The term heritage language (HL), which only emerged in the context of language policy during the 1990’s, refers to immigrant, refugee, and indigenous languages whose target group of learners have either previously learned the language as a first language (L1) or home language, or have some form of heritage connection to the language (Cummins, 2005). The bilingual nature of these individuals is ambiguous, as variables related to literacy and oral proficiency in the first language are significantly influenced by geographical, cultural, academic, and sociolinguistic factors prevalent to the context in which the speaker is situated. The topic of HL is the subject of a growing number of studies in second language acquisition as well as bilingual education. Given that an increasing number of immigrants from around the world continue to make the United States their place of permanent residence, the country’s educational focus needs to take into account the needs of heritage language learners (HLL), especially as that focus shifts from the exclusive teaching of foreign languages to incorporating the maintenance and linguistic competence of our multilingual inhabitants. / text

This study highlights the complexities associated with learning a heritage language (HL) abroad, specifically with regard to identity, expectations, and beliefs about language and language learning, by examining the ways that HL learners talk about themselves. These are important topics to study because perceptions of language learning have been shown to influence language acquisition in the study abroad context (Wilkinson, 1998). In addition, study abroad programs are becoming more popular and so are attempts to design language courses to meet the unique needs of HL learners. The study explores the experiences of 17 HL learners who chose to study abroad in 2007 or 2008 to improve their HL proficiency. These HL learners had at least a basic ability to comprehend and communicate in the language that their parents or grandparents speak natively, and were themselves dominant in English. The participants included 5 males and 12 females who went abroad to 14 different countries to study Spanish (7), Hebrew (1), Tigrinya (1), French (1), German (1), Korean (1), Cantonese (1), or Mandarin (4). Data collected include 17 hours of interviews both before and after the sojourns, 34 email reflections written while abroad, blog entries, and a focus group. Data were analyzed using discursive psychology, which views discourse as being variable, co-constructed, purposeful, and context-dependent. By analyzing the data to find the interpretive repertoires, ideological dilemmas, and subject positions used (Reynolds & Wetherell, 2003; Edley, 2001), a deeper understanding of studying abroad as a HL learner was attained. Findings include that the participants lack interpretive repertoires to discuss their HL and being a HL learner, used their HL as a resource to access other learning opportunities while abroad, encountered difficulties fully immersing themselves in the HL while abroad, received insufficient pre-departure support from the study abroad offices, and had backgrounds and HL learning experiences that varied considerably. The study's findings have implications for what topics to cover in classes and study abroad advising sessions that may help HL learners make decisions about where to study abroad, as well as help students process the experiences they have learning their HL and studying abroad. / text

The use of a heritage language (HL) at home has been seen as one of the most influential factors in determining its maintenance and is highly shaped by the attitudes parents have towards their language. These parental attitudes thus play a significant role in children's HL socialisation, particularly in environments in which the HL is in competition with multiple minority and/or majority languages, as is the case in many areas of Canada with the two Official Languages (OLs), French and English. In such environments, HL maintenance is not only influenced by the parental attitudes towards the HL itself, but also towards the OLs. Parental attitudes, the language(s) of schooling and overall exposure to each language all play a role in determining if the child will grow up to be monolingual, bilingual, or multilingual. This exploratory study aimed to identify the attitudes of Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking parents towards maintaining these HLs in Canada and their children’s language development in their HLs alongside French and English. It also aimed to explore how these attitudes influence their practices with respect to their children’s language socialisation, specifically their family language practices and the language(s) of schooling in which they choose to enrol their children, adding to this area of study that currently lacks descriptive research. Both the qualitative and quantitative results showed that the 315 parent participants generally had positive or very positive attitudes towards their HL and its maintenance in Canada, showing a high desire for their children to develop bilingually or multilingually in their HL and one or both of the OLs. These attitudes supported the family use patterns, with many parents reporting a high use of their HL at home, including those in linguistically intermarried families. Their positive attitudes towards both OLs and a generally high desire for bilingual or multilingual education were supported by the choices they made, when possible, in the language(s) of education of their children. The lack of quality and/or accessible options was noted by many and shows a growing need for more educational offerings in these two HLs. The results may be used in determining best practices for the transmission and maintenance of Spanish and Portuguese in a linguistically-diverse Canada.

This dissertation features a three-month qualitative descriptive case study that examined the home literacy practices employed in maintaining a heritage language by a Chinese immigrant family living in a mid-sized city in western Canada. Influenced by Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory, as well as the foundational concepts of d/Discourse, diglossia, and accommodation without assimilation, the research questions guiding the study were: (1) What activities do Chinese parents use in the home to maintain and develop their children’s Mandarin home language? (2) How do children respond to these activities? and (3) What beliefs and attitudes do the parents and children hold in relation to heritage language maintenance (HLM)? Most of the literature on HLM has focused primarily on post-secondary learners, children in metropolitan areas, or heritage language schools and communities, whereas this research was an in-depth examination of home literacy environment provided by immigrant parents to support their children’s heritage language, with limited community resources. Data were collected through home observations, video recordings selected by and submitted by the parents of their heritage language (HL) activities, semi-structured interviews of individual members of the family, and children’s work samples. Data were inductively analyzed using NVivo 10 software. Four themes emerged from the study: (a) parents’ intentional provision of a rich and robust home literacy environment; (b) a range of children’s responses to Chinese and English literacy activities in the home; and (c) parents’ broad perspectives on children’s language and literacy learning; (d) parents’ expectations and attitudes towards learning Chinese. The research showed that the parents drew on learning practices from both Western and Eastern traditions. One powerful activity that the family used was an extended read-aloud practice in which the mother made innovative use of the same texts/resources in different languages, along with exploratory talk that engaged the children. Various homework practices elicited a mixture of responses, ranging from enthusiastic involvement to mild engagement to frustration. The practices were related to the parents’ beliefs about how language learning occurs. The finding also indicated that the parents faced significant challenges in supporting their children’s HLM in a diglossic society, which offered few opportunities to use Chinese at a high cognitive level. / Graduate

Denna systematiska litteraturstudie behandlar ämnet modersmål eller som det också kallas heritage language. Syftet är att med hjälp av diverse vetenskapliga artiklar komma fram till vilken roll språket spelar i en individs utveckling. Detta anses vara viktigt då man i lärarutbildningen ofta lyfter fram den enskilda individen i ett klassrum och det är då viktigt att skapa en förståelse för de ungdomar i dagens Sverige som har ett annat heritage langauge än just svenskan. Artiklarna visar att de ungdomar som fått lära sig sitt heritage language känner en koppling till sin kultur medan de som inte har fått möjlighet till det känner att de saknar något. Genom sådana resultat har man därför kunnat komma fram till att inte bara finns det en stark koppling mellan ens språk, kultur och identitet men att den också är mycket viktig.

This study addresses how bilingual students and instructors construct and negotiate discourses about language and language-related social positions through different kinds language use in and outside the heritage language (HL) classroom. The project focuses on one group of students who took an entry-level Spanish HL course in 2010. Data include ethnographic observations and video recordings of class sessions throughout the semester, filmed interviews with the students and the instructor, observations and recordings of students’ language use in social contexts outside of class, course materials, and writings produced by the students for the class. The study takes the perspective that identities and ideologies are dynamic and embodied within the repeated, purposeful types of interaction in which people engage in their daily lives, and can be constructed, contested and negotiated using a variety of meaning-making resources (Bucholtz and Hall 2004b, Young 2009). The analysis takes an ethnographic approach (Blommaert 2005) and draws from the linguistic anthropological notion of language ideologies (Kroskrity 2004), a sociolinguistic approach to stance (Jaffe 2009b), and narrative analysis (De Fina 2003). The study data show that when orienting toward the pedagogical objective of acquiring grammar and vocabulary, the students and the instructor represent institutional ideologies, such as the notion of a superior ‘standard’ variety of Spanish, and construct relations of authority with respect to these discourses through resources such as repair and epistemic stance. The instructor displays a complex set of stances in the classroom, mediating between an authoritative role associated with her institutional position on the one hand and a stance of alignment with the students on the other. Reflecting the instructors’ stancetaking, the students negotiate their orientation to the institutional context on a moment-to-moment basis in classroom interaction. They ascribe expert and novice roles to each other through resources such as repair, but they do not always claim the roles ascribed to them by their co-participants. Although the expert/novice stances displayed by the students reflect an ideal monolingual identity ascribed by the instructor and an over-simplified view of language characteristic of traditional language instruction, the students challenge these institutional discourses through linguistic performance and the reframing of other voices. In other moments of interaction, the students and the instructor orient toward the goal of alignment, reflecting discursive practices from outside of the classroom, and institutional ideologies appear to be less relevant. When interacting with Spanish-speaking family members and co-workers outside of the classroom, the students use language in creative ways to construct identities that conflict with the monolingual identity ascribed within the institution. However, while they demonstrate competence in constructing these identities in contexts that are familiar to them, some students express concerns about how others will perceive them when they use language in less familiar contexts. Many of the students view the HL courses as an important stepping-stone toward full participation in Spanish-speaking communities outside of their hometowns and immediate families. The conclusions discuss a disconnect between pedagogical practices and the discursive practices in which the students participate in their daily lives and hope to participate in the future, and end with a proposal for HL teaching that addresses these differences. / text

This study explored the contexts that immigrant Taiwanese mothers provided for their American born children concerning heritage language learning. Five immigrant Taiwanese mothers in central Texas participated in this study. To collect data, a qualitative approach was used including in-depth interviews, follow up interviews, supplemental interviews with other family members, and observations of the mothers and their children in different environments. The data was analyzed to answer two research questions: (1) What meanings do immigrant Taiwanese mothers attribute to their American-born children's heritage language? (2) What are the strategies that immigrant Taiwanese mothers describe themselves as using in relation to their American-born children's heritage language learning? This study demonstrated that because of the relative lack of heritage language teaching resources independent of the family, the mothers played an important role in teaching their children a wide variety of languages including Mandarin Chinese, Taiwanese, Spanish, Japanese, and Cantonese. Furthermore, the meanings that the mothers placed on heritage language could be categorized into cultural relationships, family bonds, social status within the immigrant community, relationship with American and global societies, and academic achievement and social success. The strategies the Taiwanese immigrant mothers used to teach heritage and home languages were diverse but could be analyzed by the concept of social capital and the theories of Lev Vygotsky. The mothers with more economic capital were able to use their social capital to allow one parent to stay at home teaching their children heritage language full-time. They were also able to purchase other people's time in the form of services and effectively use resources such as the Chinese school or travel to promote heritage language learning. Thus, they could actively pursue and establish goals for their children's heritage language learning. Mothers with less social capital were less able to provide an environment promoting early language learning and instead hoped for other resources in the future. The result was that mothers with more social capital were able to have their children excel in many languages including English, while mothers with less social capital not only had difficulty creating proficiency in heritage language but also in English. / text

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The percentage of language and cultural minority students is increasing (Okagaki, 2006; U.S. Department of Education, 2010). This reality emphasizes the need for elementary school general education teachers to become knowledgeable about students’ backgrounds so that they can mold instruction to meet all students’ needs (Bennett, 2007; Spring, 2007; Whitcomb, 2003). There is, however, little research about elementary school general education teachers’ views and accommodations about heritage language maintenance (a.k.a. multicultural and multilingual inclusion) (Goldstein, 2003). The purpose of this study was to examine how teachers view heritage language learning and how teachers accommodate to students who have a heritage language background. A mixed methods study (n = 30) consisting of thirty surveys and ninety observations from general education teachers who taught in the 2010-2011 school year was used to examine elementary school general education teachers’ beliefs and accommodations about heritage language maintenance (HLM). Overall, the majority of teachers reported positive beliefs about HLM while exercising few accommodations in the classroom. Only teachers’ subject area of specialization, school corporation, teachers’ indication of HL strategies, and six accommodations were associated significantly with the positive beliefs and negative beliefs about HLM. The results from this study provide support for teachers’ input about accommodations and institutional support. The significant associations between area of specialization, six accommodations, and beliefs about HLM suggest mixed evidence and require further exploration for other intervening variables. Further investigation of findings indicates teachers’ actual practices and multicultural experiences cannot be predicted based on teachers’ expressed beliefs. Design issues like the instruments used, the sample size obtained, and the observation schedule implemented may affect the results. Longitudinal research is needed to explore other contextual factors that could impact the multi-conceptual relationship between beliefs and actual practice for further research. / Department of Educational Psychology

This thesis examines how Japanese language schools in the Greater Vancouver area function in the diversification of their pupils’ backgrounds. The schools provide curricula which mainly consist of practices of Japanese language and cultural learning. Applying the content analysis of qualitative data derived from interviews with the school principals, the thesis investigates what emphasis the schools put on their educational policies and practices of the curricula. The maintenance of the learners’ heritage language and culture have been argued as a primary function of heritage language schools such as the Japanese language schools. However, currently most of the Japanese language schools accept Japanese as a heritage language (JHL) learners who are not limited to those children of whom both parents are of Japanese descent and whose first language is Japanese. In addition, the schools accept learners who wish to learn Japanese as a foreign language (JFL) as well. The complexity of the learners’ backgrounds indicate that the schools’ function cannot be explained only as the heritage language/culture maintenance of those who are Japanese descent. The results of this study reveal that the school principals greatly consider the importance of nurturing pupils’ intercultural competence (Byram & Zarate, 1997; Liddicoat & Scarino, 2013). In the current situation of the Japanese language schools, pupils naturally gain intercultural experiences inside and outside the classrooms. The schools’ intercultural perspective enables us to reframe heritage language education to that which is connected to learners’ development of accepting cultural differences. / Graduate / 0282 / mayok@uvic.ca