Heritage language teaching (HLT), or mother-tongue teaching, known mostly as “Herkunftssprachlicher Unterricht (HSU)” in Germany and Austria and “Unterricht in Heimatlicher Sprache und Kultur (HSK)” in Switzerland, plays an important role in the development of a child’s identity and language. It promotes multilingualism and serves as a valuable personal and social resource. The awareness of this fact has long been borne out by research and framework guidelines, such as the recommendations of the Council of Europe R(82)18 and R(98)6. Nevertheless, this kind of instruction for the most part still takes place under more difficult conditions than regular curriculum classes. Various factors are responsible:
- Heritage language education is on an insecure footing institutionally and financially in many places. In Switzerland, for instance, heritage language teachers almost everywhere are paid by the country of origin or even the parents.
- Heritage language classes are often poorly coordinated with regular classroom instruction; contact and cooperation with regular curriculum teaching staff is often very poorly developed.
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Heritage language classes often occur only two hours per week, which makes constructive, uninterrupted learning more difficult.
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Heritage language classes are mostly optional, and the commitment on the part of the students is not very strong.
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Heritage language classes involve multiclass teaching as a rule, with students from the 1st to the 9th grade joined into a single class. This requires a great deal of internal differentiation and didactical skill on the part of the instructor.
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The heterogeneity of the student body in heritage language classrooms is extremely high in terms of the students’ linguistic competence as well. While some have acquired at home good proficiency in both dialect and standard use of their native language, others may speak only dialect. For second or third generation heritage speakers who have already resided for many years in the new country, the language spoken there (e. g. German) has become the dominant language, while their command of the first language is limited to dialect, transmitted exclusively orally, and with a vocabulary reduced to familiar issues.
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The heritage language instructors have generally received a good basic education in their countries of origin, but they are not at all prepared for the realities and the challenges of teaching in a multiclass environment in the migration destination countries. Professional development opportunities in the host countries exist for the most part only to an insufficient extent.
The series “Materials for heritage language teaching” supports the teachers of native language education classes in their important and demanding task and thereby hopes to contribute to the optimal quality of this kind of learning. The review of the backgrounds and principles of the current pedagogy and didactics in western and northern European immigration countries (c.f. the volume Foundations…) furthers this goal, supported with concrete practical suggestions and models for the classroom in the workbooks “didactic suggestions”. Their main emphasis is the promotion of linguistic competence. The didactical suggestions purposely revert to the pedagogical principles and procedures that are familiar to the students from the regular curriculum and its teaching materials. This familiarity brings heritage language education and regular curriculum instruction in close contact and ensures the greatest possible coherence between the two. As the teachers of the heritage language education programs familiarize themselves with the didactic approaches and specific proceedings that are currently used in the regular curricula, they receive further training and, it is hoped, a strengthening of their stature as partners of equal value in the educational process of the students who are growing up bilingually and bi-culturally.
The series “Materials for heritage language teaching” is published by the Center for International Projects in Education (IPE) at the Zurich University of Teacher Education. It is developed in close collaboration between Swiss and other West European specialists on the one hand, as well as experts and practicing instructors of heritage language programs. This ensures that the offered information and suggestions reflect the real circumstances, needs and possibilities of heritage language programs and meet the objective of functionality and practicality.