Strategies for Teaching and Maintaining Chinese as Heritage Language for Chinese Children in Sweden : An investigation for identifying strategies that Chinese parents use helping their children learn and maintain their heritage language

Abstract: Chinese as a heritage language is one of the fastest lost languages in the world. In fact, in most Chinese families that have left China, the heritage language is lost by the second generation. When people move from their homeland to a place where the primary language is different from their home language, one issue becomes whether their heritage language can be retained. The situation in Sweden is quite different from that in English-speaking countries when it comes to maintaining Chinese as a heritage language. Most Chinese moving to Sweden have no prior exposure to the Swedish language. The purpose of this study is to find out which strategies Chinese parents use to help their children learn and maintain proficiency in the Chinese language. It also investigates the progress made using these strategies. A qualitative research approach was taken and semi-structured interviews of the children’s mothers were performed. Some of the children in the study were born in China and some were born in Sweden. During these interviews, a number of strategies were identified that parents use to help their children learn and maintain the heritage language. These included, for instance, mother tongue education, watching Chinese TV and films, parents giving their children encouraging comments, and associating with other Chinese families. Some families recommended strategies that they felt would be beneficial for others, like delaying the start of daycare. According to this study, the effects from, for example, mother tongue education and encouraging comments, should have implications on how educators shape their programs, and the way they engage the parents in their children’s language training. When analyzing the various strategies and their effects on the children in the study, it became apparent that the younger sibling always shows a lower level of Chinese proficiency compared to the older sibling. This phenomenon is herein called the younger sibling syndrome.