• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.18 no.11
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• pp.188-204
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• 2018

This study examined how early maternal language use was associated with school readiness at kindergarten entry among children of Asian or Hispanic immigrant mothers in the United States. Using a nationally representative sample from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (ECLS-B; $N{\approx}1,500$), this study estimates multivariate regression models to address each research question. This study finds generally advantages of maternal use of English and bilingualism for children's expressive language in both Asian and Hispanic groups and for children's pro-social behavior in the Asian group. It also finds that longer residency in the U.S. is associated with higher levels of approaches to learning for children of bilingual Asian mothers and lower levels of behavior problems for children of bilingual Hispanic mothers. Based on the findings, social work implications for the healthy development of young children of immigrants were discussed.