Heritage Language: A Different Approach
S. Krashen
CAFABE Newsletter, in press (California Association for Asian Pacific Bilingual
Education)
Heritage Language: A Good Idea
There is firm evidence that development of the heritage language (HL) results in
modest advantages in cognitive development (it makes you smarter; Krashen,
1999), it has practical, job-related advantages (we need bilingual spies, sales
personnel, and interpreters) and that it leads to smoother relationships between
the generations (Wong Fillmore, 1991; G. Cho, 2000).
Attitudes Toward the Heritage Language
Parents of children who speak minority languages agree that heritage language
development is advantageous for practical goals and for cognitive development
(Shin and Krashen, 1999), and that they strongly support maintaining the first
language. Older children also think it is important to maintain their first
language (Nguyen, Shin and Krashen, 2001, Shin and Lee, in press). Many
adolescents, however, go through a stage in which they feel indifferent to the
heritage language and may even avoid it (Tse, 1999), apparently due to the
strong press for English and social integration in English-speaking society.
Development of Heritage Language: Comprehensible Input
The best way to improve the heritage language appears to be the same as the best
way to improve language in general: comprehensible input. G. Cho and Krashen
(2000) found four independent predictors of heritage language competence among
1.5 generation Koreans in
Negative Experiences
Tse's subjects reported that Saturday school and afterschool heritage language
programs did not contribute to their development. Such classes included
dictations, grammar worksheets, reading aloud, and other aspects of traditional
instruction; the three subjects who participated in these programs felt that
"other activities, particularly recreational reading, was the true
cause" of ther advanced heritage language development (Tse, 2001, p. 264).
(But see Shibata, 2000, for one success story.)
A second problem HL speakers face is the fact that expectations for HL
competence are often unrealistically high. Tse (2001) noted that in foreign
language classes, instructors were sometimes "particularly hard on native
speakers" (p. 265). Krashen (1999) reported that in informal interaction,
heritage language speakers with less-than-perfect proficiency are corrected, and
sometimes even ridiculed by friends and family members for their
"errors," which strongly inhibits the use of the language. The
language "shyness" that results from such treatment could contribute
to the apathy and/or rejection some adolescents show toward the heritage
language, as described in Tse (1999).
Pedagogy
A pedagogical approach to HL should be designed to help solve the problems that
HL speakers face. It should them help avoid the possible rejection of the HL
during adolescence, help deal with those with unrealistic expectations, and, of
course, be interesting, avoiding the frustration of Saturday class experiences.
Fortunately, comprehensible input methodology, already demonstrated to be the
most effective (Krashen, 2003), provides ready solutions to these problems. And
the kind of CI most suitable for HL students is recreational reading (RR) and
recreational listening (RL). There is overwhelming research support for
recreational reading (Krashen 1993, 2002). In addition, I have described
intermediate level programs emphasizing RR and RL in Krashen (1998) and review
them briefly here.
Recreational reading comes in two versions: Sustained silent reading is part of
a larger program. It is done for 5-10 minutes per day and consists of
free-choice reading by students, with no accountability. Teachers read while
students are reading. Self-selected or individualized reading takes the entire
classperiod. Students read all period long, except for short conferences with
the teacher, who meets with a few students each period to review book selection,
strategies, and, most important, to simply discuss books.
Recreational listening, to my knowledge, exists as a pedagogical option only in
my imagination. I envision it as self-selected listening of recorded radio
programs, and watching of interesting and comprehensible TV shows and movies,
supplemented by recordings of fully proficient heritage language speakers made
by students themselves on topics they find interesting (Krashen,1998), It can,
of course, be done on its own or combined with recreational reading.
For RR and RL to work, students need access to books and recordings. They need,
in other words, a library.
RR/RL promises to solve many of the problems HL students face. RR/RL does not
require any student output, so the shy or hesitant HL speaker can feel
comfortable in such a class. The research on recreational reading shows that it
stimulates tremendous progress and builds competence and confidence rapidly and
painlessly; all students have to do is read interesting books. In recreational
listening, students only have to listen to interesting stories and watch
interesting shows and films that they select themselves. This approach also puts
students in a position where they can continue to improve after the class ends;
students will not only develop a reading (and listening) habit, but will also
have a better idea of what kinds of reading and listening are available and how
and where they can be found.
Cho, G. 2000. The role of heritage language in social interactions and
relationships: Reflections from a language minority group. Bilingual Research
Journal 24 (4).
Cho, G. and S. Krashen. 2000. The role of voluntary factors in heritage language
development: how speakers can develop the heritage language on their own. ITL:
Review of Applied Linguistics 127-128: 127-140.
Krashen, S. 1998. Foreign Language Education: The Easy Way.
Krashen, S. 1998. "Language shyness and heritage language
development." In
Krashen, S. 2001. More smoke and mirrors: A critique of the National Reading
Panel report on fluency. Phi Delta Kappan 83: 119-123.
Krashen, S. 2003. Explorations in Language Acquisition and Use.
Nguyen, A., F. Shin, F., and S. Krashen. 2001. "Development of the first
language is not a barrier to second-language acquisition: Evidence from
Vietnamese immigrants to the
Shibata, S. 2000. Opening a Japanese Saturday school in a small town in the
Shin, F. and S. Krashen. 1996. "Teacher attitudes toward the principles of
bilingual education and toward students' participation in bilingual programs:
Same or different?" Bilingual Research Journal, 20(1): 45-53.
Shin, F, and Lee, B. Language shift co-occurs with positive attitudes toward the
geritage language. Mosiac, in press.
Tse, L .1998. "Ethnic identity formation and its implications for heritage
language development." In S. Krashen, L. Tse and J. McQuillan (eds.)
Heritage Language Development (pp. 15-29).
Tse, L. 2002. "Heritage language literacy: A study of US biliterates."
Language, Culture, and Curriculum 14,3: 256-268.
Wong-Fillmore, L. 1991. "When learning a second language means losing the
first." Early Childhood Research Quarterly 6: 323-346.