A monolingual future? INTERGENERATIONAL TRANSMISSION OF MINORITY LANGUAGES IN NEW ZEALAND

Overview  Statistical situation  Advice to parents in New Zealand  Plunket  Huggies  Office of Ethnic Affairs Report  Our and others’ critique (Massey and TESOLANZ)  Our project  Planned outcome

Statistical situation  At least 168 LOTE spoken by children in NZ  240,750 of children living at home in NZ (20.1%) could speak more than one language  The highest proportion of children who speak two languages or more is in Auckland (29.1%)  In NZ as a whole 53% of multilingual children are resident in Auckland  11,391 more multilingual children living in Auckland since last census  Twelve out of sixteen districts now have >10% of children who are multilingual

Statistical situation  Languages spoken by children living at home  Most spoken language by children in Auckland is Samoan  Numbers of German, French, Japanese and Spanish speakers inflated by those learning at secondary school

Statistical situation Percentage of NZ children who speak more than one language by ethnicity, Census: 2013 Most European, Māori and Pacific children are monolingual in English.

Statistical situation  Over one-third (35.0 percent) of overseas-born children (aged 0 to 14 years) were able to speak two or more languages, compared with 11.5 percent of New Zealand-born children.  Once children are born in NZ their likelihood of learning their home language is not much greater than the percentage of NZ born people who can speak more than one language

Problem A recent report, Language and Integration in New Zealand from the Office of Ethnic Affairs considering the role of language in integration outcomes of migrants advises LOTE-parents to speak English to their children to help the child’s English language development.

Ethnic Affairs report  Home is given as a key domain for both acquiring proficiency in English and heritage language maintenance.  reference to interview data from the Longitudinal Immigration Study about adult students’ preference for homestay (Learning the Lingo)  Dr Hilary Smith, President of TESOLANZ, wrote a response to the report  Dr Arianna Berardi-Wiltshire of Massey University expressed her concern about the report to the Department. Those determined to speak English took steps to live with native speakers. Some participants’ families organised home -stay billets with Kiwi families as part of a ‘package’ in advance of leaving for New Zealand, so ‘ you can speak English all the time, instead staying with a friend [when] you speak Chinese all the time … really no good for you’.

Esser’s findings  Objective is linguistic assimilation  Shift happens  Only English language proficiency is predicative of school results  Reduced message that competence in LOTE is irrelevant to academic success and exposure to English should be maximised, so you should speak English at home  No reason relevant to our context to advise against raising baby bilingually.

Our project  Prong 1: interview study of families where NZ-born bilingual child has reached year 12 or 13.  What has been their experience at different stages of the child’s development?  What factors have influenced their decisions about languages?  What advice do they have for new parents?  Prong 2: Study of commissioned data from the 2013 Census focusing on the bilingual outcome of NZ-born children who are in families where more than one language is spoken.  We are interested in the most widely spoken 20 languages.

Christchurch  9% Asian children  10% speakers of languages other than English  What is the situation in Auckland and elsewhere in New Zealand?

Planned outcomes  Brochures and research-informed professional development for midwives, Plunket staff, early childhood educators  One-two Masters and/or doctoral theses sited in the project.  Website with research informed information and advice for parents  Interviews with parents and adult children

References  Bell, A., Harlow, R., and Stark, D. (2005). Languages of New Zealand. Wellington, New Zealand: Victoria University Press.  Cunningham, U. (2011). Growing up with two languages. London: Routledge.  Esser, H. (2006). Migration, language and integration – AKI- Research Review 4.  Office of Ethnic Affairs. (2013). Language and integration in New Zealand. Retrieved from advicehttp://ethnicaffairs.govt.nz/story/language-information-and- advice