Russian and Polish heritage languages as a resource in the classroom
Investigating the role of school and family contexts for the use of heritage languages by students with a migration background
Background and aims
The objective of this project was to analyse the language proficiencies and use among adolescents from Russian- and Polish-speaking families in Germany.
The main research interests of the project were to determine:
- proficiency levels in the heritage language (Russian or Polish) and in German
- the role of parental input for the development of proficiency in both languages
- language use and attitudes within the families
- the potentials of multilingualism as perceived by the adolescents and their parents
Methods
A total of 45 adolescents living in Berlin, Hamburg and Leipzig, along with one parent (usually the mother), were tested in two waves regarding their skills in the heritage language (Russian or Polish) and German. The skills tested included listening and reading comprehension, writing, speaking and language mediation, orthography, pronunciation, grammar and lexis. It was thereby possible to evaluate the adolescents’ proficiencies and their development during the process of language acquisition. The adolescents and their parents also answered questions concerning their personal language learning biography, language attitudes, family language policies and their use of the heritage language in everyday life. It was thus also possible to evaluate the quantity and quality of parental input in their children’s language development and the effect that this may have on proficiency levels.
Findings
Adolescents from both language groups (Polish/ Russian) showed well-established and well-balanced competences in German. In their heritage language, however, they exhibited a considerable degree of variation in the tested skills, especially with regard to written registers. The strongest results were achieved in oral proficiencies in the respective heritage language, including listening comprehension, with some speaking without an accent.
The difference in proficiency levels between German and the heritage language were very apparent in the written tasks. The adolescents used fewer target-like or pragmatically adequate forms in their heritage language; the produced texts were shorter and less elaborate than in German and displayed orthographic problems.
Lexical competence in the heritage language was stronger among those adolescents who speak Russian/Polish in their families and had received formal instruction in the heritage language. Parental input also proved to be an important factor for heritage language development.
What does this mean for educational practice?
The potential of heritage language knowledge is not always recognised in mainstream school settings where the adolescents’ multilingualism rarely comes into play (just a few positive exceptions were noted in this project). Although the adolescents are made aware of the risk of interferences from German during Polish- and Russian-language classes, ‘language comparison’ is not exploited as the teachers strive to establish a monolingual teaching ideology in the heritage language classroom. The results of this study may serve as a starting point for determining linguistic properties that should be dealt with to a greater extent in heritage language education and should be included in a didactic programme for the teaching of heritage languages.
The cooperation between the two teams within the project allowed for the development of innovative instruments that illustrate and document the benefits of multilingualism especially well, and that should receive particular consideration when expanding the potential of multilingualism within the framework of systematic teaching of the heritage language.