UKRAINIAN AS A HERITAGE LANGUAGE IN SCHOOLS OF UKRAINIAN STUDIES ABROAD

Abstract

For a long time, we, the Ukrainian Americans, were hesitant about what instructional methods to use while working with our kids in the Saturday or Sunday Ukrainian school abroad, since we simply couldn’t classify our students by their linguistic abilities. The majority of children that attend Ukrainian schools are not native speakers of Ukrainian since the mainstream language that they use in society is English. They are also not foreigners who learn the language from scratch since they hear and speak Ukrainian at home with their families. Moreover, we cannot disregard their Ukrainian origin and roots, which “deny” teaching Ukrainian as a foreign language. The translation of the term “heritage language” was introduced by Prof. Oksana Turkevych at one of the language conferences. This term is not unique as we can see different scholars use different definitions, such as home language, ancestral language, or immigrant language [2:1]. Heritage languages in the USA have been studied since the 1990s. Unfortunately, the Ukrainian language is not part of this research, however, the Ukrainian-American community is largely presented. With this being said, this article aims to introduce the research and experience of our colleagues working on heritage languages in the USA. I also want to explain the difference between native, foreign, and heritage language learning; share our school experience of teaching Ukrainian heritage language students in order to not only improve the quality of teaching but also to enable the Ukrainian language to become one of the languages that are being taught and researched in the USA and the world. Key words: Ukrainian as a heritage language, Ukrainian as a foreign language, Ukrainian as a native language, methodology of teaching Ukrainian as a heritage language, authentic materials, sociocultural situation, sociocultural materials, sequential and parallel bilingualism.