Bilingual Development among Culturally Linguistically Diverse Children : A study at a public elementary school in Osaka Prefecture.

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  • CLD児の複数言語能力の関係について：大阪府下の公立小学校での調査研究より
  • CLDジ　ノ　フクスウ　ゲンゴ　ノウリョク　ノ　カンケイ　ニ　ツイテ　オオサカフカ　ノ　コウリツ　ショウガッコウ　デノ　チョウサ　ケンキュウ　ヨリ

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Abstract

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This article presents some of the findings of a longitudinal study conducted during last eight years supported by the KAKEN Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research. Current study has been carried out for the last five years, based on the previous three-year-study at public elementary schools in Osaka, where more than twenty percent of the pupils are from China. Those Culturally Linguistically Diverse (CLD) Children are prospective bilingual speakers of their home language, Chinese, and the local language, Japanese in our society. As increasing number of CLD children have been accepted and facing difficulties at Japanese public schools, the authors and their research group believe it important to assess not only their Japanese but their Chinese language proficiency as well, so that "additive bilingualism" is taken into consideration, as the standpoint of promoting JSL education, rather than "subtractive bilingualism" which leads children to monolingual Japanese. The subjects of the assessment for this article were 110 in total, among whom fifty pupils were assessed in both Japanese and Chinese language, using assessment tools of the Oral Proficiency Interview for Bilingual Children (OBC) and the Dialogic Reading Assessment (DRA) in the two languages separately and individually. Our research questions are two folds: (1) how speaking and reading skills in Japanese are improving among those Chinese pupils, and (2) how their L1 Chinese proficiency is related to their Japanese literacy. The results indicated as follows: (1) their Japanese speaking and reading skills improved yearly, and (2) their Japanese literacy showed mild correlation with their Chinese proficiency. Their Japanese literacy showed highest when they are literate in L1 Chinese. It was higher if they can communicate in Chinese, compared to those who have only L1 listening skill. These results support Cummins'Interdependence Hypothesis, and can be interpreted to encourage additive bilingualism in such public schools in Japan.

Journal

  • 間谷論集

    間谷論集 11 41-57, 2017-03-31

    The Center for Japanese Language and Culture, Osaka University

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