Exploratory Model 1 Exploratory Model on Advising Bilingual Parenting among Chinese Immigrants

2 Bilingual education has always been a hotly debated topic among politicians and educators in the United States, a nation in which the hegemony of English seemed self-evident through much of history (Crawford, 2000). Despite such an argument, the enrollment of Chinese language students in both the heritage sector and the formal education sector has been steadily rising. According to Scott McGinnis (2005) at the Defense Language Institute, the enrollment of Chinese language students reached 140,000 in heritage language schools and 59,000 in K-12 and higher education in 2002. The seemingly controversial nature of bilingual education and the increasing popularity of Chinese language education presents a growing need for a model in the advising of bilingual parenting among Chinese immigrants. The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to shed light on Chinese immigrants’ perspectives on their children’s heritage language maintenance and development; second, to bridge the information gap between current research and immigrant parents by suggesting an exploratory model in disseminating crucial information on raising bilingual children. According to sociolinguists, language maintenance depends in large part on the communities where the languages are spoken (Fishman, 1991). What role can leaders of today’s diverse learning community play in assisting minority parents to raise bilingual children that can withstand the pull of English (Tse, 2001), and continue to maintain and develop their home language ability after enrolling in mainstream American public schools? A Case Study on Chinese Parental Attitudes A case study on Chinese parental attitudes toward their children’s heritage language maintenance and development was conducted at Ybarra Elementary School of Rowland Unifie