Awareness of Language and Learning: Vietnamese Immigrants Navigate Bilingualism in the New Culture

Abstract The present report of research on language learning compares two groups of immigrants from Vietnam who settled in Taiwan in some ways under similar circumstances, and in other ways very different. While both groups faced the task of learning or improving their proficiency in Mandarin Chinese, the second group, of the present study, were all speakers of another language of the Chinese family of languages. In this report, we mainly consider the task of second language learning of Mandarin and literacy learning as part of the process of transition toward new citizenship. The participants in the project are representative of populations that were part of multi-cultural societies in their home country. In particular, the experience of the bilingual immigrants in the present study includes already having attained literacy in Chinese. Their experience of integration is qualitatively different from that of all non-Chinese-speaking immigrant populations, and is important to study as it presents itself as an important contrast, in particular in regard to the factor of language awareness. The comparisons and contrasts between these two immigrant populations from Vietnam we hope will serve in part as a template for better understanding the experience of other immigrant groups.