Promoting biculturalism and biliteracy for Vietnamese American children through cultural performing arts

Under the theoretical underpinnings of language socialization and continua of biliteracy, this ethnographic case study documents how cultural performing arts, as part of extracurricular activities, promote bicultural identity and biliteracy development among Vietnamese American children. The study was set in two transnational contexts: a community-based Vietnamese heritage language school and a Vietnamese dual-language two-way immersion program, both located in a southwestern U.S. city. Data was drawn from observation field notes, interviews, teachers’ testimony, and visual records. Findings show cultural events created by and for Vietnamese Americans create affordances for dialogic teaching on culture, language play, and cultural identity formation through collaborative efforts between home, school, and community. This paper implies a need for (1) purposeful integration of cultural events held by transnational communities into school curricula and (2) an in-depth focus on the sociocultural aspects of language programs, especially among the less-commonly-taught-language groups.