뉴질랜드 한국 교민의 자녀 이중언어교육에 대한 인식 연구

Abstract

The history of Korean immigration to New Zealand being very short,Koreans are, when compared to other Asian ethnic groups, the most likely to speak their first language (81%). If they wish to maintain this high rate of mother tongue retention and make their children efficient bilinguals, now is the opportune moment. Otherwise, the probability of their children becoming dominant bilinguals who speak English like natives but dont speak Korean very well is very high. This would be regrettable not only for Korean parents and children, but also New Zealand society. The present article tried to uncover, by means of a simple inquiry, the opinions of Korean parents in New Zealand on their childrens bilingualism. Its findings can be summarized as follows: 1) as a whole, Korean parents are satisfied with the progress made by their children in English; 2) they make efforts to maintain Korean proficiency of their children by enrolling them in Korean schools; 3) yet some of them arent entirely convinced that Korean-English bilinguality might help their children achieve good grades in English and other school subjects; 4) half of them seem to be uncertain that Korean English bilinguality could contribute to New Zealand society and to New Zealanders - who suffer from monolingual myopia' - by broadening their intellectual horizons, by supplying a natural language environment where they are able to learn Korean language, and by providing the country with a' pool of much-needed Korean-speakers who can be drawn on to further New Zealands position in the areas of international relations, trade and tourism. Therefore, when trying to further bilingualism of Korean children in New Zealand, it would appear practical to start by addressing Korean parentsfear about 3) and 4) stated above, through regular conferences and special newspaper articles. In the 21"1 century, bilingualism is the norm rather than the exception at the international level. This is more true of Korean children who wish to live permanently in New Zealand following the completion of their schooling, inasmuch as this country is expected to become linguistically and culturally more diverse in the future.