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Information Sciences Letters

Information Sciences Letters

Abstract

This study explored language ideology, language practice, and language management of ten Saudi Arabian families staying for a short period of time in the UK for a parent’s graduate education. It also explored the challenges these families encountered during their stay. Exploring FLPs of such sojourning families can contribute to the literature as most of the previous research focused on permanent immigrants FLPs. The analysis of in-depth semi-structured interviews with ten parents revealed that the prospect of returning to their home country had an impact on their FLPs. The findings indicated that parents believed strongly in the necessity of maintaining Arabic language of their children for educational, religious, and cultural reasons. In practice, Arabic was found to be the dominant language of oral communication within family domain; however, parents’ desire to develop their children’s literacy in Arabic was not achieved as very limited efforts were made to do so. Therefore, parents expressed their frustration with their children’s Arabic literacy and regretted not giving sufficient attention to Arabic literacy development. In terms of English language development, the majority of parents showed a strong interest in raising their children bilingually and developing their English during their stay in the UK. Finally, the findings demonstrated that most of the challenges these families encountered were related to the difficulty of developing their children’s literacy in Arabic.

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