〈論文〉
Motivating Heritage Language Learning Through Bilingual
Video Letters:
Seeking Changes in Heritage Language Learning
Environments for Vietnamese Children
落合知子

OCHIAI Tomoko
Summary
1

2

How can we motivate CLD children to learn their heritage language? In the current paper, the author
clarifies the difficulties and possibilities of learning the heritage language in the Japanese school environment
through the practice of the "bilingual video letter" teaching method, which was conducted in search of a way toachieve this goal.

Key Words
Heritage Language, CLD Children, Identity Texts, Learning Environments

I. Introduction
In Japan today, there are many difficulties with learning the heritage languages spoken in the homesof culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) children. One of the reasons for this is that educational andsocietal spaces in Japan treat the experience of growing up in a plurilingual environment negatively rather
than positively. In order to turn multilingual and multicultural environments into a positive factor in children’sdevelopment, rather than a negative one, changes are needed in the current classroom culture at schools withsuch children and in the educational environments that surround them.
This paper introduces a case study of using bilingual video letters to motivate CLD children to learn their
1

In this paper, children with connections to other countries and brought up in multilingual cultural environments are referred

to as CLD children or students. Specifically, these children are first-, second-, third-, or even fourth-generation immigrants, raisedby parents who both relocated to Japan from another country.
2

The home language of CLD children is called their first language (L1) or heritage language. The L1 is defined as “thelanguage that is learned first and can be used even now” (Nakajima 1998: 20). When children reach school age and the second
language (L2) used in their studies becomes dominant, the native language is relativized and shifts status into being the their“parents’ language”—that is, the heritage language. This paper develops its argument while using “heritage language” as a
general term to mean the L1 and the home language of CLD children/students.
83heritage (or first) languages. Though these video letters were originally introduced as a means of supporting
heritage language learning (also known as heritage language acquisition) among CLD children (here, first- or
second-generation Vietnamese children in Japan), the paper describes and considers the impact on the ethnicallyVietnamese children observed during the implementation of the teaching method, as well as on their guardians,
educators, and others in the local community.
1-1. Background to the Study: The Importance and Difficulties of Heritage Language Learning
The importance of heritage language education for young learners who are CLD children brought up inenvironments with more than one language, and where the language spoken in the home of the CLD children(hereafter, “the heritage language”) differs from the second language (that is, the dominant language; in Japan,
Japanese) used in schools, nurseries, and other places of education, has received much discussion by Cummins(1981) and others.
Regarding the importance of heritage language learning, Notsu (2010) cites the following three arguments.
(1) For learning curricula and improving Japanese language proficiency
As represented by the linguistic interdependence hypothesis (Cummins and Swain, 1986), which assertsthat L1 (heritage/first language) and L2 (the learning/second language) form interdependently, heritage language
education is important for acquiring L2 and, accordingly, for general learning of curricula.
(2) For shaping identity
Heritage language learning increases self-esteem and helps establish emotional stability and identity. As
such, heritage language learning is considered important. Studies by the likes of Ishii (1999), Sekiguchi (2003),
and Takahashi (2009) have argued from this position.
(3) As a means of communicating with family
The issues of psychological instability and communication breakdowns between parents who speak only theheritage language and the second or third generations, among whom the L2 is dominant, are frequently described.
The importance of heritage language learning has been noted for resolving these parent-child communication
problems (Kitayama 2012; Takahashi 2009).
In addition, Notsu (2010) presents the following three arguments for the importance of heritage language
learning that should be discussed further.
(4) Heritage language as a human right
A heritage language has been asserted as a human right since the 1970s in Europe. It is claimed that
language should be regarded as a human right and that heritage language learning should be maintained anddeveloped from the perspective of safeguarding human rights (Kymlicka 1998).
(5) Heritage language as a socioeconomic resource
Heritage languages are cited as a resource with economic value, linking the necessity of heritage language
learning with more realistic socioeconomic lifestyles. This argument asserts that learning and using a heritage
language is a resource for an individual and social economic activities (Cummins & Danesi 2005, Matsuda 2009).
(6) Heritage language as a means of traveling to and from home country
It has been claimed (Kuwahara 2001) that learning the heritage language in Japan in order to facilitate
finding employment after returning to their country of origin is highly important to offset future risks.
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The importance and necessity of heritage-language education has been argued in these ways. However, inJapan today, there is a tendency to prioritize education in Japanese over the heritage language, with preschools
and elementary school teachers telling CLD households not to use the heritage language at home and rather touse only Japanese in their lives. As Matsuda (2017) has indicated, CLD children may lose the opportunity tolearn the heritage language and which may result in a negative impact on their Japanese-language development.
Language is also a factor in children and young learners becoming aware of and establishing their identity.
Children who perceive that their heritage language is not recognized by society feel that their heritage language
is not something useful and, as Matsuda (2017) says, often have negative feelings about their own roots andidentity, and which can negatively impact their learning.
Many difficulties exist for CLD children’s heritage language learning, which is undertaken amid theaforementioned social and educational environment. One difficulty lies in maintaining the motivation to learn(Nakajima 2003). In classes for learning heritage languages, researchers (Kitayama 2012, Ochiai 2012) haveregularly observed and reported that children who had enjoyed their time at elementary school through the lower
grades will, once they enter the higher grades, begin to question why they must learn the heritage language.
Entering junior high school, they attend heritage language classes less frequently for various reasons, including
the increasing level of the curriculum, club activities, and growing pressure to assimilate with their peers. But
there are also examples of children reappraising heritage language learning when later considering the path fromthe second half of junior high to high school, whereby certain children reassess that they are fortunate to havepeers to learn with (Nakajima 2003) and others that the heritage language is something positive that broadens
their chances in life (Matsuda & Nakayama 2010).
In order to maintain motivation in heritage language learning for children from the upper grades of
elementary school through junior high school, various factors and approaches are required, including learning
environments where children can learn with their friends and teaching methods that stimulate children’s interest.
This paper describes and demonstrates the significance of classes that used exchanging bilingual video
letters as a teaching method aiming to maintain motivation for heritage language learning, mainly targetingchildren in the upper grades of elementary school and above.
1-2. Overview of the Field
This paper is based on observations and surveys conducted at classes for Vietnamese heritage language
learning in School A, a public elementary school in Hyogo Prefecture. School A has approximately two hundred
students in total and with mostly one class per grade, a comparatively small school. In this school, around3

twenty Vietnamese children participate in Vietnamese heritage language studies. There are also several students
with roots in the Korean Peninsula.
The Vietnamese children at School A are first-generation immigrants or second-generation immigrants
whose parents migrated to Japan. They are raised in multilingual environments whereby their homes are
Vietnamese-speaking and they use Japanese at school. The children’s Vietnamese-language ability varies greatly.
There are children who have recently migrated from Vietnam and are receiving support to help them with their
3

In fiscal 2023, seventeen Vietnamese children participated in Vietnamese language studies, while twenty-one children

participated in fiscal 2014, when the initiative outlined in this paper was implemented.
85

Japanese, and there are some who are receiving Vietnamese-language education at home from their guardiansand so possess both the ability to speak as well as to read and write in Vietnamese, but many of the children havelistening comprehension in Vietnamese but poor speaking ability, and some encounter reading and writing for the
first time in the school’s Vietnamese language classes.
These classes started at School A in 2006 as a Hyogo Prefecture initiative, comprising one class (fortyminutes of teaching and a fifteen-minute break) each for the lower-grade students and upper-grade students,
held once a week after regular classes. After this prefectural program ended in 2010, it continued as a Kobe City
initiative repositioning the classes as heritage language learning for building Japanese-language ability. Over the
fourteen years of the program, the Vietnamese language instructors have been Japanese teachers with experienceof studying in Vietnam, and who hold positions teaching Vietnamese at classes organized by local Vietnamese
community groups or at elementary and junior high schools in other prefectures. In the Vietnamese classes, theVietnamese language instructor is supported by School A’s teacher in charge of CLD education as well as several
homeroom teachers.
Since 2006, this author has observed activities at these classes during special events and, for five years
between 2011 and 2015, while working as a teaching assistant at School A and, from 2016, while working
in a support capacity for students as a coordinator at a local university, attended and observed classes in the
Vietnamese language program, documented these observations, and conducted regular interviews with children in
the upper grades.
The children became familiar with the songs and stories in Vietnamese that appeared in the curriculum over
the year, learned the Vietnamese alphabet and pronunciation, retained vocabulary through flashcards, enjoyedvarious seasonal events like the mid-autumn festival and Tết (New Year), learned the Vietnamese lion dance (múalân ), and presented the Vietnamese language and culture they had learned to all students at the school.
1-3. Previous Research on Motivating Heritage Language Learning
At the Vietnamese language studies program at School A, through the teaching methods and classroom
4“tips” of the Vietnamese language instructor and CLD education teacher, the children have generally enjoyedtheir time attending these after-school Vietnamese classes, but from around the fourth grade of elementary school,some children begin to question the meaning of coming to the Vietnamese classes, or refuse to come. Why does
this demotivation for learning Vietnamese occur as the children grow older? The following sets out the previous
research on this subject.
Regarding the difficulty in maintaining motivation in heritage language learning, several factors havebeen identified. Nakajima (2003) notes that, firstly, when there is large social disparity between the dominantlanguage and heritage language, the heritage language learner internalizes the negative valorization of theheritage language by society, and, secondly, that heritage language learning is regarded as “the parents’ choice,”and becomes a passive form of learning for the children. As Nakajima explains, children’s motivation to learn theheritage language lowers during the transition from the lower to upper grades, the enthusiasm of the parents thatworked positively on the students in the lower grades being felt, in the upper grades, as pressure that negatively
4

For more on these “tips” in relation to everyday teaching methods in the Vietnamese language studies program at School A, see

Ochiai (2012).
86impacts the students.
Based on her account of the positive attitude toward heritage language learning among elementary school
lower-grade participants at heritage language classes where she worked as a heritage language instructor, andwhich then, by contrast, this attitude became negative among the upper-grade students, Kitayama (2012) also
explains the shift as rooted in how elementary school children begin developing their own personalities at thispoint, the fourth grade that is a stage in their development when they change greatly, and they start to criticize
adults harshly.
Why is the enthusiasm of the parents for heritage language learning felt as pressure by the children when
they enter the upper grades of elementary school? Why does developing a personality and criticism of adults leadto a negative attitude toward the heritage language? To consider these questions, we should examine the previous
research on language learning motivation.
According to Gardner and Lambert (1972), motivation in learning a language is deeply related to having
a favorable attitude toward speakers of the language and a feeling of wanting to become one of them. Thatfavorable attitude toward speakers of the language and wanting to become one of them is tied to a motivation tolearn. Gardner and Lambert identify what they call integrative orientation, which improves language ability, andwhich is contrasted with instrumental orientation, such as for the purposes of gaining employment or proceeding
to a higher level of education (Yashima 2004).
Giles, Bourhis, and Taylor (1977) propose the concept of ethnolinguistic vitality, defined by the social statusof the language, the social distribution of the speakers, and the systematic support received. Yashima writes that“languages with strong ethnolinguistic vitality have a high practical value and make motivation to learn themmore likely to occur” (2004: 64).
Young heritage language learners in Japan, in particular when that language is a minority language insociety, want to feel part of their family. That is, the heritage language speakers whom the children first aspire
to integrate with are surely the members of their family. Until the lower grades of elementary school, the family
is an incredibly important social environment for children. Within the restricted social environment that is thefamily, the heritage language has a strong sense of ethnolinguistic vitality, and children look to heritage language
learning out of a high motivation to learn so that they can feel part of the family. But when children transition
from the lower to upper grades of elementary school, the most important social environment for children expands
out from their family to include their friends and school class. With this expansion of their social environment,
the goal of integration ceases to be only the family that speaks the heritage language, and shifts to friends in thesame class or the school society that uses Japanese. The ethnolinguistic vitality of the heritage language becomes
relatively weaker, replaced by the ethnolinguistic vitality of Japanese, which grows stronger with the expansionof children’s social environments.
At this point, if good relationships can be built with the heritage language instructor and the friends learning
the same language in the heritage language classes, then children would, albeit haltingly, be able to overcome thisperiod by valuing the interpersonal relationships within that classroom. But, as was observed, when the desire
to identify and belong with the friends from regular classes wins out over the heritage language classes, whichtake place after school and with comparatively few people, then enthusiasm for learning the heritage language
diminishes.
87What can be done to make these children better aware of the heritage language-speaking community?
The following section examines the attempt to build a community of Vietnamese speakers through the program
undertaken at School A to create, screen, and exchange Japanese-Vietnamese bilingual video letters.

II. Bilingual Video Letter Exchange Program
The Japanese-Vietnamese bilingual video letters initiative aimed to make and exchange video letters
produced bilingually in Vietnamese and Japanese for Vietnamese-speaking friends. The bilingual video letterswere made over a four-year period from the 2014 to 2018 academic years. The exchange partners were, atdifferent times in the program, students at a public elementary school in Vietnam, students at a Japanese language
school for Vietnamese returnees with experience of living in Japan, and Japanese students at a vocational school
learning Vietnamese. This paper focuses on the exchange with the students at a public elementary school in
Vietnam in 2014, and describes those activities and the insights obtained from it.
2-1. Preparing by Making Identity Texts
The conceptual basis for the bilingual video letter initiative was the “identity text” teaching method(Cummins & Early 2011). This is a bilingual learning practice employed in Canada, where several languages
coexist societally, as a means for children in multilingual environments to express themselves in two languages(the L1 and L2). Friends, including those whose proficiency in the heritage language is high and those with a highproficiency in the L2, work together to make texts, which are then shown to their teachers and classmates, andeven sometimes to relatives in their native countries through the internet. This activity improves their proficiency
in the two languages and also helps them obtain the ability to express themselves through working with others.
By also receiving help during the learning process from their families or members of the community—people
with high proficiencies in the heritage language—they also strengthen their bonds with those people. Presenting
their finished work makes their bilingualism visible to those around them and gives the child confidence, andalso provides the opportunity to learn about the children’s thoughts on their heritage culture and their heritagelanguage abilities, which are not usually visible to the adults and children around them. As a result, the people
around them are given the chance to acquire an awareness of other cultures and international understanding aswell as relativize their own culture (Ochiai & Matsuda 2014).
In the Vietnamese classes at School A, an identity text project was started in the third semester of 2013 with
the name of “My Pride—What Makes Me Proud About Vietnam?” The children began by making pictures basedon the experiences related to Vietnam of which they are proud (for example, the food they ate with their family,
memories of going to the sea, or a swimming pool in Vietnam) and they then wrote a text in Japanese explaining
the pictures. With the help of the Vietnamese language teacher, they subsequently rewrote the Japanese text
into Vietnamese, and put everything into a PowerPoint presentation. The completed pieces were shown at theMulticultural Children’s Festival, which was held locally by a nonprofit organization in March that year as an
event for children with Korean and Vietnamese roots to present their cultures. All of the pieces were shown and,
under the supervision of their parents, teachers from School A, and people from the community, three children
agreed to read out their Vietnamese and Japanese texts from the PowerPoint presentations.
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Figure 1 An example of an identity text made in 2013.

In these activities, children could express themselves through art and in Japanese and Vietnamese, all while
watched over by the relevant people, and, in particular, their usually hidden Vietnamese-language abilities weremade visible. It was observed that the children gained confidence when they were praised and this improved
understanding among the people around them.
And it also led to the project in the following academic year that took things one step further by having
students make and present bilingual video letters.
2-2. Making the Bilingual Video Letters
The bilingual video letters in the 2014 academic year were made in the first half of the second semester andin the third semester. The participants in the project were eighteen students from the third to the six grades.
The video letters were made according to the following process.
(1) Clarifying the partners for the video letter exchange(2) Writing letters in Japanese(3) Translating the letters into Vietnamese(4) Taking photographs appropriate to the letter content(5) Practice reading out the Japanese-Vietnamese bilingual letters(6) Filming and editing the video letters(7) Exchanging the video letters(8) Screening the video letters
Each stage of the process is described below.
(1) Clarifying the partners for the video letter exchange
In 2014, students at School F, which is located in the UNESCO World Heritage Site Hạ Long Bay , were89

asked to be partners in the exchange program. The Vietnamese language teacher at School A, Instructor K, hadpreviously made frequent visits to this elementary school. During these trips, Instructor K had filmed videosof Hạ Long Bay , School F, and the lives of the students. The process of making the video letters began by firstshowing these videos to the students attending the Vietnamese classes at School A, and clarifying to the students
who would be receiving their video letters.
The children were then encouraged to think about the content of their video letter: “We will make a video
letter in Japanese and Vietnamese for the children at School F, telling them the things about your home that you
are proud of. The children at School F are probably proud of Hạ Long Bay . What are we proud of? Let’s think ofsome ideas.”(2) Writing letters in JapaneseWith the main theme of the letter set as aspects about the children’s town and lives that they are proud of,the students were divided into three groups of between five and seven each.
The children discussed the things about their town and their lives that they like and came up with various
ideas in their respective groups: Japan’s four seasons, especially the cold winter; the Japanese pancake dishokonomiyaki , which is similar to the Vietnamese food bánh xèo ; the expressways that were destroyed in
the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995 but then rebuilt; and their schoolyard, which has lots of playgroundequipment. Three more themes were decided for the content: my town, my school, and my culture.

Figure 2 Grouping the ideas of the students using affinity diagrams (the KJ Method).

After this, each student chose the key aspect from the three themes that they most wanted to convey to thechildren at School F, and then wrote his or her own Japanese text based on that.
(3) Translating the letters into Vietnamese
These Japanese texts written by the students were translated into Vietnamese under the main guidance of
the Vietnamese language instructor. Though it was initially anticipated that the students could receive support indoing their translations from their guardians at home, the nature of the task required the person helping to havefluency in both languages, and so ultimately proved difficult. By coincidence, four researchers in Vietnamese
language from another university were then visiting to observe the Vietnamese classes at School A, and they90

were asked to help. They worked one-on-one with the students to translate the letters.
(4) Taking photographs appropriate to the letter content
In the video letters, it was decided to introduce the local area and school with photographs. After the texts
in the two languages were almost complete, the students used their time during the Vietnamese classes to takethe photographs. These were taken at a wide range of locations, from a convenience store to a Vietnamese foodshop, an expressway destroyed in the Great Hanshin Earthquake and then later rebuilt, the school playground andlibrary, and a temple for Vietnamese residents. The homeroom teachers who helped in the classes remarked that
it was their first time to visit a Vietnamese temple and that taking the photographs was also good fieldwork forthem.
(5) Practice reading out the Japanese-Vietnamese bilingual letters
The bilingual video letters feature footage of the children reading out the texts they wrote in both languages.
The children worked hard practicing to read out the Vietnamese text. Several guardians fluent in Vietnamese gave
pointers to the children about their pronunciation. Fifth Grader E, who until then had not been very enthusiastic
about learning Vietnamese, received help from their mother and eagerly practiced reading out their Vietnamese
letter. Student N, whose Vietnamese was the strongest among the sixth graders and who was also literate, notonly worked on their own text but also gave help to the other sixth graders with their pronunciation, and during
the lunchbreak Student N and the Instructor K coached the six sixth graders.
(6) Filming and editing the video letters
The filming was done over two weeks. For the filming and editing, iPad devices was used with thecooperation of the Graduate School of Informatics at Kansai University. Using iPads meant that anyone could
operate the equipment, and the videos could be reshot as many times as necessary. Five iPad devices in total
were given to the students to record their letters, and the children were free to use them while practicing, andtook turns to film each other during the recordings.

Figure 3 The children filmed the video letters while offering each other encouragement.

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(7) Exchanging the video letters
The filmed letters were edited into three polished videos—“My Town,” “My School,” and “My Culture”—
by Student T at the Graduate School of Informatics at Kansai University. Each video was between five and ten
minutes long with music, and featured the children reading out their texts, accompanied by relevant photographs.
They were uploaded to a video streaming website as private videos and links for viewing the videos weresent to the exchange partners at School F. At roughly the same time, School F emailed its video letter comprisinga slideshow of images from a day during the Tết holiday.
(8) Screening the video letters
In the second half of March, the video exchange with School F was shown at three screening events—
one for the guardians of Vietnamese children at School A, one for students in the Vietnamese language programat School A, and another for the local nonprofit organization—and in this way the results were shared with
Vietnamese guardians, homeroom teachers, and peers from the Vietnamese classes, and people in the local
community.

Figure 4 Homeroom teachers watching the bilingual video letters shown at the screening for the guardians of Vietnamese children

III. Analysis
In the students’ studies from making to screening the video letters, the changes were observed in thefollowing aspects: the effectiveness of using iPads, inter-student collaboration, student-guardian collaboration,and deepened understanding of other teachers at School A. These are discussed below.
3-1. Effectiveness of Using iPads
During the recording of the video letters, five iPad devices were given to the students for filming eachother’s final readings and the run-throughs they did while waiting. Analyzing the video footage that was left, it isclear that the students practiced in front of the camera over and over again, at times laughing and embarrassed,
or even tearful because they could not get the results they wanted in the final recording, and that they maintained
concentration in their Vietnamese studies.
92

The videos capture moments when the students directly speak in Vietnamese. For the students, they could
experience looking objectively at the opportunity to use Vietnamese, which is something that does not usually
happen in their everyday lives. Filming a video letter that makes their Vietnamese abilities visible, many of thechildren were somewhat nervous and worked hard to practice ahead of the final recordings. Using iPad devices
seemed to lead to a Vietnamese-learning environment that encouraged students to concentrate and be nervous
about doing well.
3-2. Inter-Student Collaboration
The children looked out for their friends, who were nervous about speaking Vietnamese and frustrated, oreven tearful, when they could not do it like they had practiced, and they offered each other encouragement during
the filming. In an interview with the sixth grader Student N, it was evident that the student coached the other six
graders when practicing to read out their letters, here experiencing what it is like to help others and improving
their own self-efficacy
The process of making the video letters fostered collaborative relationships among the children forimproving their Vietnamese-language abilities during the classes.
3-3. Student-Guardian Collaboration
While it was difficult to involve the guardians of the Vietnamese children in the translation of the Japanese
texts into Vietnamese, they played a major role when the students were practicing to read out their Vietnamese
texts before the recording. Several of the students were coached at home by their guardians for this. In
particular, the fifth-grader Student E explained in a later interview that practicing Vietnamese with their motherwhen rehearsing before the filming made them feel glad that they were Vietnamese and that they had studied
Vietnamese.
Subsequently moving into the sixth grade, Student E was given the joint responsibility with their twin sister
M of making announcements in Vietnamese to guardians at a music concert, graduation ceremony, and otheroccasions. For this, they received coaching from their mother and, under the supervision of their classmates,
teachers, and people in the community, worked to improve their Vietnamese and had these opportunities topresent their achievements.
In addition to the screening for the guardians of the Vietnamese students, the screening for the local
nonprofit was also attended by two sets of children and parents, including E, M, and their mother, who watchedover the children talking in Vietnamese.
According to the results of a questionnaire conducted with the children after they had filmed the video
letters, 55 percent (ten children) said that they wanted to show the video letters to the children at School F, while
27 percent (five children) said that they wanted to show it to their parents and relatives (grandparents, cousins)
living in Vietnam. For the children, speaking Vietnamese was both a way to build a new Vietnamese-speaking
community with the video letter exchange partners (the children at School F), and also an opportunity torecognize again the Vietnamese-speaking community they already have in the form of their parents in Japan andtheir families living in Vietnam.

93

3-4. Deepened Understanding of Teachers at School A
When the students went off-campus to take photographs for the video letters, homeroom teachers at
the school not usually involved in the program were asked to help, and they accompanied the children to theVietnamese temple and food shop. For most of the homeroom teachers, the occasion became fieldwork about the
local Vietnamese community.
The event with the guardians of Vietnamese children was also attended by homeroom teachers for theparticipating children as well as the school principal and vice-principal. They watched the video letters together
with the guardians, making it an opportunity for them to learn concretely about the children’s Vietnameseabilities. For the teachers who had only until then had the chance to see the children express themselves inJapanese, the video letters initiative put the dual linguistic of the children on display and allowed them to develop
a deeper understanding of their students.

IV. Conclusion
The four changes in the learning environments observed during the process of making and showing thebilingual video letters led to higher motivation among students to learn the heritage language. This took placein the following two ways: increased awareness of the Vietnamese-speaking community, and making theVietnamese-language abilities of the children visible.
4-1. Increased Awareness of the Vietnamese-Speaking Community
Work on making bilingual videos initially proceeded with the similarly aged children at School F in
Vietnam in mind. Though the children did become aware of the community they shared with the students at
School F as the exchange project developed, this consciousness is not particularly strong at present. Instead,the children in the Vietnamese classes were helped and encouraged in their Vietnamese studies by their peers,
and they also received support in their studies from their guardians, and the Vietnamese-speaking communitythat had already existed around them was activated. In this regard, the children were motivated to learn theheritage language with an integrative orientation (Gardner & Lambert 1972) toward that Vietnamese-language
community.
4-2. Making the Vietnamese-Language Abilities of the Children Visible
By filming the video letters with iPad devices and then showing them at the events, the children’s
Vietnamese-language abilities were made visible both within the Vietnamese classroom and to their guardians
and teachers. Having experienced what it is like to receive praise from those around them for their improved
Vietnamese abilities, the children were motivated to learn the heritage language with an instrumental orientation(Gardner & Lambert 1972), in that they wanted to become able to speak Vietnamese well.
4-3. Future Challenges
As described above, this initiative to make and screen bilingual video letters was an effective teaching
method that made the Vietnamese-language abilities of the participating children visible, activated the94Vietnamese-speaking community around them, and motivated children to learn the heritage language.
The program did not achieve the expected results in terms of the exchange with the initial project partner,
School F. One major reason for this was that the latter was a public school, which meant that proceeding further
with the exchange project required approval from the school’s regional education authority. In the 2015 academic
year, the exchange partner was a privately run cram school in Hanoi for returnee Vietnamese students who,
having come back to Vietnam, wish to maintain their Japanese abilities. From the 2016 academic year, bilingual
video letters were exchanged with students learning Vietnamese at a vocational school in Osaka.
In the future, this researcher would like to continue investigating the potential for bilingual video letters asa teaching method that can motivate heritage language learning with an integrative orientation newly acquired
from the ongoing exchange program.
Acknowledgments: This research was supported by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research(C)(19K00738).
Note: An earlier version of this article entitled, “Dai yon syou: Bilingual video letter ni yoru” kyoujyuhou tobogogakusyu nodoukiduke” Chapter four: Bilingual Video Letter Teaching Methods and Motivating MotherTongue Learning In Tabunka jidō no mirai o hiraku—Kokunaigai no bogo kyōiku shien no genba kara [Opening
the Future of Multicultural Children: From the Frontline of Native Language Education in and out of Japan],Matsuda Yōko, Notsu Takashi, and Ochiai Tomoko (eds.). Tokyo: Kyōiku Kenkyū Shuppan [in Japanese]. Thisversion has been substantially revised.

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