Vietnamese Culture Analysis

L1 maintenance and cross-generational shift from L1 to L2 among Vietnamese Americans
Social Issues
Over the past 3 decades, there have been different studies on Vietnamese socialization and adaptation to the United States, as well as their language maintenance and shift (Luong, 1990; Pham, 1990; Bankston & Zhou, 1995; Young & Tran, 1999; Zhou & Bankston, 1994, 1998, 2000; Chung, 2000; McDonald, 2000; Nguyen, Shin & Krashen, 2001).
In the field of sociology, researchers have used survey and ethnographic methods to underscore the importance of maintaining the home language as a means to remain connected to one’s family and community, to support a strong social identity, and to promote high academic success. Zhou and Bankston (1994, 1998) found
These families had lived in the United States an average of 13 years, although there was a wide range of variability in the length of stay (approximately 70% of the parents reported 6 to 20 years in the United States). Of parents surveyed, Vietnamese was reported to be the sole home language in 84.6% of homes, while both Vietnamese and English were spoken in 15.4% of homes. At that time, no families reported speaking only English at home. Based on parent report, 59.2% of the children spoke Vietnamese, while less than 8% spoke mostly English. Among children, Vietnamese was still the preferred language in 45.1% of families. Approximately 33% of children were reported to speak both languages, and 21.6% of children spoke only English among themselves. Given that the length of stay for the majority of families was relatively short (less than 20 years), the children in these families seemed to be learning English quickly, with a growing number of children choosing to speak English with their friends. Based on these results, Young and Tran (1999) reported a rapid rate of shift from Vietnamese to English in this population. Examined factors relating to language shift included family income, mother’s education, father’s education, and length of stay in the United States. Based on survey results, length of stay appeared to be the only factor that significantly affected language shift. The longer a family stayed in the United States, the greater the shift toward English use, whether in addition to Vietnamese or solely English. Although not statistically significant, there was an additional and rather unexpected trend related to length of stay: it seemed that the longer the stay in the United States, the more parents encouraged children to retain Vietnamese. These data suggested an increased awareness of the importance of maintaining one’s heritage language among