This longitudinal study examined the development of narrative micro-and macrostructure in Japanese-English bilingual returnee children. Returnees are children of immigrant families who move to a foreign country, spending a significant portion of their formative developmental years in the foreign majority language context before returning to their native language environment. The returnees did a narrative task in both their L1 (Japanese) and L2 (English) immediately upon their return to their native language environment and a year after. The results showed no aggregate significant changes in L1 or L2 micro-and macrostructure over time. However, at the individual level, the degree of maintenance of L2 microstructure was modulated by L2 exposure. That is, children who continued to receive L2 exposure better maintained their English microstructure (i.e. Type-Token Ratio and Verbs per Utterance) despite being re-immersed in the L1 environment. In terms of their Japanese, the age of return to the L1 environment and relative proficiency predicted the development of their Japanese microstructure (i.e. MLU, Fluency, Type-Token Ratio) and macrostructure. Our study is the first to track both languages of bilingual returnee children over time, revealing that different background variables affect the change in returnee children's L1 and L2 narrative abilities.

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In April 2015, a meeting of a Hong Kong Legislative Council Panel discussed the potential for using Putonghua, as opposed to Cantonese, to teach the ‘Chinese Language Subject’ within the Hong Kong curriculum. Their primary reason for making this suggestion was based on the idea that Putonghua and the Han Chinese ethnicity are somehow inherently linked – if you are Han Chinese, you should be able to speak Putonghua. This paper discusses the validity of this assertion and examines language-in-education policy related to Putonghua in Hong Kong from the late-colonial period and the contemporary period to establish whether Putonghua is used by the Hong Kong Legislative Council to encourage Hong Kong pupils to identify with a pan-Chinese ethnicity and by dint, a pan-Chinese language, Putonghua.