Literacy practices among Spanish-Japanese children in Catalonia: an ethnographic study of their uses and mothers

This ethnographic study aims to analyze writing tasks, attitudes, roles and social practices of 11 students from grades one to nine who attend the Japanese Saturday school in Barcelona, Spain (Hoshuko Barcelona Educación Japonesa), in each of their four surrounding languages (Spanish, Catalan, Engli...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Fukukawa, Misa, Cassany, Daniel
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2018
País:España
Institución:Varias* (Consorci de Biblioteques Universitáries de Catalunya, Centre de Serveis Científics i Acadèmics de Catalunya)
Repositorio:Recercat. Dipósit de la Recerca de Catalunya
OAI Identifier:oai:recercat.cat:10230/36509
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10230/36509
http://dx.doi.org/10.1344/did.2018.3.16-34
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Multilingualism
Heritage language
Literacy practices and attitudes
Multilingüismo
Lengua de herencia
Prácticas de literacidad y actitudes
Multilingüisme
Llengua d’herència
Pràctiques de literacitat i actituds
Descripción
Sumario:This ethnographic study aims to analyze writing tasks, attitudes, roles and social practices of 11 students from grades one to nine who attend the Japanese Saturday school in Barcelona, Spain (Hoshuko Barcelona Educación Japonesa), in each of their four surrounding languages (Spanish, Catalan, English and Japanese). We conducted 22 interviews with their Japanese mothers and collected 32 students’ writing samples in multiple languages. Our participants have different language backgrounds because they belong to bilingual families and all go to local schools. In addition they all attend the Japanese school on Saturdays in order to maintain Japanese as a heritage language. We found that these children use four different languages both constantly and actively. With regard to Japanese, the most common literacy activity performed by them is keeping a diary, which is an assignment from their school. They occasionally write seasonal cards and send messages to their extended family in the appropriate language for the readers. From a sociocultural perspective, the literacy practices and the use of technology across the four languages were analyzed, with a special focus on the interactions and the appropriation of two significantly different writing systems (Spanish, Catalan and English versus Japanese).