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TitleArticle: Heritage Language Learners in the Classroom
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From http://nclrc.org/about_teaching/heritage_learners.html

"Root Words: Facing Our Changing Demographics"
By Belinda Sauret
November/December 2008

Even a glance at a demographic map makes it clear that most foreign language teachers will likely teach in areas with a number of native speakers of the language. A report from the Pew Hispanic Center shows that one in five students in the public schools is Hispanic and that proportion is expected to grow through the next few decades. Naturally, the matter of what to do with heritage speakers is not limited to Spanish instruction: a page on the National Heritage Language Resource Center “Demographic Tools for Heritage Language Instructors” offers access to maps from the U.S. Census, the MLA Language Map and websites from state departments of education that show what languages other than English are spoken in various regions of the United States. Whether we teach French, Arabic or Chinese, we might well find ourselves grappling with different pedagogical needs than those of the L2 learners we were trained to work with.

Read the entire article, which includes a list of needed tools and strategies for teaching heritage speakers and references to other support networks, at http://nclrc.org/about_teaching/heritage_learners.html .

SourceNCLRC
Inputdate2008-12-28 12:52:00
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