Acculturation and Achievement in English among Chinese Immigrant Adolescents: A Comparison of Two Populations Which Vary in the Density of Speakers of Chinese

Abstract

The present study was conducted for the purposes of addressing how differential L1-speaking population density affects the acculturation status of two cohorts of ethnic Chinese adolescent respondents with ages at testing ranging from 12 to 22 in two metropolitan cities of North America: Vancouver, Canada, and Atlanta, Georgia; and how differential acculturation status among ethnic Chinese adolescents predicts differential development of English proficiency of these ethnic Chinese adolescent respondents when demographic factors such as age of arrival and length of stay are taken into consideration. Based on empirical data collected from 133 ethnic Chinese adolescent respondents in the two cities, several conclusions are reached: (1) ethnic Chinese population density affects the acculturation levels of ethnic Chinese adolescent respondents in terms of psychological and sociolinguistic orientations towards the L2 community; (2) ethnic Chinese population density may not directly affect the L2 proficiency of ethnic Chinese adolescent respondents while differential levels of psychological and sociolinguistic orientations may; (3) ethnic Chinese population density may play an indirect role in affecting the organizational structure of L2 mental lexicon of ethnic Chinese adolescent respondents because it can affect the degree to which L1 is used among ethnic Chinese adolescent respondents; (4) in terms of the two dimensions of acculturation, sociolinguistic orientation is more powerful in predicting the development of L2 proficiency than psychological orientation; and (5) when acculturation is involved in the development of L2 proficiency, the combined effect of age of arrival and length of stay may not significantly affect L2 proficiency either for all the respondents of the present study or for respondents in the low-density group; that is, both the combined effect of age of arrival and length of stay and acculturation will affect L2 proficiency in ethnic Chinese adolescent respondents of the high population density, while in terms of ethnic Chinese adolescent respondents of the low population density, the combined effect of age of arrival and length of stay may not affect L2 proficiency though the acculturation factor may.