Learning to speak a minority language at school: Mandarin speech development of children in a Chinese-English bilingual program in Canada
Creators: Lin, Youran
Publisher: name: University of Alberta Library
Year: 2023

<p>A key factor of bilingual speech development is speech input. Different from an immigrant setting where children who are learning the majority language as a second language (L2) can receive rich and authentic input, the speech input is usually limited when learning a minority language. For L2 learners of a minority language, the input is limited to the school settings and lacks a range of native-like models. For heritage speakers of a minority language, the input is often limited to their households and immediate communities. Two-way bilingual education programs provide a unique context where native speakers of a majority language and native speakers of a minority language are in class together and are expected to provide authentic peer input for each other in both languages. Investigating the speech development in a minority language of children who are enrolled in such bilingual programs can help understand the roles of home input, school input, and limited community input.<br>
This dissertation examines the case of a Chinese-English bilingual education program in Western Canada and investigates bilingual students’ speech development in Mandarin, a societal minority language whose phonological system is uniquely distinctive from English. This paper-based thesis consists of three journal manuscripts and chapters of introduction, educational context, methodology, and conclusion. The first manuscript proposes a conceptual model to understand L2 speech learning, focusing on the interactions between L2 learners and L1 listeners. It indicates that more research in non-English L2s is warranted, especially with child learners. The second manuscript qualitatively explores teachers’ perspectives on teaching Mandarin pronunciation. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twelve Chinese teachers, suggesting that Mandarin pronunciation, especially lexical tones which do not exist in English, is challenging to learn. The third manuscript analyzed bilingual students’ tone productions using transcription and acoustic measurements. Factors influencing bilingual students’ speech learning were investigated, including their home input and school input, cross-linguistic influences from English, and the universal difficulties of tone targets. <br>
This work provides qualitative and quantitative evidence on bilingual students’ speech development in Mandarin as a minority language in Canada. It emphasizes that students’ speech learning in a minority language is impacted by not only the limited input but also the language’s phonology, and therefore, students need support at multiple levels to continually improve their Mandarin pronunciation. This work adds to the literature on bilingual education, bilingual speech development, and Mandarin speech acquisition. It also raises awareness of and encourages more evidence on (1) pronunciation teaching and learning in bilingual contexts, (2) the ongoing L2 speech development in child learners, (3) bilingual speech theories in the suprasegmental domain (e.g., tones), and (4) the learning of Mandarin and other world languages as a heritage language or L2 in this globalized world.</p>