Second Language Maintenance Amongst Sojourner Saudi Families After Returning to Their Home Country

Abstract

This study explores the language planning efforts for English language maintenance employed by sojourning Saudi families after returning to their home country. The study concludes that the importance of English in the development of different sectors in Saudi Arabia and the advantages of bilingualism in economic, health, and cognitive aspects for children played a significant role in the families’ language planning decisions. The study showed that the mothers maintained and developed their children’s English through following planned language strategies. A focus group discussion and semi-structured interviews illustrated that the mothers used four main strategies, which are speaking English exclusively at home, watching English television shows, maintaining relationships with English native speakers, and playing online educational games in English. The findings of this research study contribute to achieving understanding of sojourner families’ L2 maintenance efforts after returning to their home countries when those are monolingual countries such as Saudi Arabia.The study close with recommendations for future research to further develop this field of research.