A Case Study on Learning the Mother Tongue:Children Born from Multicultural Parents Residing in Korea
When cross-nationally wed immigrant parents residing in Korea teach their children the language of their home countries (mother tongue), such parents lacking confidence in the kids’ education due to their difficulties with the Korean language can gain significant potential and hope in the kids’ education and as well as other areas. Furthermore, not only can the immigrant parent’s mother tongue become a valuable asset to the child individually and to Korea, it can serve in the long-term as a bridge connecting the societies of Korea and the parent’s motherland.
In the case of Korea, however, there still exists the tendency to stress only the importance teaching of Korean with families of trans-national marriages and the fixed idea that education of children must be conducted in Korean. Koreans should become aware of the importance of teaching ? in addition to Korean ? the mother tongue of the immigrant parent of trans-national marriages, and it is necessary to create measures to systematically educate children the immigrant parent’s mother tongue.
Currently, precedent research concerning policies and the related support for systematically teaching the mother tongue of immigrant parents do not exist. The objective of this paper is to gather the fundamental data necessary to develop a plan to systematically teach the immigrant parent’s mother tongue to children of multicultural families.
To these ends, the primary areas of research addressed in this paper are as follows. First, this paper examines the language education support efforts that have been performed thus far in Korea to teach the immigrant parent’s mother tongue to school-age children and adolescents of multicultural families. Secondly, to grasp the demands of the pending issues and areas of improvement, this study digs into and analyzes practice cases. In addition, in order to substantiate the validity of teaching the immigrant parent’s mother tongue, not only the multicultural family’s developmental background but also its historical and cultural elements are examined against case studies of other countries, with the most similar ones of Japan and Taiwan being relied upon the most. Lastly, the paper draws conclusions with the possible implications on Korea’s education from analyses of national education policies, environments, conditions, and case studies.
The research methods for this study include literature review, analyses of related material and programs, academic seminars for pooling expert opinions, in-depth interviews and class observations, examinations of the current state of support for teaching the immigrant parent’s mother tongue in Korea and other countries, and collection and analyses of case studies.
The study was able to draw the following conclusions for developing measures to systematically teach the mother tongue of the immigrant parent to children of multicultural families. First, a policy direction needs to be established for language education, the foremost being the need to establish the language to express “cross-nationally wed immigrant parents mother tongue.” Following an inspection of the many terminology presently being popularly used such as bilingual, mother tongue, and heritage language, a selection of appropriate terms needs to be made. Next, policies need to recognize that multicultural families are important members of Korean society, and these policies should strive to enhance their linguistic and cultural potentials from the standpoint of guaranteeing human rights and securing societal resources. As opposed to a nonrecurring and shortsighted policy, Korea needs policies based on social agreement that will go side-by-side with systematic processes.
Secondly, in order to reinforce language education, the immigrant parent’s mother tongue should be adopted as part of regular school curricula, and a legal basis should be instituted to operate within the public education system. From the aspect of legislative organization, for example, wording needs to be included into a section of the Support for Multicultural Families Act (Article 11 on providing services for multiple languages) to make these compulsory and there by make it possible to actively realize them, and detailed clause sare needed to stimulate bilingual education.
This will call for administrative and financial support. In other words, government authorities will need to promote the teaching of immigrant parents’ mother tongues by creating a department exclusively in charge and taking similar efforts to procure the funds without delay and operate smoothly. In addition, it will also call for efforts similar to the ongoing programs by the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education and the Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education to train and deploy bilingual teachers, such as: policy recommendations for supporting research schools and outstanding schools; financial support for continuously expanding the labor pool of bilingual teachers; recommendations to make mandatory bilingual familiarity college courses for college students training to be school teachers; publication and dissemination of bilingual textbooks and auxiliary material at the national level; and establishment of formal certificate education alternative schools focused on bilingualism.
Fourth, there will be a strong need for a cooperative system between service providers and government departments to support the language education that will be developing. In the long-term, the government will have to raise and allocate the financial resources with considerations for the uniqueness and individual conditions of all the various regions, as well as demonstrate its intentions for strong support in the short-term by taking into careful considerations during the first stages of multicultural policy implementation. In order to accomplish these aforementioned goals, the government will need to construct an accountability structure and management system, and attract connections and cooperation agreements among the service providers and government departments.
Fifth, efforts will be needed to procure reliable language instructors and enhance instructors’ competence. Improvements should be made according to the lessons learned from the currently ongoing “train and deploy bilingual instructors” program by the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, and similar enterprises should be modified and customized to be expanded and implemented by the education offices of other cities and provinces according to their respective regional needs, all for the purpose of providing quality education to students of multicultural families. Along with these, there is a need to develop teaching methods, ways to raise students’ self-identity and self-confidence, and programs to aid with counseling skills, teaching plans, and related guidelines.
Sixth, a more developed language education underpinning will call for a rapid improvement in the environments of families, schools, and regional education offices. Further advances will be needed in all areas such recognition and policy changes by families, schools, and education offices; cognitive awareness changes by teachers and instructors concerning bilingual education; improvements in learning conditions; and advances and expansions in the teaching materials and the number of classroom hours spent.
Lastly, it will call for building social consensus and expanding the base for the need to educate the immigrant parent’s mother tongue to the children of trans-national families. With the exception of English, Korea has the tendency to belittle languages of minority groups, and a major shift in the societal awareness and discrimination against other languages. In addition, there will need to be a forming of a social consensus regarding the value and necessity for teaching immigrant parent’s mother tongues via discussions and assertive publicity efforts by civil and other groups.