Abstract
Heritage language speakers have been recognized as a special group of language learners, whose knowledge of and experiences with the language, as well as their motivations for (re)learning their home language, differ drastically from that of an average learner of a second language. Current heritage language pedagogical approaches mainly focus on the development of communicative (or functional) abilities of the heritage learners; however, heritage speakers continue to struggle with structural accuracy and complexity of their speech and, thus, often fail to develop higher levels of proficiency in their heritage language. In this paper, we propose that focus-on-form needs to be an integral part of teaching heritage learners from the start of instruction. We base our argument on the results of extensive linguistic research on heritage Russian and on insights from the currently available pedagogically oriented classroom and laboratory-based research on heritage learners. We formulate and discuss instructional methods that help educators develop heritage learners’ attention to grammatical form and ability to recognize form-meaning mappings; foster conceptual understanding of grammar, and increase their metalinguistic awareness. Given consistent parallels across different heritage languages, the methodologies developed for Russian learners readily apply in other heritage language classrooms as well.
Highlights
At the end of the 20th century a new type of language learner appeared in foreign/second (L2) language classrooms: heritage speakers of various immigrant languages
In an attempt to answer the fully justified question raised by Carreira (2016) on when and how to implement focus-on-form activities, we suggest that language-focused instruction should be the driving force of the curriculum; and while keeping up the ultimate goal of growing heritage language learners (HLLs)’ functional ability in sight, we begin each instructional unit with a set of activities that develop (1) attention to grammatical form and ability to recognize and analyze form-meaning mappings, (2) conceptual understanding of grammar, and (3) metalinguistic awareness
The continued presence of a sizable number of HLLs in American classrooms demands that the field develops a well-articulated HL pedagogy to serve the specific needs of this group of learners
Summary
At the end of the 20th century a new type of language learner appeared in foreign/second (L2) language classrooms: heritage speakers of various immigrant languages. Russian as an HL in the United States provides a potent illustration of the way in which a new HL community has formed and developed, and how HLLs’ learning needs have been addressed in the language pedagogy field.
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