Academic literature on the topic 'English language Hmong American teenagers'

This article investigates quotative use in American English in apparent and real time. The use of quotative be like, go and say in a corpus of conversation in American English dating 2004 / 2005 is compared with use in a similar corpus dating 1995 / 1996 (Barbieri 2007). Findings show that in present-day American English be like is the favorite choice for all speakers below age 40, and is extremely popular among young teenagers. The real time comparison reveals that speakers who in the mid-1990s were in their teens to mid-20s have not only maintained, but considerably increased use of be like over time; women aged 27–40 have also maintained use of be like over time. Such findings provide evidence of generational change, as well as of “lifespan change” (Sankoff 2005). Overall, the present findings indicate that be like is a true case of change in progress — a change still led by women; however they do not point to one particular type of change, suggesting that generational and communal change may operate simultaneously in the advancement of change.

Language minority students, many of whom come from low socioeconomic backgrounds, confront multiple obstacles to academic success and advancement. Yet the intersection between language minority students’ K-12 experiences and their potential to obtain higher education remains understudied. This paper examines how a set of institutional processes and practices— state-mandated classification, testing, and tracking—operates to systematically limit language minority students’ access to college-preparatory curricula. Using data from interviews, this study investigates Hmong American high school and college students’ experiences in English language development and mainstream academic tracks, as well as their perceptions regarding access to college preparatory courses. The evidence suggests that students tracked in English Language Development curricula not only have limited access to key resources, such as college preparatory courses, but also hold lower aspirations about college, compared to those who are in college preparatory tracks. The limitations of this study and implications for future research are discussed.

Simultaneously theoretical and data-rich, this volume explores ways in which ethnic minorities grapple with conflicts related to the literacy practices of their home culture as well as those practices demanded by the dominant culture. Truly multicultural in nature, the book offers in-depth glimpses into a variety of teaching and learning contexts: how young Gujarati teenagers in England learn Gujarati (chapter 3), how Hmong parents wish their children to retain fluency in Khmer while also insisting that they attend “English only” schools (chapter 4), how Finns in Sweden and Karelias in Russia grapple with the literacy demands of the majority culture (chapter 1), how “usefulness” becomes the most crucial variable in determining the language of schooling in bi- and multilingual contexts (chapter 2), and how Vietnamese people wrestle with learning their mother tongue in Norway (chapter 8).

While the perception of Polish-accented English by native-speakers has been studied extensively (e.g Gonet & Pietroń 2004, Scheuer 2003, Szpyra-Kozłowska 2005, in press), an opposite phenomenon, i.e. the perception of English-accented Polish by Poles has not, to our knowledge, been examined so far despite a growing number of Polish-speaking foreigners, including various celebrities, who appear in the Polish media and whose accents are often commented on and even parodied.
 In this paper we offer a report on a pilot study in which 60 Polish teenagers, all secondary school learners (aged 15-16) listened to and assessed several samples of foreign-accented Polish in a series of scalar judgement and open question tasks meant to examine Poles’ attitudes to English accent(s) in their native language.
 More specifically, we aimed at finding answers to the following research questions:
 • How accurately can Polish listeners identify foreign accents in Polish?
 • How is English-accented Polish, when compared to Polish spoken with a Russian, Spanish, French, Italian, German and Chinese accent, evaluated by Polish listeners in terms of the samples’ degree of:
 (a) comprehensibility
 (b) foreign accentedness
 (c) pleasantness?
 • What phonetic and phonological features, both segmental and prosodic, are perceived by Polish listeners as characteristic of English-accented Polish?
 • Can Polish listeners identify different English accents (American, English English and Scottish) in English-accented Polish?
 • Does familiarity with a specific foreign language facilitate the recognition and identification of that accent in foreign-accented Polish?

AbstractIntroductionTo anglicise an American – that is, English language – disease-specific health-related quality of life measure, using the Paediatric Cardiac Quality of Life Inventory, for children in the age group of 8–12 years and adolescents in the age group of 13–18 years with cardiac disease, and to assess conceptual equivalence of the American and British versions.MethodsA process of forward and backward translation of the measure was undertaken before focus groups and individual interviews with 40 participants – that is, 20 children/adolescents with cardiac disease and 20 parents of children/adolescents with cardiac disease – to determine their understanding of the meaning of the questions.ResultsInterviews established that participants understood the meaning of the questions, although some found it difficult to explain the meaning of questions in which the language was explicit and wanted instead to answer the individual questions as they applied to them/their child. There was agreement that all versions of the questionnaire were relevant and comprehensive, and that the length of the questionnaires was acceptable and practical.ConclusionsThe anglicised version of the Paediatric Cardiac Quality of Life Inventory appears to be a linguistically valid measure of health-related quality of life for children and adolescents with cardiac disease. The psychometric properties of the anglicised Paediatric Cardiac Quality of Life Inventory are now being tested in a multi-centre study in the United Kingdom.

Introduction Thalassemias are common inherited hematologic disorders worldwide, and with increasing migration, its prevalence evolves in different countries. However, community prevalence across most of the United States is unknown. Minnesota, particularly Minneapolis/St. Paul, has a relatively large community of immigrant families, with focal ethnic clusters of Karen and Hmong individuals from Southeast Asia, Liberia, and neighboring countries in Western Sub-Saharan Africa. Statewide data show that these ethnic minority populations have grown in the past decade; it is unknown whether thalassemia prevalence mirrors these migration trends. This report aims to quantify the demography and disease characteristics of children with thalassemia mutations seen at University of Minnesota/M Health Fairview (MHF) diagnosed between January 1, 2010 and December 31, 2019. Methods An institutional review board-approved electronic medical record (EMR) review was undertaken. Patients born on or after January 1, 2001 were included if they received medical care within the MHF system and thalassemia status could be confirmed. The prevalence by thalassemia type, demography, language, treatment details, and specialist involvement were detailed. A patient's ethnicity determination was defaulted to "American" if the ethnicity and/or immigration country of origin going back at least two generations could not be confirmed via EMR. The trends of new diagnoses over the decade were reviewed and compared to available state demography data trends. Descriptive statistical analyses were performed for the full group and by thalassemia type. Results A total of 404 patients met inclusion criteria, representing 48 country or region-specific ethnicities, 17 known countries of birth, and 30 separate languages. The most prevalent immigrant ethnicities were Karen (15%), Hmong (10%), and Vietnamese (5%), representing the 14th, 2nd, and 6th-largest immigrant communities in the state, respectively (www.mncompass.org). In Minnesota, the Asian population grew by 32% (69,800 people) between 2010-2018 (Minnesota State Demographic Center, https://mn.gov/admin/demography/data-by-topic/age-race-ethnicity/). The overall number of thalassemia diagnoses also increased over the decade, with Karen patients representing the largest proportional increase over the available time frame (Figure 1). Including both trait and disease, alpha thalassemias were more frequently diagnosed than beta thalassemias (63% versus 37%). Of the alpha thalassemias, 79% were suspected or confirmed 1-2 gene deletions based on newborn screening. Eleven (2.7%) had hemoglobin (Hb) H disease and 2 (0.5%) had alpha thalassemia major. Beta thalassemia intermedia, beta thalassemia major, and HbE were collectively 5.4% of all patients, 59% of whom were transfusion-dependent. Genetic confirmation was performed for 10.4% of all thalassemias. Those with alpha thalassemias were more ethnically diverse. Aside from those categorized as "American", those with beta thalassemias were more likely to be Karen (25%), while those with alpha thalassemias were most likely to be Hmong (14.4%). Seven had chelation prescribed during the time frame and 5 underwent bone marrow transplant. Only 16% were seen by a hematologist in the MHF system, though the yearly trends of hematology care did not match the increased diagnostic rate (Figure 2). Conclusions The incidence of pediatric thalassemia diagnoses have increased over the past decade at MHF, somewhat reflecting the statewide demographic trends. However, most patients are never being seen by hematology. A caveat to the data described is the fact that MHF is 1 of 2 pediatric hospitals locally, with the other having the historically larger thalassemia patient population. Thus, while these data offer crucial insights into the potential frequency of thalassemia mutations in our state, they also are likely to significantly under-represent the local prevalence. Also, the data do not reflect the prevalence in youths diagnosed prior to 2010 or the adult prevalence, for which institutional investigations are currently ongoing. These data illuminate the need to ensure adequate educational resources and financial support for these primarily non-English-speaking communities to improve awareness for families and medical providers and offset substantial medical costs for life-saving therapies. Disclosures No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.

The research features syntactic structure in the twentieth century "The Catcher in the Rye" by J. D. Salinger and the twenty first century "Fates and Furies" by L. Groff. The research objective was to study the nature of syntactic relations expressed by word order in speech of narrators and characters. The paper outlines the rules of word order in the English sentence and reviews related studies in the field of syntax. The author analyzed the syntactic structure of sentences in the speech of narrators and characters in the two novels. The analysis was based on the descriptive method and techniques of observation, interpretation, comparison, and generalization. There were numerous examples of omission of auxiliary verbs in interrogative sentences in characters' speech, as well as interrogative sentences with affirmative structure. In "The Catcher in the Rye", affirmative sentences obecame interrogative with the help of interjections eh and ah. Both novels contained sentences where adverbial modifiers, objects, or attributes preceded the main parts – in the narrators' speech. A lot of one-member and contextually incomplete sentences were used to describe events and personages in both novels. In "The Catcher in the Rye", the narrator's speech revealed few cases of violations of word order rules, mostly in sentences with direct word order. The characters' speech appeared to contain much more cases of word order violations, since the novel features colloquial speech of twentieth century American teenagers. The speech of adult personages was characterized by correct word order. In "Fates and Furies", the narrator's speech demonstrated a significant number of elliptical sentences where auxiliary verb to be was omitted in simple verbal predicate with the verb in Present Continuous, as well as in compound nominal predicate and in passive voice. A comparative study of syntactic structure contributed to a deeper understanding of the nature of syntactic relations reflected by word order in the English sentence, grammatical structure of the English language, and popular types of sentences. In addition, the study showed the way native speakers express their ideas and thoughts by linguistic means and violate linguistic norms. The results can be used in various grammar courses and compiling textbooks.

AbstractThis paper analyzes metalinguistic comments of two young Hmong Americans in the Minneapolis-St Paul area regarding their identity negotiation using tactics of intersubjectivity (Bucholtz & Hall 2004a, 2004b, 2005), the notion of brought-along identity (Williams 2008) and Zhang's (2017) sociohistorical perspectives in analyzing linguistic variation. Two Hmong American individuals were selected from over 60 Hmong American interviewees because their vowel production is nearly identical to each other and that of the local white youth. Although their almost identical vowel production is viewed as their acculturation to the local white majority norm in the first- and second-wave variationist sociolinguistic perspective (Eckert 2012), their speech's characterization reveals a range of potential meanings (Eckert 2008) to index nuanced and unique positions in their local community. The young woman is ambivalent about her speech being characterized as “not having an accent” and claims that she is “not a white girl”. The teenage boy discusses his speech as “Hmonglish” and “English with slang” but carefully distances himself from quintessential African American English. While their characterization of their speech is distinct from each other, their tactics are strikingly similar. Through highlighting and downplaying differences and similarities to a locally salient way of speaking that indexes whiteness or blackness, the two Hmong Americans carve out their own complex identities of race, ethnicity, gender, and class in a local setting.

Introduction: Adolescents health care brokers interpret for family and community members lacking English language proficiency in health care settings. The purpose of this study was to explore personal experiences of Burmese and Bhutanese teenagers who served as health care brokers in resettled refugee families in Northeast Ohio. Method: A mixed methods design using photovoice guided this study. Participants completed the Adolescent Language Brokering Survey, took photos, wrote in journals, and attended focus groups. Results: Eight Burmese and Bhutanese teenagers participated. Three themes became apparent: health care brokering within sociocultural contexts, mediation during health care encounters, and representations of childhood. Discussion: The adolescents were proud to be health care brokers yet found it disrupted their lives because they were living in both their traditional culture and the American culture. Photovoice empowered them through dissemination of findings during a photo exposition, community meeting, and health literacy class. Health care professionals must recognize benefits and prohibitions when working with adolescent health care brokers.

AbstractThe language that young people use in technologically mediated interactions has been sensationally exoticized by the mass media, constructed as a distinct form of communication barely comprehensible to adults, and presented as a threat to standard English, as well as to human relationships and the social order. The question of young people’s actual role in linguistic and social change is one that runs through much of the existing research on the subject, but also one that remains limited to adult perspectives. In the present study, I aim to address this gap by investigating young people’s own metalanguage in a genre where traditionally such metalinguistic awareness would be little expected – in teenage personal blogs. The material used is composed of 32 personal blogs written by American teenagers in the period between 2010 and 2013, collected from a popular dating website, Mylol.net. The teenage bloggers are shown to frequently orient to their peers’ Internet language and to norms of orthography, perpetuating many aspects of standard-language ideology and linking them with adolescent concerns. I wish to use these examples in order to draw attention to the diversity of teenagers’ attitudes to language and technologically mediated communication, which works to challenge particular dominant assumptions. More broadly, I will argue that a full understanding of young people’s online practices and their potential impact on language and communication crucially requires more nuanced attention to youth voices and youth agency.

Daily journal entries completed by ten first grade bilingual Hmong children were collected and studied. The Hmong children were of interest because their cultural back ound involves the use of oral traditions, and a newly developed written language system. This study investigated the ability of the Hmong children to use the English written language to document their thoughts and feelings through daily journal writing. One hundred journal entries for each of the ten students were considered in this study. Children completed their daily journal independently, and freely selected the topic of their journal. Writing samples were categorized in various stages of writing as described by many child development experts. The stages include: 1) pre-communicative, 2) semiphonetic, 3) phonetic, 4) transitional, and 5) correct stage of writing. Three other stages were added to account for all journal entries. They include: 1) non-writing, 2) copying, and 3) application. The degree to which invented spelling occurred in the journal entries was investigated. Results indicated that the Hmong children were able to document their ideas through writing in English. The Hmong children experienced all of the stages of writing except the correct stage. Although invented spelling was evident in the journal entries, no more than twenty-six percent of the words were invented. Thus, a conclusion of this study is that this sample of Hmong children had the ability and interest in spelling words correctly, either through copying or memorization. Daily journal writing was an activity in which the Hmong children had the opportunity to express themselves freely through written language, and it provided the teacher insights into the English writing development of the first grade Hmong children.