Moving From an L1 to an L2 Setting: Exploring Parents' Motivation for Raising Children Bilingually

This paper explores the change in parents' motivation for wanting their children to be bilingual.Derived from a larger study done between 2011-2015, the paper portrays how parents who, at thetime of data collection resided in Australia, changed motivation for communicating with theirchildren bilingually. Evolving from my personal experience and supported by data from tworesearch participants with similar experience, the paper presents an explanatory discussion onhow parents changed motivation for raising children bilingually, which is due to the change ingeographic setting.Using auto-ethnographic approach, I discuss the shifts of motivation that implicate especially inthe preferences for relative emphasis on L1 and L2, to correspond to the change in thesociolinguistic set-up due to the different settings a family has moved to. The early reason whyparents want their children to be able to communicate in two languages in the period priorgeographic movement from countries where English is a foreign language has changed after theylive in Australia. Parents had been motivated to make their children bilingual when they are inthe non-English-speaking contexts because they want their children to catch up with theglobalised world communication, while their main reason for having bilingual children after theylive in Australia is to maintain their heritage culture and language.This paper is expected to enhance the discussion in the field of bilingualism, especially aboutparents' motivation for children bilingualism, which extends the discussion in other research.

Many definitions of bilingualism have been given by many prominent theorists and can be viewed from the level of competence of the users. Definitions vary from the less demanding definition as seen in Grosjean (2010) and Weinreich's (1974) that suggest that bilingualism is the use of two languages alternately in everyday lives, through the increasingly more demanding requirement of ability as seen in Macnamara (1967), Haugen (1969), Titones (1972, in Hamers, 1981, and Thiery's (1978in Grosjean, 2010 definitions suggesting that bilinguals have certain standards of competence to possess, then to the strictly demanding ability as defined by Bloomfield (in Grosjean, 2010 andRomaine, 1995) and Hamers (1981), which is suggested to be native-like command or control of the two languages. The term bilingual in this paper means the use of two languages or more in everyday communication, without the requirement of the same proficiency in each language.
Despite the lack description on parents' motivation for their children to learn other language, the notion "motivation" has been termed by some theorists as follows. Engin (2009) describes a reason that is related to overall success and achievement. Dörnyei (2003), explains about the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, which are associated with the self-determination theory. Motivation discussed in this paper is in relation to the parental urge that parents felt to raise their children bilingually.
Discussion on parents' motivations for wanting their children to be bilinguals -which is not always common -include their beliefs in the cognitive advantages (see Rodriguez et al., 2014;Bialystok, 2009;Barac & Bialystok, 2012;Barac et al., 2014) and several other reasons (see Saunders, 1982;Saunders, 1988). Studies on parents for wanting their children to learn other languages also include an investigation by Schecter et al. (1996), which found that parents have the societal rationales comprising cultural pluralism and political issue, and personal rationales including instrumental motivation, group identity, and strengthening ties with family. There are different consideration for parents who stay in a country temporarily before returning to another country from that for parents who stay permanently in the country (Cunningham-Anderson & Anderson, 1999). Other studies have also found varying reasons for parents to raise their children in two or more languages, but there has been lack of study on the parents' shift of reasons caused by geographic relocation. This paper attempts to address this lack.
Based on a larger study, this paper aims at exploring change in bilingual parents' reasons to encourage their children to speak another language (English when they were in their home country and heritage language when they live in Australia) in addition to the language that they use for daily communication. This tendency is explored and the change of reasons that is affected by geographic relocation -which has not been much investigated -is discussed. The paper explores two research questions. First, what are parents' motivations for wanting their children to be bilingual? Second, in what way do motivations change when they move places?
The paper presents a narrative about how parents changed motivation for raising children bilingually, which is triggered by the change in geographic setting. As indicated earlier, this topic has not been much investigated; therefore, this research fills the gap in previous studies.  Statistics, 2011). By this, it is seen that all of the participants were in a context where they are surrounded by a variety of languages.

STUDY DESIGN
Positioning the researcher As the researcher, I have the experience of raising children bilingually. I also have learnt other languages since childhood. In this research I observed my own children and maintaining a journal about their language, as well as implementing strategies in parenting them bilingually. In this way, I was both a co-participant and a researcher. Thus, I do not "maintain distance from the observed events" (Denzin in Flick, 2006, p. 220). However, although it was difficult to claim objectivity as a researcher, because my "engagement is so interwoven with the intellectual and political aspects of the project" (Denzin andLincoln, 1994 in D'Cruz, 2001, p. 19), the participation of two other parents, whose data I obtained through interviews and reflective journal reports, served as a way to lessen subjectivity in this study.
I used auto-ethnography approach, which led to the situation where my experiences were reflected in the way I interpreted and analysed; in the way knowledge was constructed. "Auto/ethnography reveals concretely realized patters in one's own actions rather than the actions of others" (Roth, 2005, p. 5). I explored my own motives of why wanting my children to be bilingual in English and Indonesian, and "auto-ethnography places [my] self within social context" (Reed-Danahay, 1997, p. 9), without trying to generalize the case.

Participants
This study involved parents who raise their children bilingually from three families, including my family. The other two families are originally from Iraq and Saudi Arabia and moved to Australia either permanently or temporarily. The recruitment of the participants was done through an announcement in the university announcement board and snowballing method.
Nejma's family is from Iraq and moved to Australia due to the Iraq war. She has three sons aged eleven, seven, and four years old at the time of data collection. Two of her sons were born in Iraq and the eldest went to an Iraqi school before they moved to Australia.
Fatema's family comes from Saudi Arabia. Fatema has two sons aged nine and seven years old when data was collected. Fatema's eldest son was in primary school in Saudi Arabia before the family move to Australia, while his little brother went to school as soon as they arrived in Australia.
My family and I are from Indonesia. We -my two children and I -moved to Australia for study, and returned to our home country upon the completion of my study. My two children were twelve and six years old in the period of data collection.

Data Collection
The data from the participants were generated from a series of interview. In the larger study, each participant was asked to write a journal to record observation of their children. The journal entries can also understood as narratives of the parents viewing their experiences of practicing I kept my notes about the experience, in the form of a "diary" (Barbour, 2008) -a journal on my observations, experiences, and feelings. The journal, in the form of the personal note, was written in Melbourne. Together with the journal entries from the other two parents as the 'parent reports' (Schwartz and Moin, 2011), the journal is utilized to provide insights with regards to what the participants are experiencing between interviews carried out at various points in the course of longitudinal study (Elliot, 1997in Barbour, 2008. Diaries can be valuable in identifying issues for exploration in interviews (Barbour, 2008).
Interviews with the participants were conducted "to obtain information and understanding of issues relevant to general aims and specific questions of a research project" (Gillham, 2000, p. 2), to find out what is "in and on someone else's mind" (Patton in Merriam, 2009, p. 88) and to "enter into the other person's perspective" (Patton in Merriam, 2009, p. 88), "when we cannot observe behaviour, feelings, or how people interpret the world around them" (Merriam, 2009, p. 88). It is used as "a construction site of knowledge" (Kvale, 1996, p. 42). I did the interviews myself, because as explained in May, 2011, being an interviewer myself, I have greater degree of latitude. Besides, I need to understand the context and content of the interview, and this can only be achieved through doing the interview myself.
Starting with a more structured question, I was open to the possibility of less structured or open ended questions as the situation develops during the interview. However, as I should consider time constraints, the interview should not develop into a pure informal or unstructured interview type. Considering this, the study uses semi-structured interviews, to allow the interviewer to vary the questions as the situation demands, although there is a general set of questions and format as guidance (Lichtman, 2006). Semi-structured interview has both open and closed questions (Gilham, 2000).

PARENTS' NARRATIVES: WHY RAISING CHILDREN BILINGUALLY
Motivations for raising children bilingually vary. Parents have instrumental motivation which includes the intention to give children more open opportunity in the future for material benefits, knowledge motivation which is about cognitive benefits, to the more personally-attached anxiety reason such as language loss in the family, besides the cultural reason which denotes the heritage culture maintenance. The motivation changes, which will be discussed in this section.

My Experience Raising Children Bilingually
I am an Indonesian and I have lived in Indonesia since I was born. In 2011, I moved to Melbourne, Australia, engaging in PhD study.
Indonesia's official language is Indonesian or Bahasa Indonesia. People's first language might be Bahasa Indonesia or other ethnic languages, that broadly exist in the country, where there are more than seven hundred ethnic languages spoken in Indonesia (the Embassy of Republic of Indonesia, Washington DC, 2013). In my family, as in most families who live in Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia, Bahasa Indonesia becomes the first language. With the use of Bahasa Indonesia ________________________________________________________________ International Journal of Educational Best Practices, Vol. 1, Number 1, April 2017 in most of the aspects of life because we speak Bahasa Indonesia at home, at schools and offices, with friends and relatives, my children can be categorized as monolingual. However, they can be "receptive bilinguals" or "passive bilinguals" (Beardsmore, 1986, p. 16) in Javanese, where they understand Javanese language in the spoken form but do not speak or write it. The exposure of Javanese came from their grandparents and me.
Both of my children were exposed to English differently. My first child, a fourteen-year old girl, Reza, started to be exposed to English when she was about four years old, which was the time she went to playgroup and had English sessions twice in a week for thirty minutes. Other than that, Reza had had little exposure to English. However, Reza and I started speaking English frequently when she was in the fourth grade. My second child, an eight-year old young boy Africh was more exposed to English in terms of listening when we were in Indonesia because I spoke some English with his sister, besides the exposure from the playgroup since he was three. The school implemented English language activities every day for half an hour. However, due to his age, before we came to Australia, I had not started my intensive English communication with Africh, as I did with Reza.
When Reza and Africh came to Australia, they both spoke Bahasa Indonesia as their dominant language. Reza spoke little English as we often communicated in English when we were still in Indonesia, while Africh understood very little English. Besides that, although Africh speaks more Javanese than Reza due to the fact that he lived in a town where people speak Janavese for about four months, they both understand Javanese quite well. However, Javanese were not quite exposed when they were in Australia.
The children developed Bahasa Indonesia as their dominant language until sometime after their arrival in Australia. This language dominance of Bahasa Indonesia occurred in the adjustment period, until they got used to using English at school, which caused the dominance of English at other times with their parents and friends outside school.
In Indonesia, not only because I was an English teacher to kindergarten students in a private school in Jakarta, I always wanted my children to be able to communicate well in English since early age. My goal is that the children speak the language of the world, which is an advantage. My husband, a businessperson who does not speak English, and I believed that it is an advantage if the children speak the language of global communication. We were assured that having good command in English increase the opportunity in the global market. He experienced difficulties negotiating business prospects due to low English proficiency, and he believed that he would performed much better if he spoke English well.
When we were in Indonesia, my husband and I agreed to the following thing about speaking English to our children in our everyday conversation. I applied English communication, more intensively with Reza. I tried to communicate in English with her when there was opportunity. My daughter was struggling in finding the correct words for her sentences, but I kept encouraging her. This, I believe, became an important phase for her English language acquisition.
Then, the second phase of our experience with English and bilingualism was when we moved to Australia. Reza, who came to Australia with me four months prior to Africh's arrival, had had the foundations for English basic sentences. When we came to Australia, although she speaks 'her English,' the English that has her dialect and limited vocabulary and sometimes improper diction, ________________________________________________________________ International Journal of Educational Best Practices, Vol. 1, Number 1, April 2017 she adjusted very quickly. I trained Reza basic conversation principles and English for social function. I spoke to her in English most of the time. I also made her ordered simple food to speed up her fluency. This aims at accelerating her adjustment in the academic setting.
For Africh, both Reza and I assisted him in the best way by encouraging him to speak English all the time, especially when he speaks simple sentences. We also encouraged him to produce more complex sentences, so he would not hesitate speaking English to wider interlocutor. Within several months, both children have been fluent in speaking English and they speak English to each other. Reza's assistance in guiding her brother producing English sentences was amazing and he developed very quickly.
There are times when the children mix languages. They, more often seen from the younger one, sometimes mix Indonesian and English in the English language convention or grammar form. This has been clear with the sentence, "Mum, are we jemput-ing mbak Reza first?" The word jemput means "to pick up", so the sentence in English would be, "Mum, are we picking up mbak Reza first?" Meanwhile, switching is definitely a common practice among my children when using the languages. They change the language between sentences, when they feel like using one of the languages.
As soon as they are confident and fluent in speaking English, my children shift their dominant language into English. This is seen from the frequency of their English use in their daily communication. They have mostly left Indonesian language unspoken in their daily communication in Australia with both Australian and Indonesian people. However, they are still communicating well in Indonesian language with family members in Indonesia when they make phone calls. We visit Indonesia once a year and this is a good way of reminding them of their mother tongue, because back in Indonesia, most of our family members do not speak English. A good experience that we had was that the children did not feel reluctant nor shy for speaking Indonesian, although their Indonesian is not as fluent anymore. In the second vacation to Indonesia (during our second year in Australia), Africh had always come to me and ask how to say things in Indonesian.
Later I changed the way I communicate with my children. It was not in full English as the first time they arrived in Australia. I spoke Indonesian a lot, although they would always answer in English. My purpose of doing this was that I want them to keep exposed to Indonesian language.
Talking about the future situation when we are back in Indonesia after I finish my study, it can be assumed that I will return to my old goal, which is maintaining English within my children for global communication purpose. English will need to be maintained using strategies because, as I have described previously, our environment is a monolingual environment.
Therefore, the reasons that I have for practicing bilingual communication with my children have evolved, and assumed to be changing once again upon our return to Indonesia.

Fatema the Bilingual Mother
Fatema and her family came to Australia in 2009 when she continued her Master's Degree in one of the universities in Australia, when her sons were four and five years old. They are originally from Saudi Arabia. Now she and her husband are studying for PhD and continue living in Australia until they finish their study. As international students, Fatema and her husband will ________________________________________________________________ International Journal of Educational Best Practices, Vol. 1, Number 1, April 2017 return to their home country on the completion of their studies in Australia. In her country, Fatema is an English teacher, while her husband is a teacher of Mathematics.
She had been exposed to two languages (Arabic and English) since she was little. Her family lived in the US for several years and she had been bilingual since then. She is thankful to her parents and feels advantaged that they had given her the opportunity to live in the English-speaking country, so that she had the experiences of living with two languages and in two cultures. "So, you have this diversity of culture. … when you think in two ways, you work cognitively much more… Exercise the brain" she said. She sees bilingualism beneficial not only for the problem-solving skill, but also cognitively.
Fatema wants to share the good experience with her children; exposing the children to two languages and in two cultures, because of its advantages. She believes that the children should learn English language since the beginning, "because English is a global language." She has decided that her children should be bilinguals. "This is my choice from the beginning," she said.
Similar to the reason that my husband and I had, Fatema believes that the ability to speak in English while they were not in an English-speaking country should be nourished. This is considered highly beneficial because being able to communicate in English means better opportunity in global market. This means that children will be able to compete with the other English-speaking people for the job opportunity around the world.
Her children started schooling in Australia without any English in the beginning. However, they became able to use English after about three months of adjustment. Her sons, Ali and Muhammad, are seven and nine at the period of data collection. When the children came to Australia in 2009, they had not started school and did not speak English. Fatema enrolled her sons in kindergarten for one year in 2009. In 2010 she enrolled Muhammad, her elder son, in primary school.
Although it took them three months before her children started to communicate in English, Fatema considers that English was quite easy for the children. During the first few months, she was informed by the teachers that her sons were not listening and not responding correctly, but after the three-month adjustment period, Ali and Muhammad started to speak English confidently.
Today, as Fatema and her husband have continued speaking Arabic, the children still understand the language although they prefer to respond in English. Fatema can see that the children now think they are better able to express themselves in English than in Arabic, especially when they talk about school. Looking at this situation, Fatema considers that maintaining Arabic is crucial because "Being bilingual for me is also the benefits for culture… to keep their identity. … what I want to maintain is the culture," she said about why she wants to keep the Arabic language within her children.
Fatema always believes that bilingualism gives benefit to children, in relation with their ways of thinking. So, when the family returns to Saudi Arabia after the parents finish their study, she had planned to get her children an English teacher and enrol them in international school for the sake of the English exposure when they are back to Saudi later. "My future plan, when I finish my scholarship … the boys are going to international school. … When they go to international school, they don't only adopt the language, they adopt the culture" because she believes that there is credit ________________________________________________________________ International Journal of Educational Best Practices, Vol. 1, Number 1, April 2017 point in "the teachers, the language used, the curriculum taught, the methodology used by teachers" to make them maintain the English.
Fatema undergoes changes in her motivation to practice bilingualism with her children. Capability of speaking English as global language of communication became her main reason for wanting her children to be bilinguals. Besides that, she always believes in the cognitive benefits of being bilinguals, which strengthen her reason. During her stay in Australia, she wants to keep her children bilingual; speaking English as dominant language and Arabic as the heritage language because she wants to maintain the culture that is embedded in the language. Later when the family returns to their home country, she plans to keep the English language used by the children through sending her sons to international school. This is to maintain English and the culture that English language brings with.

Nejma, a Mother of Three Sons
Nejma and her family are originally from Iraq when the war occurred. They came to Australia in 2008 as refugees. She and her husband were English teachers in Iraq and they left everything when they decided to move to Australia. Nejma has two sons who were born in Iraq; Zain who was eleven and Ali who was eight when the data were collected. Her youngest son was three at the time of data collection and was born in Australia. The first son, Zain was 11 years old, and Ali, her second son was seven years old when the interview was conducted. Abu, Nejma's youngest child, started going to childcare when he was very young, so he is exposed to English earlier than his two brothers. He is exposed to English more than he is to Arabic, in the school days.
The first language the children spoke was Iraqi Arabic. Zain and Ali did not speak English when they came to Australia. After learning English in a language centre for six months, they went to primary school.
In Iraq, English started to be widely used after 2000. "In my country, it's very important for us to learn English, also for my kids. … My country is open to many countries, to many companies. They wanted interpreters," Nejma said in our first interview. Nejma had encouraged her children to be bilingual in Arabic and English since they were living in Iraq because she sees that being bilingual in Iraq is a benefit because English is a global language. "The situation changed in my country, … This encourage people to study English, to look at English as global language or as language of benefits," said Nejma. This has become strong motivation to make her children bilingual. Nejma and her husband exposed their children to English since they were still in Iraq, although the children did not start to speak the language before they learned it after they were in Australia. In Iraq, they implemented a strategy where the children must learn about five words every day through the daily conversation they had. As English teachers, both Nejma and her husband believe that English language ability is important for their children as a language of communication.
Although both Nejma and her husband were English teachers, they did not speak English to each other in their daily life, which in a way was unaccommodating to their wish to make their children speak English. That is why, to support their children after they arrived in Australia, Nejma and her husband spoke English; they wanted to catalyse their children in acquiring the language for better use in their daily communication. Nejma also supported her children's English learning by reading the books they brought home from school together. Now, as her children's dominant language is English, Nejma and her husband encourage their children to use Arabic at home. Her husband often reminds everyone to speak Arabic at home. The family also watches Iraqi programs in Arabic. Besides that, the children need to speak Arabic when they talk to their family in Iraq. One of Nejma's children, Zain, the oldest son, understands Arabic well, because he had one-year of schooling in Iraq before they came to Australia. Zain often helps Ali, whose proficiency in Arabic is lower.
Sometime after their arrival in Australia, Nejma and her husband spoke English to each other, then they changed into speaking Arabic more. This is to encourage their children speaking Arabic after the children shift their dominant language. Nejma considers that the children "lost their identity", which is shown from the attitude that "they don't like their country now," said Nejma in our third interview. What Nejma feels strengthen her intention to always make her children able to use Arabic, because language for her shows the identity.

DISCUSSION: CHANGE OF DEMOGRAPHIC SETTING AND THE CHANGE OF MOTIVATION
Although some parents who live in an English speaking country like Australia use English to communicate with their children, which has been usual "in immigrant families in Australia where English has in many cases become the language of the family" (Saunders, 1982, p. 27), there are parents who still maintain their heritage language. Therefore, there are many children from the immigrant families who form their bilingualism through speaking their mother tongue as a second language, as seen in my study.
There are various reasons for parents using their heritage language in the family context in the English speaking country, which somehow shift. The discussion about the shift of parents' reason for wanting their children to be bilingual comprises three stages in this study. The first is the period when the families were in their home country before moving to Australia, second is the period of transition after they moved to Australia, and third is the phase when the families live in Australia.
Talking about bilingualism and reasons for bilingual communication between parents and children, two situations are present. The first situation is present when the family is in their home country, which is a non-English speaking country, where bilingualism is formed with English as a second or foreign language, while the second is when the family live in Australia, where bilingualism is formed with their heritage language as the second language. Both situations happen in this study, where parents who previously live outside Australia want their children to be able to speak English and then want the children to speak their heritage language since they moved to Australia. They have different reasons for wanting their children speak more than one language.

First Stimulus
An "instrumental motivation" (Carreira, 2011;Engin, 2009) occurs when families live in countries where English is not their first language, or where English is a foreign language. At this stage, when the families were still in their country of origin, the trigger for parents wanting their children to be bilingual is the fact that English is a global means of communication, and parents want their children to play a global role, so they need to make sure their children are able to. Parents wanted their children to be skilled and competitive in the global job market in the future. This will enable the children to benefit economically and become the world citizen.
Cognitive benefit also becomes important motivation that the parents have. It has been said that bilingualism promotes metalinguistic awareness, cognitive development, academic achievement, and cross cultural understanding (Rodrigues et al., 2014). Literature has discussed that the ability to speak more than one language "appear to have a beneficial effect on aspects of cognitive development, cognitive control, and academic achievement" (Rodriguez et al., 2014, p. 9). Fatema's explanation about the good exercise for the brain confirmed this; a brain capability which Diamond (2010) describes as resulting in the ability to keep focused and ignoring distraction. They have special challenge involving executive function which is described as the work on the executive control system in the brain which function as general manager, to keep people focused on what is relevant (Diamond, 2006).
The will to extend good experience to their children also motivates parents for wanting their children to become bilinguals. Parents' good impression for being bilinguals because of the advantages that they get are motivated to extend the "past success" (Bernard Weiner, 1992in Dörnyei, 2003 to the children, that being bilingual is beneficial for the skill formation of ability to see things from different points of view.

Second Thoughts: A Transition
This stage is the period when a family moves to another country. In this study, families move to country where English is the first language, Australia, from countries where English is a foreign language. Bilingualism in this period is a consistent use of heritage language or mother tongue and the increasing use of English for the purpose of social and academic life.
Thus, parents need to increase the use of English with their children to encourage the children in English acquisition sooner for the above purposes, and still use the heritage language for the purpose of daily communication because the children are not fluent in English yet.

Third Situation
This particular stage occurs during further stay in Australia. After quite a while, when the children are comfortable with speaking in English, making friends at school, and can follow the lessons by the teachers well, they start speaking English for their daily communication and gradually leave their heritage language. The situation has made them fluent in English, both for social and academic functions.
Parents' reason for wanting their children not to stop speaking their heritage language falls into three factors. The first one is that they will return to their home country and go to school where most likely the heritage language is used as the media of instruction. Keeping in touch with the language is a way to keep them exposed to the language, so that the adjustment time when they go back to school in their home countries will not be too difficult. The second factor is for keeping them exposed to more than one language, which the parents always believe beneficial for children's language and cognitive development (Diamond, 2006;Bialystok, 2009).
Another reason is a cultural consideration, where bilingual children have the advantage of knowing the cultures of both languages they acquire and of being able to communicate with a wider variety of people (Rosenberg, 1996). It is also important to note that to the parents, language is closely related to identity. "Language has been noted as one of the most prominent factors in the competency of culture" (Lee, 2002, cited in Lee, 2013, p. 1576. Parents consider that speaking heritage language shows their identity and cultural background; and they believe that children should not lose their cultural identity. Children, when they start to go to school, will become unable to maintain their heritage cultural identity (Lee, 2002), because they will soon be immersed into English language and the cultural values that come with it. The participating parents' worries that their children lose their cultural identity might become the concerns of most parents who come from cultural background where English is not their first language. In this stage, English and its cultural values will be perceived by the children automatically as the consequence of living in the cultural circle, but heritage language should be maintained purposively and with strategies. So, because English is already noted as the "primary means for social integration" (Guardado, 2002, p. 343 in Lee, 2013) and so is spoken intensively, many parents strive with communicating with their children in the heritage language because they do not want their children to lose their heritage language.
Further thought about the use of heritage language and English is reflected in parents' plan when they return to their home country after their temporary stay in Australia. As some parents realize that they will return to the setting where English becomes foreign language again, they want their children to keep using English or keep having the ability to communicate in English for the same reason they had when they had not yet moved to Australia: global communication for global participation and cognitive benefits that bilingualism is good for their brain.

CONCLUSION
The diagram below describes the evolving of reasons that parents have, as has been elaborated in previous sections.
Parents' motivation to communicate bilingually with their children evolves when they move to another country with different status of English; thus, it results in the difference of the heritage language status.
Their first phase where English is a foreign language results in the instrumental motivation as well as the cognitive-based reason for speaking bilingually. The instrumental motivation involves the competitiveness of the child in the global market, where the children have more opportunities to get job around the world. The changed setting in the second phase has changed the reasons to more pragmatic reason, which is for the purpose of academic and social adjustment. The third phase denotes that the setting where English is dominant results in the will to maintain heritage language for cultural reasons as well as the cognitive benefits. The third phase also triggers thought for parents to consider what they will do to maintain English, which will become foreign language again, when they return home to their country of origin.
What is not explored from this study is whether change of motivation is also experienced by parents who do not move place. Motivation might also shift because of other reasons, to assumingly mention some are the attitude that teenage children show towards their heritage language, or future plan of the family.
Bilingualism and bilingual communication that are discussed in this paper involve English as one of the languages. However, the concept is that it will involve one dominant language and one non-dominant language, which might be both different ethnic languages that exist in one country, as it happened with many Indonesian people with their diverse ethnic languages. Therefore, the context of bilingualism is not supposed to be limited to that with English as one of the languages, because it might also happen to families with non-English first language and non-English second or foreign language.