Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 19:1 (2009), 7–29. doi 10.1075/japc.19.1.02hanissn 0957–6851 / e-issn 1569–9838 © John Benjamins Publishing Company

Bilingual and biliteracy practicesJapanese adolescents living in the United States

Mari Haneda and Gumiko MonobeSchool of Teaching and Learning, Ohio State University

In this paper, we report the findings of our qualitative inquiry conducted with two male and two female sojourner students in their early teens living in the United States. Sojourner students, an under-researched population in literacy studies, refers to expatriate children who reside and study abroad for a number of years because of their parents’ jobs and who anticipate eventual return to their home country. Our participants were Japanese sojourner students. Drawing on multiple sources of data, including the students’ literacy logs that documented their reading and writing activities in Japanese and English, interview tran-scripts, and literacy artifacts, we investigated what kind of literacy practices they engaged in outside school and what developing bilingual and biliterate compe-tences meant to them as individuals. Our findings indicate that (a) although the four students spent much time on academic literacy in Japanese and English outside school, they also had active literate lives of their own; and (b) gender af-fected not only how they perceived their competencies in the two languages but also how they allocated their time outside school to engage in literacy practices in each language. While there is little investigation of this student population from the perspective of gender, we suggest that it is an important issue to take into account in future research.

Introduction

Over the past two decades, the intellectual accomplishments of children, youth, and adults in non-school settings have attracted considerable attention from a range of disciplines, notably math education, anthropology, cultural psychology, and litera-cy research (Schultz & Hull, 2002). More specifically, in recent years, ethnographic studies of literacy have documented how people, children and adults alike, use liter-acy as an integral part of their everyday lives, thereby expanding our understanding of what literacy is. What this research shows is that there are many different types of literacy practices in people’s lives: across contexts, in different domains, and for

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various purposes (Street, 1995). However, some studies have also pointed to an apparent disconnect between school and out-of-school literacies, in that students’ literate accomplishments outside school frequently surpass their school-based per-formance (e.g., Knoble, 2001; Lam, 2000; Skilton-Sylvester, 2002).

While this suggests the importance of examining literacy repertoires beyond schools, it also begs a fundamental question as to why it is that students invest in certain literacy practices and not in others. With this question in mind, we exam-ine an under-researched student population in literacy studies: A subpopulation of Japanese ESL students called kaigaishijo — Japanese school-age students who reside and study abroad for a number of years because of their parents’ jobs and who anticipate eventual return to their home country. Focusing on two male and two female kaigaishijo in their early teens in the US context, the central questions addressed in this paper are: (a) what kind of literacy practices do Japanese adoles-cent sojourner students engage in outside school?; and (b) what does developing bilingual and biliterate competencies mean to them as individuals?

Out-of-school literacy practices in multiple languages1

Recent literacy research in English as first language (L1) settings has documented many instances of competent literacy performance demonstrated by school-age students outside school. For example, Knoble (2001) describes Jack, a low-achiev-ing preadolescent boy in Australia, who used literacy to successfully promote his part-time grass-cutting business. Similarly, Schulz (2002) provides a portrait of Denise, a Californian high school student, who actively resisted school-based lit-eracy, yet in private produced powerful works of literature to make sense of her crime-filled world. Cushman (1998), through an illustrative example of three ur-ban youths discussing the implications of a traffic ticket, shows how these youths deploy their linguistic, literate, and reasoning skills to solve a material problem in their resource-scarce community.

Similar findings are reported with respect to ethnic minority students and ESL students who are growing up to be bilingual or multilingual in English-speaking countries. These young people participate in out-of-school literacy practices in various contexts. For example, research on the literacy practices of working-class Latino families in the United States has shown that children often engage in collab-orative literacy activities in public spaces, such as the kitchen or the living room, which involve parents, siblings, cousins, and extended family members (e.g., Gon-zalez et al., 2005; Volk & De Acosta, 2001). There are also cases where ethnic com-munities take a more active role in arranging out-of-school literacy practices for their children in order to pass on their cultural, religious, and linguistic heritages

Bilingual and biliteracy practices 9

to their children. For example, Williams and Gregory (2001), in their examination of the multilingual literacy practices of young children aged 4–7 in a Bangladeshi community in London’s East End, found that, outside school, the children spent an average of 10–18 hours per week attending ‘formal literacy’ classes: learning standard Bengali as heritage language and Arabic for their religious practices. In the US context, Zhou and Kim (2006) describe the Chinese and Korean commu-nities in Los Angeles, which operate non-profit or church-affiliated heritage lan-guage schools. In these schools, children not only learn their heritage language and cultural values but also share core experiences of being Chinese or Korean Americans. These parents also send their children to private ethnic institutions that specialize in offering academic programs, particularly in English and math, which prepare the children to succeed in American schools. Consequently, the Chinese and Korean immigrant communities create a system of supplementary education, including literacy in heritage languages as well as in English.

However, as students grow older, while they continue to participate in family and community literacy practices, their use of literacy may become more diversi-fied. For instance, they may take up the role of language broker, helping their par-ents deal with such tasks as reading and/or writing English literacy documents that are necessary for the family’s survival, as in the case of Latino youths in the United States (McQuillan & Tse, 1995; Orellana et al., 2003). Further, minority and ESL adolescents may increasingly use literacy for their own purposes, not necessarily tied to their family life nor to school literacy. Lam (2000) tells a story of Almon — a Chinese immigrant ESL student who made use of the power of computer literacy to reinvent himself as a desirable person. At school, Almon studied basic literacy skills in ESL and remedial classes; he was neither able to attend academically chal-lenging classes nor to establish successful social relations with English-speaking peers. By sharp contrast, at home, he used his personal website to actively en-gage in sustained, extended written conversation in English with others around the world, which enabled him to construct a desirable virtual identity for himself. Feeling stigmatized because of his accent, Almon created a discursive space where his identity could be constructed solely in writing. Not surprisingly, in the long run, this self-chosen on-line activity boosted his school literacy skills as well.

Although Almon selected English as his discursive tool outside school, some bilingual youths may choose to draw on their native language in which they can express themselves more fully than they can in English. In this respect, Yi’s (2005) study is illustrative. Through her investigations of out-of-school biliteracy practic-es in which three Korean female adolescents engaged, Yi found that outside school they spent much time reading and writing on line: Internet novels, serially con-structed stories, emailing, instant messaging, and surfing the Internet. However, she also found that the ways in which they used their two languages was indicative

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of individual inclinations and circumstances. Sohee, a recent arrival and a high achiever, wrote extensively in Korean to express her innermost thoughts in her diary. Joan, who resisted school literacy, wrote poems in Korean and posted them in Korean cyber communities involving local peers and extended family members in Korea. Jessica, the most English-proficient student among the three, engaged in diverse literacy activities as a functional reader/writer in both Korean and Eng-lish. These activities included reading a print-based English newspaper to look for volunteer work and to check events in the local area, and helping her parents with administrative work in English related to the running of their Korean church. Interestingly, on certain occasions, these girls seamlessly crossed the boundary between home and school (e.g., reading school related books at home to improve English skills, doing school work at home on the computer while reading and re-sponding to e-mail or instant messages). Further, Sarroub’s (2005) ethnography of Yemeni American high school girls has challenged one to think carefully about what literacy means to multilingual and multicultural youths in the US context. Sarroub has shown that, for her female participants, school literacy meant em-powerment because education would give them some leverage to negotiate their future lives with their families instead of being married off to a stranger at a mo-ment’s notice. As well, for them, literacy meant being in a “state of grace” (Scribner, 1984), as their out-of-school literacy practices revolved around religious practices, in particular the reading of the Qur’an in Arabic.

Taken together, it can be said that an investigation of school-age ethnic mi-nority and ESL students is a worthwhile path to take since there is evidence of these young people having very active literate lives outside school. At a young age, these students participate in literacy practices in multiple languages by means of ‘formal literacy’ classes in the heritage language and the language of their religion, or through collaborative literacy activities with significant others in a supportive environment. With increasing age, they start to develop their own literacy reper-toires, independent of family and community literacy practices. Outside school, adolescents strategically use literacy for their own personal purposes to: express their feelings and opinions, seek and exchange information, maintain and develop social relations, construct desirable identities for themselves, and act as language brokers for their families. Furthermore, it is important to consider their literacy practices in both L1 and L2 and, as well, both on and off line activities, since stu-dents who are not English-proficient may have other literacy-using contexts in which they express themselves in their L1. Additionally, as Sarroub’s study shows, for those students, whose home communities’ cultural and religious practices make much sharper gender differentiation than is the case in the United States, the concept of gendered literacy practices is one that should be given more serious consideration. This concept has been explored with respect to adolescents’ literacy

Bilingual and biliteracy practices 11

practices in English as their first language (e.g., Finders, 1997; Rowan, Knobel, Bigum, & Lankshear, 2002; Shuman, 1989). However, attention to the differenti-ated practices of multilingual young people has been largely concerned with the purposes for which such students engage in our-of-school literacy practices and the languages they use for these different purposes. Greater attention to the role that gender plays in these students’ choices with respect to which literacy practices to invest in (Norton, 2000) would enrich our understanding of their literacy devel-opment, thereby contributing to the larger domain of literacy research.

Brief background on kaigaishijo

Before we describe our study, a brief introduction to the term kaigaishijo is neces-sary, since this is a key frame of reference in understanding the conditions that shaped the lives of our research participants. As noted earlier, kaigaishijo refers to Japanese school age children who experience overseas sojourns for a number of years because of their parents’ (usually fathers’) jobs, but will eventually return to Japan. It is reported that there are 55,000 such students, who receive compul-sory education (to grade 9), living around the world as of 2006 (Monbukagakusho, 2006). In North America, Japanese sojourner students typically attend local schools during the week and supplementary Japanese Saturday schools, where Japanese and other subjects are taught (hoshuko). This was the pattern experienced by the four Japanese preteens that we studied.2 For these Japanese sojourners, as Yashiro (1995, p. 146) points out, critical issues are “how to adapt to the language and cul-ture of the host country, and at the same time how to maintain Japanese language and contact with Japanese society.” In other words, they have a two-fold concern: (a) to develop sufficient linguistic and cultural competences to do well in their local schools in the host country; and (b) to maintain their Japanese language competence and Japanese norms of behavior and to keep abreast with the Japanese curriculum for their grade level. This second concern is grounded in the history of serious readjustment problems that sojourner students have faced in the edu-cational system upon their return to Japan, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s. In the past, they were considered as an educational and societal liability because of their deficient Japanese, non-Japanese like behaviors, and their lagging academic performance in different school subjects. Many instances of bullying experienced by these students were reported (e.g., Domoto, 1987; Enloe & Lewin, 1987; Willis, 1984). In fact, these problems prompted major Japanese companies to urge the Japanese government to open full-time Japanese schools and hoshuko around the world in order that Japanese sojourner children would be better prepared for their eventual return to their homeland (Kaigaishijo Kyoikushi Hensan Linkai, 1991;

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Kitsuse et al., 1984). Within Japan, some universities created a quota system in which a certain number of sojourner students were admitted on the basis of an al-ternative exam (Kaigaishijo Kyoiku Shinko Zaidan, 2000). Further, in recent years, because of Japan’s focus on internationalization, these sojourner students’ inter-cultural and linguistic competences have come to be viewed as more of a societal resource than as a problem (see Goodman, 1990). In particular, English language proficiency is considered to be an important asset.

Purpose of study and research questions

Most studies of Japanese sojourner students have tended to focus on the problems faced by these students or have been primarily interested in quantitative measures of language proficiency and of psycho-social variables that affect their accultura-tion in the host country as well as their reintegration into Japanese society (e.g., Miyamoto & Kuhlman, 2001; Yoshida et al., 2002). In neither case do we hear the students’ voices or learn about their lives from their points of view (but see Kanno, 2003). Further, there is little documentation of what they do outside school, particu-larly in relation to their literacy activities in their two languages. The purpose of the study reported here was to examine, through their own words or voices, the kinds of literacy practices in which two male and two female kaigaishijo in their early teen engage and the ways in which they are making sense of their bilingual and biliteracy practices for themselves. Thus, the research questions addressed are as follows:

1. What kinds of literacy practices do Japanese adolescent sojourner students residing in the United States engage in outside school?

2. What does developing bilingual and biliterate competencies mean to them as individuals?

While answering these questions, we also seek to address the larger question fram-ing this study: Why is it that students invest in certain literacy practices and not in others?

Method

Data base and procedures

The two authors planned and undertook the study together. We decided on a bal-anced sample involving both boys and girls because it would give us a rounded pic-ture of bilingual youths’ literacy practices. The first author conducted a descriptive

Bilingual and biliteracy practices 13

study with two boys and the second author a collaborative inquiry with two girls. This division of labor was due to the girls’ request to work with the second author, who had taught them at hoshuko a few years previously and with whom they felt more comfortable. These inquires were undertaken as pilot studies for a larger investigation of kaigaishijo teenagers’ in- and out-of-school literacy practices in a US mid-western city, where a substantial number of Japanese families reside be-cause it is there that a major Japanese automobile plant is located. Our four study participants’ fathers worked either for that company or a subsidiary company, and their families lived in a suburban middle-class school district with a good aca-demic reputation.

Using logs that were provided for them, the two boys, Kenji and Teruo (pseud-onyms), kept track of their out-of-school reading and writing activities for 4–5 days a week. In the following week, they were interviewed in Japanese by the first author about their log entries and other related literacy activities; they shared lit-eracy artifacts, such as books, worksheets, and their writings, and discussed them with her. This pattern of data collection was repeated four times over two months for each student in the spring of 2006. In the last interview, they were also asked to reflect and comment on their bilingual and biliteracy practices. Data sources included transcripts of digital recordings of the interviews, field notes about each interview, and copies of relevant literacy artifacts, including their writings.3

The second author undertook a collaborative inquiry with two of her former female students from hoshuko, Narumi and Miyu.4 This form of investigation was possible because of the rapport that the second author had established with the girls prior to this research project. The inquiry group (consisting of the second author and the two female participants) met every other week for several hours each time over three and a half months during the summer of 2006, followed by several meetings from September to December of 2006. Like the boys, Narumi and Miyu also kept a record of their daily literacy practices outside school and discussed them with the second author. In addition, the inquiry group explored linguistic and cultural issues that the two girls had encountered and thought about for an extended period of time, particularly the issue of what Japanese and English meant to them. The second author also asked the girls to reflect in writing on their feelings about bilingual and biliteracy practices; in response, they wrote narratives, poems, and diary entries. The data sources for the second study included tran-scripts of digital recordings of research meetings, field notes about these meetings, and relevant literacy artifacts, including the girls’ writing.

For both parts of our study, the field notes and interview transcripts were ana-lyzed using ethnographic techniques, in particular, open coding to develop con-ceptual categories and core themes, and focused coding to build up and elaborate analytically interesting themes (Emerson et al., 1995). Following the principles

14 Mari Haneda and Gumiko Monobe

of qualitative research, these data were read iteratively throughout the analysis process (Marshall & Rossman, 2006). Then, the findings of our research were com-piled and compared in order to see any similarities and differences. Triangulation of data sources, member checks, and peer briefing were used so as to increase the credibility of the overall study (Guba & Lincoln, 1989).

Participants

As noted earlier, all four participants attended local American schools during the week and hoshuko on Saturdays. They also had private tutoring sessions at home that helped them with various aspects of schoolwork in both languages. Receiving private tutoring at home is a common phenomenon in Japan, and this practice is continued by Japanese families who live abroad. Often Japanese companies pay for such tutoring services in order to help those employees whose children have to live abroad because of their fathers’ job transfer. At the time of the research, of the three students, Kenji, Teruo, and Narumi had resided in the United States for approximately two and a half years; and Miyu for three years. The two boys men-tioned in the previous section, Kenji and Teruo, were in the sixth and fifth grades, respectively. They differed considerably in physical appearance and personality traits. Kenji was solidly built, athletic, and outgoing, whereas Teruo was of slight build, reserved, artistic, and also playful. The two teenage girls, Miyu and Narumi, were seventh graders and high achievers in Japan. Miyu had completed grades 5–7 in American public schools and Narumi grades 6–7. Miyu was a hard worker, who described herself as makezugirai (competitive with oneself), and Narumi was described by others as cheerful, friendly and accommodating. Kenji, Teruo, and Miyu attended the same elementary school, known for its large enrolment of Japa-nese ESL students. All three had only one period of ESL each day and spent the rest of their time in mainstream classes, assisted occasionally by a bilingual Japa-nese teaching aide. Because of this rapid mainstreaming policy at the school, the students learned English in a ‘sink or swim’ fashion.

Kenji and Miyu also subsequently attended the same middle school, this time with very few Japanese students; they continued to spend most of their time in mainstream classes, except for one ESL class per day. Narumi, on the other hand, had a different educational trajectory from the other three. She spent her first two months in the United States in an elementary school, surrounded by children half her size, being placed several grades below her actual grade level because of her limited English. However, in the same year she transferred to a middle school, where she started as a sixth grader. In the latter school, she attended one period of ESL per day and mainstream classes for the rest of the time. Because of the substantial number of Japanese students in her ESL class, she felt intense pressure

Bilingual and biliteracy practices 15

not to make errors in English in front of other Japanese students for fear of being teased by them rather mercilessly. Consequently, she did not volunteer to con-tribute to the class discussion unless she was absolutely sure that her answer was correct.

Findings

In this section, the findings for each of the research questions are reported in turn. For this purpose we combine the findings from both parts of the study, paying particular attention to similarities and differences among the four students’ expe-riences. We report our findings by gender pairs because the results of our analyses pointed to the significant role that gender played in shaping these students’ prac-tices. It thus seemed appropriate to present our findings in this manner.

Literacy practices outside school

For all four students, the bulk of their out-of-school literacy practices consisted of completing homework assignments in both English and Japanese from the two schools that they attended; they also completed assignments set by their private tutors. The two boys had comparable profiles of out-of-school literacy practices. Both Kenji and Teruo had bi-weekly private tutoring sessions at home with the same Japanese tutor, who was a Japanese/English bilingual, in which they studied Japanese grade-level appropriate materials in various subjects (e.g., math, social studies, science, Japanese) in order to keep up with their Japanese education.5 The tutor also helped them with some of their school homework in English and Japa-nese; in addition, she taught them how to give appropriate answers to typical ques-tions in Japanese examinations of English as a foreign language, as fluency in Eng-lish does not necessarily translate into high scores on exams in Japan. However, the boys were rather nonchalant about this extra work in Japanese; they simply said that they would eventually be going home and so accepted it as a necessity. In addition to this private tutoring, Teruo went twice a week to juku, a private tutor-ing institution, which provided Japanese students with additional instruction in math and Japanese so as to prepare them for Japanese school entrance exams.

Like the two boys, the girls also had private tutoring sessions at home; the frequency was once a week for Miyu and 4–5 times per week for Narumi. How-ever, their tutors were non-Japanese who were employed to help them with their learning of the English language and their American schoolwork. On their own, the girls spent much energy in keeping up with their schoolwork, in particular the humanities projects demanded by their American public schools. It was not

16 Mari Haneda and Gumiko Monobe

uncommon for both girls to stay up until one or two in the morning to work on their school projects. This was partly because of their unfamiliarity with American culture and history (e.g., not knowing what key words to use to do research), as their teachers assumed possession of common cultural knowledge among all the students and did not offer any provisions for those who did not share it. Addition-ally, on Fridays, the girls spent many hours completing their Japanese homework for hoshuko on the following day (see Table 1 a for a summary of the participants’ literacy practices outside school).

Despite the time required to complete school assignments, all four students had active literate lives of their own, although their modes of engagement with reading and writing for pleasure differed in subtle ways. Kenji read many action-oriented Japanese comic books and baseball novels by Atsuko Asano; in addition, he surfed the Internet both for schoolwork and for pleasure (e.g., checking the World Cup results). Like Kenji, Teruo also surfed the Internet and enjoyed read-ing Japanese comic books – both historical and action-oriented ones. He also read science-related books in Japanese and English and enjoyed stories written in Japa-nese as his bedtime reading. On the other hand, their writing activities differed. Kenji, who had kept in contact with his friends both from Japan and hoshuko, corresponded by e-mail in Japanese with ten friends (8 boys and 2 girls) on a daily basis. For the most part, the content of these messages dealt with daily events and their feelings about certain friends, some of which were playful, with interesting layouts to make them visually appealing. While Japanese was Kenji’s language of choice in both his reading and writing for pleasure, Teruo read mostly Japanese texts but did his private writing in English. Knowing of Teruo’s interests in fossils, dinosaurs and drawings, his tutor encouraged him to write about various fossils in English as a form of language practice and to draw accompanying pictures. Prompted by his tutor, Teruo produced detailed pictures of fossils and dinosaurs with some scientific explanations; in addition, he volunteered to write detective stories about fossil hunting in English. Asked what he liked about writing these stories, he said, “naiyoo o kangaeru no ga omoshiroi” (Thinking about how to de-velop the story is interesting).6 He explained that he first thought about a storyline in Japanese and then embellished it as he wrote in English. It is interesting that, although Teruo wrote about fossils at his tutor’s request, he wrote stories in English of his own volition. While he was not able to articulate why he opted for writing stories in English, it is clear that he felt comfortable enough to compose in English and took much pleasure in doing so.

Like the two boys, Miyu and Narumi also had active literate lives of their own, which were different from each other and from the boys. Miyu, who appeared to be most comfortable with English among the four students, read books in Eng-lish and Japanese, depending on her mood on a particular day. Her readings in

Bilingual and biliteracy practices 17

Table 1. Profile of Participants’ Literacy Practices Outside SchoolParticipants Teruo Kenji Miyu NarumiGrade levels 5th grade 6th grade 7th grade 7th gradeLOS in the US 2.5 years 2.5 years 3 years 2.5 yearsESL placement Advanced Intermediate Exited ESL AdvancedUse of private tutoring

– twice a week home tutoring with a Japanese tutor(Japanese school subjects)– Attending juku twice a week to study math and Japanese language arts

Twice a week home tutoring with a Japanese tutor(Japanese school subjects)

Once a week home tutoring with an American tutor(Language arts in English)

4–5 times a week home tutoring with an American tutor(School subjects at her American school)

Literacy activities on their own

English– Surfing the Internet for schoolwork and for pleasure– Writing detec-tive stories about fossil hunting– Homework from his American school

English– Surfing the Internet for schoolwork and for pleasure– Homework from his American school

English– Reading popular adolescent novels– Writing her diary– Letter exchanges with her American friend from school– Homework from her American school

English– Homework from her American school

Japanese– Reading action-oriented & histori-cal comic books, science books, and stories– Surfing the Internet for schoolwork and for pleasure– Homework from hoshukoOthersDetailed drawings of dinosaurs and fossils accompany-ing his stories

Japanese– Reading action-oriented comics & baseball novels– Surfing the Internet for schoolwork and for pleasure– Daily E-mail correspondence with his Japanese friends– Homework from hoshuko

Japanese– Reading a wide range of books from classics to contemporary fic-tion & non-fiction– E-mail cor-respondence with her friends in Japan– Letter exchanges with Narumi– Journal exchang-es with Narumi and another Japa-nese friend from hoshuko– Homework from hoshuko

Japanese– Reading books, magazines, and comic books– Letter and journal exchanges with Miyu– Writing her di-ary in a mixture of Japanese and secret codes– Homework from hoshuko

LOS refers to the length of stay; ESL placement to the level of ESL class that students were assigned at their local American schools; juku to a Japanese private tutoring institution; and hoshuko to the Japanese Saturday School where sojourner students study Japanese school subjects.

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English consisted of an assortment of popular adolescent novels, including Kira-Kira, Shiloh, and Number the Stars. In Japanese, she read a wider range of books on her own, ranging from classics to contemporary fiction and non-fiction. Miyu also engaged in functional reading in English (e.g., trying to sort out how mail-in rebates worked with her mother). Narumi also enjoyed reading for pleasure, but her language of choice was Japanese. She read novels, such as Madogiwa no Totto chan (Totto at the Windowsill) and Tatta hitotsu no takaramono (One and Only Treasure), magazines, and some comic books. In addition to reading, both girls were actively engaged in writing, but in a different combination of activities. Miyu frequently corresponded with her friends in Japan by e-mail, exchanged letters with Narumi in Japanese and with her American friend in English, and exchanged journals with Narumi and another Japanese friend from hoshuko. Although she used both English and Japanese for her private correspondence, Miyu stated that writing in Japanese allowed her to express things that mattered most to her. None-theless, she also wrote a diary in English. She explained that it was natural for her to write in English since she mostly wrote about what happened at her American school. As for Narumi, in addition to letter and journal exchanges with Miyu and e-mail correspondence with her Japanese friends, she kept a diary in Japanese. Interestingly, in order to protect her privacy, she used a mixture of Japanese and secret codes, which consisted of code names assigned to different people, expres-sions of her feelings in onomatopoetic words that only made sense to herself, and deliberately ambiguous and fragmented expressions.

Students’ views on developing bilingual and biliterate competencies

In this section, addressing the second research question, we present the students’ perspectives on their developing bilingual and biliterate competencies in three chronological stages: the past, the present, and the anticipated future. In so doing, we attend to both similarities and differences among the students.

All four students described how difficult their first year had been. In each case, they described how, overnight, they became beginning students who could not even comprehend what was being said to them. For example, Narumi wrote about a particularly upsetting incident that she experienced as a foreign newcomer. When she first arrived at school, she could not understand which classrooms to go to. She did not even know whom to ask for help or how to ask her question in English. Wandering around the hallways, she eventually started to cry. A teacher came over to help her. “The teacher was speaking to me kindly, but I could not understand what she was saying. All I could do was guess what she was saying and go in the direction that she might have said where my class was” (translated from Japanese to English). After this incident, she resolved not to cry again.

Bilingual and biliteracy practices 19

After similar initial difficulties, the two boys noticed, to their surprise, that by their second year they were able to understand what was happening in their class-es. As Teruo commented: “Itterukoto chinpunkanpun. Demo ima wa daijoobu” (I didn’t understand what people were saying at all [during the first year], but right now I don’t have a problem). In fact, at the time of the research, all four students expressed a sense of accomplishment in having achieved a considerable degree of English proficiency in a few short years.

For the two girls, however, their sense of accomplishment and pride was achieved at some emotional cost. They commented that what most hurt their feel-ings was the low expectations conveyed by some of their teachers as well as some of their classmates, who frequently told them, “you don’t need to do anything.” In her first year, Narumi tried hard to move ahead by setting goals for herself in classes where she was not expected to achieve very much. In this way, she managed to complete her language arts project, assisted by her teacher’s careful guidance. To her consternation, Miyu found herself exempted from doing assignments and ex-ams in her classes. However, she, too, did not accept the teachers’ premise (that she was not capable) and kept trying to find tasks she could complete in order to rees-tablish herself as an academically competent student. By the end of the first year, on her own she had finished a long-term project in English called “All about me”; after writing draft after draft and receiving feedback from her teacher, she noticed that, over time, she was making fewer errors in English. Ironically, the outstanding progress made by Miyu subsequently created another hurdle for her. Her teach-ers started to expect her to perform well. Despite many hours spent on complet-ing school assignments, Miyu stated that she never admitted to her teachers how much time and energy she invested in her projects. She explained that, for one thing, “yowami o misetakunakatta” (I didn’t want to reveal my weakness), and for another, she did not wish to volunteer this information, as she expected her teach-ers to become aware of her struggles on their own. In these ways, through genuine hard work, the girls gradually increased their English language proficiency and felt a sense of satisfaction at their developing English competence. Nevertheless, Narumi revealed her continuing lack of confidence when she confessed that, when she spoke in English, she still did not feel intelligent.

Despite the similarities in their initial struggles and their gradual establish-ment of some degree of equilibrium from the second year onwards, the ways in which the four students perceived their bilingual and biliterate competencies in the present were by no means uniform. In particular, there appeared to be some gender differences among them in their perspectives. The boys basically said that their study in the United States was valuable because they were becoming profi-cient in English and were enjoying the experience of different types of learning from those to which they had been accustomed in Japan. However, as was noted

20 Mari Haneda and Gumiko Monobe

earlier, they spent many hours studying Japanese school subjects in preparation for their return to Japan. Although their development of English proficiency was considered to be “cool” by both boys, their families’ central concern was for them to hone their Japanese literacy skills in order to do well on their return to Japan. By contrast, during the inquiry group meetings, the girls said that, for them, both lan-guages were equally important in both school and out-of-school contexts. Com-pared with the two boys, they appeared to experience much less pressure from their parents to be fully prepared for their reintegration into the Japanese educa-tional system. However, it should be noted that the girls did not neglect their Japa-nese studies; on the contrary, they spent many hours completing their homework for hoshuko on their own.

Young people have visions of their future lives – their envisioned future. These visions can vary from what is most likely to be the case given their life circum-stances to visions of what they would like their future life to be even though it may be very unlikely to transpire. Nevertheless, these envisioned futures do influence the current choices that young people make in the present and, with respect to the four students in the current study, the notion of envisioned future appears to provide some explanation of the choices of literacy practices in which they chose to invest.7

In terms of their envisioned futures, the boys’ eyes were firmly set on their life in Japan. Kenji commented that he was glad to be returning home in the summer of 2006 to resume his life in Japan, since he felt that he had been asked to abandon his life (i.e., school, friends, baseball team) when the family moved to the United States two years previously. As far as he was concerned, English proficiency was an asset, but not central to his envisioned future. In the immediate future, he wanted to play baseball and enjoy his school and friends in Japan. As for Teruo, the situa-tion was more complicated. His family considered his English proficiency to be a double-edged sword: an asset and a potential problem. They were concerned that Teruo might be bullied in a Japanese public school, because his tiny figure and quiet disposition in combination with his proficiency in English would make him an easy target for bullying. Because of these concerns, Teruo had private tutoring in Japanese school subjects four times a week so that he could pass the entrance exam for a private school. Although Teruo appeared to be personally proud of his accomplishments in English, he found himself in a precarious position. So, for the boys and their parents, competence in Japanese and with Japanese school subjects was given priority over English.

By contrast, the girls considered developing bilingual and biliterate competen-cies as key to their future, because they believed that English could open doors for their future lives. They felt that being competent in English was not only “cool” but would also allow them to meet and talk with people around the world. They also

Bilingual and biliteracy practices 21

Miyu’s Poems in Japanesewith English translations

母国語

日本語って何？それは私の母国語。

大切で切なくて思い出がつまっている

日が経つと同時に少しずつ苦手になって行く。でも忘れたら困るから忘れちゃいけない。だって忘れたら今後どうするの？

どんなに苦手になったって　忘れられないよ。だって私の一部で、私の一生でも有るんだから

Mother Tongue (written vertically in blue)

What’s Japanese?It is my mother tongue.

Precious and imbued with sorrowsFilled with memories

The longer I stay [in the United States], the less skillful I have gradually become.But I cannot afford to forget it.For what would I do in the future if I had forgot-ten it?

No matter how less skillful I have become, Icannot afford to forget it.Because it is part of me and it is my whole life.

大好き

私にとっての英語—————それはもう一つの母国語いつも当たり前の様に使い思い出をたくさん作る

絶対忘れたくない英語—————

うれしい思い出や　くやしい思い出がゴチャゴチャにまざって　つまっている一生の思い出。

私にとっての英語—————アメリカ生活の一部だし　自分自身の一部である。自分の将来、未来　そして自分の夢でもある。

もう「英語」という味を覚えた私には英語ナシでは生きて行けるのカナ？大好きだよ。。。

English I Love (written vertically in orange)

English for me–––––It is another mother tongueUsing it as part of daily life as if it were mineMaking many memories

English, that which I do not want to forget–––––

Life-long treasure filled withTwirls of memories,Joyous and regretful

English for me–––––It is part of my American lifeAnd it is part of meIt is my futureAnd my dream

I who have already tasted the pleasure of EnglishI am not sure whether I can live without itEnglish that I love…

22 Mari Haneda and Gumiko Monobe

added that English gave them an alternative way to express themselves, not having to conform to the linguistic constraints inherent in the Japanese language (e.g., gender appropriate language). At the same time, they emphasized the importance of Japanese because it was core to who they were. To illustrate the girls’ evolving views and feelings toward the two languages and being bilingual, Miyu’s Japanese poems are presented in Table 1 with English translations: “bokokugo” (mother tongue) and “daisuki” (English I love).

In the first poem, “bokokugo” (mother tongue), Miyu acknowledges the im-portance of Japanese as her mother tongue and describes the Japanese language as being precious, imbued with sorrows, and filled with memories. For her, Japanese is the language through which she has construed and constructed her experiences, hence grounding her as a member of a particular ethnolinguisic community. She then, in the third stanza, cautions against losing it as her sojourn in the United States becomes prolonged and she reminds herself of how integral Japanese is to her Japanese identity. In the second poem, it is of note that Miyu did not choose a parallel title to the first one, but instead entitled it “daisuki” (a literal translation “I love it”). While in the first poem Miyu describes Japanese retrospectively as filled with memories of the past, it is interesting that in the second poem she de-scribes English prospectively — as another mother tongue with which she is mak-ing many memories in the present (the first stanza). For Miyu, English represents both joyous and painful memories, but it is also a language she has appropriated to the extent that she has come to use it as if it were her own. In the fourth stanza, she reiterates her view that English is tied to her present life and suggests a perceived link to the future. The last stanza is a powerful personal statement that she has indeed come to live a bilingual life and has made English part of her life.

In this regard, it is interesting to compare Miyu’s poems with Narumi’s key word lists describing her feelings toward the two languages, which were produced at one of the inquiry meetings. Narumi’s key word list for Japanese consisted of: I love it; without it I would not be who I am; katakana and hiragana syllabaries and Chinese characters; Japan; family; life; old; and language (translated from Japanese to English). Her list for English included: life; friends; I love it; world; books; dream; Disney; all; now; future; and America (translated from Japanese to English). Although she valued both languages, it is of note that as in Miyu’s poem, English was considered to be not only part of her current life but also an important tool to make friends, to build her life in the future, and to connect her to the world beyond her immediate environment. One of her chosen words, “all” (zenbu), may be interpreted as her recognition that English mediated her current life to a large extent (e.g. making friends, doing well at school, feeling intelligent or not intel-ligent about herself when she spoke English) and will perhaps mediate her future life in significant ways. The girls’ perspectives on the value of the two languages,

Bilingual and biliteracy practices 23

particularly the role played by English in the present and future, appeared to di-verge greatly from what little the two boys said on this subject.

Discussion

The kinds of out-of-school literacy practices in which the four Japanese students engaged were, for the most part, different from those reported by previous studies conducted in the United States on ethnic minority and ESL students’ out-of-school literacy practices, which tend to focus on those that are non-academic. The main difference was in the amount of time that the four students invested in academic literacy in Japanese and English outside school in order to keep abreast with the study of Japanese school subjects and to complete American schoolwork. Related to that, another difference was that they actively utilized supplementary educa-tional services, such as private tutoring and hoshuko on Saturdays. Although the use of supplementary education was reported by Zhou and Kim (2006) with regard to the Chinese and Korean immigrant communities in Los Angeles, there was little pressure for the children to develop full competence in their heritage languages or to study school subjects in their mother tongue. These immigrant parents wanted their children to be familiar with their linguistic and cultural heritage, but their eyes were firmly set on their children’s success in the United States, their adopted country. What distinguishes Japanese sojourner students from ethnic minority and immigrant ESL students is that they are temporary residents in the United States who will eventually return to their home country. Thus, unlike immigrants, their gaze appears to be more bidirectional. While doing well in American schools is important, equally important (more important in the case of the boys) is the ex-tent to which they are academically prepared for their reentry into the competitive Japanese educational system, making competence in the Japanese language and with Japanese school subjects critically important. Indeed, it can be said that the maintenance of literate competence in different school subjects, which is regarded as a highly valued commodity in Japan, is a basic requirement for social advance-ment in Japanese society.

However, as noted in the findings section, despite their demanding out-of-school academic work, the four students managed to have active literate lives of their own. They read a variety of books for pleasure, mostly in Japanese but some in English. They engaged in many writing activities in Japanese, although three of them also used English for their private writing. They used writing for a variety of purposes: to express their feelings; to find expression for their imagination; to maintain and develop social relationships with friends; and to be reflective about their own feelings (particularly the girls).

24 Mari Haneda and Gumiko Monobe

These findings are quite similar to those of previous literacy research: children and adolescents alike use literacy to make sense of the world, express their inner-most feelings and build social relations with significant others (e.g., Blackburn, 2003; Cushman, 1998; Schultz, 2002; Skilton-Sylvester, 2002; Yi, 2005). None of the study participants, however, chose a public forum for their self-expression, as was found by previous research on adolescent Asian ESL students (Lam, 2000; Yi, 2005). For them, out-of-school literacy practices were either academic or personal and interpersonal – but interacting only with people they knew well.

The observed differences: The importance of gender

The decision to include both boys and girls in our research was made to create a balanced sample. However, the importance of gender in distinguishing between the students came as a surprise. As we have reported, gender affected not only how they perceived their competencies in the two languages but also how they al-located their time outside school to engage in academic literacy practices in each language. However, we wish to be explicit that our personal experiences may have influenced our interpretations regarding this issue. Both of us came from Japan to study in North America, partly to escape the kinds of expectations placed on females, and we have since chosen to establish our lives in North America. So, our discussion of gender is conducted from a particular vantage point rooted in our life trajectories.

As reported in the previous section, the boys assigned more value to Japanese studies and maintenance of their Japanese linguistic competence than did the girls. The boys regarded English proficiency as an asset, but not as centrally important to their future lives. This view aligned well with their parental expectations. The girls, on the other hand, appeared to experience much less parental pressure to focus on reentry into the Japanese educational system, and were given more freedom to invest in their American schoolwork and the learning of English. What was inter-esting to us was that the girls’ mothers encouraged them to think of retuning to the United States to study in the future. This may well have been because the mothers regretted the constraints that they experienced in their own lives and hoped that their daughters would have greater freedom to determine how they wished to live their lives. Perhaps because of this latitude given to them by their mothers, the girls appeared to shape their lives in the present towards less constrained lives in the future. Nevertheless, they were also concerned to maintain their attachments to their Japanese roots. As Narumi wrote with respect to her feelings about Japa-nese: “Sono kotoba ga nakereba watashi wa ima koko ni inaikamoshirenai (without Japanese, I would not be who I am). The different orientations of the boys and the girls in our study towards the two languages are indicative that, while Japanese

Bilingual and biliteracy practices 25

culture and values are said to be changing, gendered expectations for boys and girls still remain markedly different. Because of our limited sample, it is not pos-sible to make any generalizations about differential gender expectations held by Japanese sojourner families. Rather, the point we wish to make is that gender is an issue that needs to be taken into account in researching not only the kaigaishijo population but also other non-Japanese adolescent populations, particularly in re-lation to multilingual youths’ out-of-school literacy practices (see Sarroub, 2005).

Concluding remarks

We close by turning briefly to the larger question that framed the research we have described: Why is it that students invest in certain literacy practices and not in others? Our research allows us to comment on this question as it relates to the sojourner student population. The findings of our research suggest that adolescent bilingual students’ investment in particular types of literacy practices in the two languages is formed at the intersection of gendered parental expectations, their own current interests, and their envisioned futures. It appears that the status of being sojourners who will eventually return to their home country in the near fu-ture makes gendered parental expectations for their future lives more salient than would have been the case had the family stayed in Japan. As a result, sojourner stu-dents form their opinions of the role each language may play in their future lives in part as the result of parental expectations. At the same time, they exercise some agency in engaging in literacy practices of their own choice in the light of their current interests. Furthermore, the way in which they invest in literacy practices in their second language appears to be profoundly affected by the role that they expect English to play in their envisioned futures.

Because of globalization, company employees in business and industry are increasingly transferred to overseas posts for long enough for it to be desirable for their families to accompany them. Consequently, there are many young peo-ple, not limited to Japanese sojourner students, who are spending a number of years studying abroad and then returning to their home countries. During these years they develop intercultural and bilingual/biliterate competencies to varying degrees. As shown in this study, how these young people evaluate their develop-ing competencies in their additional languages may be influenced by various fac-tors, including the gendered cultural expectations implicitly conveyed to them, their individual circumstances, and personal dispositions and interests. Whether the linguistic and cultural expertise that they achieve through much hard work is nurtured depends on local societal values, enacted in micro-interactions in their daily lives (in schools and other places). In this regard, our study points to

26 Mari Haneda and Gumiko Monobe

the importance of considering students as individuals with unique life trajecto-ries rather than labeling them according to ethno-cultural stereotypes (e.g., quiet, hard-working Asian students). Further, with respect to instruction, it is important that teachers be aware that such students do not have the cultural knowledge that is taken for granted among their local students and so make conscious efforts to explicate it for them (see Duff, 2001). Such practices by local teachers with respect to ESL students, including sojourner students, would make it possible to provide more fine-tuned linguistic and cultural scaffolding, particularly in the humanities subjects.

The experiences of the participants in our study give us some insight into what it means to be transported into another country in late childhood and early adolescence. What our study makes salient is: (a) the active literate lives that they have on their own, despite demanding academic work outside school; and (b) the gendered cultural expectations of their parents and how these may impact the students’ investment in developing their bilingual/biliterate competencies, both in the present and for the future.

Notes

1. We recognize that some scholars (e.g., Schultz & Hull, 2002; Yi, 2005) argued that the distinc-tion between in and out of school is unsatisfactory because some literacy practices in which stu-dents engage at school have little to do with the official curriculum (e.g., exchanging notes), and conversely, some out-of-school practices are essentially an extension of the curriculum carried on in school. We agree with them in that some literacy practices cross over the physical border of the school premises and that official and unofficial (academic and non-academic) practices occur in both settings (also see Dyson, 2003). However, our interests in this paper is the kinds of literacy practices in which bilingual Japanese adolescents engage outside school, hence we are using the term “out-of-school” literacy practices to denote a physical location and to include both academic and non-academic practices (for a similar perspective, see Martin-Jones and Jones, 2001).

2. The Japanese government provides these students with officially approved Japanese text-books. Further, when the student enrollment is sufficiently large, it also sends a principal, which was the case with the hoshuko attended by the focal students. Although hoshuko is held only once a week, on Saturdays, it attempts to cover the core Japanese curriculum for a particular grade level. As a result, students are assigned a substantial amount of homework to complete each week and during school breaks.

3. Some segments of the digital recordings of the interviews turned out to be incomprehensible because both students spoke very quietly and often mumbled. To compensate for this, I focused on listening to them carefully while I interviewed them, took extensive notes during the inter-views, and asked clarification questions on the spot and/or afterwards. Out of the four inter-views with each boy, two lasted about one hour and the other two approximately half an hour.

Bilingual and biliteracy practices 27

4. Having taught these two girls as their sixth grade teacher at hoshuko, Gumiko Monobe (the second author) has maintained friendship with them since then. Because of her rapport with them, she was able, in a relatively short period of time, to collect a wealth of in-depth informa-tion about their perceptions of the linguistic and cultural issues that they face in their daily lives. This may also be attributed to the fact that the inquiry group meetings were conducted in Japa-nese, the language that both girls felt comfortable expressing their opinions and feelings in a nu-anced way. It should be noted that we use the girls’ real names in this paper upon their request.

5. The two boy’s tutor was the second author.

6. All the translations in the manuscript were carried out by the first author.

7. In thinking about an envisioned future, we have drawn on the concept of possible selves (Mar-cus & Nurius, 1986) in social psychology. Possible selves represent “individuals’ ideas of what they might become, what they would like to become, and what they are afraid of becoming, and thus provide a link between cognition and motivation” (p. 954). As such, they mediate personal functioning in a significant way. They “function as incentives for future behavior” and “provide an evaluative and interpretive context for the current view of self ” (p. 955).

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Authors’ addresses

Mari HanedaSchool of Teaching and Learning333 Arps Hall1945 N. High StreetOhio State UniversityColumbus, OH 43210-1172 USA

haneda.1@osu.edu

Gumiko MonobeSchool of Teaching and Learning333 Arps Hall1945 N. High StreetOhio State UniversityColumbus, OH 43210-1172 USA

monobe.1@osu.edu