Motivational strategies in Chinese mother tongue teaching for simultaneous bilinguals

Sammanfattning: Given the perception that it lacks differentiated study for distinct linguistic varieties under the general discussion of mother tongue tuition, this study is devoted to the Chinese mother tongue education in Sweden. It aims to better understand the motivational issues in the Chinese mother tongue learning for Swedish-Chinese simultaneous bilinguals from the teachers’ perspective. Interview was chosen as the primary fieldwork method to solicit teachers’ understanding and experience on the subject. It is found out that the teachers experience motivation of target students as a multifaceted issue and their strategies stretch over a wide spectrum. The collected empirics are analyzed with the help of linguistic theories of the Chinese language and bilingualism, as well as motivational theories in language learning. It is concluded that the family plays a vital role in the development of bilingualism and that the multiplicity and the morphographic nature of the Chinese language impose extra challenge on Chinese mother tongue teachers and Swedish-Chinese simultaneous bilinguals, at the same time the current general curriculum for mother tongue teaching fails to provide sufficient and relevant guidance to Chinese mother tongue teaching.