MAINTAINING FIRST LANGUAGE: BILINGUALS’ VOICES

Abstract

Indonesia is known as a multicultural country which has thousand different languages Most of its citizens are believed to be able to communicate by using two or morelanguages. This qualitative research, by employing case study approach, was done withthe purpose of figuring out and describing bilinguals’ voices in maintaining their firstlanguage. The discussion centered on their ways to keep their first language. Thisresearch was conducted at Jambi University and ten participants took part in this casestudy. To get the data, the researcher distributed demographic questionnaires andinterviewed the participants. Then, the researcher used within case and cross casedisplays and analysis (Miles and Huberman, 1994) to analyze the interview data. Thefindings showed that there were three major ways done by bilinguals to maintain theyfirst language, among others; 1) Doing interaction, 2) The use of ICT, and 3) The use obooks and songs