23.2384, FYI: Linguistic Research Project on Petridish.org

Fri May 18 17:17:18 UTC 2012

LINGUIST List: Vol-23-2384. Fri May 18 2012. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 23.2384, FYI: Linguistic Research Project on Petridish.org

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Date: Fri, 18 May 2012 13:17:15
From: Corinne Seals [cseals108 at gmail.com]
Subject: Linguistic Research Project on Petridish.org

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http://linguistlist.org/issues/emailmessage/verification.cfm?iss=23-2384.html&submissionid=4546618&topicid=6&msgnumber=1

Dear Linguists,

Recently, a new research funding source was launched, Petridish.org, 
and it has already been featured by Scientific American, Wired 
Magazine, and the Huffington Post.

Currently, my research project on heritage language learners is being 
featured on the website and is the first social science project to be 
launched by Petridish.

Please take a look at the project by visiting the following URL:

http://www.petridish.org/projects/successful-education-for-heritage-
language-learners

Below is a description of the project:

Immigration is becoming increasingly common around the world, and as 
a result, many language policies are becoming stricter. But what about 
the children of émigré families who grow up with one language but then 
shift to the socially dominant language? Once people have lost a 
language while growing up, they find it very difficult to reclaim it as an 
adult. Yet, fluent multilingualism is an asset in the growing global 
market. Therefore, we should be working to help children from émigré 
communities maintain their heritage languages.

How then can we create an educational program that achieves success 
in simultaneously teaching the heritage language and the socially 
dominant language to heritage language learners for mastery over 
both? At present, this effort has been taken on predominately by 
individual émigré communities, which find a way to teach the heritage 
language once per week at best. However, I have identified and 
conducted pilot data from a public primary school in the United States 
that has found a way to foster multilingualism for heritage language 
learners in the school itself.

By returning to conduct in-depth fieldwork, I will be asking the following 
questions:

1) What are characteristics of the system being used by the school to 
support heritage language learners?
2) What about the system is making it successful?
3) How is this success evidenced through aspects of the heritage 
language learners' classroom participation?
4) How can this success be replicated in other schools and educational 
programs?

Please pass this message on to anyone who may be interested.

Thank you!

Corinne Seals
Georgetown University
contact: cas257 at georgetown.edu 

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics
                     Language Documentation
                     Sociolinguistics

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