Response to inquiry: Definition of "heritage learner"

[Scott McGinnis]

Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2001 14:08:13 -0800
From: Frank Smith <vox at drizzle.com>

Linda touched on something I think is very important in defining what
a heritage language learner is: it's a question of functions.
Heritage language learners are (among other things), for the most
part, native speakers whose command of the language in question
primarily exists for "home/family functions"...this can range, in my
experience, from students being able to perfectly understand one's
parents speaking in the heritage language but consistently respond to
them only in English, to students being capable of quite fluent,
unselfconscious speech in the heritage language that is nonetheless
quite severely marked for informal, colloquial pronunciation and
vocabulary (and thus inappropriate for formal social interaction) to
fully functional comprehension/production in a wide variety of social
situations.

Heritage learner status most often also implies (again, in my
experience) a complete lack of or quite limited range of literacy
skills in the heritage language...this lack of literacy skills is
usually what brings heritage students to the language classroom in
the first place, and tends to be the focus of instruction in heritage
classrooms, at least in Southeast Asian heritage language
instruction.  What's been driven home to me as I become more involved
in heritage language curriculum/materials creation and instruction is
that a focus on language functions overall is ultimately a much more
realistic (and useful) focus than simply a "literacy focus."

Frank

Linda Trinh Pham wrote:

>My friend Eddy who is not Vietnamese can give a
>brilliant presentation on International Politics in
>Vietnamese, something that is way beyond what I can
>do.  But I can sit down and discuss lets say, what it
>is like to, I don't know, take a shower!  Something
>that comes "naturally" for me but unnatural for Eddy.
--


Frank Smith
Khmer Language Coordinator
Heritage Language Facilitator
Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute
University of Wisconsin-Madison