Language awareness and multilingualism
eveloping resource-oriented didactics for heritage- and foreign-language education with the example of Russian and Polish heritage speakers
Background and aims
Based on the language skills and learning needs of the Russian- and Polish-speaking adolescents in the preceding study , the project team in Leipzig developed didactic approaches for heritage-language instruction. Particular consideration was given to how these adolescents can capitalise on their existing linguistic resources and meta-skills (language awareness and language learning strategies) in acquiring additional languages.
The project team in Greifswald continued to investigate the language skills of the adolescents in order to gain insights into their long-term language development. An additional focus was on whether heritage-language speakers have a generally higher level of language awareness when compared with foreign-language learners from a monolingual background. If so, this should make it easier for them to recognise structures of not-yet learned languages, for example when building new linguistic knowledge.
Methods
Differentiated teaching units were prepared, implemented and reflected upon in close cooperation with teachers of Polish and Russian (both foreign- and heritage-language teachers). Textbook exercises for differentiating between learner groups were empirically tested by, for instance, e.g. working with reading diaries or revising written texts, using differentiated worksheets, cooperative forms of learning or learning by teaching.
At the same time, participants’ skills in the respective heritage language (reading and listening comprehension, writing, speaking, vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar) continued to be investigated. Language awareness was tested by asking participants to detect and classify structures of the heritage language as well as languages not previously learned by the participants.
Findings
An important principle of teaching heterogeneous groups is internal differentiation, i.e. the modification of methods, materials and learning activities in a flexible way so that learners with different proficiency levels may be optimally supported. Internal differentiation between foreign- and heritage-language learners can be implemented easily where there are connecting elements — e.g. a common topic — on which the whole group of learners can work; at the same time, the level of difficulty, scope and amount of help for individual learners can be varied or modified. Once these measures are implemented, the different results can be brought together again on the content level and formative feedback given.
The language proficiency tests showed a steady improvement in heritage-language proficiencies; any stagnation in language skills occurred at a high level of proficiency. In addition, the participants displayed generally high, but mostly implicit, knowledge of the examined structures in the heritage language. While these results cannot be generalised, they do indicate that in families with a high awareness of the benefits of heritage languages, and who avail of institutional support, it is possible to continuously expand the skills in the heritage language.
What does this mean for educational practice?
Factors that play an important role in the long-term preservation of heritage-language skills could be determined in this project. For example, heritage-language instruction can contribute to language maintenance if it is attended continuously over many years with the highest possible degree of weekly input and when supported by intensive use of the heritage language in the family from birth. Language attitudes in the family are also very important for identity formation and language attitudes of children themselves. However, despite very high proficiency in the heritage language, the participants rarely used it as a cognitive or linguistic resource for learning. Methodological and didactic measures which heighten awareness of the heritage language as a linguistic resource (for example, when acquiring other languages) are therefore necessary. Such measures ought to enable more systematic access to previous linguistic knowledge possessed by the adolescents.