Browsing by Subject "bilingualism and multilingualism"

In The United States there has been developed a system to divide immigrant generations into different categories to clarify the statistics and to provide information about integration and language skills. Generations are divided into seven different categories. The second generation is divided into generations 2,0 and 2,5. The 2,5 generation, children of international partnerships are in my special interest and my research subject. In studies it have been found that the 2,5 generation's position is weaker in their own mother tongue teaching than the 2,0 generation's position. Finnish as a second language seem to be not so important for generation 2,5. Parents' language choices and the child's mother tongue registration was instead in a crucial role in supporting multilingualism and multicultural identity both at home and at school. The aim of my Master's Thesis was to study the language choices of families and the reasons for these choices, different mother tongue education participation and the role of the school and the kindergarten in supporting the multilingual and multicultural identity. I carried out the Master's Thesis as a qualitative case study. I interviewed five international family's mothers by the theme interview method. The purpose was to obtain information on children's lingual pathways from early childhood to the present day and how the parents' language choices impact to these pathways as well as how the school and day care center offer support in this process. I analyzed the data by narrative analysis method. The family language choices were affected by the family's own decisions, activity of the relatives and environmental attitudes. In this casestudy especially mothers were active in supporting multilingualism. Finnish skills were quite good, so there was no need to the Finnish as a second language teaching. There was only one family, whose children had participated from the beginning to the teaching of the mother tongue and they were also the only one whose mother tongues were equally strong and who felt that the school and the kindergarten have been actively supporting multilingualism. 2,5-generation children's language resources are valuable capital for both the individual and society in general. Parents also need more support and encouragement in order to use the valuable language resources. The simplest would be the registration of all native languages instead of one and if the teaching of the mother tongue would be compulsory.