The Attitudes and Strategies of EFL Parents of Public Kindergarten Children in Suburban Shanghai Toward Their Children's English Learning

HE Lifan

Shenzhen Longhua Innovation Experimental School,Shenzhen,518110,China

[Abstract] The study helps understand the attitudes and strategies of public kindergarten parents in suburban Shanghai through a questionnaire survey.The findings show that the children started early.The parents had realistic purposes and strong SES background.The children’s English performance was weakly connected with the teachers.Most of the parents were involved and they held positive expectation,but their children’s language achievement was not as satisfactory as expected.

[Keywords] parental attitudesand strategies;kindergarten children;English learning

In East Asia there is an increasing zeal among parents for their children to learn English at a young age,including in Mainland China (Jin &Cortazzi,2018).To provide a clearer picture of the background context,the researcher used questionnaires to survey the attitudes and strategies toward their Children’s English learning of the parents whose children attended a kindergarten.

The research questions of this study is what are the attitudes and strategies of EFL parents of public kindergarten children in suburban Shanghai toward their children’s English learning? The research was conducted over 90 days from 06/04/2019 to 06/07/2019.The research instruments used were a questionnaire survey.The participants in the questionnaire survey were 40 Chinese parents of children attending Form 3 of the LM Kindergarten (pseudonym) which is a public urban kindergarten in the suburban district of Songjiang in Shanghai City in China.

The questionnaire collected three sets of data: factual data,behavioral data,and attitudinal data (Dörnyei &Taguchi,2010) and six contextual factors were investigated through the questionnaire survey,including (1) the purpose of learning English and the starting age,(2) the SES background of the parents,(3) the parents’ choice of English teachers and the estimated teaching effect of these teachers,(4) parental involvement and the estimated teaching effect of these parents,(5) the estimated vocabulary size of the children and (6) the parents’ attitude towards teaching English at home by themselves.The findings are as follows.

1.Purpose of learning English and starting age

Of the 40 respondents,37 (92.5%) had involved their children in English learning by various means and they were divided into three types on the questionnaire.Only a few parents put their children’s interest or hobby (10%) as the major concern for their children’s English study.Most parents involved their child in English learning to lay a foundation for primary school or future study (38.75%),as well as for language ability improvement(40%).Of the 92.5% children who had already started learning English,78.38% of these children (37) started before or at Form 2,which corresponds with what is known in the Chinese context about the “the earlier the better rationale.”

2.SES background

This section analyses the SES background of the parents related to on the tuition they paid and the evaluation of the tuition,as well as their educational background .

Economically,tuition is considered as one potential indicator of SES (Kwok,2015).For the 32 respondents who get their children involved in English learning by hiring paid English teachers,all of them spent at least RMB 10,000 (roughly US$1449) annually for their child’s English learning.For the money spent,20 respondents thought it was expensive,11 thought it was affordable and only 1 thought it was cheap.Though a large proportion of the parents thought the tuition was expensive,they still have the economic assets to pay the tuition fees.

Culturally,educational background is considered as one potential indicator of cultural SES (Kwok &Wong,2015).82.5% of mothers and 92.5% of fathers have a bachelor's degree or above.27.5% of mothers and 37.5% of fathers have a master’s degree or above.Parents with a bachelor’s degree or above have the potential to teach their children English at home.The parents surveyed have strong educational background to potentially teach their children English.

3.Choice of English teachers and the estimated teaching effect

The majority of interviewees preferred native English teachers.Of the 37 respondents whose children learned English,31 respondents hired native English speaker as their children’s English teacher,1 hired a foreign non－native English teacher (a Singaporean)and 5 chose to teach their children by themselves or by their family members.Only a few parents chose Chinese English teachers,which reveals that the recognition of a native English teacher is high among the parents for young child English learning,and this is consistent with the literature reviewed in section 2.3.

However,the high recognition of the native English teacher did not necessarily show an optimistic correlation between the teachers and the teaching effects.When asked whether the paid courses helped improve their child's vocabulary growth,only 8 respondents picked “yes,very much”,and 27 chose “yes,but only to some extent”.It may,on the other hand,reflect that the parents,whether choosing the off－line or online paid courses,yearned more progress for their children.

4.Parental involvement and the parents' teaching effect

As for the parental participation in their children’s English learning,of the 37 respondents,24 chose the combination of English teacher and parents and only 8 chose sole use of English teacher,which may indicate that parents realized the sole use of native English teacher and the ensuing limited class time was inadequate for their children’s effective English learning,as listed in Table 1.

Table 1: Number of different types of English learning mood Type 1 Type 2 Type 3 24 9 5

For the parents’ own teaching effect,most of the respondents were not satisfied.When asked whether the parents’ own teaching helped improve their child’s vocabulary growth,three types of respondents had similar understanding.for Type 1 parents,6 respondents answered “yes,I am satisfied” and 17 picked “Yes,but I am not satisfied”,and for Type 3 parents,1 respondents answered “yes,I am satisfied” and 3 picked “Yes,but I am not satisfied”,revealing that parents did not show great confidence in their own teaching effect as well,whether as the teacher’s facilitators as in Type 1 or as the sole English teacher for their child,as in Type 3.

5.The estimated vocabulary size of the children

The vocabulary development of the 37 children who were involved in English learning did not witness a fast growth,as revealed in Table 2 below.For Type 1 (24 respondents),22 respondents estimated that their children had a small vocabulary size of no more than 300.For the Type 2 (9 respondents),a larger percentage of the respondents estimated that their children had a smaller vocabulary size of no more than 100.For the Type 3 (5 respondents),though the sample was too small,the results also did not show much difference,as no child had learned more than 300 words.This may suggest the conflicted reality between the parents’ high expectation for their children and the unsatisfactory English development of these children.

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6.Attitude towards teaching English at home by parents

Of the possible disadvantages of teaching their own children English at home,most parents,whether they chose to teach their own child at home by themselves or not,had concerns over the negative transfer of L1 as well as their English proficiency if they taught their children at home by themselves only.Table 3 shows that 23 respondents had their primary concern over the negative transfer of their pronunciation.The unsatisfactory English proficiency of the parents,and the parents’ being too busy to teach their children English are two other major factors that could possibly prevent the parents to teach the children by themselves,as shown in Table 3.

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As for the advantages of teaching their own children English at home,most parents thought the convenience and the tuition costs saved were the two major advantages of teaching their children at home by themselves,as revealed in Table 4.Interestingly,15 respondents placed their own improvement in English as the top third benefit.

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The study helps understand the attitudes and strategies of public kindergarten parents in suburban Shanghai.The techniques and strategies,as well as the linguistic content adopted are transferable to other similar contexts.The findings of this study,therefore,can be a reference for Chinese parents who are interested in immersing their children in an English－speaking home environment or teaching their own children English at home.