Acculturation, perceived discrimination, academic identity, gender and Chinese language learning among ethnic minority adolescents: A structural equation modeling analysis

Parents, teachers and policy makers are concerned about how immigrant students acquire the mainstream language and achieve academic success. Therefore, researchers face an urgent need to examine the broader ecological factors that influence immigrant students’ academic identity construction and mainstream language learning. This study investigates the nexus of acculturation, gender, identity and Chinese language learning among 881 South Asian immigrant adolescents in Hong Kong. The results indicate that students with stronger academic identity report superior Chinese reading and writing, and the results show that among ethnic minorities, girls reported higher level of Chinese reading and writing than boys. Paradoxically perhaps, students who perceived greater discrimination didn’t show significantly different academic identity from other students and reported higher proficiency in reading and writing Chinese. This implies the necessity of providing more school and social support to these students. The study also shows that students with greater assimilation have weaker academic identity and hence report poorer Chinese reading and writing. The negative link between assimilation and mainstream language learning suggests the importance of maintaining the heritage identity and sense of belonging to heritage culture for enhancing the ethnic minority students’ mainstream language learning. This result informs policy makers developing suitable immigration policy. Copyright © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.