Strategies for Teaching and Maintaining Chinese as Heritage Language for Chinese Children in Sweden : An investigation for identifying strategies that Chinese parents use helping their children learn and maintain their heritage language

Chinese as a heritage language is one of the fastest lost languages in the world. In fact, in most Chinese families that have left China, the heritage language is lost by the second generation. When people move from their homeland to a place where the primary language is different from their home language, one issue becomes whether their heritage language can be retained. The situation in Sweden is quite different from that in English-speaking countries when it comes to maintaining Chinese as a heritage language. Most Chinese moving to Sweden have no prior exposure to the Swedish language. The purpose of this study is to find out which strategies Chinese parents use to help their children learn and maintain proficiency in the Chinese language. It also investigates the progress made using these strategies. A qualitative research approach was taken and semi-structured interviews of the children’s mothers were performed. Some of the children in the study were born in China and some were born in Sweden. During these interviews, a number of strategies were identified that parents use to help their children learn and maintain the heritage language. These included, for instance, mother tongue education, watching Chinese TV and films, parents giving their children encouraging comments, and associating with other Chinese families. Some families recommended strategies that they felt would be beneficial for others, like delaying the start of daycare. According to this study, the effects from, for example, mother tongue education and encouraging comments, should have implications on how educators shape their programs, and the way they engage the parents in their children’s language training. When analyzing the various strategies and their effects on the children in the study, it became apparent that the younger sibling always shows a lower level of Chinese proficiency compared to the older sibling. This phenomenon is herein called the younger sibling syndrome.汉语作为承袭语言是世界上消失速度最快的语言之一。事实上，在大多数离开中国的华人家庭中，承袭语言基本上到第二代就已被遗失。当人们从他们的祖国迁移到一个主要语言与他们的母语不同的地方时，就要面对如何保留自己母语的问题。在瑞典，汉语作为承袭语言在被传承方面的情况与英语国家截然不同。大多数移居瑞典的中国人早期很少接触过瑞典语。本论文的目的是找出生活在瑞典的中国父母使用哪些策略来帮助他们的孩子学习和维持他们的中文以及使用这些策略所取得的效果。本论文采取了质量研究方法，对孩子的母亲进行了半结构化访谈。研究中的一些孩子出生在中国，一些孩子出生在瑞典。在这些访谈中，笔者归纳出了一些父母用来帮助孩子学习和保持传统语言的策略。它们包括：母语教育、观看中文电视和电影、父母给孩子鼓励性的评价，以及与其他中国家庭的交往等等。一些家庭推荐了他们认为对其他人有益的策略，比如推迟开始幼儿园的时间。根据这项研究，例如母语教育和鼓励性评价的影响，会对教育者如何制定他们的教育计划，以及他们让父母参与孩子的语言培训的方式产生影响。在分析各种策略及其对研究中儿童的影响时，很明显，与哥哥姐姐相比，弟弟妹妹的中文水平总是较低。这种现象在本文中被称为幼弟妹综合症