Home Environment and Second-Language Acquisition: The Importance of Family CapitalAuthor(s): Guofang LiSource: British Journal of Sociology of Education, Vol. 28, No. 3 (May, 2007), pp. 285-299Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30036207 .Accessed: 10/03/2011 09:48

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British Journal of Sociology of Education Vol. 28, No. 3, May 2007, pp. 285-299 I Routledge

Taylor WFrancis Group

Home environment and second- language acquisition: the importance of family capital Guofang Li* Michigan State University, USA

Framed within Coleman's theory of family capital, this article examines how different home vari- ables such as family physical, human and social capital affect immigrant children's second-language acquisition in the homes of four Chinese immigrant families in Canada. Specifically, the study analyzes the relationships between family physical capital and family investment in second language learning, between parental human capital and levels of parental involvement, and between family social capital and access to familial and community resources. The analysis demonstrates that parental educational backgrounds, their occupational choices and chances, and their adaptation and integration into Canadian society had a significant impact on the families' accumulation and activation of family capital to support their children's second-language learning.

Introduction

Research on second-language acquisition over the past 20 years has focused mainly on linguistic and cognitive aspects of English learning in traditional school sites (Ellis, 1994; Lazaraton, 1995; Cummins, 2000). Although research in traditional school settings has yielded significant knowledge on second-language learning, it has created a misguided picture that second-language learning occurs only within the boundaries of official settings such as English-as-a-second-language classrooms. Recent research from a wide variety of disciplines suggests that language and literacy learning is deeply embedded in the social fabric of schools and homes and that school success is depen- dent upon a complex combination of home and school variables that may vary from child to child (Hull & Schultz, 2002; Li, 2006). Therefore, it is significant to explore the learning environments of minority students outside school in their specific home contexts.

* Associate Professor, Department of Teacher Education, Michigan State University, 350 Erickson Hall, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA. Email: liguo@msu.edu

ISSN 0142-5692 (print)/ISSN 1465-3346 (online)/07/030285-15 C 2007 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/01425690701252028

286 G. Li

Many quantitative studies have suggested that the home environment has a direct impact on immigrant children's academic achievement in school (Fuligni, 1997; Gettinger & Guetschow, 1998; Parcel & Dufur, 2001). However, very few studies have explored in depth how different home variables interact to influence immigrant children's second-language learning, and in what ways these variables differentiate the environments of those children who are more successful in second-language acquisition from those who are less so.

The ethnographic study summarized here aims to address this gap by exploring in depth the home environments of four Chinese immigrant families in Canada. The study describes different home literacy environments, and how different home variables shape qualitatively different language acquisition experiences of English-as- a-second-language children. More importantly, the study investigates how these home variables intersect, and how the intersection might have shaped the children's success or failure to learn a second language.

Theoretical framework

The theoretical orientation framing this study is the social theory of family capital (Coleman, 1988, 1990, 1991). Coleman maintains that the family as a dynamic entity actively transforms various forms of capital from the parent generation into educational attainment in the children's generation. In Coleman's theory, family environment includes three distinct forms of capital-physical or financial capital, human capital and social capital-which are interrelated and should be dealt with interdependently. Physical capital refers to the material resources that can be measured by family income and wealth; that is, their socioeconomic standing. Human capital is the individual's level of educational attainment that is embodied in a person's knowledge, skills and capabilities to act in certain social structures. Social capital refers to the social resources in the family and in the community that are acces- sible to the family; it is the network of social relationships that exist in the family (within-family social capital) or between the family and the community (between- family social capital) (Hao & Bonstead-Bruns, 1998). Together, the three forms of family capital-physical, human and social capital-reflect the quality of the children's home environment.

First, family physical capital is a significant factor in shaping students' academic performance. Children from a higher socioeconomic standing are often socialized into high-brow cultural activities at home, which include regular visits to theaters, concerts, museums and libraries, and/or interest in literature and art (Bourdieu, 1977; Bourdieu & Passerson, 1977). Through these cultural activities, parents estab- lish 'the intellectual climate for their children's educational aspirations, motivations to achieve, and hence, performance in schools' (Wong, 1998, p. 5) and therefore will more probably ensure their school success. Agreeing with these conclusions, Cole- man cautions that differences in physical capital are not determinants of the quality of children's family environment. It does not determine what the families can do with literacy because even families from a lower socioeconomic status can provide quality

Home environment and second-language acquisition 287

language and literacy learning environments for their children (Taylor & Dorsey- Gaines, 1988; Compton-Lilly, 2003).

Parental human capital, especially that of mothers, is an important factor that affects a home language and literacy environment (Taylor, 1995; Parcel & Dufur, 2001). Parents with little educational background may have high aspirations for their children's language and literacy achievements just as parents of higher education levels. However, their education level may restrict their involvement in language and literacy learning activities with their children at home (Purcell-Gates, 1995; Rogers, 2003; Li, 2004). Parents of different educational backgrounds have different beliefs, use different teaching strategies in child rearing, and interact in different ways with their children (McGillicuddy-DeLisi, 1982). For example, they differ in parent-child verbal interaction, including reading to the child; early experience with books; struc- tured lifestyles with rules regarding television (TV) watching and expected bedtimes; parents' reading; access to reading materials; and opportunities to read (Guthrie & Greaney, 1991; Parcel & Dufur, 2001).

The concept of social capital is also a significant indicator of quality family environ- ment. Coleman suggests that the relationships and interactions between adults and children and their social networks are valuable resources to children's learning at home. Social capital such as parents' participation in children's learning at home 'facilitates and enhances the conversion of other forms of family capital into children's human capital' (Wong, 1998, p. 4). Coleman postulates that relationships outside the family (such as the family's social networks and interactions with teachers, commu- nity members and other parents) are also significant. For many immigrant families, these social networks may be important resources to understand schooling and develop coping strategies to facilitate their children's learning in the host country (Li, 2006; Portes & MacLeod, 1996).

However, not all family capital can be transformed into children's educational attainment. Only when parents use their physical and human capital effectively as resources does it become significant to their children's educational attainment (Cole- man, 1988; Field et al., 2000). Furthermore, the activation of family capital differs in different family contexts as it depends on the value attached to the forms of capital in a particular setting, the family's process and skills to translate their capital into educational resources, and the legitimacy the institutions accord these forms of family capital (Lareau & Horvat, 1999).

In this study, I analyze how different forms of family capital played out in four Chinese immigrant families, and how they helped shape different home environments and their children's opportunities to acquire second language and literacy. As the findings will demonstrate, the three forms of family capital are intricately linked and overlapping, and at times it is difficult to disentangle them.

Methodology

This ethnographic study involved four Chinese families in two different neighbor- hoods in a university town in Western Canada. The four families included two

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academic families (the Li1 family and the Zhang family) with the fathers being graduate students in the local university, and two entrepreneurial families (The Ye family and the Liu family) who operated restaurant businesses in an inner-city neighborhood.

For an eight-month period, September 1998-April 1999, I visited the four families in their homes and/or restaurants. My visits averaged once a week per family and each visit lasted two to three hours. I conducted participant observations of the families in different settings such as the home, parks, the family restaurants, the research labo- ratories, public libraries and shopping centers, and during a variety of occasions such as family dinners, holiday celebrations, family outings and reunions. Since I am a bilingual Chinese/English researcher, I could participate fully in the family activities. Our co-ethnic background also allowed me to befriend the families and establish a good rapport with them; therefore, the influence of my presence on the families' interactions was minimized and they mostly carried on their everyday life as usual.

During these observations, I took field notes and paid special attention to the families' language environments, the parents' relationships and interactions with their children, and the families' interactions and relationships with people in the commu- nities. I also noted their cultural activities and access to resources associated with second-language and literacy acquisition. During the data collection period, I also conducted semi-structured and informal interviews with the parents. Through these interviews I gained information about their educational backgrounds and early immi- gration experiences, their language and literacy beliefs, and their perspectives on cross-cultural living. Due to the limited scope of this study, I did not conduct any research in the school sites, and collected data only in the milieu of the four families.

I used generic theorizing processes (Goetz & LeCompte, 1984) and thematic analysis procedures (Bogdan & Biklen, 1992) to construct an interpretive description and representation of the different home environments and their effects on the chil- dren's second-language acquisition. I utilized strategies such as coding and analytical categorizing to identify themes across the four families. These themes were further interpreted on the basis of the theoretical interests under-girding this research.

The four families and their children

In the Li family, both parents had bachelor's degrees in science, and were engineers in China. The father, Li-yong, came to study for a master's degree at the local univer- sity in 1997, and was joined by his wife, Nie-dong, and their five-year-old son, Yang, in 1998. The Li family initially lived on the father's graduate assistantship. Half a year later, in late 1998, Nie-dong was employed as a part-time laboratory assistant in her husband's department. At the time of the study, Yang was a grade one student and was beginning to learn English in a nearby public elementary school whose majority population were white, middle-class children.

In the Zhang family, father Zhang-bo, who was an associate professor in a Chinese university, came to study as a post-doctoral fellow at the local university in 1996, and was joined by his wife Wang-ling, a librarian, and their five-year-old daughter, Yue,

Home environment and second-language acquisition 289

in 1997. After Zhang-bo finished his post-doctoral training in 1998, and could not find a job, he enrolled in an undergraduate program in computer science. After stay- ing home for five months, Wang-ling found a sewing factory job and earned the Canadian minimum wage in order to support the family while her husband studied. Yue was a grade two student in the same school as Yang and was already fluent in spoken English and was meeting the expected performance level in all subject areas.

The Ye family immigrated to Canada with the sponsorship of their extended family in 1995. The father, Tim Ye was a salesman with a high school education, and the mother Sue was a professional soccer player with a junior high education. They worked at several Chinese restaurants as kitchen helpers for a couple of years before they operated their own restaurant business in a lower socioeconomic neighborhood. The restaurant was also their home. Their three children were born in Canada. Amy, who was almost three, was already fluent in spoken English, and would soon go to preschool; Lucy was two; and Andy was four months old.

The Liu family had been in Canada the longest. The father, Peter, who had only a grade four education in China, had been in Canada for 17 years, and the mother, Kathy, who had a grade 12 education in China, had been in Canada for 21 years. Both of them were factory workers in China before they immigrated to Canada. Simi- lar to the Ye family, both of them worked many years in different manual labor jobs such as factory workers, kitchen helpers and dishwashers before they opened their own restaurant business in the same neighborhood as the Ye family. The Liu family's house was located a few blocks away from the restaurant. The family was sharing the house with a sister and her two children, and their parents. They had four children- an eight-year-old son Daniel, who was in grade one, and three daughters, 14-year-old Erin, 15-year-old Fay, and 16-year-old Gina. Among these four children, Erin and Gina were fluent in English and were doing okay in school. Fay and Daniel were struggling with English and were in special needs programs. Fay was able to converse in English, but Daniel was unable to converse in English or Chinese. All the children attended nearby inner-city community schools whose majority population was under privileged Aboriginal people.

Findings

Physical capital, home environment and investment in second-language learning

My study concurs with Coleman's theory that physical capital is not the crucial factor that influences what the families can do with literacy; rather, it is the families' choice of investment of their physical capital that matters. The findings suggest that physical capital played out in the four families in different ways. Although none of the four pairs of parents were fluent in English, their investment in their children's learning prescribed fundamentally different second-language environments at home.

At the time of the study, the Zhang family was struggling financially. The whole family lived on Wang-ling's minimum wage from her sewing factory job. Their furniture came from garage sales, leftovers from friends and garbage dumped by other

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people in the neighborhood. Their most valuable possessions were their computer, piano and TV. However, they decided to rent a two-bedroom apartment in a base- ment so that their daughter could have a better environment to study and to practice the piano. Although they could not afford new books in English, they went to garage sales to buy English storybooks and reference books such as the Canadian Picture Dictionary for their daughter. They also made full use of the public library to provide English reading materials and children's videos for their daughter. For her drawings, they used recycled paper. Despite their tight budget, they sent their daughter to a half-hour piano lesson every week.

The Li family was in a better financial situation-they had Li-yong's graduate assis- tantship and Nie-dong's wage as a part-time laboratory assistant. They chose to live in a cheap apartment with only a bedroom and a small kitchen. They had two mattresses on the floor as their beds, a desk for studying, and a kitchen table. Their most valuable possessions included a TV, VCR, an electric keyboard for Yang to practice music, and two tall bookshelves with all kinds of books. They made use of their limited space and turned it into a 'classroom.' On their walls, there were maps for their son's interest in geography, alphabet posters, Yang's drawings and other learning materials. Like the Zhangs, the Lis also made full use of the public library and borrowed children's books, and audio and video materials for Yang so that he could learn English. But they also set aside a small budget for Yang to buy new infor- mational books from school catalogues. To cultivate Yang's interest in science, they also went to different book fairs to buy used books, magazines and journals such as Owl. They also visited local bookstores to buy workbooks in English-language arts and mathematics for Yang to practice at home. Besides these materials, their apart- ment was also full of other kinds of print materials including Chinese textbooks, the parents' textbooks and notebooks from their university studies, Bible materials, English and Chinese newspapers, and Yang's drawings. This print rich environment provided ample opportunities for Yang to interact with reading and writing (Lesman & Jong, 1998).

Financially the two entrepreneurial families were better off than the two academic families, but they made different choices of investments. In the Ye family, the chil- dren were exposed to a rich oral English environment but the parents did not make any special investment in providing different opportunities for their children's reading or writing practices. The Ye children spent most of their time in the family restaurant while the parents Tim and Sue cooked and served the customers. Amy usually played with their Aboriginal customers who spoke vernacular English (English as a Dialect); Lucy was put in a cardboard box and played by herself; and Andy stayed in a car seat all the time. The Ye children did not have any children's books, pencils, crayons or other children's reading or writing materials that were considered necessary resources for children to develop emergent literacy (Teale, 1986). Different from the two academic families, their only exposure to print was through the goods sold at the restaurant such as print on menu boards, Coke cans and cigarette packets. Since Tim and Sue were busy with their work, they never had time to take their children to the library or outside to play.

Home environment and second-language acquisition 291

The Liu family lived in a spacious home and had the best financial situation among the four families. In their home, there were five TVs and VCRs; and in their restau- rant, there were two TVs and VCRs. However, their home environment was charac- terized by a lack of print in either Chinese or English due to their choice of investment. Peter and Kathy were unsparing in terms of buying books, but they chose to buy classics rather than children's books. The Liu children had only a few children's books such as Archie's Comic Books, which were neatly stacked in their bedroom. A few years ago, they spent about Canadian$ 10,000 (Kathy worked as a dishwasher to earn the money) and bought a whole set of the world's great classics of 100 titles that included the most sophisticated readings by writers and thinkers such as Aristotle, Socrates, Shakespeare and Einstein. Since none of the children could read them, they were still in their plastic wrappers in boxes piled in their storage room in the restaurant. Besides purchasing these classics, Kathy and Peter also bought many children's videos in English so that the children could watch them after school. Since the children did not watch any regular TV programs, for years their TVs could not receive TV programs and they did not get them fixed. Similar to the Ye parents, the Liu parents never visited the local public libraries or any bookstores with their children. In sum, the Liu family invested a lot of their physical capital in their children's reading (world classics) and oral (video) materials, but their investment was not favorable in providing exposure to and engagement with age-appropriate materials and for fostering familiarity with and knowledge of written or interactive oral language (Teale, 1986).

Human capital, parental involvement and second-language learning

Although all parents had high expectations for the children's education and offered moral support for their children's learning, their human capital, especially their individual levels of educational attainment in both China and Canada, significantly influenced their ability and possibility to be actively involved in their children's second-language learning at home.

In the academic families, the parents all had at least bachelor's degrees from China. The two fathers had experienced higher education in Canada. Their educational experiences, particularly their ability to read, write and speak English, were reflected in their (especially that of the mothers') intense involvement in their children's English-language learning at home. Influenced by their schooling experiences in China, they supported their children's English learning mainly through direct instruc- tion, parent supervision and monitoring, parental modeling and moral support. In the two academic families direct instruction included using children's books as texts to learn English spelling, vocabulary, grammar and sentences. The mothers acted as teachers who dictated English texts, assigned and supervised their child in reciting the texts, and corrected the child's work. In the Zhang family, for example, Wang-ling used children's stories such as Henry Babysits and The Farmer's Wife as texts for teaching English. In the Li family, since Yang was a beginning learner, Li-yong and Nie-dong made bilingual wordlists from children's storybooks for Yang to learn

292 G. Li

English words. They also made flash cards with new English words, and had Yang hand-copy the sentences from storybooks to practice spelling and handwriting. They also let the children read and recite the stories on their own. Sometimes they took turns to read the alternate lines of a story to make reading more fun or use audiotapes from the library to guide their children in reading.

The academic parents also influenced their children's learning through high aspirations and strong moral support. Yang's parents encouraged him to study hard and set goals for himself so that he could go to Harvard Medical School when he grew up. Yue Zhang wanted to become a teacher and her parents motivated her to do well in school: 'if you don't study hard, you can't become a better teacher.'

In the two entrepreneurial families, none of the parents had more than a grade 12 education in China, and none of them had any sort of schooling experiences in Canada. In the Liu family, the father had only a grade four education while the mother had a grade 12 education in China. In the Ye family, the father had a grade 12 education while the mother had a grade nine education in China. Since their prior- ity had been on economic survival and they had been working as low-paying manual laborers, they had not had the luxury to formally go to school to learn English. The Ye parents could speak some functional English for their restaurant business, but they could not read or write English. The Liu parents could speak only a few greeting words and phrases such as 'Hi,' 'how are you' and 'good'; and could not read or write in English either. Their limited educational experiences, especially their limited English ability, affected the roles they could play in their children's English literacy learning. Although the parents were supportive of their children's education, they were unable to initiate reading and writing in English at home. Because they could not read English letters from their children's school, they did not understand their children's school performance or school activities or attend parent-teacher confer- ences. Most of the time, a bilingual customer who befriended the family was called upon when their children were in trouble in school.

Moreover, in these two families, both parents worked long hours seven days a week, and did not have time to spend with their children. In the Liu family, the children were often left unsupervised, spending most of their time watching videos at home. In the Ye family, the children were in the parents' sight in the restaurant, but they spent most of the time playing by themselves or interacting with the customers. Both families placed high hopes in schools to provide their children with a quality educa- tion. The Ye family, for example, was trying to find a school for Amy where a French immersion program was offered so that she could learn both English and French (Canada's official languages). For the Liu parents, although they could not speak English, they realized that the schools did not give English homework to their children, especially Daniel and Fay, who had the most problems with learning English. They relied on my help to arrange a meeting with Fay's teacher and demanded English be added to their daughter's life-skill learning program in which English literacy was not emphasized.

In sum, the academic parents with high levels of educational attainment were able to provide quality support for and involvement with their children through direct

Home environment and second-language acquisition 293

reinforcement of improved academic performance, or general academic guidance, setting high expectations for school performance, verbal encouragement or interac- tions regarding learning English (Keith et al., 1986). In contrast, the entrepreneurial parents were unable to activate their human capital to facilitate their children's learn- ing because of their limited English ability and their demanding job circumstances (Coleman, 1990; Lareau & Horvat, 1999). The differences in parental involvement in the four families suggest parental human capital is an important factor in shaping children's home learning experiences.

Social capital, social integration and access to second language

Coleman (1988) points out that if parental human capital is not complemented by social capital embodied in family relations, it is irrelevant to the child's educational growth. The children's home literacy environments and their parents' involvement in their language learning suggested that the four families also differed in the relation- ships and interactions between adults and children and their family social networks. Possessing or not possessing these resources had significant implications for their access to English literacy.

In the two academic families, social capital was embodied not only in the parents' sustained involvement in their children's English learning described in the previous section, but also in a variety of shared family literacy activities. These activities, as part of their daily living, often included many teachable moments that both children and parents appeared to enjoy. For example, both families shared with their children in practical reading at home including reading flyers and junk mail, and took their children with them for grocery shopping to provide exposure to print language and to promote family unity. Furthermore, the parents made an effort to watch TV shows such as six o'clock news programs, Ally McBeal or videos in Chinese and English together with their children. When watching TV, both families kept the close caption on so that the children could see the words spoken. Sometimes, they also involved their children in shared writing activities such as writing letters to grandparents in China. In both families, verbal interactions at home were encouraged. The parents set a special time everyday to talk with their children about their school experiences. In the Li family, for example, they set a 'mother-son talk' time every school night for Yang to talk about what he did at school every day. These talks greatly enhanced the Li parents' understanding of their son's school experiences and his progress in English. In these two families, the children's schooling and well-being were at the top of the families' agenda. Similar to many Chinese parents reported in research (Chao, 1996; Jiang, 1997), their every day life schedules revolved around their children's schedules and they were willing to do whatever it took to help their children succeed in learning. In the Zhang family, for example, Wang-ling took a lower-wage factory job, instead of a higher-wage waitress job, because the factory job offered regular work hours and allowed her to spend more time with her daughter.

Besides these active parent-child interactions, the two academic families also made an effort to build a social network in their communities, especially the English-speaking

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communities where they could learn more English language and culture. Although both families found it was hard to mingle with the local community, they made an effort to get to know more non-Chinese-speaking people. For the fathers, they had an academic community from the university who were mostly non-Chinese. The mothers, who were very isolated in their work, made a choice to study English on weekends with a Jehovah's Witness lady, and attended the Jehovah's Witness congress despite their religious differences. They often took their children with them to these Bible studies so that they could play with other English-speaking children. Yue Zhang, for example, found a playmate she liked from the Bible study group and was keen on going to the meetings on weekends. The families' choice to study the Bible had opened up more opportunities for them to speak and use English. Another social network for the academic families was established through their children's weekly piano lessons. Yue Zhang had been taking piano lessons for a year with an English-speaking teacher, and, through these lessons, she met other English-speaking and bilingual children. Later, Yang also started taking lessons from this teacher. The families' affiliation with the university also provided them with access to an English-language environment and opportunities to use English. During western festival seasons such as Christmas, they attended Christmas parties sponsored by the university. Yue learned how to sing Christmas songs such as Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and Silent Night from these parties. In short, these activities provided them with interactive resources through which the second language and culture were acquired (Rohl, 1994).

In the two entrepreneurial families, because the parents could not spend time with the children, the opportunity to generate social capital through parent-child interaction to facilitate learning was greatly reduced. In the Liu family, the parents only saw the children in the morning before they went to school. After school, the children often watched their favorite videos separately on different TV sets in differ- ent rooms, therefore their interactions among themselves was minimized. In the Ye family, although Tim and Sue were present with their children at all times in their restaurant, they did not have time to engage with them in any deliberate literacy activities.

The two families also had different relationships with the communities in which they resided. The Liu family had been in Canada for almost 20 years and was the least integrated into the local community. Because they lived in a neighborhood known for crime and robbery, the Liu children were never allowed to play outside with other children, and they were raised not to trust outside people. The family stayed within their kinship network and socialized only with their extended family. The children were not allowed to have any friends from the schools. The Liu family also chose to cater to Chinese customers for their business. As a result, they did not have much contact with English-speaking customers. The only non-Chinese friend they made among their customers was a Portuguese woman who grew up in Hong Kong and was able to speak Chinese. She later acted as the family's liaison with their children's schools. Because of the Liu family's lack of contact with the outside community, the possibilities to accumulate social capital that could aid their children's second- language learning were therefore severely limited.

Home environment and second-language acquisition 295

Similar to the Liu children, the Ye children had not been oriented to community resources such as libraries, parks or museums. However, the family had much more access to the English-speaking environment as they chose to cater for non-Chinese customers. Many customers hung out at the restaurant all day and the Ye parents developed good rapport with them. The Ye family, particularly Amy, interacted with these customers everyday, and were forced to learn and use functional English; and the customers were supportive and willing to teach them. For example, one of the customers taught Tim how to read classified adverts in the local newspaper to find things he wanted to buy. Their constant interaction and negotiation were invaluable resources for the Ye family's English-language learning.

Thus, the social capital generated through the families' social interactions and rela- tionships within the families and/or with the communities was directly linked with the children's access to second-language learning. This social capital was another factor that might contribute to the success of Yue Zhang's, Yang Li's and Amy Ye's language development, and the underdevelopment of the Liu children, particularly Daniel who might have a learning disability and need more support at home.

Discussion

This study suggests that different forms of family capital are significant in shaping different home environments for second-language learning. All the parents in the four families placed a high value on their children's educational success in learning a second language. Although they were similar in their educational aspirations for their children, the ways in which they fostered the children's second-language learning at home were different. From the four families' home practices I described, it is obvious that the accumulation of family physical/financial capital (material resources) is not the determinant of the quality of a family's learning environment (Coleman, 1988); rather, how the family utilizes its existing family capital and in what ways it is invested in their children's learning play a central role in constructing a positive learning envi- ronment. For the two academic families, although they were not financially well-off, they were able to make educated choices and invest in a variety of material resources that were beneficial to their children's learning. For example, they made use of public resources such as libraries to provide reading and writing materials for their children. And they were selective in purchasing books that were not only age-appropriate, but of interest to their children. Their choices provided opportunities for children to have constant contact with reading and writing. For the entrepreneurial families, for exam- ple, the Liu family, although they made much more of a financial investment in purchasing books such as the Encyclopedia Britannica, their investment was not effective in providing resources for their children's language learning because these books were not usable or useful for their children's immediate language needs. Also, besides these books, the Liu children had very little exposure or contact with English literacy outside of the home. The Ye family did not know that it was important to provide opportunities for their children to 'be doing' literacy. These findings support Coleman's theory that not all investment of family capital was beneficial to children's

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education. Only the investment that addresses children's specific developmental needs (such as active engagement with reading and writing) can be translated into success in learning.

The fact that the academic families were able to make more educated choices in their investment than the entrepreneurial parents suggests that parents' human capi- tal (i.e. their educational attainments) may have played a significant role. Research indicates that parents with higher educational levels are more aware of their chil- dren's academic development (McGillicuddy-DeLisi, 1982; Parcel & Dufur, 2001). As I have described, the academic parents who had much higher education level from both China and Canada were able to read, write and speak English, and they were also actively involved in their children's learning. Their active involvement in their children's learning may have provided insight into what their children needed to improve their learning. The entrepreneurial families who were unable to be actively involved in their children's learning were unable to gain this insight. There- fore, they made choices of investment that were not inductive to their children's learning needs.

My study suggests that parental human capital is central for the families to transfer other forms of family capital into their children's language learning. It is not economic class, but the educational and occupational (job circumstances) factors that shaped the parents' expectations for and involvement in schooling. The differences in their education and occupation status resulted in differences in parent involvement, and shaped the resources that parents had at their disposal to assist their children, and the life chances that resulted from their access to those resources. That is, the four fami- lies differed in the cultural resources they possessed and the activation and investment of the resources into cultural capital that was useful for their children's language learning (Lareau, 2000). In the two academic families, the parents possessed 'cultural capital' acquired through the Chinese education system, supported with Canadian university education and a network of graduate students, and were able to translate it into resources for their children's language learning. In the entrepreneurial families, the parents had limited exposure to formal education in both China and Canada, and were not familiar with the cultural capital of the education system in both countries. Therefore, they relied on the school to educate their children, particularly in English language, with which they had little familiarity as readers, writers or speakers.

Parental educational status was also linked to the social and cultural resources that their educational status yielded (Lareau, 2000). First, as I have described, the academic parents who had higher education levels accumulated and activated more social capital through engaging their children in a variety of within-family and within- community interactions and relationships. Second, their educational status also socialized their children into the academic world of literacy. The fathers in the two academic families pursued graduate degrees in Canada, while the two entrepreneurial families lived in a world distant from the academic world. The children of academic families were at the periphery of academic work and observed its associations; Thus, the children in the academic families were more familiar with 'the culture of literacy' (i.e. books, homework and technology of the educational institutions) in both

Home environment and second-language acquisition 297

countries than those children from entrepreneurial families. Purcell-Gates (1995) illustrates:

They already know, or acquire implicitly as they develop, the varying registers of written language with the accompanying 'ways of meaning' and 'ways of saying,' the vocabulary, the syntax, the intentionality. This makes learning the 'new' so much easier. (pp. 182-183)

On the other hand, the children in the entrepreneurial families were on the periphery of restaurant work and observed its associations and demands. They lived in a family culture that was not associated with print and academic discourses; therefore learning to read and write was not a natural but a foreign concept for them. Purcell-Gates (1995) explains that when these children go to school, they are challenged from the beginning:

to learn a code that some of them may not even have realized existed before ... Without a great deal of support and motivation, their level of literacy skill attainment is bound to be low compared with that of their peers who are natives of the more educated literate world. (p. 183)

Conclusion

Analysis of the different forms of family capital indicates that each family had a distinct second-language environment including differences in family investment in learning, levels of parental involvement, and access to familial and community resources. The families demonstrated distinct home literacy practices because of their respective sociocultural experiences in China and Canada. Factors such as the families' educational biography, their occupational choices and chances, the communities they resided in, their adaptation and integration into Canadian soci- ety, and their situational circumstances influenced how second-language literacy was acquired at home. These factors intertwined and interweaved in the families' daily literacy and living, and thus constructed uniquely different, but similarly complex, experiences in the four families. In a sense, the children's second- language learning experiences were the result of an intricate, multifaceted playing- out of all these experiences.

These findings provide significant insight in understanding immigrant children's sociocultural contexts of learning and their discursive practices that occur outside school classrooms in their homes and communities. The concept of family capital may help educators and policy-makers by turning their attention to the ways in which children are socialized into learning outside of school. Such an attention can help them make educated decisions on instructional approaches that best fit students' needs. As this study suggests, some children's home learning experiences may have complemented and extended those of the school; and for others, the literacy practices of the home were not such a good match with those of the school (Rhol, 1994). For children who did not have a good match with school learning, educators need to provide opportunities for reading and writing in the second language that may not be available at home.

298 G. Li

The study also has significant implications for immigrant families. This study suggests that parents can take different measures to ensure a more positive learning environment at home. It is necessary for immigrant parents to learn English language and literacy, an ability that enables them to make good choices for investment in their children's learning needs, participate in the social life of the host society and have access to different social resources, and, most importantly, get involved in the academic and social lives of their children. Parents also need to be directly involved in their children's learning, especially spending time with them while working on homework, supervising their TV viewing and exposing them to different literacy activities such as going to librar- ies and museums.

In concluding this paper, I want to point out that due to the limited scope of this study I did not address how the home variables interacted with school variables to affect the families' activation of family capital to support their children's language learning. Further research on the links between family capital and school cultural capital would be helpful to provide a critical understanding of the children' second- language learning outside school settings.

Note

1. All names are pseudonyms.

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