Identifier

etd-04262012-182344

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Linguistics (Interdepartmental Program)

Document Type

Dissertation

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to examine Korean parents’ attitudes, motivations, and home literacy practices toward their children’s participation in bilingualism in Korean and English in Korea. The success of foreign language learning is influenced by positive attitudes and the level of motivation regarding the target language. Language learners’ attitudes and motivations toward a target language are closely related to their development of language proficiency, and children are often strongly influenced by their parents. The present study was conducted by the survey that was comprised of four-part Likert-type statements. The participants consisted of parents who have children enrolled in the elementary school located in the center of Korea. Parents of 218 responded to the survey questionnaires on December 2011. For the research questions, a two-way analysis of variance was applied based on the parents’ demographic information, and a multiple regression in the methods was used to examine the correlations among attitudes, motivations, and home literacy practices. The results of this research indicate that most participants had highly favorable attitudes toward bilingualism based on the scores according to both holistic view and fragmented view. Although there was slightly a difference between the two views, the parents’ attitudes toward the holistic view of bilingualism were more favorable than those toward the fragmented view. Also, the parents showed favorable responses to all five motivations toward bilingualism. While the scores for the integrative motivation were the highest, on the other hand, those for the attributions about past failure were the lowest. In terms of home literacy practices, the parents’ responses were positive for all the practices. The formal practices were the preferred activity for children’s bilingualism, whereas the favorableness to CALL practices was the lowest. Attitudes and motivations can influence each other without a hierarchy. The parents’ attitudes, motivations, and home literacy practices toward bilingualism were measured based on the demographic information such as gender, age, socio-economic status, etc, resulting in a variety of significant findings. Also, attitudes and motivations allow us to predict the favorableness of home literacy practices. The present study proposes some recommendations to policy makers and concludes with several suggestions for further research.

Date

2012

Document Availability at the Time of Submission

Release the entire work immediately for access worldwide.

Committee Chair

Brody, Mary

DOI

10.31390/gradschool_dissertations.3860

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Linguistics Commons

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