Heritage language acquisition and community language schools: Mandarin Chinese in Saskatchewan, Canada

This paper examines the role of Mandarin community heritage language schools (MCHLS) in the acquisition of Mandarin Chinese as a heritage language in Saskatchewan, Canada. As compared to earlier research of schools with more intensive bilingual programming in major urban locations, this study explores a smaller community context. The study involved 70 bi-/multilingual children who spoke Mandarin and English (with a few speaking additional languages) and 70 of their parents. Most children ( n = 53) attended MCHLS, while 17 did not. The study adopts a mixed-methods approach combining quantitative and qualitative analyses. The quantitative component examines the relationships between children's attendance at community schools, language use at school, and attitudes toward school, on the one hand, and their oral language proficiency, literacy, language attitudes, and communication strategies, on the other. Measures of oral proficiency were derived from image-elicited narrative tasks and complemented by literacy measures obtained through writing and reading tasks. Social background and school attendance variables were collected through interviews with children and parental surveys. The qualitative component analyzes children's accounts of their experiences with and attitudes toward MCHLS and their home assignments, obtained through interviews, as well as parents’ evaluations of the benefits of heritage language schooling reported in surveys. The results show that most children attend MCHLS for only one or two years. School attendance is primarily associated with literacy outcomes rather than with oral proficiency. Children who attend MCHLS demonstrate higher levels of Mandarin literacy than non-attendees. At the same time, non-attendees produce more sentences in narrative tasks, although a larger proportion of their sentences are incomplete. Advancing to higher grades in MCHLS is associated with producing a greater number of Chinese words in narrative tasks. Children attending MCHLS report using Mandarin alone or Mandarin and English equally during class, while both languages are commonly used during breaks. Exclusive use of Mandarin in class is associated with fewer phonological and tonal errors in speech. The use of Mandarin during breaks is associated with fewer lexical errors and with higher rates of correctly identified Chinese characters. Completion of home assignments is also associated with improved literacy outcomes. Both parents and children evaluate heritage language schooling positively. Most children report enjoying attendance at MCHLS, although they express dislike for homework assignments. Parents, in turn, emphasize the value of heritage language education and advocate for increased resources to support it.