International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Vol. 5, No. 2; February 2015 263 Preserving Immigrants Native Language and Cultural Identity in Multilingual and Multicultural Societies Dr. Norma Nawaf Yousef Alzayed Assistant professor Department of English at Middle East University Faculty of Art and Science Middle East University Jordan Introduction Preserving Immigrants native Language and Cultural Identity is very important to organization today. Preserving is necessary not only to preserve function of the building, but to endure a safe environment. The problem occurs because of low quality of preserving work, lack of ethics in preserving effectiveness, ignorance to understand maintenance work, inexperienced and unskilled workers and manpower, and lack of commitment to preserve plan (Emma and Syharul 2009). This paper discussed how to preserve our native language and cultural identity in multilingual and multicultural society. Preserving student’s native language and cultural identity in multilingual and multicultural societies is constantly debated. Native language and cultural identity refer to all languages and cultures brought to the host societies by immigrants. International migration is one of the most global issues of today. More people than ever before are moving across international borders. As families and individuals settle in other countries to make a life for themselves, the question of maintaining or preserving ties and connection with the source country arises, to enable children of immigrants to establish position culture identities (Duff.2008). Preserving Student’s Native Language in Multilingual Societies We use native languages to refer to languages spoken by immigrant refugees and indigenous groups, which mean all languages in principle, but all languages other than community language in practice. Cummins (2005) refers to” native language practices are often embedded within family life, the home environment; parental influences are seen to be greater than the role of the peers in heritage language proficiency” (p.585). Given the right encouragement, immigrant families can pass on the best of both worlds to their children: a home language in addition to the host community language. One of the most important factors causing immigrant students’ native language loss in immigrant family is parents’ choice of the home languages. According to (Hinton 1998), parents’ language choice at home may increase the possibility of their children’s native language loss. In addition, Hinton revealed that younger children in the family were more likely to lose their native language because of the earlier exposure to other language from the older siblings, who learned this language in school. “Studies show that simply speaking language at home is not enough to maintain of the heritage languages. Rather, more efforts from parents as well as proper resources are required” (Kondo 1998:394). Negative consequences reported by many researches (e.g. Cummins 2001, Hinton 1998, Thomas &Cao 1999) which can be one of the biggest negative consequences of immigrant students’ native language loss, is the destruction of family relationships. Students’ native language lost because the use of the host language society dominates in the home; also the children in this family make their parents who do not know the host language less authoritative by “putting them in to a secondary position of decision making” in their school life (Thomas and Cao 1999 p.112). As a result of this, the children and parents could not communicate well due to an increasing language gap caused by children’s native language loss, the weakening of communication between generations.