Curricular and Programmatic Language Development Opportunities for University-Level Heritage Language Learners

Heritage Language Acquisition and Maintenance of Turkish in The United States: Challenges to Teaching Turkish as a Heritage Language

“…Heritage speakers are the key factors in building a multilingual identity for the United States (Beaudrie, 2021). However, the current U.S. language policies do not recognize the importance of bilingualism in today's global world and stigmatize and minoritize the efforts of heritage language communities, often resulting in a progressive loss of heritage languages and identities within three generations.…”

“…The data analysis shows that heritage language speakers do indeed benefit from instruction, particularly in early childhood (i.e., in elementary school) when language arts instruction with an emphasis on the four language skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking) is used as the teaching method. The findings also point to an increased achievement in the dominant language (Beaudrie, 2021;Potowski, 2021), to academic success (Cummins, 1993;Jang & Brutt-Griffler, 2019;Krashen, Tse & McQuillan, 1998), and to the positive development of heritage identity and self-esteem (Li & Duff, 2008). Overall, these findings indicate that the benefits of heritage language teaching go beyond the linguistic aspects and significantly contribute to heritage speakers' academic performance at school, connectedness to their heritage identities and the preservation of the heritage culture as well (Kupisch & Rothman, 2016;Rothman, Tsimpli & Pascual y Cabo, 2016).…”