scholarly journals Slavic and East European Language Programs and Heritage Language Communities

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 11
Author(s):  
Susan Kresin
Keyword(s):  
Language Learners ◽  
Heritage Language ◽  
Heritage Language Learners ◽  
College Level ◽  
European Language ◽  
Heritage Languages ◽  
Language Programs ◽  
East European ◽  
European Heritage ◽  
Language Schools

Among Slavic and East European heritage communities, the post-1989 geopolitical situation in Central and Eastern Europe has changed both emigration patterns and core aspects of the relationship between speakers in the homeland and abroad. Many speakers have both an enhanced motivation to maintain their heritage languages and greater resources to do so. As a reflection of this increased interest in Slavic and East European heritage languages, recent years have witnessed a rise in the number and scope of community language schools, established primarily by parents who wish to ensure that their children maintain active use of their heritage languages. At the same time, many Slavic and East European language programs at the college level have increasingly come under threat, due to the combination of reduced enrollments, greater administrative focus on class sizes, and a loss of federal funding. In this paper, using Czech as the base language, I suggest that by placing a greater emphasis on connections with heritage communities, we may be able to enhance the viability of Slavic and East European programs at the college level. This potential is supported by a marked increase in research on heritage language learners over the past two decades, which provides a foundation for curricular adjustments that address the specific needs of heritage language learners.

scholarly journals Language ideologies and identities in Kurdish heritage language classrooms in London

2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 (253) ◽  
pp. 173-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Birgul Yilmaz
Keyword(s):  
Language Learners ◽  
Heritage Language ◽  
Language Ideologies ◽  
Heritage Language Learners ◽  
Phonological Features ◽  
Language Classes ◽  
Language Classrooms ◽  
Language Schools ◽  
Distinct Features ◽  
The Way

Abstract This article investigates the way that Kurdish language learners construct discourses around identity in two language schools in London. It focuses on the values that heritage language learners of Kurdish-Kurmanji attribute to the Kurmanji spoken in the Bohtan and Maraş regions of Turkey. Kurmanji is one of the varieties of Kurdish that is spoken mainly in Turkey and Syria. The article explores the way that learners perceive the language from the Bohtan region to be “good Kurmanji”, in contrast to the “bad Kurmanji” from the Maraş region. Drawing on ethnographic data collected from community-based Kurdish-Kurmanji heritage language classes for adults in South and East London, I illustrate how distinctive lexical and phonological features such as the sounds [a:] ~ [ɔ:] and [ɛ]/[æ] ~ [a:] are associated with regional (and religious) identities of the learners. I investigate how these distinct features emerge in participants’ discourses as distinctive identity markers. More specifically this article examines how language learners construct, negotiate and resist language ideologies in the classroom.

scholarly journals Assessment in Spanish heritage language programs

2020 ◽  
pp. 101-110
Author(s):  
Clara Burgo
Keyword(s):  
Language Learners ◽  
Language Proficiency ◽  
Heritage Language ◽  
Personal Narratives ◽  
Placement Test ◽  
Heritage Language Learners ◽  
Assessment Practices ◽  
Language Programs ◽  
Language Brokers ◽  
Variation Assessment

Spanish heritage language learners (HLLs) are heterogeneous in nature. Thus, how can we assess these students? Most of the literature on this has been on placement exams (Polinsky & Kagan, 2017, among others), but the focus of this article is on assessment in Spanish heritage courses. Placement test results should be indicators of what should be included in the curriculum. One of the main challenges is the lack of the following components: specific proficiency indicators for HLLs, consensus in defining key concepts, understanding dialect variation, assessment for measuring linguistic skills, and finally research on HLLs’ assessment (Malone, Kreeft Peyton, & Kim, 2014). Thus, assessment is the biggest challenge in HL education due to the dominant monolingual ideologies, so formative assessment practices are recommended to confront them by allowing HLLs to negotiate their linguistic identities via multilingual perspectives (King, Liu, & Schwedhelm, 2018). What are specific tools or activities to negotiate these? Personal narratives of US Latinos were collected by Carreira and Beeman (2014) for the sake of reflections of HLLs as language brokers. González-Davies (2004, 2018) also mentions the importance of peer-to-peer strategies for translation competence. These projects can also become group projects, like the manifestos implemented by Moreno and MacGregor-Mendoza (2019) in a course in which language, culture, and community are the goals. All these activities are examples of the kinds of assessment that may be effective in the heritage classroom and may guide their instructors. The goal of this article is to suggest activities to connect HLLs with their communities at the same time that their learning gains are assessed in terms of language proficiency.

scholarly journals Spanish Heritage Language Learners: A Review of Literature Analyzing Their Preference of the English Language

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. p56
Author(s):  
Hilda Guillen-Ramos ◽  
Tonya Huber
Keyword(s):  
Language Learners ◽  
Dual Language ◽  
Heritage Language ◽  
English Language ◽  
Heritage Language Learners ◽  
Language Programs ◽  
Transitional Bilingual ◽  
Transitional Bilingual Education ◽  
American Schools ◽  
New Research

The increased number of Spanish Heritage Language (SHL) speakers in American schools has called for the need of new research focused on SHL students, their parents, their teachers, and a profound analysis of best instructional practices for this individualized group of students. The purpose of this thorough analysis of peer-reviewed literature is to evaluate language programs for the growing SHL student population in elementary schools. A careful look into this growing population will help evaluate the educational programs provided to SHL students such as the Dual Language (DL) immersion program and the Transitional Bilingual Education program (TBE). This review addresses why students walk into an elementary classroom as an SHL and English language bilingual and subsequently become monolinguals as they progress in their elementary school years. Recognizing the factors that lead to a student’s language preference can assist parents, teachers, and the education system in developing an academic structure that will promote bilingualism and biliteracy for SHL learners.

Advanced Proficiency: A Practitioner’s Perspective on this Special Issue

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-152
Author(s):  
Maria Carreira
Keyword(s):  
Language Learners ◽  
Heritage Language ◽  
Linguistic Knowledge ◽  
Heritage Language Learners ◽  
Heritage Languages ◽  
Instruction And Curriculum ◽  
Advanced Proficiency ◽  
High Level ◽  
Heritage Language Speakers ◽  
Shed Light

The papers in this issue seek to shed light on the role that these and other factors play in the development of heritage languages and the achievement of high-level proficiency by heritage language learners (HLLs). Addressing three general areas of inquiry: (1) the linguistic knowledge and needs of advanced heritage language speakers, (2) assessment, and (3) instruction and curriculum and program design, these papers alert us to the complexity of the issues surrounding the development of advanced proficiency and orient us to key considerations in the design of effective instructional practices.

"There is no space for being German": Portraits of Willing and Reluctant Heritage Language Learners of German

2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 162-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roswita Dressler
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Heritage Language ◽  
Secondary Level ◽  
Significant Part ◽  
Heritage Language Learners ◽  
Post Secondary ◽  
Language Identity ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
German Speaking Country

Some heritage language learners (HLLs) are comfortable identifying themselves as such, while others are decidedly reluctant to adopt this term (Piño & Piño, 2000). HLLs in this paper are defined as those students having a parent or grandparent who speaks German or those who have spent a significant part of their childhood in a German-speaking country (as suggested in Beaudrie & Ducar, 2005, p. 13). This paper highlights case studies of six HLLs of German at the post-secondary level who are participants in a motivation study (Dressler, 2008). Three students are ‘willing’ HLLs. The additional three case studies are of students that I will call ‘reluctant’ HLLs of German, and this paper explores the reasons behind their reluctance and the components of self-identification, which include language identity (Block, 2007; Pierce, 1995); language expertise; affiliation and inheritance (Leung, Harris, & Rampton, 1997); cultural artifacts (Bartlett, 2007) and positioning (Block, 2007).

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