1. Introduction
Language shift and maintenance are often the outcome of interplay of a variety of factors. “These factors can be grouped as follows: economic changes, status, demography, and institutional support (Mesthrie et al, 2006, p. 255).” This study aims to analyse the reasons of linguistic changes of Chinese-speaking students and professionals in Sydney with a focus on spoken language. The study identifies economic factors and demography as the two most salient factors in influencing Chinese speakers in terms of language behaviours.
2. Hypotheses
Because of the sheer amount of Chinese speakers in Australia, many Chinese speakers rarely speak English outside school/professional settings; some are not confident enough to speak English, and some simply do not need to. Taking the University of Sydney for example, in the year 2007, Chinese-speaking students (including students from Taiwan, China, Singapore, Macau, and Hong Kong) make up 54.61% of total international students, or 10.89% of all students (The University of Sydney, 2007); many Chinese-speaking students find it sometimes unnecessary to speak English when participating in group projects or class activities, especially in business school, where most students are from China. I therefore assume that Chinese-speaking students who have low English proficiency or low motivation of learning English are likely to avoid English speakers because they can live by Chinese most of the time. Students who plan to find employment in Australia after graduation or have just found jobs in Australia tend to speak more English outside school/professional settings, because they are eager to improve their communication skills in order to succeed in an English-speaking environment. Students who have immigrated to Australia or have been working in Australia for a long time are more comfortable switching between Chinese and English due to higher language proficiency in both languages.
3. Methodology
I conducted interviews with people of the following groups:
1) Chinese-speaking students who are currently studying in Australia and will return to their home countries when their study is finished.
2) Chinese-speaking students who plan to apply for PR (permanent resident) or have graduated and found employment in Australia for less than one year.
3) Chinese-speaking students who have immigrated to Australia or have been working in Australia for more than one year.
I interviewed nine Chinese speakers in Sydney: Sophie and Benji have graduated from the University of Sydney (USYD) and are currently working full time; George is studying in high school; Lin and Newton are currently studying full time in USYD and plan to immigrate to Australia upon completion of their studies; Woody and Jesse are currently studying full time in USYD and will return to home country upon completion of their studies; Sarah is currently studying full time in USYD and has no clear future plan; Gary has immigrated to Australia for years and is currently studying in TAFE full time. The information collected from the interviews are analysed against the interviewees’ background and language use. The interviewees’ detailed background information is summarised in Chart 1 in the appendix.
4. Results
The results of the interviews confirm my hypotheses: students who plan to immigrate to Australia or have been working in Australia for less than one year are more motivated to improve their English than those who will return to home countries (see Chart 2 in the appendix). Students with PR or citizenship are less concerned about language learning.
Sarah is now a near-native English speaker. She can comfortably switch between Chinese and English but speak more Chinese because most people she meets in Sydney are Chinese speakers. She reports speaking more English when in Melbourne because there were less Chinese speakers. Sarah’s motivation of leaning English was much higher when she first arrived in Australia because she had to attend the foundation school and pass the IELTS. She is no longer eager to improve her English for now her high English proficiency suffices for her postgraduate study and professional work.
Lin and Newton are both average English speakers. They both plan to immigrate to Australia and are keen to hone their English skills in order to assimilate to the Australian society. However, they speak more Chinese than English because most people they know in Sydney are Chinese speakers.
Benji graduated from the University of Sydney in 2006 and has been working in Sydney for five months at the time of interview. He speaks English to both English and Chinese speakers and only uses Chinese from time to time at home domain or when his interlocutors initiate a conversation in Chinese because he wants more chances to practice his English.
Gary is a fluent English speaker and does not make much effort in learning English. He speaks English in work place; Taiwanese or Mandarin with friends and family. His brother, George, is a very competent English speaker. Among the nine interviewees, George is the only person to reply only in English during the interview, which was conducted bilingually in Chinese and English. George reports that he uses English in both home and school domains and concedes not being able to speak Chinese well.
Sophie is a competent English speaker. She uses English half of the time and use Chinese mostly in home domain where half of her housemates are Chinese-speakers. Sophie learns English only casually now.
Jesse is a competent English speaker. He speaks English to Chinese speakers unless addressed in Chinese first. Jesse has been enthusiastic about learning English. Although he plans to return to home country, he practices English all the time because he plans to work in international trading, which requires frequent use of English. Woody, on the other hand, avoids English and is not particularly interested in leaning English, because he will return to home country and will work in an industry that does not require much English.
5. Analyses
Ordinarily, we assume children who learn a second language (L2) become bilingual. But recent studies show that the L2 learning of immigrant children is often a subtractive rather than additive process (Fillmore, 2000). They lose their ethnic language while learning the dominant language in the immigration country. The interview reveals George’s major shift from Chinese to English. The reason is multifold: low concentration of ethnic language speakers, low institutional support (e.g. little mass media content in ethnic language), and low status (i.e. English is more prestigious than Chinese in Australia). While George has some classmates also from Chinese-speaking countries, he speaks English with them; George reports that ethnic languages are rarely used among his peers. As a result, George shows strong speech divergence (Sachdev & Giles, 2005) when addressed in Chinese, as is the case in the interview.
The demography in postgraduate classes is very different from that of primary and secondary schools. In contrast to George, Master students, Sarah, Lin, Newton, and Woody, report that there are so many Chinese-speaking students in their classes and they usually can not find native English speakers to join their group activities. Newton complains:
You know, I really want to practice my English. But most of my classmates are Chinese and they talk in Chinese. In some of my classes, I can’t even find local students. Where are the Australian students? Are they all enrolled in research programs?
The Chinese-speaking students in postgraduate classes are more likely to talk in Chinese than their primary and secondary school counterparts, because most postgraduate international students started learning English at secondary schools (see Chart 1), which is at the end of the critical period (Patkowski, 1990; Scovel, 1988) and therefore making their L2 production an arduous rather than a natural process. Students in Australian primary/secondary schools usually began English learning way before the critical period. Consequently, a group of postgraduate Chinese-speaking student tend to use Chinese for easier communication. Under such circumstance, even keen L2 learners like Lin and Newton would speak (or have to speak) Chinese in class. These keen L2 learners, however, constantly seek opportunities of speaking English.
Recent economic development in Asia has convinced most Chinese speakers that English is a steppingstone to higher socioeconomic status (Wei et al, 1997). For Benji, working in Australia means higher salary than if he works in his home country, but it also means he needs to invest much time in bettering his English. Both Jesse and Woody will return to their home countries, but Jesse’s motivation is apparently higher than Woody’s (see chart 2) and almost as high as that of Benji, because Jesse knows English is essential in his future career. Benji and Jesse speak English mostly, but they speak less English at home where most of their housemates are Chinese speakers. Woody says that English is only important in his study in Australia and he probably will not use it much when he returns to home country. Accordingly, Woody reports speaking English only occasionally in class discussion. The comparison above demonstrates that economic factors play an important role in language shift.
Sarah, Sophie, and Gary have been staying in Australia for five, three, and ten years respectively at the time of interview. Their relatively long immersion in the English environment has more or less transformed them from L2 learners into L2 users (Cook, 1999). All three feel comfortable switching between Chinese and English and do not favour a particular language in daily speech. Sarah reports that:
I know English is important, but I don’t need to practice it. I mean I’m focusing on my study at the moment. When I first came to Australia I studied English hard, but now I think my English is OK. I no longer feel the urge to improve my English.
Sophie says English is not a problem for her at all:
English is so simple. Chinese is much more complex. There are only twenty-six alphabets in English but there are hundreds of thousands of Chinese characters, not to mention the complex Chinese phonological system.
Piller (2002) suggests that highly motivated L2 learners can achieve near-native linguistic competence even if they begin the L2 learning after the critical period. Both Sophie and Sarah began learning English after the critical period. They initially arrived in Australia as international students with limited English ability and had to go through the foundation courses. Having reached their current English proficiency, their motivation of language learning drops considerably. Gary reports never being an enthusiastic English learner; his fluent English might be attributed to his rather extended stay in Australia. Sophie, Sarah, and Gary now see English as a tool rather than a subject they need to study.
Language policy has some impact on Chinese speakers, especially on those with low English competence. Australia has undergone several language policy changes, including multilingualism and aggressive monolingualism. Today, some community languages are encouraged for economic reasons in Australia, but the principle “competence in English for all” remains (Clyne & Kipp, 2006). English competence of immigrants and international students is monitored through IELTS. We observe that both Sarah and Sophie had much higher motivations of learning English in the past when they had to prepare for IELTS. Sarah took IELTS for threes time. She scored 5.5 in her first try. After the foundation course, she scored 6 and was admitted to a full degree program. When she applied for PR, she had to take IELTS again and scored 7. Since Sarah no longer needs to take IELTS, she now focuses on content subjects and her motivation of language learning decreases. Sophie took IELTS twice. She got 5.5 in her first test and had to attend the CET (Centre for English Teaching) classes. Sophie was offered full admission to a degree program after passing the CET examination, but she continued to study English hard for PR application. Sophie is now less motivated to learn English because she was already granted PR.
No particular English accent is intrinsically better than others, but “even outside Britain, RP [received pronunciation] is still an overtly admired model in many countries (Holmes, 2001, p. 350).” The nine interviewees unanimously express their dislike for Australian accent, although they are willing to learn Australian slangs. They can communicate with people without adopting any Australian accent, but lacking the knowledge of some Australian slang may sometimes cause problems. In other words, they are only willing to learn Australian English when there is no alternative. Sophie is the only interviewee to acquire some Australian accent, but she claims:
I hate Australian accent. They are so so stupid. I like British accent better. I might have a slight OZ accent, but I guess that’s because I have stayed here for so long and I unconsciously caught up some OZ accents.
Most interviewees prefer RP. Jesse prefers American accent. Benji, Woody, Sophie, and Newton say that in addition to RP they can accept American accent too, but they definitely do not like Australian accent. Not surprisingly, they are using Australian spellings, but none makes any effort to learn Australian pronunciation.
6. Conclusion
Recent immigrants to Australia are generally more willing to assimilate to the new culture and adopt new societal values than their early counterparts. They tend to make a lot of effort in improving their English skills in early stages of their stay in Australia and few would care about maintenance of ethnic languages (Borland, 2006). This study demonstrates that Chinese speakers intending to stay in Australia for an extended period of time are strongly motivated to learn English and seek opportunities to speak it. After reaching a certain level of English competence, their learning motivation will decrease and their language pattern becomes more balanced between English and Chinese.
This study discovers that demography and economic factors play major roles in shaping language behaviours of Chinese speakers. Language policy has only short-term effect on language behaviour. Status and institutional support seem to be very trivial in language shift and maintenance.
Language shift and maintenance are very complex processes. I have selected interviewees with various backgrounds to better understand how these processes take place in different settings. However, this study is by no means comprehensive. Further studies are necessary to identify more causes of linguistic change.
7. Appendix
chart 1
chart 2
8. References
Borland, H. (2006). Intergenerational Language Transmission in an Established Australian Migrant Community: What Makes the Difference? International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2006(180), p.23-41.
Clyne, M., & Kipp, S. (2006).
Cook, V. (1999). Going beyond the Native Speaker in Language Teaching. TESOL Quarterly, 33(2), 185-209.
Fillmore, L. W. (2000). Loss of family languages: Should educators be concerned? Theory into Practice, 39(4), 203-210.
Holmes, J. (2001). Attitudes and Applications. In An Introduction to Sociolinguistics (pp. 342-365). Essex: Pearson Education Limited.
Mesthrie, R., et al (2006). Language Maintenance, Shift and Death. In Introducing Sociolinguistics (pp. 248-278). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Patkowski, M. (1990). Age and accent in a second language: A reply to James Emil Flege. Applied Linguistics, 11(1), 73-89.
Piller,
Sachdev,
Scovel, T. (1988). A time to speak. A psycholinguistic inquiry into the critical period for human speech. Cambridge: Newbury House Publishers.
The
Wei, L., et al (1997). Language Shift in the Teochew Community in Singapore: A Family Domain Analysis. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 18(5), 364-384.
by J.C., Dept. of English, Sydney Uni.
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