Abstract

ABSTRACT
Immigrant Parents’ Perspectives on Heritage Language Maintenance and Multilingual Books
Onyemechi Fikani
Many immigrant parents in Canada seek to foster their children’s language and literacy development in a heritage language as well as the official languages of English and French. The purpose of this study is to describe immigrant parents’ (a) beliefs and practices related to passing on a heritage language to their children and (b) views on using websites providing digital stories in multiple languages as a resource to support the heritage language.
Through two semi-structured interviews, eight parents reflected on their heritage language and literacy practices, shared their beliefs about heritage language maintenance, and described their experience of sharing digital stories on the Storybooks Canada and Global Storybooks websites with their children. Analysis of the interview transcripts revealed that participants engaged in parent-child conversations, storybook reading, and storytelling to support their children’s language development in both the heritage language and one or both of Canada’s official languages. The parents also believed that multilingualism was pertinent to the future of their children and valued the role of extended family and community in passing on their home language, culture, and identity. To support their efforts to transfer heritage languages, parents reported they needed more resources, language schools, and access to books in their home languages. Additionally, parents believed that the storybook websites were helpful in the maintenance of heritage languages and most (6 of the 8 participants) showed interest in incorporating the websites into their language and literacy practices. The findings can inform schools, families, and immigration policymakers.