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María M. Carreira is the co-director of the National Heritage Language Resource Center. Her research focuses on heritage languages, with a concentration in Spanish in the US as well as the less commonly taught languages.

One out of five children in U.S. schools speaks a language other than English at home. In foreign language departments, these children are called heritage language (HL) learners or speakers. With considerable linguistic and cultural competencies, HL learners are widely considered a “national resource” (Brecht and Ingold, 2002). To further develop these competencies, HL learners need instruction that is responsive to their language and socio-affective needs.

Regarding language, children who speak their HL at home develop native or near-native pronunciation and the vocabulary and grammatical structures that are adequate for the needs of the family and possibly the community. Typically, however, they lack the kinds of skills associated with schooling – i.e. reading and writing skills and a facility with the academic registers, including its attendant vocabulary and grammar.

In the area of socio-affective needs, most HL learners want to understand themselves through their heritage language and culture and they want to communicate with HL-speaking relatives and friends in the U.S. and abroad (Carreira and Kagan, 2011, He, 2006). Many HL learners also grapple with feelings of linguistic insecurity (Carreira and Beeman, 2014).

Olga Kagan (Kagan & Carreira, 2015) has compiled five principles of HL teaching that respond to HL learners’ linguistic and socio-affective needs. Formulated in a “From-To” format, these principles are best conceived as strategies for using HL learners’ skills as bridges to learning.

Framing these principles and guiding the design of the type of activities that emerge from them is the concept of performative competence (Canagarajah, 2013), which refers to using language effectively in real-life situations. A performative competence orientation in HL teaching prioritizes what learners can do with their HL over what they know about it.

Overall, effective HL teaching is about building on HL learners’ considerable abilities through authentic tasks that reflect who they are and respond to who they want to become.

References

Brecht, R. D., & Ingold, C. W. (2002). Tapping a National Resource: Heritage Languages in the United States. ERIC Digest. EDO-FL-02-02.

Canagarajah, S. (2013). Theorizing a competence for translingual practice at the contact zone. The multilingual turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL, and bilingual education, Routledge, New York, 78-102.

Carreira, M. & Beeman, T. (2014). Voces. Latino Students on Life in the United States. Santa Barbara, CA: Prager.

Carreira, M. & Kagan, O. (2011). The Results of the National Heritage Language Survey: Implications for Teaching, Curriculum Design, and Professional Development.” Foreign Language Annals, 44(1), 40-64.

He, A. W. (2006). Toward an identity theory of the development of Chinese as a heritage language. Heritage Language Journal, 4(1), 1-28.

Kagan, O. & Carreira, M. (2015). Supporting Heritage Language Learners. Teaching Heritage Languages: Approaches and Strategies. ACTFL webinar. Jan. 28, 2015.