain the importance of maintaining the Turkish language. I tried to explain the importance of preserving the Turkish language in my responses, e.g., maintaining a connection to a rich culture, literature, tradition, extended family members, a different way of thinking, etc. (Enes)
As Tuba notes, some immigrant parents see this refusal process as a part of bilingual development for their children. She said in the interview that it is normal for her own family. She and her spouse, both works, so their children mostly speak English on weekdays.
We are busy parents. We don't see our children all day. The child first goes to school, after school, the babysitter comes, and they speak English. Most of the day, we are absent, and he’s been speaking English. And then I come home and speak Turkish, or his/her father does. There is no switch to the brain that will make them suddenly speak Turkish. It's very typical for this to happen, so I don't force him/her. (Narin)
Sumeyye articulated how it feels for her daughter to only talk in English when Sumeyye wants her daughter to speak with them in Turkish. She hopes to provide enough motivation and courage to her daughter so that one day her daughter will understand the importance of speaking Turkish with her parents, her grandparents, and relatives.
At the age of three, we were distraught when she went to school because she didn't speak Turkish at all. She always spoke English with us. We persistently warned her to speak Turkish, we would tell her that some of our relatives might come, and they won't understand English, so she should speak Turkish for them to understand. But of course,
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there was nothing else we could do other than expecting her to speak Turkish as well. (Sumeyye)
B) Expectations from their children heritage language development Most of the parents who were interviewed were very highly educated. The parents' educational level may impact their expectations, whether they are okay with their children's current heritage language proficiency or searching for more options to cultivate their children's heritage language development. Immigrant parents are often concerned with their children’s dual language development, specifically heritage language competence. Turkish immigrant parents feel comfortable using Turkish to communicate with their children. Therefore, it is reasonable for them to expect their children to show efforts to maintain Turkish. As Zubeyir articulated, parents provide a warm home environment for their children as a reliable source to fulfill their children’s expectations.
This unconditional belief in the home's effect as a reliable source of environmental language input seemed to affect parents’ representation about the basket of tools (i.e., strategies) for managing children’s language development and their expectations concerning the child’s language competence. (Zubeyir)
Humeyra did not not worry too much about her son’s heritage language development in the beginning because she believed that her son is intelligence enough to maintain two languages. However, when her son started losing the motivation to keep Turkish while learning English, Humeyra has started thinking of showing less enthusiasm to maintain her son’s heritage language development.
He also takes Turkish lessons. If you ask me if I care, no, I don't. At school, Emre is a student who occasionally receives complaints from the teacher. Academically speaking, he's a good student, his grades have been excellent. When he was six years old, they did an intelligence test at John Hopkins University. Yunus’s results showed that he is in the 99 percentiles. But he also has some emotional problems. Let's just say he’s not easy to handle. (Humeyra)
Some Turkish immigrant parents who are highly proficient in English don’t mind speaking it so long as they are properly communicating with their children, Kadriye has this attitude.
My child doesn't particularly refuse to speak Turkish but often asks if she can say something in English instead. My only goal is to keep the communication with my child healthy, whether in English or Turkish. S/he must know that they can always come to me for anything. I try to keep this strong, but since I do not know what conditions I might encounter in the future, I did not develop a strategy yet. For now, I try to act according to the situation. (Kadriye)
Concerns about mixing up between languages is a pervasive attitude among dual language speakers (García & Wei, 2014). Some immigrant parents show expectations from their children only using one language at a time. For instance, Narin’s native language is Turkish but
37 is fluent in English. She believes that children cannot acquire both languages properly if they mix two languages simultaneously. She called this process “gibberish.” She expects her children to speak Turkish or English at home as long as they don’t mix the two.
There is a matter I care about specifically. I don't want them to speak Turkish and English in a mixed form. If they talk like that, I tell them that all I hear is gibberish. I'm quite sensitive about this matter, and it is unfair to both languages. It seems to me that the child cannot learn both languages properly. I'm sensitive about that. But I don't force it unless they mix it up. I worry that it will backfire if I push it on them. When they do, I quickly tell them to stop talking gibberish and to fix their language. They don't ignore me, so they immediately fix themselves. It is up to them to decide which language to speak. But I will not accept gibberish, and I made sure they understood that. (Narin)
Vygotsky (1978) argues that children acquire language with social context such as environmental support. Although parents of bilingual children see the advantages of bilingualism, their children tend to lack environments where the children can practice more the language beyond what the parents are willing to maintain. Sara is one of many immigrant parents whose expectations turn into different results due to not having diverse social contexts in the Turkish language.
Our children are developing differently than I expected them to be as bilingual children. They are relatively poor in expressing themselves in Turkish, specifically our youngest one. I had thought they would be more proficient in Turkish. Unfortunately, both of them had caregivers that were non-Turkish speakers. And since their friends are only English speakers, as parents who are fulltime workers, I guess it was not enough for us to just speak Turkish with them when we are home. They both understand Turkish very well but prefer to express themselves in English. (Sumeyye)
C) Difficulties encountered in attempting to maintain heritage language Turkish immigrant parents sometimes find themselves in a situation where they cannot provide an ideal environment for their children to learn Turkish. Rabia is one of them. She was pursuing a Ph.D. when she had her daughter. She had to send her daughter to a daycare, which means that her child was exposed more to English than Turkish. As a result of it, the child did not enjoy reading Turkish books.
For example, my daughter does not speak Turkish very well. Because I was doing a doctorate when growing up, I couldn't read many books with her. Now she doesn't let me read any books in Turkish because she doesn't understand. I even bought Princess Sofia in Turkish. I tell her, let me read these books, but she objects and insists on reading English books instead (Rabia)
Studies such as Milburn et al (2014) show that reading book facilitates children’s language proficiency. Turkish-speaking immigrant parents also desire to have their children read books frequently in Turkish and English because they know that bilingual children face problems in grammar structures in both languages they are exposed to. Ece expects her child, who was born deaf, to read more Turkish to avoid spelling errors and stuttering. He couldn’t hear anything
38 until the age of one. When he became one year old, cochlear implant surgery was performed. But he was only exposed to a sign language. It is one of the severe difficulties immigrant parents face to have a child who is deaf. Ece said that as parents, they educated themselves to help their son acquire two languages after he acquired the implants. Reading a lot was one of the best practices she had done with her son. Now, he is five-years-old, and he speaks Turkish and English fluently.
We had a different experience than ordinary people. My son was born deaf. Therefore, when he was one, cochlear implant surgery was performed. So for one year, there was no exposure to any language except sign language. We also have read many books on this matter. Like about whether we start him with English, would there be a problem introducing both languages. You know, we were a little bit anxious about these issues. That's why we read studies related to this matter so that we can learn more. But he adapted to both languages, and he spoke both well. Now he has no problems with neither language. Like he doesn't have difficulty with the communication he has with his grandparents. Therefore, even as a child born deaf and was exposed to sound after the age of one, he didn't have any problems becoming bilingual. (Zuhal)
Zuhal also added that her experiences with her son show that it is vital to read books in a heritage language regularly. They can help children of immigrants can avoid grammar errors in their heritage language.
Turkish is pronounced exactly like how it is spelled and written, so there's no issue with that, but there is no consistency with reading it. In other words, there is a lot of stuttering and need for sounding out before reading because they haven't experienced Turkish much since they have not experienced much Turkish. After all, when I say a word, everyone can write it. With a little spelling error, they can write it correctly, more or less. But when it comes to reading Turkish, everyone stutters. They cannot read it quickly. They struggle with making smooth transitions and easily get stuck. This happens because they aren't fully proficient in the language and don't read any Turkish books. It is imperative for children to read books.
Elif’s expects her children to read Turkish books and to watch Turkish channels. She is a child psychiatrist working in a hospital. She doesn’t have a Turkish community near her house and faces similar experiences to Narin while raising her two children as a working mother. Thus, Elif didn’t know any other way to help her children maintain Turkish. At the end of our interview, she asked me, “please give me advice,” indicating the difficulties she has encountered while struggling to maintain her children’s Turkish proficiency.
Maybe I can subscribe to Turkish television channels, or I can take them to Turkish events. For example, I say TV, but we are not a family watching TV like I do not know where the TV cable is now. Maybe I can make them read Turkish books. I don't know what I can do. I would love to enhance their Turkish, but I don't know the answer to the question of what I could do to do this. Due to the State that we live in now, the responsibilities that I'm involved in leaves me quite tight with time, thus preventing me from enhancing them in any way. Please give me advice. (Elif)
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Ahmet argues that children find reading Turkish books boring due to the books’ structures. He, as a parent, has also found some Turkish books hard to follow easily. This experience may trigger a lack of motivation in children to work on their Turkish proficiency.
Usually English. We tried Turkish in the past, but it wasn’t very successful. We purchased Turkish books. I read them out with the kids. What I found is that reading Turkish is not easy. I am not entirely sure if Turkish grammar is hard, or Turkish authors make it hard for people to understand. While it could be possible to describe a situation in 2-3 sentences, Turkish authors usually create excessively long sentences (combine 2-3 sentences into one sentence), and kids have extreme difficulty following what is going on. I nearly started to think that writing conventions in Turkish are not well set up, and that might very well be why I prefer not to read in Turkish anymore. (Ahmet)
In summary, parents show a variety of attitudes toward maintaining Turkish as a heritage language, such as adjustments, expectations from their heritage language development, and dealing with the difficulties of their children refusing to speak Turkish with them. They reported that encouraging switching between languages comes with a price, including the need to spend more times with their children during packed daily schedules, taking their children to Turkey to practice Turkish within cultural contexts regardless of geographical distances and airplane ticket prices. Bilingual speakers tend to encourage only using one language at a time to prevent issues arising from mixing up languages (Garci & Wei, 2014). Although they are eager to establish healthy communication and to create a warm home environment to boost their children’s motivation to work on Turkish, they face difficulties in keeping their children motivated and enthusiastic due to a lack of dedicated time to maintaining Turkish and environmental supports. Some parents do not mind switching between languages as long as they can establish a healthy communication with their children. On the other hand, others worry about losing their children’s heritage language if their children do not practice Turkish with them in daily family conversation. Figure 2 shows parental attitudes and strategies and methods the parents use to preserve Turkish language and culture.
3) Parental strategies to maintain HL among children A) Parents’ efforts to enhance children’s HL development Almost every parent reported that they frequently use Turkish to help their children maintain their heritage language. If they have a Turkish community close to their houses, they take their children to those places to be exposed to Turkish in different contexts and social environments. For instance, Narin’s makes the effort to take her children to Turkey or to invite grandparents to come over to their home. Some parents in the interview noted that they don’t have enough Turkish books to access. Yet, Narin uses children's books written in English as a source to teach her children Turkish. She did not read the book but showed the pictures to them by describing what was going on in the book in Turkish.
They might not be the same as children who go to school or live in Turkey, but they are quite familiar with most things from what they observe at home or when we visit Turkey. Every year we try our best to go to Turkey. We stay with their grandparents when we go
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to Turkey, and they have a strong bond with them since they look after them there. I love to read a lot, and I always read Turkish books with him. I started reading to him when he was two months old. I would choose books that had lots of interesting pictures that might capture his attention in libraries. So, for example, I would show these pictures to him and describe them. Sometimes I wouldn’t read the book, just show him the photos and focus on what they look like. I continued doing this until he started going to school. (Narin)
Zubeyir is also another parent who is very sensitive about vocabulary mix-ups. He believes that while children’s language skills develop, they can distinguish one language from another by receiving constant feedback from their parents at home. How I think 'exclusive Turkish at home' helps my kids is more through 'vocabulary distinction.' In other words, as language skills develop, I believe the kids need relatively constant feedback on what language a word belongs to. This helps them compartmentalize the languages they learn and avoid vocabulary mix-ups typical of multiple language learners. Speaking two languages should positively affect her development as long as the languages' line is preserved effectively. It provides environments where she can exclusively use one language or the other (and thus avoid vocabulary mix-ups). (Zubeyir)
Spending time together, taking children to Turkey, and reading, and watching anything in Turkish are common among Turkish immigrant parents, including Mehmet. Some strategies can also be tentative, which means that parents change their strategy and efforts when their children grow. Mehmet prefers to look for any possible advice from immigrant parents who have older bilingual children in the U.S. This is called “social support” or “looking for social support.”
We speak in Turkish with them as we spend our time/play together. We read Turkish books to them. We also allow them to watch Turkish cartoons. We take yearly extended vacations to our homeland Turkey to visit our parents and relatives. I may look for advice from older bilingual parents with older children and also read on the topic. (Mehmet)
Small practical examples can enlighten immigrant parents when they feel they lack “what to do” while raising bilingual children without having external social support. Kadriye’s dinner table activity is a practical strategy. Sibel’s example from her friends is counted as another useful strategy to cultivate children's heritage language. Always hearing and watching in a specific language can facilitate or contribute to children’s language development one way or another.
We try to make a rule to speak only Turkish when we are at the dinner table. If they start speaking English, we tell them, “Now try to say that in Turkish” or “Would you like to say that in Turkish?” Secondly, their father and I make sure to speak mostly Turkish at home. I would say we are 90% successful in doing so. Third, we recast the phrases they say in English by restating the Turkish sentences as if we are trying to make sure we understood what they meant to say. Even if they don’t say something in Turkish, we try to make sure they hear and understand what they said in Turkish. (Kadriye)
One of my friends would show a Turkish tv series called Çiçek Taksi for her kids every day. In this series, the actors speak a heavy black sea accent, so her daughter started
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speaking Turkish with that accent. We were utterly shocked by her accent. I was curious about how she managed to catch this heavy accent and checked out a couple of tv series episodes. There happens to be a prominent male character and a couple of his friends that have this black sea accent. I have another friend that watches this other Turkish tv series where Tuba Büyüküstün, a famous female actor in Turkey, played the role of a gypsy. I don’t remember the name of the series, but I remember precisely how my friends would repeatedly binge-watch the episodes. (Humeyra)
B) Language practices and resources Maintaining a heritage language requires activities and resources. Another theme noticeable in the interview data is that the parents specifically shared their actions as part of their strategies to preserve their children’s Turkish proficiency. Narin, who doesn’t have so many Turks around her, uses cooking time to practice Turkish with her two sons. Since language comes with contexts, she successfully applied to create a language atmosphere for her children to teach Turkish. She also taught Turkish to her children during her vacation time in Turkey. She reported that her children don’t have difficulty with the Turkish alphabets, but they find reading Turkish books boring because they can’t read them as fast as in English. In her family, she finds Turkish books, and her husband finds Turkish movies for her children. This strategy is an example of how bilingual families divide tasks to ease the burden. Also, children can acquire language from different speakers and environments.
I try to do small activities such as baking a cake or making a dish or the like. My cookbook is in Turkish. When I’m busy making things while cooking, I have them read the recipe out loud from the cookbook. And they can read what I wrote even though now and then some of the letters look confusing, they tend to the point that out. Let’s say they can read good enough. I had written the letters and put pictures under them. So, they quickly learned Turkish this way by uniting the pictures with the letters. It is straightforward to read in Turkish than reading English because it is read exactly how it is written. (Narin)
Narin also noted that while several methods develop of Turkish, they don’t get the same pleasure with Turkish books as they do when they read English. She said that Turkish books seem more boring to her children than English books due to the long sentence structures. Such structures make her children lose their motivation to read Turkish enthusiastically.
However, they don't enjoy reading Turkish because they read slowly compared to English, which they can read faster. I bought Turkish books for them, but they don't want to read them. When I was teaching them Turkish, I thought about how I’m not the master of this language since I’m an engineer. I only knew that I just needed to get them Turkish books to read. But that didn’t seem to work out as I had anticipated. We would find Turkish dubbed animations on the internet to watch specifically for films they loved to watch generally in English. These methods are just our way of trying our best to teach them Turkish that we came up with, we didn’t learn it anywhere. (Narin)
Reading books and visiting libraries to check out books together seem to be popular options for immigrant parents. Yet, as Mehmet stated in the interview, he reads more English
42 books because of his daughter’s school needs. Since his daughter is in preschool, he hopes to put extra effort into helping his daughter develop Turkish language proficiency, such as writing.
We read to our preschool-age child in both languages. Reading in English tends to go up compared to reading in Turkish as they go to school and bring books from school or check out books from local libraries. As far as writing is concerned, our preschool-age child is learning English letters and sounds. We do not put any additional effort to help her write in Turkish, yet. (Mehmet)
A play can be an excellent context to use Turkish actively. Zuhal, whose daughter goes to Sunday school to learn Turkish, helped to organize a play in Turkish. Her daughter was also a part of the play. After the play in a theater, she saw tremendous improvement in her daughter's Turkish proficiency. Figure 3 illustrates Turkish parents’ efforts and language activities in Turkish.
We did the following to teach our child how to write: There is a Turkish center here close to us. Every Sunday, our kids go there to learn Turkish. I volunteered to organize a play for my daughter's class. This theater was also in Turkish. They created and read the script by themselves. So, it was such a hands-on activity for them to learn Turkish. Of course, the girls were very excited about the play because of the acting. Even this play was done in a small part of their time at Sunday school. It improved their literacy a lot. I think aside from writing. They improved significantly in reading. (Zuhal)
In summary, parents reported strategies they use to preserve their children’s Turkish, such as their efforts to practice language and use linguistic resources. Most of the parents prefer taking their children to places such as Turkey or Turkish community centers, or to encourage reading and writing in Turkish as a way to maintain Turkish. These different contexts and social environments boost their Turkish skills, as Vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory strongly supports (Vygotsky, 1978).
4) Parents acculturation experiences A) Adaptation to the U.S. (i.e., awareness of raising a bilingual child as immigrant parents) Various factors impact the heritage language development process, such as adaptation experiences to the host country. Since language can be alive within culture, immigrant families' acculturation can affect both proficiency in both Turkish and English. Sumeyye’s personal acculturation experiences are not unusual for highly educated immigrant parents. Sumeyye, who migrated to the U.S. at a very early age, adapted to the host country easily. She didn’t face any language problems and completed her high-level education in the U.S. She struggled a bit with sarcastic, metaphoric, and ironic language at first. Yet, her experiences involved integrating into the host country, and Sumeyye didn’t isolate herself. After having children and currently living in a diverse city, she has faced some obstacles and difficulties teaching her Turkish language and Turkish culture. When it comes to teaching good manners to her children, she and her husband don’t mind using Turkish or English as long as their children understand the importance of some essential concepts, such as religious holidays.
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Our kids were born and raised in a diverse place like California. Bay Area is a unique experience since we didn’t even have any American neighbors for years. We mostly interacted with Indian, Philippine, Chinese, Pakistani, and Mexican people. Despite our communication language being English, we have many similarities in terms of culture, so it was relatively easy to get along. (Sumeyye)
Although Sumeyye came to the U.S. after earning her undergraduate degree in Turkey, she believes that her children’s bilingualism developed differently than she expected.
My children are relatively poor in expressing themselves in Turkish, especially our youngest one. Unfortunately, both of them had caregivers that were non-Turkish speakers. And since their friends are only English speakers, as parents who are fulltime workers, I guess it was not enough for us to speak only Turkish with them when we are home. They both understand Turkish very well but prefer to express themselves in English. We explain things by giving relevant examples they can make sense of and show alternatives. One important example is the concept of religious holidays. We want them to understand the things we explain, such as some cultural or religious topics. Sometimes terms in English make more sense. They may be more explanatory and convincing. (Sumeyye)
The adaptation process for immigrant families brings so many different experiences. Migrating from a home country to a host country is costly. Notably, it is a challenge for families to change the way they used to live. They consider adjusting their parenting style to keep healthy communication with their children while showing extra efforts to adapt to a new society as separated individuals. Depending on how they migrate to a host country, families have tremendous experiences, as Narin did. She and her husband came to the U.S. to pursue doctoral degrees in engineering. Their cultural environment was a bit different than typical immigrant families. They were surrounded by intellectual people who are usually very open-minded to welcome diverse students. Therefore, Narin learned some key concepts that positively impacted her life and she wants to transmit some of the beneficial cultural norms to her children, such as respect and tolerance to many cultures.
As immigrant parents who came to this country as graduate students, we experienced a global transformation. We were in a highly intellectual environment and interacted with peers from the U.S. and many other cultures. We gradually developed respect and tolerance for many cultures. Our children grow up and go to school in the U.S. They both speak English without an accent. Their Turkish is good too, although their vocabulary is somewhat narrow. They are mostly immersed in U.S. pop culture. I don’t think they are in an environment to develop respect and understanding of many cultures yet. Our experiences caused us to develop sensitivity to social justice. We hope and expect better social justice in both U.S. and Turkey. We hope to raise children who don’t discriminate against other people because of race, ethnicity, religion, physical, mental, or language abilities. (Narin)
Zubeyir experiences his acculturation process in two different environments: a work/school environment versus a family environment. He is mostly exposed to the dominant
44 culture and language in work/school places as a parent. Once he comes back home from those places, his family feels more “at home” by eating Turkish cuisine and talking to each other only Turkish.
Our experiences have been mixed. Usually, work/school vs. family lives are at a contrast; where work/school culture is pretty 'acculturated,' although the family life is single- language (Turkish) and resembles more a Turkish household (e.g., food variety, etc.). In a global world, however, it is not only us experiencing 'acculturation' but every family in the world, to some extent, with American culture being dominant on media across the world. (Zubeyir)
Determining positive and negative impacts of the acculturation process can suggest why some immigrant parents successfully transmit their heritage language and culture to their children, but others do not. Mehmet noted that as long as the dominant cultural norms align with his values and beliefs, the benefits of raising a bilingual child are valid. As he said, “it is a plus for us to grow better.” He also brought up an important topic that many immigrant parents encounter with child-rearing. Children of immigrants question their surroundings a lot since they are exposed to two different cultures and languages. Some values and beliefs may impact their adaptation process. As Mehmet emphasizes parenting challenges in the dominant culture, “it is almost impossible to shield your child from the bombardment of messages coming from everywhere (school, friends, cartoons, shopping, etc.). Of course, this makes it very challenging for us as parents to say no.” If those children don’t receive appropriate parenting guidance, they may struggle to adapt to the school environment. Consequently, it may lead to some psychological problems.
There are positives and negatives that one can derive from adapting to a different culture based on our value system and beliefs. If a cultural norm or expectation aligns well with our values, belief system, and culture, it is a plus for us and helps us grow for the better. If there are negative or neutral cultural aspects that may not necessarily align well, we try to avoid those experiences. (Enes)
Enes also pointed out that children of immigrants grow up in an environment where they are exposed to so many norms and cultures so that parents have to tell their children which part of the dominant cultures are aligned with their own beliefs. Their children can then integrate into two different cultures and belief systems more successfully.
Children learning the local dominant language through school and the environment surrounding us comes with understanding the culture as a whole, whether we as parents approve some parts or not. As parents, we try to explain our values, belief system, and cultural identity to counterbalance the dominant culture elements that we may not necessarily celebrate, internalize, or approve. Children pick up a lot of things from the environment surrounding them. They have their questioning and reasoning. It is our continuous job as parents to guide them.
Enes’s positive example of cultural practice in the dominant culture is greeting. He said that greeting between people occurs more than back home. Once he internalizes this attitude as a
45 part of this culture into his own life, his action seems awkward for people in his home country. Not only do children of immigrants struggle to adapt to two different cultures, but also their parents strive to acquire the best attitudes from the dominant culture to guide their children.
I was surprisingly impressed with people whom I don't know looking in the eye and say "hello," "hi," "how are you?". Our belief system and our own culture emphasize the importance of greeting, yet in practice, here it appears to be more in action than back home. I appreciated and internalized this practice that it feels awkward when I go home since I sort of expect a similar greeting custom in action. Of course, I would like my children to know and understand the importance of sincerely greeting other people and practicing it as much as possible, like our current environment surrounding us.
A negative example of Enes’s family is Halloween. He seemingly does not approve the nature or idea of Halloween based on his cultural and belief systems. He said that this negative example is only one example from others that many immigrant parents struggle with.
Even though Halloween seems innocent, child-friendly, and fun, we disapprove of this due to its historical roots as parents. However, when it comes, it is almost impossible to shield your child from the bombardment of messages from everywhere (school, friends, cartoons, shopping, etc.). Of course, this makes it very challenging for us as parents to say no but keep them entertained at the same time with alternative activities at home. (Enes)
Zuhal’s experiences are similar to Tuba’s stories about adapting to American culture. She is an architect and has been working in the U.S. for a long time. She said that one of the significant obstacles for immigrant parents is not finding a conventional memory. The other obstacle is to maintain the heritage language for children.
As a professional, I did not have difficulty adapting to American culture. I started working right away. I had colleagues, and I became friends with them. Lack of shared memory is always a big obstacle for immigrants in the acculturation process. However, in the U.S., especially on the costs, is one of the most comfortable places to be a foreigner. Our children are born into this culture. They watch TV, they go to school or play dates, where the dominant language is English. The challenge for them is not communicating in English, but rather using their mother tongue. As an immigrant parent who did not go to school in the U.S., I had no school system experience. It was a learning process to understand public vs. private, or different school of thoughts between charter schools, or boundary system, etc.. (Zuhal)
Kadriye, who has been in the U.S. for more than ten years, articulated the adaptation process to the host country as an “ongoing process.” Having more than one child and raising them as multilingual in a dominant culture pushes immigrant parents to continue to adapt.
Acculturation is naturally necessary and inevitable, first for us as parents and then for our kids. As soon as a child enters the U.S. school system (in our case- through preschool), as much as I observed, they start to implement their language differentiation as school
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language vs. home language. Adapting the U.S. culture has been an ongoing process. I still learn things to this day- it’s been more than ten years since I’ve come here. Raising multi-lingual children is often a task that the parent has to pay attention to since kids (at least in our household) tend to speak English over their parents' native language. (Kadriye)
As stated by Elif, “I cannot win!” She is not alone thought as other immigrant parents who want to pass their heritage culture and language to the second and third generations. The adaptition process (i.e., learning the dominant language) may be more straightforward for some parents to the host country, yet preserving heritage culture and language can be more challenging. This makes them feel that it is a “never-ending” struggle.
Our child recruited for this study was born here. Therefore, her exposure to Turkish culture consists of home and three weeks every year in Turkey. Therefore, our work feels more like an acculturation process to Turkish society and keeping it fresh and live! Yass, we love waffles and maple syrup, but how about trying bal kaymak?? (a traditional food in Turkey). When it comes to language, it feels like a never-ending struggle. There are many days I feel defeated and discouraged and find myself saddened that there is a good possibility that one generation down may not even be talking any Turkish barely. We live here. Our friends speak English, school is in English, books screen times... so yes, it feels like I cannot win! (Elif)
Humeyra is another parent who is very fluent in English and is an architect. But she feels that her and her children’s adaptation to American society has not been straightforward. Her statements support the idea that language and culture are intertwined. Being proficient in a language does not connect to its culture if it is not learned within cultural contexts and sharing everyday experiences. But children of immigrants acquire the dominant language within American culture. Even their parents are very proficient in English, which may not be enough to guide their children the way they want.
Our adaptation to American society is much slower than our children. I see my children speak and write in popular culture terms and understanding between the lines better than our parents. Some of our attitudes were towards keeping our identity rather than adopting new ones. I was not keen on learning to laugh at jokes that I didn’t get or worked up on TV's political issues. I was not a participant but an observer. This attitude might cause our adaptation to take longer. (Humeyra)
B) Culture versus religion (i.e., experiencing Turkish culture in their perspectives) The concept of culture is a comprehensive and cannot be explained in only one way. The meaning of culture depends on individual experiences. For instance, some parents defined culture as a life of practice without religion. These parents value cultural norms, such as getting their children married from the same ethnicity. Others associate their way of cultural lifestyle as a part of their religious identity. These parents would not mind if their children married those outside of their ethnic background as long as they are in the same belief system. Although each parent in the interview indicated the importance of preserving heritage culture, they meant
47 different concepts. For example, Zubeyir, Zuhal, and Elif are only a few examples of associating Turkish culture with their religious identities. Consequently, these perspectives toward culture can impact the acculturation attitudes of the parents. The degree of assimilation, separation, integration, and marginalization to the host country is connected to how they define culture. Therefore, the proficiency level of children's dual language development can show differences.
We, admittedly, kept ourselves somewhat shielded from the popular culture (e.g., Halloween, etc.), but we do experience the process in other facets of life. One example is how we interact with people; and the embracing of diversity. The 'shielding' probably limits the variety of people our child interacts within the U.S., although she is still exposed to cartoons/chapter books, etc., and culture through them. (Zubeyir)
Zuhal’s example indicates that acculturation attitudes depend on families’ religiosity. She identified herself as a religious person who conforms any holiday in America if it does not contradict her religious beliefs, such as thanksgiving. However, if Turkish families do not associate themselves with any religion, they don’t mind celebrating Christmas as a part of their integration or assimilation to the host country.
As far as I assume, religious families have different attitudes than non-religious families. We celebrate religious and national holidays in Turkey. We don’t celebrate Christmas. This way, the kids understand that they aren't Americanized. But they know they’re a part of both cultures. We celebrate Halloween, which is unlike the Turkish, but it has no religious connotations, so it’s not harmful to our culture. The kids dress up, go trick, or treating. It has no connections to Christianity, so we allow it. Besides, Turkey also celebrates Halloween now. Thanksgiving, for instance, we don’t host a feast ourselves, but if a friend invites us, we accept it. We are not so isolated. On the contrary, we’re exposed to the American culture since we live here. (Zuhal)
Echoing what Zuhal’s pointed out, Elif’s understanding of Turkish culture depends on the level of religiosity. She stated that she wouldn't mind if her child preferred to marry a person outside of Turkish ethnic background as long as they are in the same religion. As she explicitly said, it is "ironic" to expect her child to only marry Turk while she raises her in a diverse environment.
My friends get mad at some of my views. They don’t understand how it would be acceptable for my kids to marry a non-Turkish. They ask how come I transformed into this person after moving here. I simply state that the only thing necessary for me is if my child is marrying to is Muslim, the rest is irrelevant. But I wouldn't object to a decent non-Turkish with good morals and spirituality. Then there’s the question, what about the grandkids? Well, I have already taken that risk coming here, I shouldn’t contradict myself. Having and raising a child here rather than asking them only to marry a Turkish person feels very ironic. Turkishness is essential for me, too, but I care more about teaching them daily prayers than teaching them Turkish. So, I focus my energy on this. (Elif)
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C) Social aspects of acculturation experiences (i.e., discrimination, unfamiliarity, embarrassment)
Various factors can influence heritage language preservation, for instance, social pressure, discrimination, and fear of embarrassment (Halsted, 2015). During the interview, only one parent, an architect who came from a very highly educated family background, shared her experiences in the U.S. with me about discrimination, unfamiliarity, and embarrassment. Therefore, it is vital to explore immigrant parents' acculturation experiences in society to understand why some parental strategies to maintain heritage language are not enough for children's linguistic choices (Halsted, 2015).
Humeyra’s first acculturation experiences were mostly with cultural terms that are primarily associated with American cultures, such as complimenting a baby. Some words carry different meanings so that if those words are translated into a second language, the meaning can be lost.
I have made obscene comments or inappropriate references because of my unfamiliarity with the culture before. I called the newborn baby of an African American friend "cute little monkey." This was a direct translation of a compliment I would offer to a Turkish baby. I learned that calling black babies as monkeys have a racist history, which I was not aware of. I have asked many unnecessary questions to friends and colleagues about their religious practices. Religious diversity was a very new concept for me. On an Ash Wednesday, I thought that our office printer was broken, and several people had black dirt on their forehead. I told them to clean their faces and almost called technical service for the printer. Many of them were related to race and religion.
In addition to Humeyra’s personal acculturation experiences in the U.S. culture, she has also experienced discrimination. This includes comments directly about her lifestyles, which seemingly contradicts the mainstream U.S. culture.
I have been subject to countless racist and xenophobic comments during my acculturation process, mostly due to unfamiliarity between cultures. Did you take a camel ride to universities? You don't have to cover your head, and your husband can’t force you to. You are free here. Are you allowed to be schooled? But you are the moderate type, right? (I am the conservative type, but I don’t fit Hollywood characterization, I guess). (Humeyra)
Some parents report that their children feel embarrassed using immigrant language as a known heritage language. They feel somewhat "different" than their peers in school while integrating into the dominant culture. Humeyra’s children also experienced embarrassment using Turkish in front of their friends, although Humeyra is fluent in English.
My son told me this a couple of times. I would take him to school when he went to elementary school. When he was in 2nd grade, he told me, “Mom, let’s speak English when my friends are around, because otherwise, it will be rude.” He gradually stopped speaking Turkish after he started school.
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Humeyra also brought up a similar experience with her older child. She said that her daughter also felt the same way, yet her daughter did not explicitly articulate her feelings the way her brother directly pointed out to his mother. Embarrassment can also occur in language differences among children of immigrants, regardless of their parents’ high English proficiency.
I have a daughter, ten years his senior, and never said anything like that to me. Then I asked her whether she felt uncomfortable when I spoke Turkish around her. I sometimes do it without noticing, though I know it’s awkward when people around you speak intensely in a language you don't understand, you wonder what they talk about. It’s like whispering to someone when there are others around. My daughter told me, “Yes, I didn't tell you about it, but I was embarrassed as well. But I wouldn't tell you. It’s natural. It will go away once he’s in junior high. I’ll pass as he grows more confident; it happened the same way with me, but I was embarrassed in elementary school.” I asked her why she never told me, so she said, “I thought you would feel bad, so I didn’t. Emre happened to say it out loud, but it's quite natural for him to feel this way.” (Humeyra)
Minority group tends to face discrimination based on their appearance, language, and beliefs. Going off the feeling of embarrassment using the heritage language, attitudes toward a minority group, such as discriminatory attitudes, impact children's learning of their home language. In other words, they may slowly lose the motivation to preserve heritage culture and language.
We better stay away from those people. Mine is a woman in her sixties. (Referring to her pediatrician). It has been years, my daughter grew up with her, and now she is my son’s doctor as well. One day I had to hurry and told her I was going to leave early for a meeting. She asked what the meeting was. I explained that I was an architect, and they need me in the construction site immediately. It's almost like being called into the emergency room in a hospital like doctors. The client, the engineer, the contractor all starts to get angry. The responsibility is on the architect, so you have to calm everyone and settle everything with a solution. So, the woman was shocked to learn that I’m an architect. (Humeyra).
Humeyra’s experience in the doctor's office is one of many examples in the everyday experiences of immigrants, especially women. She also noted that her family was also educated in Turkey. Witnessing the level of discrimination may impact children’s motivation to preserve their family’s heritage language because they may associate the discrimination experiences with the heritage language.
I saw it vividly in the expression on her face. My friend said my pediatrician probably thinks I'm lying because she has individual opinions about what kind of occupation I could hold. She knows you’re working somewhere, for example, possibly a place like McDonald's because she thinks of very few categories, and being an architect isn't one. I was young at the time and didn’t know the whole story. With time, it came to my realization that architecture is a male-dominated area. My mother-in-law is a university graduate. They would never even think of the possibility of my mom or mother-in-law
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being a university graduate like it is nearly impossible for them to wrap their heads around it. (Humeyra)
In summary, Turkish immigrant parents face acculturation while providing contextual linguistic home environment for their children’s Turkish. As a parent reported, “Acculturation is a naturally necessary and inevitable process for immigrants,” immigrant parents feel the need to adjust their parenting while raising bilingual children in the U.S. During the acculturation process, they face adapting to the U.S., based on their understanding of culture (e.g., culture versus religion), and social aspects of acculturation experiences (e.g., discrimination, embarrassment). For example, parents in this study tended to have higher educations (e.g., holding doctoral degrees) and they indicated an attitude not to isolate themselves from the U.S. culture. Yet, they still have adjustment struggles adjusting and facing obstacles due to lack of shared memory and cultural nuances with current citizens in the U.S. “I cannot win!” is a general statement shared by a parent who raises two children and holds a medical degree in the U.S. The adaptation process may be straightforward, but preserving Turkish language and culture is a never-ending struggle. Parents are aware of the importance of integrating into the host country, but they also try to maintain their Turkish traditions in their home so they can feel more “at home” while eating Turkish cuisine, inviting Turkish friends over, and watching TV shows as families. Based on Berry’s acculturation attitudes (Berry, 1997), although Turkish parents value integration to the host country as reported in their interviews, they sometimes feel the need to obtain separation attitudes to provide a contextual context for their children to preserve Turkish culture and language. Various reasons exist for immigrants to establish in host countries, such as welcoming immigration policies and reasons to migrate from host countries (Nesteruk, 2010). If immigrants are not welcomed by citizens in the host country, they may hold separation attitudes to protect their families’ identity and language. Each immigrant population brings their own understanding, attitudes, and experiences to the host countries; therefore, their acculturation attitudes tend to change from integration to separation or from marginalization to assimilation. In the current study, parents defined culture in two different ways: Turkish culture with a secularist point of view or Turkish culture with a religious point of view. Culture is a comprehensive concept that may carry a different meaning to people with different backgrounds; therefore, it impacts their assimilation, separation, integration, and marginalization attitudes. In turn, those attitudes may affect the proficiency level of their children’s heritage language. For example, when immigrant children feel embarrassed using their immigrant language and feel “different” from their peers in schools, they may lose motivation to preserve their heritage language in order to eliminate potential discrimination against their linguistic background. Figure 4 shows multicultural experiences, social pressures of Turkish immigrant parents in the U.S.
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CHAPTER FOUR: DISCUSSION The goal of the present research was to bring a novel approach to social and family aspects contributing to children's heritage language development with immigration focus on the U.S. context. This study examined the process of preserving heritage culture and language among Turkish-speaking parents in the U.S. Additionally, the study carefully analyzed the unique acculturation experiences of Turkish-speaking parents in the U.S. by applying a mixed- method approach. Quantitative data was collected from Turkish-speaking parents and their children in order to address the first five research questions. Qualitative data collected from only Turkish speaking parents and clarified the quantitative results by addressing the last two research questions. Our qualitative findings uncover aspects of Turkish parents’ personal and social experiences in the U.S. and a broader context to help situate the range of their experiences as immigrants. The parents also provide a richer understanding of children’s heritage language development with immigrant emphasis. Our quantitative and qualitative findings reveal that each parent showed positive attitudes towards preserving and maintaining their heritage culture and language to benefit their children’s intellectual development and communication with extended family. Yet, most parents reported that they struggle to raise bilingual children in the U.S.the way they desire to raise in the U.S. due to external factors such as acculturation experiences and the multilingual environment. These findings converge in suggesting that Turkish immigrant parents’ experiences in linguistically and culturally diverse environments provide a set of criteria that are useful in maintaining heritage language and culture among immigrant children, particularly for those who belong to educated and middle-class immigrant families. Quantitative Findings Parental language attitudes, acculturation experiences, and children’s heritage language development Research generally concurs that the acculturation process begins when immigrant parents migrate from their own culture to a host country due to interacting with two or more cultures and languages (Berry, 1997; Schofielf et al., 2008). Since language is a part of acculturation, it is also associated with culture (Tardif & Geva, 2006). There are various levels of acculturation and language attitudes among immigrant groups due to educational, economic, and political reasons (Atmaca-Süslü, 2014). More specifically, the homogeneity of immigrant families (i.e., educational level, length of being in the country, age of arrival to the county) can affect the different rates of acculturation attitudes, which in turn influences parental language attitudes (Nesteruk, 2010; Tardif-Williams & Fisher, 2009). Language attitudes provide a supportive home environment that influences the feelings people have toward their language or other languages (Cherciob, 2013, p. 716; De Houwer, 2009, p.82; Santello, 2015). However, there is a general lack of research examining whether the development process of children’s heritage language growing up in linguistically and culturally different environments is related to parents' language attitudes (Makarova et al., 2017) and acculturation strategies (Berry, 1993). Immigrant families usually experience the four model acculturation attitudes proposed by Berry (1997, 2003) and they tend to use those models to respond to new stressor. Of the four attitudes, the integration strategy was found to be the best fitting and successful adaption among immigrant groups (Berry, 2003). Contrary to Berry’s acculturation model, the findings of the present study are mixed. The current study's findings indicate that parental language attitudes are negatively correlated with marginalization, assimilation, and integration attitudes but positively correlated with separation attitudes. Specifically, the present study shows Turkish-speaking parents
52 reported more positive language attitudes when they separated themselves from the mainstream language and culture. This finding is not supported by Berry’s (1993, 2003) acculturation, as he indicated that integration was the best fitting attitude for immigrants. That can mean that when the families integrate into the dominant culture, their children may not find the motivation to maintain their heritage language, not specifically culture. The parents are willing to speak both heritage and dominant languages with their children (Nesteruk, 2010). However, consistent with Bhati and Ram (2001), integration attitudes cannot be the best-fitting attitudes for all immigrants and propose that other socio-political factors should be taken into account to understand how those experiences shape the practice of acculturation models in various situations. The current study found that among acculturation attitudes, only separation attitudes are linked to positive parental language attitudes toward heritage language maintenance. This finding is consistent with Park (2013, p.39) and Place & Hoff's (2011) findings. This result suggests that Turkish-speaking immigrant parents prefer to obtain separation attitudes as a strategy to create a “supportive home environment” to boost bilingual proficiency in general, but especially Turkish proficiency (Park & Sarkar, 2007). The supportive home environment is usually followed by organizing home literacy programs, taking children to cultural centers, visiting Turkish friends in states, watching movies or TV shows in the heritage language or visiting extended families and friends in their home countries. Separation attitudes can provide such an environment for those families to maximize the amount of heritage language exposure to their children, which comes with cultural contexts. A supportive home language environment and interacting with more people who speak the same language can positively affect children’s heritage language proficiency. The findings of the current study were supported by Bhati and Ram's (2001) results, which hold that parental language attitudes and acculturation attitudes predict children’s heritage language proficiency. More specifically, inconsistent with Berry’s proposal, the findings of the present study show that when immigrant parents show fewer assimilation attitudes to the host country’s culture and language, their children tend to have higher heritage language proficiency than the parents who more assimilate to the host country. In turn, the parents feel more satisfied and comfortable raising bilingual children in the U.S. when the parents are less assimilated to the dominant culture. As long as they can maintain their essential communication with their children in the heritage language, they tend to integrate more into the U.S. culture. Bhati and Ram (2001) provided a reasonable explanation for this effect, claiming that socio-political factors and immigrant group differences alter the consequences of four acculturation attitudes. Beyond that, the parents’ level of acculturation experiences may shape their story of language attitudes toward developing a child’s dual-language proficiency (Nagy, 2017). The parents exchange acculturation attitudes, which in turn impact their language attitudes toward the dominant culture and language to prepare an environment for their children to expose more heritage language-related materials and tools in the host country. In summary, immigrant parents who tend to have fears of losing their children’s connection to Turkish heritage bonds may use separation attitudes as a strategy to teach Turkish culture to children. For example, many parents in the current study are highly educated and these parents are interacting with a lot of native U.S. speakers, which would contribute to their desire to make their home a “small Turkey” by having a strong connection with Turkish speakers in the U.S. and taking their children to Turkish community and cultural centers (Nisanci, 2019). Regardless of their demographical background, Turkish speakers with immigrant backgrounds
53 tend to stick with their heritage language and carefully separate English words from Turkish while speaking (e.g., speaking sentences that are either all English or all Turkish). As stated in chapter 1, the history of Turkish immigrants in the U.S. and reasons for migrating to the U.S. clearly shows that it is not surprising to see why Turkish parents with highly educated and high- income backgrounds tend to hold separation attitudes over other acculturation attitudes (Balgamis & Karpat, 2010; Nesteruk, 2010). Additionally, educated people need to preserve Turkish as a heritage language for creativity and accessing to heritage cultural resources, especially to assist the internal development of their native tongue (Doğançay‐Aktuna & Kiziltepe, 2005). As the history of Turkish migration to the U.S. indicates, Turkish cultural centers have begun to establish in the third waves of Turkish arrival to the U.S. (Balgamis & Karpat, 2010). Smaller Turkish communities still exist in the U.S. Thus, Turkish immigrants may consider it important to impose a separation approach, since their children would not have as much opportunity to be exposed to Turkish in the community context, as consistent with Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory (Vygotsky, 1978). Regardless of their background, speaking English can be generally less comfortable for Turkish speakers because the grammar is very different, and they express their identities more comfortably in Turkish. Consequently, they preserve their Turkish heritage by sticking with the Turkish language not to lose connections from Turkish heritage bonds. Interestingly, some educated elite Turkish groups show greater language loyalty to Turkish by using this language free of any other language influences such as English, Arabic, Persian (the Turkish language borrows some words from these three languages with the individual’s context and sociopolitical contexts) Among educated Turkish groups, English is seen as an international language that opens global opportunities. (Doğançay‐Aktuna & Kiziltepe, 2005). Attitudes towards English tend to vary depending on the contexts and Turkish elites tend to support English as a vital tool of globalization and socioeconomic liberalization. Other than that, preserving Turkish as a heritage language for Turkish speakers in the U.S. still keeps a special place in their worldviews and nationalistic tendency (Doğançay‐Aktuna & Kiziltepe, 2005). Factors that Impact Heritage Language Development for Children The link between demographic variables as predictors of children's heritage language proficiency The current study found a negative relationship between a child’s age and their heritage language proficiency. This result is consistent with Johnson & Newport (1989; 1991) as well as Hoff (2013), both of which claim the negative impact of aging on children’s heritage language proficiency. This might be due to the increasing amount of dominant language exposure. Children in Turkish-speaking households speak mostly Turkish until they are young (e.g., aged 4-5). Yet, they tend to exclusively use English as they get older and interact with more English speakers, as supported by Hoff and Place (2013) findings on declining heritage language proficiency when children begin formal schools. This adds to the existing literature that the younger the children are, the better they are in their heritage language due to massive exposure to this language (e.g., Turkish) in the household. However, Hakuta et al.’s (2003) studies provided a sufficient explanation for this phenomenon, arguing that it is a matter of capturing the effects of initial exposure of age and the social and linguistic background of those immigrant groups. Consistent with the current study’s findings, research on early child bilingual language development indicates that the heritage language fluency is mostly interrupted by the time children begin formal school in the host country (Hoff
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& Place, 2013). Although the present study did not provide evidence of specific skills that children should acquire to learn switching between languages, external factors (e.g., schools, welcoming environment) can play considerable roles in the heritage language development of those children (Halsted, 2015). To motivate bilingual children to comfortably switch back and forth between languages, immigrant parents should adjust their strategies based on children’s language needs. Also, immigrant parents should provide a supportive language home environment reflecting their “language attitudes” (Park & Sarkar, 2007; Pearson, 2007). It is also important to note that the current study only measured children’s expressive heritage language, not receptive heritage language. Children in the present study did not have higher Turkish expressive vocabulary test scores, mostly if they were older ages. Ribot and Hoff's (2014) studies supported the current study’s findings that bilingual children tend to be better at receptive vocabulary skills than expressive vocabulary skills due to their weakened exposure to each language. However, bilingualism cannot be just expressive or receptive. For example, parents’ perception of their children’s bilingual level tends to differ among immigrant parents. Hashimoto and Lee’s study (2011) examined how Japanese immigrant parents consider their children’s bilingualism. Those parents reported that their children “could not be bilingual without being biliterate” (Hashimoto & Lee, 2011, p. 176), meaning that children should preponderate over the linguistic knowledge of two languages to become bilinguals. On the other hand, Gharib and Seal’s study (2019) explored the Iranian parents’ beliefs toward their children’s bilingualism level. They found that some parents reported that if their children develop receptive knowledge in their heritage language, they perceive their children as bilingual children. They concluded that meaningful differences exist between heritage language speaker’s conversational proficiency and literacy ability. Therefore, the current study can speculate that although Turkish parents reported that their children were bilingual and engaged in family conversation one way or another, literacy development and actively producing the language require extra efforts from the children. That could be why most children in the study had lower scores on expressive vocabulary tests, although their parents identified them as bilingual. This may be attributed to varying definitions and proficiency fluency among bilingual speakers (Halsted, 2016). Further, low scores on expressive Turkish vocabulary tests in the current study may not indicate that these children are not bilingual. Based on parental reports and responses, they are bilinguals and express themselves in a sense that they establish healthy communication with their parents in their heritage language. Otherwise, they would not be eligible to participate in the current study. Another finding of the current study indicates that parental age, household income, parental education, and length of living in the U.S. had no significant relationships with children’s heritage language proficiency. The current study can speculate that most families may share similarities or commonalities in terms of demographic levels. Those predictors may not be strong predictors for the level of children’s heritage language proficiency. Turkish immigrant parents in the study reported that once their children grow, managing their heritage language proficiency becomes harder. Therefore, it is not surprising to see that their length of time being in the country and parental older age and their educational level may not predict the higher proficiency in Turkish. Highly educated parents tend to be highly proficient in English so that they may not feel the need or motivated enough to continuously teach their children Turkish later (Nesteruk, 2010). The link between language environment and child’s expression in Turkish as a heritage language
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The current study found that language environment (e.g., Turkish language used at home with siblings, the number of native speaker friends in a family social environment, the amount of reading books in Turkish, and the amount of watching videos and movies in Turkish) and children expressing themselves in Turkish predict children’s heritage language proficiency. More specifically, the current study's findings show that only a child’s expression in Turkish and Turkish language used at home with siblings were positively associated with children’s heritage language development. The reason may be that the number of heritage language speakers in bilingual households contributes to children’s heritage language proficiency (Place & Hoff, 2011). In turn, children can be better at expressing themselves in the heritage language. For example, Bridge and Hoff (2014) studied older siblings' role in younger siblings’ bilingual development, since they have a more significant influence on each other in the language used at home. Their findings revealed that the language experiences between school-aged older children and no school-aged children showed different effects on children’s heritage language proficiency. Usually, siblings' conversations tend to be in English if they attend schools in English. Siblings facilitate their bilingual development better if they are all not school-aged children (Bridge & Hoff, 2014). The present study findings are consistent with previous studies, such as Zukow-Goldring's (2002) work, which claims that the siblings contribute to young bilingually developing children as a source of language exposure in some immigrant households. Conversely, Hoff-Ginsbergand Krueger’ (1991) studies found that siblings did not show a vital contributor to young children’s heritage language proficiency as adults. However, the present study did not provide any evidence to support their results. Furthermore, the current study did not find any relationship between the number of native speaker friends in the family social environment, the amount of reading books in Turkish, or the amount of watching videos, movies, and TV in Turkish with children’s heritage language development. One possible explanation is that the families may not find enough time to increase the amount of watching or reading materials in Turkish and a Turkish community where they live (e.g., Nesteruk, 2010). Another explanation is that most children may not feel motivated to work on their Turkish proficiency by using external resources (e.g., Halsted, 2013). Additionally, reading books in Turkish does not seem enjoyable for children sometimes since the Turkish structure and its grammar are completely different from English structure and its grammar. Lack of access to books in the U.S. written in their heritage language may be another barrier for parents to have regular reading times in Turkish (Gharibi & Seals, 2019). Although it was beyond the scope to investigate differences between Turkish immigrant families in the U.S. and Turkish immigrant families in Germany, the present study observed among Turkish families that differed from those reported in previous research with Turkish immigrant families in Germany (e.g., Gungor, 2007; Akoglu & Yagmur, 2016; Vedder & Oortwijn, 2009). For instance, the reasons Turks migrated to German and socio-political climates and attitudes toward Turkish immigrants in German impact the development process of heritage language for the first and second generation of Turkish-German children (Bayram& Wright, 2016). Qualitative Findings The purpose of the qualitative part of the current study was to investigate how Turkish- speaking immigrant parents perceive their children’s dual language experiences (e.g., heritage and majority languages) in the U.S. and experience the acculturation process to adopt the majority culture in the U.S. Montrul (2016) shows that studies on heritage speakers from all around the world found that each heritage speaker has different language backgrounds, cultures,
56 and social studies that impact their linguistic competence and performance in comparison to age- matched monolingual speaker norms. Thus, preserving heritage language for immigrant families depends on their home language environment (e.g., degree of parental support for maintaining heritage language), communities (e.g., community supports) sociolinguistic circumstances (e.g., acculturation experience in host countries). Perception of Dual-Language Experience of Turkish Families on the Research Questions Benefits and drawbacks of raising bilingual children Not surprisingly, most parents reported that raising their children as bilingual is priceless. Almost every parent agreed that the developmental process of being proficient in two or more languages boosts their children's cognitive skills (e.g., having capacities of acquiring more languages) and open doors in their social lives (e.g., the richness of vision, global citizen, global job opportunities). On the other hand, some parents reported that one language usually takes the dominant role over another regardless of any effort that the parents show, such as environmental factors (e.g., geographical distance) and family conditions (e.g., full-time working parents). For example, if the host country is geographically not far from a home country for immigrants, they can make frequent visits for extended families, so that the amount of Turkish exposure can increase to avoid English taking a dominant role over Turkish. A similar approach to full-time working parents can be made about the availability of increasing the amount of Turkish exposure in immigrant households. The qualitative analysis findings suggest that although all parents do not doubt learning more than one language has beneficial outcomes for children’s cognitive and social development, children of immigrants usually face confusion and struggles between languages. The awareness of the advantages of raising bilingual children may not be a substantial factor that motives immigrant parents to maintain children’s heritage language. Parents want their children to be successful and feel comfortable in schools while engaging in communication with their friends and teachers in society. Consistent with Vygotsky’s (1978) sociocultural theory, learning a language occurs in a cultural context. Most children of immigrants do not frequently interact in social contexts that know their heritage language. While they are exposed mostly to the majority culture, immigrant children may have difficulty making a connection between Turkish words within the American cultural context. Many parents in the study lacked extended family support to provide external supports in their language home environment. Although parents tended to have a high-income background in the current study and may have the opportunity to travel due to financial flexibility, this distance may prevent them from frequently traveling to Turkey to practice the language with Turkish speaking people within the cultural contexts. It is also important to consider that sociopolitical factors may also prevent immigrants from travelling to their home country despite financial flexibility. Parents’ attitudes and strategies toward maintaining children’s heritage language development process As their children get older, parents are aware that they have to adjust their language attitudes. The parents reported that their children sometimes develop a habit of not speaking Turkish due to experiencing two different linguistic environments. Switching between heritage and dominant languages requires efforts; thus, the parents in the study believe that their warm attitudes play a crucial role in making the switching process as smooth and painless as possible. When the parents find themselves in a situation where their children refuse not to respond to their parents in Turkish, they insistently keep the conversation in Turkish. However, if the parents do not see any progress in their children’s Turkish development or motivation to speak
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Turkish, they feel free to talk with them in English unless the parents are not fluent in English. A few parents with high English proficiency believe that as long as their children comfortably express themselves, the language choice does not matter. Lee’s study (2013) supports this finding by arguing that because children can have difficulties expressing inner feelings to their parents in the heritage language, parents may prefer their children to speak only one language; however, they feel comfortable maintaining family bonds. The qualitative analysis findings illustrate that if parents prepare a safe and warm language home environment for their children, their family relationships can be based on a strong foundation. Consequently, children can learn the value of maintaining Turkish while being fluent in English. Regardless of their English proficiency level, some parents preferred to explain to their children the importance of preserving the Turkish culture, such as maintaining a connection to a rich culture, literature, communicating with extended family members and a different way of thinking since the refusal process is not uncommon among bilingual children (Li, 2006). As long as immigrant parents are aware of the reasons for rejection of using heritage language in a family conversation, they can adopt strategies that motivate children’s eagerness to maintain Turkish. For instance, if parents intend to use heritage language to consolidate family relationships (Hashimoto & Lee, 2011; Yan, 2013), the refusal process may gradually decrease among those children. Furthermore, only using one language at a time is another common strategy among immigrant families. Consistent with Bice and Kroll’s (2015) studies, establishing one language is crucial because the necessary foundation of that language will transfer to a second language foundation. Thus, the parents in the study reported that it is just harmful if they allow children to mix two languages simultaneously because they cannot acquire Turkish and English languages properly. Unlike previous studies, the present study had a unique part aspect of the sample. In the qualitative analysis, a parent whose son was born deaf couldn’t hear until the age of one. After cochlear implant surgery was performed, he began hearing and speaking. Yet, before the surgery, the child was taught sign language. His parents showed extra efforts to teach Turkish and English to manage two languages and cultures in the U.S. Based on the parent’s report, they applied a reading-books-to-child strategy a lot. Later on, their son adapted to both languages well. The more parents show extra efforts in being consistent reading books in Turkish, the more children can gradually begin smooth transitions between languages. In the study, parents are aware that the Turkish language is entirely different than English. For instance, Turkish is pronounced how it is spelled and written, which is the opposite of English. Some reported that children find reading Turkish books boring due to the language structure differences between these two languages. Thus, it affects their motivation to spend extra time reading or writing exercises in Turkish with families. Experiencing the Acculturation Process as Turkish-speaking Parents in the U.S. Parents acculturation experiences In this study, the main focus was on investigating how Turkish-speaking immigrant parents raise their bilingual children in the U.S. More specifically, the current research examined the development process of immigrant children’s heritage language. A substantial amount of bilingualism research mostly focuses on the cognitive benefits of bilingualism (e.g., Bialystok, 2016) or the social aspects of bilingualism (Hoff, 2013) among immigrants. As far as the researcher knows, little is known about underlying variables that prevent children of immigrants from maintaining their heritage language. How do their parents play a role in terms of cultivating
58 their heritage language development process? What factors (e.g., internal and external) impact immigrant parents’ abilities or lack thereof, to preserve their children's heritage language proficiency? Combining quantitative and qualitative analysis from a specific immigrant group with bilingualism emphasizes existing literature claiming that unique immigration experiences in a foreign country impact parental language attitudes toward heritage and dominant language. The current study's emphasis is also on exploring positive or negative ways the acculturation experience can enlighten the underlying reasons why some immigrant parents are successful in transmitting their heritage language and culture to their children, but some are not. Consequently, consistent with Bialystok’s (2016) proposal, bilingualism is a matter of experiences that varies from a person to person. The qualitative analysis of the current study found that if parents tend to be highly educated and do not isolate themselves from American culture, they usually do not have any problem integrating into society. However, they faced some obstacles in teaching their children the Turkish language and Turkish culture because they frequently use English in their workplaces and actively have relationships with Americans. Thus, the main concerns for these Turkish immigrant parents are the importance of some essential moral rules and good manners regardless of language choice. For parents in the current study, migrating from Turkey to the U.S. for parents in the current study is rewarding but costly, depending on the reasons for migration (Nesturuk, 2013). Most parents in the present study migrated to the U.S. to pursue doctoral degrees in popular areas such as engineering and medicine. Consequently, they found themselves surrounded by intellectual people who tend to be very open-minded to diverse students. Thus, the positive adaptation experiences to the U.S. motived the parents to transmit beneficial cultural norms to their children, such as respect and tolerance to many cultures. Based on their interviews, those unique experiences usually came with actively using a common language in their school or workplaces, English. Yet, when they come back home from those places, they intend to create a home environment that makes them feel “home” by eating Turkish cuisines, watching Turkish movies, and talking to each other or relatives online only in Turkish. Furthermore, children of immigrants tend to question their family and social environments a lot, and they adapt some values and beliefs from their surroundings. A parent in the interview described this experience as “the bombardment of messages coming from schools, friends, cartoons, shopping, etc.” All parents agree that as long as American cultural norms and expectations align with their values, belief system, and culture, it is a plus for them to grow for the better. What is difficult for those parents is to explain their children's “good” or “bad” within multiple contexts, which may impact their dual-language development process (Liang, 2018). “I cannot win!” This is not an uncommon statement that immigrant parents make while raising their children as bilingual because some immigrant parents sadly admit the reality of lack of exposure to heritage language and culture in the host country. In turn, their children may face difficulties to preserve their heritage language when they get older, meaning receiving more exposure to mainstream culture and its language. Consistent with Hoff’s (2013) findings, most immigrant parents make such a statement that the second generation tends to lose their heritage bonds, “I cannot win to preserve my heritage culture and language and transfer them to my offspring no matter what I try.” Acculturation is inevitable for them as parents as well as their children. Once their children grow and enter the US school system, they implement their language differentiation as school language vs. home or immigrant language. Although cognitively, children have a strong capacity to maintain more than one language (e.g., Bialystok,
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2013), environmental factors may demotivate children to maintain their heritage language (Halsted, 2013). In the qualitative study, some parents defined culture as a life of practice without any connection to religion. Those parents tend to hold more nationalist perspectives and stick with their heritage culture, such as marrying their children from the same ethnicity. On the other hand, others defined culture as a part of their religious identity. They tended not to have a robust nationalist behavior and reported that they would not mind if their children marry those outsides of their ethnic background as long as they share similar religious backgrounds. The meaning that they associate with culture impacts the level of their acculturation experiences, such as assimilation, marginalization, integration, and separation (Berry, 1997, 2003). When the parents reported in the interview, “Our children are not Americanized,” they associate being Americanized with the definition of their understanding of culture, whether secular-based or religious-based. Some were open to celebrating Thanksgiving but not Christmas if they consider culture with a religious background. Some were open to any holidays if they associated the definition of culture with a secular background regardless of their educational and family income level. Immigrants usually face discrimination not only for their beliefs but also for their language (Negrón, 2018). During the interview only one parent, an architect, preferred to share her acculturation experiences with the researcher about discrimination and embarrassment (e.g., Halsted, 2015). Although her reason to migrate to the U.S. was to pursue higher education, and she was able to find a prestigious job, she was subject to countless racist and xenophobic comments due to being unfamiliarity between cultures, such as questions, “Did you take a camel ride to universities? You don’t have to cover your head, right?” She also reported that sometimes people could not believe that she is an architect. They tend to hold certain opinions about what kind of occupation immigrants, specifically immigrant women, have. In addition to discrimination, the feeling of embarrassment is another common experience that impacts the development of heritage language among immigrants, specifically immigrants' children. Children of immigrants feel somewhat “different” than their American peers in school. Such an example also came from the same parent who was discriminated against by her coworkers. She reported that when her children were in elementary school, they felt embarrassed if their mother spoke Turkish in front of their friends. However, once her children grew and felt more confident about themselves, the feeling of embarrassment went away. Figure 6 depicts the findings concerning the seven questions, combining experiencing acculturation process as immigrant parents.
Conceptual Framework Revisited and Conclusion Key points from the findings of the influence of Turkish immigrant parents’ acculturation strategies and language attitudes on their children’s development are pointed by analyzing the framework of Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory (Vygotsky, 1978) and Berry’s acculturation theory (Berry, 1997). These two theories informed the current study’s analysis and guided the current study throughout the interpretation of the findings. Understanding of the processes of immigrant children’s dual-language development may shed some light on general issues of the contributions of cultural context to language development. Consistent with Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory, they believe that heritage culture provides the context for their language otherwise language will become only ceremonial. Since culture is intertwined with language, it is challenging to maintain heritage language for
60 immigrant families without having proper cultural contexts in a host country. The qualitative analysis illustrated that language is a vehicle that transmits culture; hence, the parents believed that to preserve heritage culture, they should teach their children the role of heritage language serving as a tool to bonds their children to the culture. Turkish is a gateway to make children interested in their heritage culture. In response to these phenomena, Turkish parents in the study showed extra effort to teach Turkish culture to their children at home and in places such as the Turkish community and centers. By using heritage language, children can communicate with extended families within cultural contexts; consequently, this warm relationship may increase the sense of belonging to their heritage. Since language does not develop without contexts (e.g., culture), positive experiences with the language can increase the motivation of preserving the language. Culture is a very complex phenomenon. Thus, it is vital to define and construct a definition of culture that describes acculturation attitudes among Turkish immigrant parents in the U.S. When culture carries different meanings in different contexts, each individual constructs their definition of culture (Nisanci, 2019). Most Turkish-speaking parents in the current study were highly educated; henceforth, their attitudes were mostly searching for more options to boost their children's Turkish proficiency besides English. Educated parents sometimes have disadvantages and concerns for their children’s bilingual development, more specifically heritage language development (Nesteruk, 2010). Those parents may find jobs in places where they have to live isolated from Turkish communities. Especially if both parents work, they tend to have limited time to spend with their children on their Turkish, unless they have visitors from Turkey regularly or hire a nanny or babysitter who speaks Turkish (e.g., Gharib & Seal, 2019). In turn, in order not to lose connections from Turkish heritage bonds, educated elite Turkish groups may tend to observe Turkish as loyalty and carefully practice it with free from any other language influences (Doğançay‐Aktuna & Kiziltepe, 2005). They support English as a part of bilingual development for themselves as well as for their children as an important tool of socioeconomic liberalization. Other than that, it is not surprising to see why they may hold separation attitudes as a strategy to prepare a cultural context to be surrounded by Turkish speakers to preserve Turkish as a heritage language in the US. “What to do” lists are widespread among immigrant parents who make efforts to enhance their children's heritage language development. This list mainly includes taking children to cultural centers, reading/writing in a heritage language, and visiting extended families in a home country. In the qualitative analysis, some parents reported that taking their children to home countries usually facilitates their Turkish proficiency. However, since geographically Turkey is very far from the U.S., it is hard for working parents to take long vacation days and tickets are costly. Small practical examples are seemingly more welcomed by Turkish parents. In other words, common strategies or practices sometimes do not reflect the reality of immigrant family structures or conditions. These families request from bilingual researchers more practical strategies that work for the dual-language young learners. Consistent with previous studies (DeCapua & Wintergerst, 2009; García & Kleifgen, 2018; Ro & Cheatham, 2009), home is the primary place where bilingual and biliteracy development start (Lee & Gupta, 2020). The findings of the qualitative study illustrate that the following strategies and language home activities guide them when they lack external supports or cannot visit families in Turkey: 1) spending quality time together in Turkish, 2) making reading and writing activities in Turkish as productive and fun as possible, 3) watching favorite shows together in Turkish, 3)
61 baking/cooking together by reading recipes in Turkish, 4) reading English-written books in Turkish by looking at only pictures and making a new story in Turkish orally, and 5) using dinner table conversation as opportunities to boost their Turkish. Figure 5 depicts the findings concerning the six research questions, combining parents’ attitudes and strategies toward maintaining heritage language. Furthermore, since the children experience a multilinguistic and multicultural environment, their parents seem to be the primary heritage language educators to provide a supportive language home environment to prevent first-language loss while learning the dominant language. In the current study, each parent reported that bilingualism brings many social and cognitive benefits for their children. They believe that preserving their children’s heritage language development is part of promoting bilingualism since early bilinguals are usually the ones who are children of immigrants (Hoff, 2018). However, parents also reported that their efforts are not sufficient to prevent linguistic outcomes because heritage language is not widely supported in the U.S. They are also aware that their second or third generation will experience a sharp language shift when they settle in the U.S. due to a lack of societal richer exposure to Turkish culture and language. In conclusion, the current study synthesizes and analyzes the influences of Turkish-speaking parental language and acculturation attitudes on children’s heritage language proficiency in the U.S. The quantitative and qualitative findings support that although raising bilingual children as immigrant parents in the U.S. comes with responsibilities, concerns, and worries, they are primarily active advocates of their children’s heritage language development (Lee & Gupta, 2020). The quantitative data analysis found that younger children are better at active usage of Turkish. It is not surprising to see this result as supported by studies (e.g., Hoff, 2018; Hoff, 2013; Hoff & Place, 2013) reveal that once children grow older and begin schools, the amount of majority language exposure increase. In turn, older children of immigrants tend to speak less heritage language than their younger counterparts. Additionally, although the quantitative data analysis did not find significant relations between the amount of reading books or watching movies in Turkish, except the number of siblings at home, the qualitative data analysis provides evidence demonstrating that active usage of Turkish at home with children is a strong contributor for those children to preserve their heritage language (e.g., Willard et al., 2015). This finding follows providing a richer home literacy environment with books, reading daily activities, and watching movies in the heritage language. The results also illustrate that Turkish-speaking immigrant parents do their best to help their children understand the value of speaking more than one language. In line with previous studies cited in this paper, the results of this current study highlight that parents and local community supports are not enough for immigrants to preserve their heritage languages. School curriculum designers, teachers, and researchers should create an effective and supportive environment for immigrant families to promote the importance of maintaining heritage language as part of bilingual education (Bayram & Wright, 2016). Strengths and Limitations The current findings shed new light on the contextual variables that shape children's dual language experience, specifically heritage language proficiency. A significant contribution of this study is that it is the first attempt to apply the mixed-method analysis and investigate the unique experiences of Turkish-speaking parents and their bilingual children in the U.S., which has a high potential to open the gate for more research on this topic. Moreover, the current study uniquely examines the association between parental language attitudes and acculturation
62 attitudes with children’s dual-language development process, specifically their heritage language learning. Also, recent research deeply analyzes parents’ perceptions of their children’s dual- language development while the parents experience the U. S’s acculturation process. On the other hand, the first limitation of the present study is that it lacks diversity in demographic characteristics. For example, the first Turkish immigrant comers arrived in the U.S. for educational purposes (Balgamis & Karpat, 2008). Those early comers became very successful, and their children followed in their parents’ footsteps (Atmaca-Süslü, 2014). Thus, the majority of Turkish immigrants in the U.S. tend to have higher educational and financial attainments (Isik-Ercan, 2014; U.S. Census Bureau, 2011) in comparison to Turkish immigrants in German and Australia (Helicke, 2002). Almost all parents in this study had acquired a bachelor’s degree or higher. Thus, further research should be conducted with a broader demographic group of Turkish-speaking families in the U.S. It is also essential to point out that the findings are not generalizable to the dual-language development process outside the age range of the investigated group (5-11 aged) because this age group has developing specific cognitive and emotional characteristics compared to other age groups. Hence, further research should be designed with other age groups, possibly adolescent groups, who are considered within the second critical time frame for dual-language development skills. Turkish immigrant parents may need to adjust different parental language attitudes and acculturation attitudes based on their adolescents’ characters, such as identity, self-consciousness, and cognitive flexibility (Nisanci, 2019). Furthermore, the findings of the current study should be taken with caution due to the sample size of the data (N = 52). Although the present study also added the qualitative analysis by applying semi-structured interviews (N = 20), more diverse participants and extensive data can add novel findings to the literature. Importantly, the participants in the current study are not truly independent of one another because they were drawn from the same social networks. Lastly, the current study used a standardized Turkish expressive vocabulary task for Turkish children, which was not designed for assessing bilingual children’s language skills. It is vital to note that most Turkish children with an immigrant background in the U.S. are linguistically different from their monolingual peers in Turkey, and they tend not to demonstrate equivalent master of foundational structures of Turkish language, such as word-order and subordination. However, this test has been used with German-Turkish children (e.g., Ertanir et al., 2018) and high correlations between the measures show that this approach is not a significant limitation. To eliminate classifying bilingual children’s language skills with monolingual children, specific language tests based on bilingual norms are needed. Thus, further research should include more language measurement tests, such as adding a standardized receptive vocabulary test or parent- child dyads interaction to permit a greater level of detail based on children’s dual-language development process with the primary help of immigrant parents. Implications and Suggestions for Future Research Regarding future directions, the current study implies that children’s dual-language development, specifically their heritage language, is associated with younger age. This is evident from the significant negative relationship between a child’s age and children’s heritage language proficiency. However, the findings must be approached with caution before making any general conclusion about the association between children’s age and children’s heritage language proficiency level because it does not provide evidence of causation. The study’s findings apply to promote early bilingualism interventions among immigrant families. Such interventions would involve training parents to maintain their children’s heritage
63 language development by adjusting their perception toward acculturation experiences and passing along positive language attitudes toward heritage and majority languages. Additionally, these interventions could include providing practical methods and strategies that can be used by immigrant families to promote early bilingualism. Thus, immigrant parents can know how to restructure their multilinguistic home environments in a way that motivates children to maintain their heritage language with the majority language in the U.S. It is also essential that increasing the number of bilingual education models in public schools can merge between immigrant children and American children. Finally, the current study findings are consistent with studies suggesting that children of immigrants need their first language supports in Turkish with home and societal support to remain proficient in their heritage language (Lee et al. 2015). There is an immense amount of remaining to support immigrant families by better understanding the importance of bilingualism in the U.S.
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List of Tables Table 1. Timeline for the Study
Month Data Collection Analyses August 2019 -November Study design, recruitment, None 2019 and IRB process November 2019 – February Data collection, interviews Quantitative Data Entry 2020 with parents February 2020 – March 2020 Interviews with parents done Transcribing and the first round of coding March 2020 – April 2020 ---- Finding the relationships, issues, themes, and processes April 2020 ---- Describing the cases through findings. Writing the quantitative and qualitative findings May 2020 ---- Continuing analyzing and writing the findings May 2020 - August 2020 ---- Writing up the findings
Table 2. A Sample from an Interview with a Parent
R: Why do you like your child to learn and speak Turkish? Children: Learning Turkish gives the ability to connect with their home culture, religion, and relatives.
R: Can you also elaborate on how you see Turkish language ties to Turkish culture?
Parent: I see the Turkish language as an enabler that will expose my kids to the culture source, whether in the form of literature or comfortable visits to Turkey without a language barrier. It also enables them to connect with their relatives back in Turkey and allows them to live in Turkey if they choose to do so.
R- How do you think speaking two languages will affect your child's language development?
Parent: It should affect her development positively as long as the line among the languages are preserved effectively, and by providing environments where she can exclusively use one language or the other (and thus avoid vocabulary mix-ups)
R: Do you think that speaking Turkish facilitates your child's language maintenance or constructing their ethnic identity?
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Parent: Yes, definitely. As long as it is the exclusive language for an environment, it keeps her connected with the terminology and literature (by enabling her reading in Turkish).
R: Yes, true, but can you provide me with an example that you have experienced with your child in the USA regarding the relationships between language maintenance and ethnic identity?
Parent: In my opinion, the more obvious way to demonstrate this point is by providing counterexamples: the cases where a lack of language preservation leads to alienation from the culture. I have a 15-year-old niece born and raised in the U.S., without visiting Turkey for the past few years as her Turkish language skills deteriorated, her ability to connect with her visiting grandparents, any literature in Turkish, and even her parents. Especially since all the ''human sources'' of culture had their cultural identity built up with language intertwined, or in other words, since the cultural and religious terminology has been tied to the language, conveying those values has proven to be a challenge.
Table 3 – Parent Demographics for Qualitative Study Participants (N = 20)
Parents Their children's Parent Education/ Age Parents Annual gender and age Profession Income
Sule, Male, 10 Ph.D./academic 39 $125k or above mother Zehra, Male, 9 B.A./housewife 37 $75k - $124k mother Zeynep, Male, 9 B.A./housewife 39 $75k - $124k mother Ipek, Male, 11 B.A./teacher 38 $75k - $124k mother Beyza, Male, 5 B.A./housewife 29 $125k or above mother Fatma, Male, 8 B.A./housewife 34 $75k - $124k mother Sinem, Female, 6 B.A./housewife 32 $25k - $45k mother Melike, Female, 11 B.A./housewife 44 $125k or above mother Humeyra, Male, 11 M.A. /architect 48 $125k or above mother Derya, Male, 9 B.A./housewife 43 $25k - $45k mother Elif, Female, 9 Ph.D./medical doctor 44 $125k or above mother Kadriye, Female, 7 B.A./student 32 $75k - $124k mother Zuhal, Male, 11 BA/architect 43 $125k or above mother
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Ahmet, Male, 8 Ph.D./data scientist 38 $125k or above father Mehmet Female, 6 M.S./Lead System P 47 $75k - $124k father Enes Male, 7 Ph.D./academic 34 $125k or above father Zubeyir Female, 7 Ph.D./engineering 35 $125k or above father Narin, Male, 11 Ph.D./engineering 47 $125k or above mother Rabia, Male, 11 Ph.D./professor 43 $125k or above mother Sumeyye, Female, 6 M.S./engineering 34 $125k or above mother
Table 4. Interview Questions
1-Do you think it is better or worse for your child if they speak two languages? Why not? 2- Why do you like your child to learn and speak Turkish? How do you think speaking two languages will affect your child's dual language development? 4- How would you identify your child's cultural identity? And would you do anything to enhance/change it? 5- Do you think that speaking Turkish facilitates your child's language maintenance or constructing their ethnic identity? 6- Has your child refuse to speak Turkish with a child? How do you respond to his/her choice? 7- How do you facilitate your child(ren) 's's Turkish language proficiency? 8- How do you think your strategies might change as your child gets older? 9-If you practice reading and/or writing at home with your child, what language(s) do you practice in reading and writing?
Table 5. A Sample from a Back-up Translation Process for One Interview from Turkish to English
Excerpt 1 Turkish: Ben 15 yildir burdayim. 20 yasinda gelmistim, bekardim ogrenciydim. Genc bekar ve ogrenci olarak geldigim icin adaptasyon surecim kolay. Belki ilk 2 sene zorlanmisimdir mecaz anlatimlarda, sarcastic ve ironic konusmalarda. vs. ama yurtda kaldim ve isolated yasamadigim icin bence kolay bir adaptasyon surecim oldu. Hala kulturel olarak bazi seyler garip geliyor ama bu durumada alistik. Cocuklarimizin California, bayarea gibi asiri diverse bir yerde dogmasi be yetismesi aslinda farkli bir deneyim. Cunku bizim uzun Yillar americali komsumuz bile olmadi, hintli, Philippinli, cinli, pakistanli, meksikali vb. Milletlerle daha cok etikesimizi oldu. Onlarla kulturel benzerlikler var. Tabi bu surecte communication hep ingilizce oldu. Cocuklarimizin bilingual olarak yetistirmek bekledigimden daha farkli gelisiyor. Kendilerini ifade etmekte Turkceleri oldukca zayif ozellikle kucuk olanin. Turkceye daha Hakim
79 olucaklarini dusunmustum. Ama malesef ikisininde care giverlari non Turkish speakers oldu. Arkadaslarida o sekilde olunca sanirim calisan Anne baba olarak sadece bizim turkce konusmamiz yeterli olmadi. Ikiside turkce gayet iyi anliyorlar ama kendilerini inglizce ifade etmeyi tercih ediyorlar. Iki Dil biliyor olamali bir avantaj olarak goruyorum bir cok acidan. Sosyal iliskileri, visionlari , cariyerleri etc.. Bizim kulturumuze yeri olmaya hatta cakisan durumlarla kasilasiyoruz ama oldukca transparent bir sekilde, biased olmayarak durumu aciklamaya calisiyoruz. Tabi biz Turk oldugumuz icin Turk kulturunu benimsemelerini ve korumalarini istiyoruz ama bunu olabilidigince objective olarak yapmaya calisiyoruz. Onlarinda anlayabilicegi sekilde ornekler ve alternative ler sunarak anlatiyoruz. En buyuk ornek dini bayramlar olabilir.Ingilizceleri daha iyi oldugu icin bazi kulturel yada dini meseleleri aciklarken hem inglizce hem turkce ifadeler kullanip netlestirmek istiyoruz cocugun zihninde. Bazen inglizce terimler onlar icin daha aciklayici yada ikna edici olabiliyor..
English (with back-translation) I've been here for 15 years. I came here as a single student at 20 years old. It was easy to adapt since I was single and a student. I may have struggled slightly with the sarcastic, metaphoric, and ironic language at first. Still, I think it was a reasonably easy adaptation process because I was living in a dorm and wasn't isolated. Some things about the culture still feel a bit strange. I'm used to it by now. (Some things about the culture still feel the same, but I'm used to it now). Our kids were born and raised in a diverse place like California. Bay Area is a unique experience since we didn't even have any American neighbors for years. We mostly interacted with Indian, Philippine, Chinese, Pakistani, and Mexican people. We have more similarities in terms of culture. The communication language was English, of course, all along (Despite our communication language being English, we have many similarities in terms of culture, so it was relatively easy to get along). Our children are developing differently than I expected from them as bilingual children. They are relatively low in expressing themselves in Turkish, especially our youngest one. I had thought they would be more dominant in Turkish. Unfortunately, both of them had caregivers that were non-Turkish speakers. And since their friends are only English speakers, as parents who are fulltime workers, I guess it was not enough for us to speak only Turkish with them when we are home. They both understand Turkish very well but prefer to express themselves in English. I see knowing two languages as an advantage for many reasons. Social relationships, visions, career- wise, etc.… We encounter instances where things aren't as we are used to in our own culture but try to explain the situation as transparent and unbiased as possible. We sure want our kids to embrace and preserve our culture since we are Turkish, but we try being objective doing that. (We naturally want our kids to embrace and preserve our Turkish culture, but we try to be as objective as possible during this process). We explain things by giving relevant examples they can make sense of and show alternatives. One important example is the concept of religious holidays. We want them to understand the things we explain, such as some cultural or religious topics, and their English is better, so we use both English and Turkish as we speak. (Since they are more proficient in English, we use Turkish and English as we speak together.) Sometimes terms in English make more sense. They may be more explanatory and convincing.
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Table 6. Participant Characteristics (N = 52)
Variable M SD TIFALDI Expressive 85.88 22.59 Language Attitudes 3.75 .34 Child’s expression him/herself in Turkish a 3.15 .94 Turkish language used at home with siblings b 3.78 1.23 The number of native speaker friends 2.54 .83 The amount of reading in TR c 3.19 1.72 The amount of watching in TR d 2.65 1.31 a 1 = not very well , 2 = a little less well, 3 = generally the same , 4 = very well b. 1 = never, 2 = rarely, 3=sometimes, 4=usually, 5=always c. 1 = daily, 2 = a few times a week, 3 = one/twice a month, 4 = once/twice a year, 5 = never d. 1 = daily, 2 = a few times a week, 3 = one/twice a month, 4 = once/twice a year , 5=never
Table 7. Bivariate Correlations between Relevant Variables (N = 52)
1 2 3 4 1 Parental Language Attitudes
2 Assimilation -.459**
3 Separation .587** -.609**
4 Marginalization -.339* .752** -.571** 5 Integration -.440** .673** -.593** .433** *. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).
**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
Table 8 – Multiple Regression Analysis Summary for Factors Predicting Children’s Heritage Language Proficiency
Predictor(s) B Std Error of the β t p Estimate Language Attitudes 5.77 10.97 .09 .53 .601 Assimilation -29.46 10.37 - .70 -2.84 .007 Separation -9.11 6.29 - .29 -1.45 .154
Marginalization 2.45 9.10 .06 .27 .789
Integration 6.45 4.71 .26 1.37 .178 Note. R2 = .23 (N = 52, p < .05).
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Table 9 - Means, Standard Deviations, and Intercorrelations for Children’s Heritage Language Proficiency and Predictor Variables (N = 52)
Variable M SD 1 2 3 4 5 Children’s Heritage 85.88 22.59 -.348** .005 -.224* -.055 .106 Language Proficiency Predictor Variable 1. Assimilation 1.66 .54 - -.609*** .752*** -.055*** -.459***
2. Separation 3.84 .71 - -.571*** -.593*** .587***
3. Marginalization 1.81 .52 - .433*** .-.339**
4. Integration 3.37 .91 - -.440***
5. Language 3.75 .34 - Attitudes Note. * p < .05. ** p < .01. ***p < .001.
Table 10 – Multiple Regression Analysis Summary for Factors Predicting Children’s Heritage Language Proficiency (N = 52)
Predictor(s) B Std Error of the β t p Estimate Parental Age -.82 .68 -.18 -1.20 .235
Parental Education -1.80 2.52 -.10 -.72 .478 Household Income 2.44 2.76 .12 .89 .380
Child’s Age -3.70 1.53 .-.36 -2.42 .020
Length of Living in -.60 .52 -.17 -1.16 .253 the U.S. Note. R2 = .32 (N = 52, p < .05).
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Table 11 - Means, Standard Deviations, and Intercorrelations for Children’s Heritage Language Proficiency and Predictor Variables (N = 52)
Variable M SD 1 2 3 4 5 Children’s Heritage 85.88 22.60 -.399** -.205 -.047 -.505*** -.334* Language Proficiency Predictor Variable 1. Parental Age 38.15 4.84 - .380** .167 .455*** .267*
2. Parental 3.13 1.21 - .214 .167 .043 Education 3. Household 3.83 1.08 - .168 .326** Income 4. Child’s Age 8.23 2.18 - .438***
5. Length of 14.10 6.17 Living in the - U.S. Note. * p < .05. ** p < .01. ***p < .001.
Table 12 – Mean Scores on Four Acculturation Attitudes (assimilation, marginalization, separation, and integration) (N = 52) (I) Degree of (J) Degree of Mean SE 95% Confidence Interval for Acculturation Acculturation difference difference Types Types (I - J) Lower bound Upper bound
(1) Assimilation (2) -.154* 0.05 -.295 -.012 (3) -2.180* 0.16 -2.606 -1.754 (4) -1.709* 0.10 -1.968 -1.451
(2) (1) 0.154* 0.05 .012 .295 Marginalization (3) -2.026* 0.15 -2.441 -1.611 (4) -1.555* 0.12 -1.872 -1.239
(3) Separation (1) 2.180* 0.16 1.754 2.606 (2) 2.026* 0.15 1.611 2.441 (4) 0.471 .20 -.080 1.023
(4) Integration (1) 1.709* 0.10 1.451 1.968 (2) 1.555* 0.12 1.239 1.872 (3) -.471 0.20 -1.023 .080 Note: Based on estimated marginal means *The mean difference is significant at the .05 level
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Table 13 – Multiple Regression Summary for Factors Predicting Children’s Heritage Language Proficiency (N = 52)
Predictor(s) B Std Error of the β t p Estimate Child’s Exp in 15.31 3.16 .59 4.84 .000 Turkish Turkish Lang 6.29 2.21 .34 2.85 .007 Used with Siblings The number of -3.76 3.65 - .13 -1.03 .310 Turkish speaker friends The amount of 1.05 1.94 .08 .54 .591 reading in T The amount of 3.04 2.62 .17 1.17 .251 watching in T
Table 14 - Means, Standard Deviations, and Intercorrelations for Children’s Heritage Language Proficiency and Predictor Variables (N = 52)
Variable M SD 1 2 3 4 5
Children’s Heritage 85.88 22.59 .618** .493 -.284* -.209 .037 Language Proficiency Predictor Variable 1. Child’s Exp in 3.28 .89 - .201 -.378** -.447*** -.332** Turkish 2. Turkish Lang Used 3.78 1.23 - -.111 -.171 .214 with Siblings 3. The number of 2.52 .78 - .484*** .405** Turkish speaker friends 4. The amount of 3.07 1.73 - .574*** reading in T 5. The amount of 2.59 1.26 watching in T - Note. * p < .05. ** p < .01. ***p < .001.
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List of Figures Figure (1). Factors that impact raising bilingual children as a Turkish-speaking immigrant parent
85
Figure (2). Parental attitudes and preserving heritage language and culture
Figure (3). Parental efforts and language activities in Turkish
86
Figure (4). Multicultural experiences, social pressure, parenting
87
Figure 5. Parental Attitudes and Strategies toward Maintaining Heritage Language
Figure 6. Experiencing Acculturation Process as Immigrant Parents
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APPENDICES
Appendix A
General Family Demographics Questions
ENGLISH
1) Mother's date of birth: ______
2) Mother's age of entry to U.S.: ______
3) Mother's city of origin in Turkey: ______
4) Highest level of education completed by mother: ______
5) Mother's Occupation: ______
6) Father's date of birth: ______
7) Father's age of entry to U.S.: ______
8) Father's city of origin in Turkey: ______
9) Highest level of education completed by father: ______
10) Father's occupation: ______
11) Number of children: ______
12) Parents are:
( ) Married ( ) Separated
13) Annual household income:
( ) Less than $25,000 ( ) $25,000 to $34,999 ( ) $35,000 to $49,999 ( ) $50,000 to $74,999
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( ) $75,000 to $99,999 ( ) $100,000 to $124,999 ( ) $125,000 to $149,999 ( ) $150,000 or more
TURKISH
Genel Aile Nüfus Soruları
1) Annenin doğum tarihi: ______2) Annenin ABD’ye geldiğindeki yaşı: ______3) Annenin Türkiye’deki doğum yeri (İl/İlçe): ______4) Annenin tamamlamış olduğu en yüksek eğitim seviyesi: ______5) Annenin mesleği: ______6) Babanın doğum tarihi: ______7) Babanın ABD’ye geldiğindeki yaşı: ______8) Babanın Türkiye’deki doğum yeri (İl/İlçe): ______9) Babanın tamamlamış olduğu en yüksek eğitim seviyesi: ______10) Babanın mesleği: ______11) Toplam çocuk sayısı: ______12) Ebeveynler: ( ) Evli ( ) Ayrı 13) Yıllık hanehalkı geliri: ( ) $25,000’dan az ( ) $25,000 ile $34,999 arası ( ) $35,000 ile $49,999 arası ( ) $50,000 ile $74,999 arası ( ) $75,000 ile $99,999 arası ( ) $100,000 ile $124,999 arası ( ) $125,000 ile $149,999 arası ( ) $150,000’dan fazla
Appendix B
COST Action IS0804 Questionnaire for Parents of Bilingual Children (PaBiQ Questionnaire)1
1. General Information about the Child
1.1 Birth Date: ______
1 This questionnaire is the short version of a longer questionnaire piloted by research groups in several countries within COST Action IS0804, which was in part based on the ALEQ (Paradis, 2011) and the ALDeQ (Paradis et al., 2010). It should be cited as “COST Action IS0804 (2011), Questionnaire for Parents of Bilingual Children (PaBiQ). http://www.bi-sli.org” 90
1.2 If place of birth is not country of residence, date of arrival in country of residence: ______
1.3 What languages does your child speak now?
Home language (specify) Country language Other (specify)
1.4 Which language do you think your child feels the most at home in? ______
2. Child’s early history: Language, etc.
2.1 How old was your child when he/she spoke his/her first word? ______
2.2 How old was your child when he/she first put words together to make short sentences? ______
Example: more water ; more milk ; etc.
2.3 Before your child was three or four years old, were you ever concerned about his/her language? NO or YES
______
2.4 Has your child ever had any hearing problems or frequent ear infections? NO or YES
______
2.5 At what age was your child first in contact with each of his/her languages?
Age (months if possible) Age (months if possible) Home language Other (specify) Country language Other (specify)
2.6 In general, before your child was four years old, was he/she exposed to:
0 1 2 3 4 Never Rarely Sometimes Usually Very Often/Always
Home language (specify)
Country language
Other (specify)
2.7 In what context and at what age did this exposure (before age 4) begin (put age in all appropriate cells)?
Home language (specify) Country language Other
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a. Mother
b. Father
c. Grandparents
d. Babysitter / child minder
e. Other adults (specify)
f. Siblings
g. Nursery school/day care center
h. Kindergarten
Total (1 point per cell)
Total by language /8 /8 /8
3. Current Skills Home Other Country language language (specify)
3.1 Compared to other children the same age, how do you think 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 your child expresses him/herself in …?
0 = not very well/not as well as them; 1 = a little less well/a few differences; 2 = (generally) the same; 3 = very well, better
3.2 Compared to other children the same age, do you think your 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 child has difficulties making correct sentences?
0 = yes, many difficulties; 1 = some difficulties; 2 = (generally) the same; 3 = no difficulties, better than other children
3.3 Are you satisfied with your child’s ability to express 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 him/herself in …? Always?
0 = not at all satisfied; 1 = not very satisfied; 2 = pretty satisfied/generally satisfied; 3 = very/totally satisfied
3.4 Does your child feel frustrated when he/she can’t communicate 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 in …?
0 = very frustrated/almost always frustrated/very often frustrated ; 1 = often frustrated/yes ; 2 = sometimes frustrated, but not often; 3 = (almost) never frustrated/no
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3.5 Do you think that your child speaks like a child the same age 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 who only speaks …..?
0 = not very well/not as well as them; 1 = a little less well/a few differences; 2 = (generally) the same; 3 = very well, better
Total by language /15 /15 /15
4. Comparison between languages used at home2 4.1 With parents
Mother ↔ Child Father ↔ Child
0 1 2 3 4 0 1 2 3 4 Never Rarely Some- Usually Very Never Rarely Some- Usually Very times Often times Often /Always /Always
Home language (specify)
Country language
Other
4.2 Is there another adult who regularly takes care of your child? (grandparent, babysitter, etc.) YES or No
Other Adult ↔ Child
0 1 2 3 4 Never Rarely Sometimes Usually Very Often /Always Home language (specify) Country language Other
4.3 With siblings (brothers and sisters):
2 If the parent asks how to interpret words such as "rarely," etc., the following explanation can be used : "Considering the total time in exchanges between you/the father/family friends and your child, how much time is in language X and how much time is in language Y? If this were put over 4 points (with 0 for never and 4 for very often or always) would you say 4 for language X and 0 for language Y, 3 for language X annd 1 for language Y, 2 for language X and 2 for language Y, 1 for language X and 3 for language Y, or 0 for language X and 4 for language Y? " 93
Siblings ↔ Child
0 1 2 3 4 Never Rarely Sometimes Usually Very Often /Always Home language (specify) Country language Other
5. Languages spoken in other contexts
5.1 What language activities does your child do each week and in what language(s)?
Home language (specify) Country language Other 0 1 2 0 1 2 0 1 2 Activities Never or At least Every Never or At least Every Never or At least Every almost once a day almost once a day almost once a day never week never week never week a. Reading (books, magazines, comic books, newspapers) b. Television/ movies / cinema
c. Storytelling
Total
Total by language /6 /6 /6
5.2 What language is spoken between your child and the friends he/she plays with regularly?
Child ↔ Friends
0 1 2 3 4 Never Rarely Sometimes Usually Very Often /Always
Home language (specify)
Country language
Other (specify) ______
5.3 What language is spoken with family friends with whom you are in regular contact?
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Family Friends
0 1 2 3 4 Never 0% Rarely 25% Sometimes 50% Usually 75% Always 100%
Home language (specify)
Country language
Other (specify) ______
6. Information about the mother and the father
6.1 Information about the mother
6.1.1 In which country were you born? ______
6.1.2 If you are currently working, what is the language you use at your work place? ______
6.1.3 Education: Number of years Further information
Primary school Yes / No
Secondary school Yes / No
University Yes / No
Other professional training Yes / No
6.1.4 In your opinion, how well do you speak the following languages?
0 1 2 3 4 Only a few Gets along, but with Basic abilities Well Very well words difficulty (gets along)
Home language (specify)
Country language
Other
6.2 Information about the father
6.2.1 In which country were you born?______
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6.2.2 If you are currently working, what is the language you use at your work place? ______
6.2.3 Education: Number of years Further information
Primary school Yes / No
Secondary school Yes / No
University Yes / No
Other professional training Yes / No
6.1.4 In your opinion, how well do you speak the following languages?
0 1 2 3 4 Only a few Gets along, but Basic abilities Well Very well words with difficulty (gets along)
Home language (specify)
Country language
Other
7. Difficulties
In each cell, please indicate YES or NO:
Brother/ Mother Father Father’s Mother’s sister family family
Difficulties mainly with reading and spelling
Difficulties understanding others when they speak
Difficulties expressing oneself orally (pronunciation, forming sentences, finding the right word, etc.)
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Brother/ Mother Father Father’s Mother’s sister family family
TOTAL
Appendix A 1
Çocuğun Kodu: Görüşmenin tarihi:
Araştırmacının adı: Anne Baba
******************************************************************* ******** PaBiQ (BiLaD Veli Anketi Ocak 2014)
1. Çocuk hakkında genel bilgiler : 1.1 Doğum tarihi: Doğum yeri / ülke: 1.2 Doğum yeri Fransa değilse, Fransa’ya geliş tarihi: 1.3 Çocuğunuz şu aralar hangi dilleri konuşuyor (birkaç izole edilmiş sözcükten daha fazla)
Türkçe Fransızca Diğer Diğer
1.4 Sizce çocuğunuz hangi dilde kendini daha iyi hissediyor? 2. Çocuğun erken gelişimi (dil ve diğer)
2.1. Çocuğunuz ilk sözcüklerini söylediğinde kaç yaşındaydı? ( Anne, baba, bubu,(babıldamak) değil, ama anlaşılabilir diğer sözcükler, örneğin “ masa, yok, annem, baba, gel“)
2.2 Çocuğunuz ilk kısa cümlelerini söylemek için kelimeleri bir araya getirdiğinde kaç yaşındaydı? ______Bunlar nelerdi? (Mümkünse seslere uygun yazınız!) Örneğin, “Resim yap!“, “Süt istiyom.“, “Baba geldi.“ vs. ______
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2.3. Çocuğunuz 3-4 yaşına gelmeden, onun dil gelişimi hakkında hiç endişe duydunuz mu? O zamanlar çocuğunuzun dili ile ilgili endişeleriniz var mıydı? EVET HAYIR Yorumlar (Örnek: Terapi ve tanı hakkında kesin sorular): ______2.4 Çocuğunuzun şimdiye kadar işitme ya da orta kulak sorunu oldu mu? EVET HAYIR
YORUMLAR (Çocuğunuz erken teşhis muayenelerini oldu mu? Hangilerini?):
______
2.5 Çocuğunuzun bildiği dillerle ilk defa kaç yaşında teması oldu? Yaş (mümkünse Yaş (mümkünse aylar) aylar) Arapça / Portekizce / Türkçe / İngilizce / Diğer Diğer
Fransızca Diğer
2.6 Çocuğunuz dört yaşına girmeden genel olarak hangi dillere maruz kaldı?
0 1 2 3 4 Hiçbir zaman Çok seyrek Bazen Genellikle Çok sık / Her Zaman
Arapça / Portekizce / Türkçe / Diğer
Fransızca
Diğer (Belirtiniz)
2.7 Çocuğunuz (4 yaşından önce) hangi koşullarda ve kaç yaşındayken bu dil maruzu başladı (yaşı uygun kutulara yazınız)?
Arapça / Portekizce / Türkçe / Fransızca Diğer Diğer
98
a. Anne
b. Baba
c. Büyükanne ve büyükbaba iletişim
d. Dadı / çocuk bakıcısı
e. Diğer yetişkinler (Beliritiniz)
f. Kardeşler
g. Çocuk yuvası / Kreş
h. Ana okulu
Toplam (Her kutucuk için bir puan)
Dile göre toplam /8 /8 /8
3. Güncel Dil Yetenekleri Arapça / Portekizce Fransızca Diğer / Türkçe/ Diğer 3.1 Çocuğunuzu yaşıtlarıyla karşılaştırırsanız, 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 çocuğunuz nasıl konuşuyor? 0 =o kadar iyi değil / onlar kadar iyi değil; 1 =onlardan biraz daha az iyi / neredeyse onlar gibi ama onlardan birazcik kötü;2 = onlar kadar iyi; 3 = çok iyi / onlardan daha iyi, onlardan cok daha iyi 3.2 Çocuğunuzu yaşıtlarıyla karşılaştırırsanız, 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 çocuğunuz nasıl konuşuyor? Doğru cümleleri kurarken zorluk çekiyor mu? 0 =o kadar iyi değil / onlar kadar iyi değil; çok zorluk çekiyor 1 =onlardan biraz daha az iyi /
99
onlardan biraz daha kötü;2 = onlar kadar iyi; 3 = çok iyi / onlardan daha iyi, zorluk çekmiyor
3.3 Çocuğunuzun …‘de / da kendini ifade 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 edebilmesinden memnun musunuz? Her zaman mı? 0 = memnun değil; 1 = o kadar memnun değl; 2 =memnun; 3 = tamamen memnun, çok memnun
3.4 Çocuğunuz …‘de / da iletişim kuramadığında 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 mutsuz oluyor mu? 0 =çok / neredeyse her zaman mutsuz / hayal kırıklığına uğramış; 1 = sık sık mutsuz / hayal kırıklığına uğramış / evet ; 2 =bazen,ama sık sık değil; 3 = (neredeyse) hiç mutsuz değil / hayal kırıklığına uğramamış / hayır
3.5 Çocuğunuz … dilinde konuştuğunda yaşıtları 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 kadar iyi olduğunu düsünüyor musunuz? 0 =o kadar iyi değil / onlar kadar iyi değil; 1=onlardan biraz daha az iyi / onlardan biraz daha kötü / birkaç farklılık dışında onlar gibi;2 = onlar kadar iyi; 3 = çok iyi / onlardan daha iyi
Her dil için toplam /15 /15 /15
4. Aile içinde konuşulan dillerin birbirleriyle karşılaştırılması3: 4. 1. Anne-babayla
3 Eğer anne-babalar “seyrek” vs. gibi sözcükleri nasıl değerlendirmeleri gerektiğini sorarlarsa, şu şekilde açıklama getirilebilir: “Çocuğuzun aile dostlarıyla, babayla, anneyle olan tüm iletişimini göz önüne alırsanız,bunun ne kadarı X diline, ne kadarı Fransızca 'ya aittir? Bunlar 4 puan üzerinden değerlendirilse ( 0 hiçbir zaman için ve 4 her zaman için), X diline 4 puan ve Fransızca'ya 0 puan , X diline 3 puan ve Fransızca 'ya 1 puan, X diline 2 puan ve Fransızca'ya 2 puan, X diline 0 puan ve Fransızca'ya 4 puan verir miydiniz? 100
Anne ↔ Çocuk Baba ↔ Çocuk 0 1 2 3 4 0 1 2 3 4 Hiçbir Seyrek / Bazen Sık Çok sık Hiçbir Seyre Bazen Sık Çok sık / zaman ara sıra sık / Her zaman k/ ara sık Her zaman zaman sıra
Arapça / Portekizce/ Türkçe / Diğer Fransızca Diğer
4.2 Çocuğunuzla düzenli olarak ilgilenen diğer yetişkinlerle (Büyükanne, büyükbaba, bakıcı, vs.) Diğer Yetişkin ↔ Çocuk 0 1 2 3 4 Hiçbir Seyrek / ara sıra Bazen Sık sık Çok sık / Her zaman zaman
Arapça /Portekizce / Türkçe / Diğer Fransızca Diğer
Not: ______
4.3 Kardeşlerle
Kardeş ↔ Çocuk 0 1 2 3 4 Hiçbir Seyrek / ara sıra Bazen Sık sık Çok sık / Her zaman zaman
Arapça / Portekizce / Türkçe /Diğer Fransızca Diğer
5. Başka durumlarda dil kullanımı:
5.1 Çocuğunuz aşağıdaki etkinliklerden hangilerini her hafta yapar ve hangi dil(ler)de?
101
Arapça / Portekizce / Türkçe Fransızca Diğer ______/Diğer
Etkinlikler 0 1 2 0 1 2 0 1 2 hiçbir haftada en az bir kez her gün hiçbir haftada en her gün hiçbir haftada her zaman ya zaman ya az bir kez zaman ya en az bir gün da da da kez neredeyse neredeyse neredeyse hiçbir hiçbir hiçbir zaman zaman zaman a.Okumak(Kitap, Dergi, Çizgi roman, Gazete) b.Televizyon / Film/ Sinema c.Hikaye anlatmak/ hikaye dinlemek
Toplam
Her dil için toplam /6 /6 /6
5.2 Çocuğunuz düzenli olarak oynadığı arkadaşlarıyla hangi dil(ler)de konuşur?
Çocuk– Arkadaşlar
0 1 2 3 4 Hiçbir zaman Seyrek / ara sıra Bazen Sık sık Çok sık / Her zaman
Arapça / Portekizce/ Türkçe / Diğer Fransızca Diğer (Belirtiniz)
5.3 Size sık sık ziyarete gelen aile dostlarınızın konuştuğu dil: 0 1 2 3 4 Hiçbir zaman Seyrek / ara sıra Bazen Sık sık Çok sık / Her zaman
Arapça/Portekizce/ Türkçe/ Diğer Fransızca
102
Diğer (Beliritniz)
6. Anne-baba hakkında bilgiler 6.1 Anne hakkında bilgiler
6.1.1 Hangi ülkede doğdunuz?
6.1.2 Şu anda çalışıyor musunuz? EVET HAYIR Cevabınız „EVET“ ise, işinizde hangi dili konuşuyorsunuz?
6.1.3 Eğitim: Kaç sene Notlar / Görüşler
İlk okul Evet / Hayır
Orta okul/ Lise Evet / Hayır
Üniversite Evet / Hayır
Başka meslek eğitimi Evet / Hayır
6.1.4 Aşağıdaki dilleri tahminize göre ne kadar iyi konuşuyorsunuz (uygun olanı işaretleyiniz)?
0 1 2 3 4 Hiç (en fazla Çok az (Zorlukla Orta (anlıyorum, İyi (kendisini Çok iyi (akıcı bir iki sözcük ) anlayabiliyorum) herşey yolunda) iyi konuşuyor) hissediyor) Arapça / Portekizce / Türkçe / Diğer Fransızca Diğer______
103
6.2 Baba hakkında bilgiler
6.2.1 Hangi ülkede doğdunuz?______
6.2.2 Şu anda çalışıyor musunuz? EVET HAYIR Cevabınız „EVET“ ise, işinizde hangi dili konuşuyorsunuz? ______
6.2.3 Eğitim: Kaç sene Notlar / Görüşler
İlk okul Evet / Hayır
Orta okul/ Lise Evet / Hayır
Üniversite Evet / Hayır
Başka meslek eğitimi Evet / Hayır
6.2.4 Aşağıdaki dilleri tahminize göre ne kadar iyi konuşuyorsunuz (uygun olanı işaretleyiniz)?
0 1 2 3 4 Hiç (en fazla Çok az (Zorlukla Orta (anlıyorum, İyi (kendisini Çok iyi (akıcı bir iki sözcük ) anlayabiliyorum) herşey yolunda) iyi konuşuyor) hissediyor) Arapça / Portekizce / Türkçe / Diğer Fransızca Diğer ______
7. Özel durumlar / Zorluklar
Lütfen her kutucuğa EVET (1 Puan) ya da HAYIR (0 Puan) yazınız:
Kardeşler Anne Baba Okuma ya da yazmada zorluklar
104
Kardeşler Anne Baba Anadilde konuşulduğunda başkalarını anlamada karşılaşılan zorluklar
Anadilde konuşmada zorluklar (Telaffuz, cümleleri doğru kurabilme, doğru sözcüğü bulabilme, vs.)
Toplam
8. Ek sorular: 8.1 Çocuğun doğum yeri ______8.2 Annenin memleketi______8.3. Babanın memleketi ______8.4. Kardeş: Sayı ______Yaş ______8.7. Başka Notlar______
Appendix C
Acculturation Attitudes Scale – English version
The following statements refer to the various ways in which you can handle different aspects of your life in America. Some statements are about the Turkish way, others refer to the American way; while some are related to both the Turkish and the American cultures, others accept neither. Please tell me about your personal preferences on these issues.
1------2------3------4------5 Strongly disagree Strongly agree 1 2 3 4 5
1. I prefer to celebrate American holidays more than Turkish holidays 2. I prefer to socialize with Americans more than with Turks 3. I prefer to celebrate both American and Turkish holidays. 4. I prefer to socialize with Turks more than with Americans. 5. Holidays don’t mean anything to me. 6. I prefer to socialize with both Canadians and Turks. 7. I prefer to celebrate Turkish holidays more than American holidays 8. I don’t really care who I socialize with. 9. I would like my children to be raised in both the American and the Turkish ways 10. I prefer to eat American food more than Turkish food at home. 11. I prefer to have American decorations more than Turkish decorations in my home. 12. I prefer to have Turkish close friends more than American close friends. 13. I don’t really care what kind of food I eat at home. 14. I would like my children to be raised more in the American way than in the Turkish way.
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15. I would say that I like to live both like a Turk and like an American. 16. I don’t really care what kinds of newspapers I read. 17. I prefer to have both American and Turkish close friends. 18. Most of the time I don’t care which way I live. 19. I would like my children to learn Turkish values and customs more than American values and customs. 20. I prefer to speak English more than Turkish at home. 21. I prefer to read Turkish newspapers more than American newspapers. 22. I prefer to have Turkish decorations more than American decorations in my home. 23. I don’t really care whether my children learn any values or customs. 24. I would say that I like to live more like a Turks than like an American. 25. I prefer to read American newspapers more than Turkish newspapers 26. I prefer to eat both American and Turkish food at home. 27. I don’t worry about something as trivial as decoration. 28. I prefer to speak both English and Turkish at home. 29. I expect my children to live with me until they get married. 30. I would like my children to learn American values and customs more than Turkish values and customs. 31. I don’t really care how my children are raised. 32. I would say that I like to live more like an American than a Turk. 33. I expect my children to live on their own as soon as they feel ready. 34. I would like my children to learn both Turkish and American values and customs. 35. I prefer to speak Turkish more than English at home. 36. Acculturation Attitudes Scale – Turkish version
Aşağıdaki ifadeler, Amerika’daki hayatınızda karşılaştığınız değişik durumlarda nasıl düşündüğünüzle ilgilidir. Bazı ifadeler Türk kültürü, bazıları Amerikan kültürü, bazıları ise hem Türk, hem Amerikan kültürleri hakkındadır. Diğer ifadelerde ise bir kültür seçimi yoktur. Lütfen bu konulardaki kişisel tercihlerinizi belirtiniz.
1------2------3------4------5 Kesinlikle katılmıyorum Kesinlikle katılıyorum
1 2 3 4 5 1. Türk bayramlarından çok Amerikan bayramlarını kutlamayı tercih ederim. 2. Türkler'den çok Amerikalılar'la biraraya gelip vakit geçirmeyi tercih ederim. 3. Hem Amerikan hem Türk bayramlarını kutlamayı tercih ederim. 4. Amerikalılar'dan çok Türkler'le biraraya gelip vakit geçirmeyi tercih ederim. 5. "Bayram" bana birsey ifade etmiyor. 6. Hem Amerikalılar'la hem Türkler'le biraraya gelip vakit geçirmeyi tercih ederim 7. Amerikan bayramlarından çok Türk bayramlarını kutlamayı tercih ederim. 8. Kimlerle bir araya gelip vakit geçirdiğime aldırmam. 9. Hem Türk hem Amerikan kültürünü benimsemeyi
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tercih ederim. 10. Evde/yurtta Türk yemeklerinden çok Amerikan yemekleri yemeyi tercih ederim. 11. Evimde/odamda Türkler'e özgü süslemelerden çok Amerikalılar'a özgü süslemelerin olmasını tercih ederim. 12. Yakın arkadaşlarımın Amerikalı'dan çok Türk olmasını tercih ederim. 13. Evde/yurtta ne çeşit yemek yediğime aldırış etmem. 14. Amerikan kültüründen çok Türk kültürünü benimsemeyi tercih ederim. 15. Hem Türk hem Amerikalı gibi yaşamaktan hoşlandığımı söyleyebilirim. 16. Ne tür gazete okuduğuma aldırış etmem. 17. Yakın arkadaşlarımın hem Amerikalı hem Türk olmasını tercih ederim. 18. Çoğu zaman ne şekilde yaşayacağıma aldırış etmem. 19. Türk kültüründen çok Amerikan kültürünü benimsemeyi tercih ediyorum. 20. Evde/yurtta Türkçe'den çok İngilizce konuşmayı tercih ederim. 21. Amerikan gazetelerinden çok Türk gazetelerini okumayı tercih ederim. 22. Evimde/odamda Amerikalılar'a özgü süslemelerden çok Türk’lere özgü süslemelerini olmasını tercih ederim 23. Hangi kültürü benimsediğime aldırış etmem. 24. Amerikalı'dan çok bir Türk gibi yaşamaktan hoşlandığımı söyleyebilirim 25. Türk gazetelerinden çok Amerikan gazetelerini okumayı tercih ederim. 26. Evde/yurtta hem Amerikan hem Türk yemekleri yemeyi tercih ederim 27. Evi/odamı süsleme gibi önemsiz şeylerle kafamı yormam. 28. Evde/yurtta hem İngilizce hem Türkçe konuşmayı tercih ederim. 29. Evde/yurtta Amerikan yemeklerinden çok Türk yemekleri yemeyi tercih ederim. 30. Hem Amerikan hem Türk gazetelerini okumayı tercih ederim. 31. Türk'ten çok bir Amerikalı gibi yaşamaktan hoşlandığımı söyleyebilirim 32. Yakın arkadaşlarımın kimler olduğuna aldırış etmem. 33. Evde/yurtta İngilizce'den çok Türkçe konuşmayı tercih ederim. 34. Evimde/odamda hem Amerikalılar'a hem Türkler'e özgü süslemelerin olmasını tercih ederim. 35. Çoğu zaman duygu ve düşüncelerimi nasıl dile getirdiğime aldırış etmem. 36. Yakın arkadaşlarımın Türk'ten çok Amerikalı olmasını tercih ederim.
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Appendix D
PARENTS LANGUAGE ATTITUDES
1-How many years have you been to USA (or another English-speaking country, if you lived there before USA)? _____
2-How many years ago did you leave your home country? ______
3-How important is it to you that your children speak/understand Turkish?
□ very important □ quite important □ somewhat important □not very important □ not at all important
4-Do you think your child is exposed enough into Turkish -speaking environment? □ Yes □ No
5-What language do you want him/her to speak better?
□ English □ Turkish □ Both equally
6-What language(s) do you speak to your spouse/partner at home on the daily basis?
□ only Turkish □ mostly Turkish □ half English, half Turkish □ mostly English
7-How many of your friends are native Turkish speakers?
□ all □ most □ about half □ less than half □ none
8-When you visit other Turkish speakers in their home (or when you have them over), how often do you speak Turkish?
□ always □ often □ in half of the cases □ rarely □ never
9-When you are on the street with other Turkish speakers, how often do you speak Turkish?
□ always □ often □ in half of the cases □ rarely □ never
10-How often do you read books in Turkish?
□ daily □ a few times a week □ once/twice a week□ once/twice a month □ once/twice a year □ never
11-How often do you watch videos/movies/TV in Turkish?
□ daily □ a few times a week □ once/twice a week□ once/twice a month □ once/twice a year □ never
(Explanations: Very well – occasional inaccuracies, generally handles language well; Reasonably well – coping with overall meaning in most situations, with some mistakes; Poorly – competence is limited to familiar situations)
□ like a native speaker □ very well □ reasonably well □ poorly □ not at all
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12-How would you rate your proficiency in Turkish?
□ like a native speaker □ very well □ reasonably well □ poorly □ not at all
13-How often do you seek out contact with Turkish speakers?
□ daily □ a few times a week □ once/twice a week□ once/twice a month □ once/twice a year □ never
Here are some statements about the Turkish and English languages in USA. Please say whether you agree or disagree with these statements and circle one of the following:
1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Disagree 3 = Neither agree nor disagree 4 = Agree 5 = Strongly agree
14-For a person with Turkish -speaking ancestry, it is important to be able to speak Turkish 1 2 3 4 5
15-Learning Turkish can be beneficial for my child’s future life 1 2 3 4 5
16-Learning Turkish can be beneficial for my child’s future career 1 2 3 4 5
17- It is important for my child to participate in Turkish community life and events in Turkish 1 2 3 4 5
18-I would like my child to marry a Turkish -speaking spouse 1 2 3 4 5
19-Learning Turkish is essential to fully participate in Turkish community life in USA 1 2 3 4 5 20-Learning Turkish is essential for keeping contact with family in Turkish /other Turkish -speaking country 1 2 3 4 5
21-It is important for my child to get an exposure to Turkish culture 1 2 3 4 5 22-It is important to learn Turkish in order to be exposed to Turkish culture 1 2 3 4 5 23-Children should learn both Turkish and English to become bilingual 1 2 3 4 5 24-Learning English is more important than learning Turkish for my child’s life in USA 1 2 3 4 5 25-Learning two languages (Turkish and English) can help the child to be smarter 1 2 3 4 5 26-There is no use for my child’s learning Turkish in America. 1 2 3 4 5 27-I feel sorry for Americans with Turkish -speaking ancestry who don’t know Turkish. 1 2 3 4 5 28-We came to USA to become Americans, so I do not want my child to have anything to do with Turkish (Turkish -speaking country) 1 2 3 4 5
Appendix E
Parent Interview Protocol
Hello, my name is Seyma Inan. I am studying the relations between Turkish parents and their bilingual children in the USA and would like to ask questions regarding your relations with your child and your own experience being in the USA as a parent. Your responses will be confidential. The interview may last about maximum 15 minutes. Thank you for participating in this study. May I record the interview?
Time of Interview: Date:
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Place: Interviewee:
Background Characteristics:
Appendix F
Participant Parents Informed Letter of Consent (Turkish)
Miami University of Ohio
Psikoloji Bolumu
90 N Patterson Ave, Oxford, OH 45056
BİLGİLENDİRİLMİŞ OLUR VERME FORMU
Aşağıda bahsi geçen bilimsel araştırmaya katılmaya davetlisiniz. Bu form bu çalışmaya katılıp katılmayacağınıza karar vermenize yardımcı olmak için hazırlanmıştır. Her hangi bir konuda sorunuz olursa lütfen aşağıdaki iletişim bilgilerini kullanarak sorularınızı iletmekten çekinmeyiniz.
Bu çalışmanın amacı göçmen Türk ebeveynleri ile onların çocukları arasındaki ilişkiyi incelemektir. Bu çalışma, Amerika'ya göçmen olarak yerleşen Türk ebevynlerin kulturlesme tutumlarını ve onların dile karşı olan tutumlarının çocuklarının dil yeterligini nasil etkiledigini arastirmaktadir.
Calışmam hem ebeveynleri hem de cocuklarini kapsamaktadir. Ebeveynler icin, calisma iki asamali. Ikinci asamaysa, katilimcilarinin istedigine bagli olacak. Bu asama hem anket hem de istege bagli olarak ropörtaj icermektedir. Toplam anket paketi uc adet olacak ve anketleri doldurmak 20-25 dakikadan daha fazla surmeyecektir. Cocuklara dayali testimde, tablet uzerinden olacak. Iki adet hem turkce hem de ingilizce kelime hazinelerini olcecegim. Cocuklarin test sureci 15-20 dakikayi asmayacak sekilde ayarlandi. Ebeveynlerden ropörtaja katilmak isteyenler icinse, cevaplarınızı doğru bir şekilde kaydettiğimden emin olmak için bu ropörtajı sesli kayıt cihazıyla kayıt altina alinacaktir. Bu görüşme 15 dakikadan fazla süremeyecektir. Bu araştırmayla ilgili bilinen her hangi bir risk veya rahatsızlık yoktur.
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Bu çalışmadaki katılımınız gönüllüdür. Bu çalışmaya katılıp katılmayacağınıza yalnızca siz karar verebilirsiniz. Katılmaya karar verdiğiniz takdirde, istediğiniz zaman bu çalışmadan bana bildirerek çekilebilirsiniz, bu kararınız benimle olan ilişkinizi etkilemeyecektir. Çalışmadan çekildiğiniz takdirde, size ait olan tüm bilgiler imha edilecektir. Katılmanız durumunda, tüm bilgileriniz gizli tutulacaktır.
Eğer bu çalışmaya katılmayı kabul ediyorsanız, lütfen aşağıdaki bildirim formunu imzalayınız.
Proje Direktörü: Seyma Inan Developmental Psychology, Miami University Oxford, Ohio Tel: (734) 548-0344 E-posta: [email protected]
GÖNÜLLÜ OLUR VERME FORMU:
Tez Danışmanı:
Dr. Yvette Harris Oxford, Ohio, 45056 Tel: 513 529-2009 E-posta: [email protected]
Bu formda geçen bilgileri okuyup anladığımı ve bu çalışmada gönüllü olarak katılmayı kabul ediyorum. Bilgilerimin tamamen gizli tutulacağını ve istediğim zaman bu çalışmadan çekilebileceğimi kabul ediyorum. Bu olur verme formunun imzasız bir kopyasını kendi kayıtlarım için teslim aldım. Ad ve soyad (lütfen yazınız): ______İmza:______Tarih:______Size ulaşabileceğimiz telefon numarası:______Size ulaşabileceğimiz en uygun gün ve saatler: ______
Üstte bilgileri geçen şahsa bu çalışmayla ilgili katılım koşullarını, çalışmanın amacını, olası yararlarını ve olası risklerini açıkladığımı, şahsın sorularını cevapladığımı ve formu imzaladığını onaylıyorum. Tarih: ______Araştırmacının İmzası:______
Participant Parents Informed Letter of Consent (English)
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Miami University of Ohio
Department of Psychology
90 N Patterson Ave, Oxford, OH 45056
INFORMED CONSENT FORM
You are invited to participate in this research study. The following information is provided in order to help you make an informed decision whether or not to participate. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask.
The purpose of this study is to examine Turkish immigrant parent-child relationships. This study investigates how immigration affects acculturation attitudes of Turkish parents and how language attitudes of Turkish parents affect children’s language proficiency in the United States. In this study, both parents and their children will participate. For parents, I will ask you to participate in filling out three short questionnaires and one individual interview as an additional choice. The questionnaires part will take no longer than 15- 20 minutes. Parents who also would like to participate the interview part of the data, I will audio record the interview in order to make sure that I am collecting your answers completely. The interview will be no longer than 15 minutes. There are no known risks or discomforts associated with this research. For children part, your children will be shown two different receptive vocabulary tests both in Turkish and English. This test will take about 15-20 minutes.
Your participation in this study is voluntary. You are free to decide not to participate in this study or to withdraw at any time without adversely affecting your relationship with me. If you choose to participate, you may withdraw at any time by notifying me or my thesis chair. Upon your request to withdraw, all information pertaining to you will be destroyed. If you choose to participate, all information will be held in strict confidence.
If you are willing to participate in this study, please sign the statement below.
Project director:
Seyma Inan Developmental Psychology, Miami University Oxford, Ohio Tel: (734) 548-0344 E-posta: [email protected]
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VOLUNTARY CONSENT FORM:
Thesis Chair:
Dr. Yvette Harris Oxford, Ohio, 45056 Tel: 513 529-2009 E-posta: [email protected]
I have read and understood the information on the form and I consent to volunteer to be a subject in this study. I understand that my responses are completely confidential and that I have the right to withdraw at any time. I have received an unsigned copy of this informed consent form to keep for my own records. Name (please print): ______Signature:______Date: ______Phone where you can be reached:______Best days and times to reach you: ______
I certify that I have explained to the above individual the nature and purpose, the potential benefits, and possible risks associated with participating in this research study, have answered any questions that have been raised, and have witnessed the above signature. Date: ______Investigator’s signature:______
Assent script to be read to children prior to collecting data:
“Hi, my name is ______, and I’m going to ask you to answer some questions today. But before I do that, I want to make sure that your mommy/daddy has talked with you about what you are going to do today, and that it’s ok with you to answer these questions today.” And you can stop at any time you want to and you can skip some problems if you want to also, just let me know and it is really ok to stop at any time.
Note to experimenter: Make sure that you obtain a verbal yes or nod from the child before you begin each test. If the child states or indicates that he/she is not interested in participating then do not proceed with this phase of the research. Please note that if the child becomes frustrated and stops, please let them know that it is ok and give them their gift.
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Appendix G
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