Maintenance of Russian as a heritage language in Germany: A longitudinal approach

The study discusses the perspectives of long-term maintenance of Russian as a heritage language in Germany. Based on data from a longitudinal study (2014-2018) we investigated changes in the sociolinguistic situation of 19 adolescent heritage speakers and in their proficiency in Russian. The aim was to investigate whether changes in the participants sociolinguistic situation are reflected in their knowledge of Russian. Data on the sociolinguistic situation were collected via an extensive questionnaire that the participants had to fill out once a year. Language proficiency was measured by experimental tasks targeting different linguistic domains. For the current paper, we used data from the longitudinal measurement of lexical and grammatical proficiency. The results revealed that the participants exposure to Russian input is decreasing in several domains over time, especially concerning media consumption and personal visits to the homeland. Russian is increasingly restricted to interactions with parents, and to educational settings (classes in Russian as a foreign or heritage language). Regarding language attitudes, our participants explicitly consider Russian important primarily for family interactions and cultural factors, but less with regard to career goals. Nevertheless, there was a positive trend in lexical and grammatical proficiency. We interpret these findings as a result of the prolonged exposure to heritage language instruction which leads to a stabilized proficiency in Russian. Given the institutional support and the size of the community, we hypothesize that the perspectives for long-term maintenance of Russian as a heritage language in Germany are better than for Russian heritage speaker communities in other countries.

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The effects of heritage language instruction on first language proficiency: a psycholinguistic perspective

International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism ◽

10.1080/13670050.2012.676620 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 15 (5) ◽

pp. 593-609 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

Emanuel Bylund ◽

Manuel Díaz

Keyword(s):

Language Proficiency ◽

Heritage Language ◽

First Language ◽

Language Instruction ◽

First Language Proficiency

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“Turkish is a Stepchild.” A Case Study of Language Policies in North Rhine Westphalia, Germany

Heritage Language Journal ◽

10.46538/hlj.17.2.3 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 17 (2) ◽

pp. 156-178

Author(s):

Asli Can Ayten ◽

Tatjana Atanasoska

Keyword(s):

Professional Identity ◽

Heritage Language ◽

Language Attitudes ◽

Language Instruction ◽

Language Policies ◽

Teachers And Students ◽

Teachers Perspectives

Research on the language attitudes and ideologies of teachers engaged in Heritage Language Instruction (HLI) in Germany is scarce even though HLI has been implemented in German schools since the early 1970s. Our goal is to fill in a gap in this field of HL pedagogy and focus on teachers’ perspectives related to language policies. We examine the ways that HL teachers’ work is shaped by specific ideological discourses that lead to bias against using HLs in school and prejudices against their speakers. We focus only on Turkish as a HL spoken in Germany, but we present findings from our case study that could theoretically apply to other HLs in Germany. We find that both explicit and more covert discrimination affect teachers’ actions and professional identity as HL teachers and persistently disrupt HLI and communication of teachers and students.

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The relationship between language proficiency and language attitudes

Spanish in Context ◽

10.1075/sic.14.1.05mil ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 14 (1) ◽

pp. 99-123 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Lauren Miller

Keyword(s):

Language Proficiency ◽

Heritage Language ◽

Language Change ◽

Language Attitudes ◽

First Graders ◽

Fourth Graders ◽

Spanish Speakers ◽

Language Preference ◽

Negative Attitudes ◽

The Relationship

Abstract To determine how attitudes toward the minority language change with age, sixty-five Spanish/English bilingual children completed an attitude questionnaire. Results show that first graders have roughly equal attitudes to Spanish and English, while second, third, and fourth graders increasingly state a preference for English. However, among fifth graders, a decrease in this preference for English is found. Results from a matched guise task show that the Spanish and English versions are not rated significantly differently, suggesting that, while children prefer speaking English, they may not project negative attitudes onto Spanish-speakers themselves. Finally, a shift in language preference is found before a shift in language dominance, which may suggest that negative attitudes toward the heritage language lead to a dominance shift.

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Language Maintenance in a Multilingual Family: Informal Heritage Language Lessons in Parent–Child Interactions

Multilingua ◽

10.1515/multi-2014-1020 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 34 (3) ◽

Cited By ~ 17

Author(s):

Mina Kheirkhah ◽

Asta Cekaite

Keyword(s):

Heritage Language ◽

Language Use ◽

Social Dynamics ◽

Language Maintenance ◽

Language Instruction ◽

Family Interactions ◽

Parent Child Interactions ◽

Interactional Analysis ◽

Family Language ◽

Parent Child

AbstractThe present study explores language socialization patterns in a Persian-Kurdish family in Sweden and examines how “one-parent, one-language” family language policies are instantiated and negotiated in parent–child interactions. The data consist of video-recordings and ethnographic observations of family interactions, as well as interviews. Detailed interactional analysis is employed to investigate parental language maintenance efforts and the child’s agentive orientation in relation to the recurrent interactional practices through which parents attempt to enforce a monolingual, heritage language “context” for parent–child interaction. We examine the interactional trajectories that develop in parents’ requests for translation that target the focus child’s (a7-year-old girl’s) lexical mixings. These practices resembled formal language instruction: The parents suspended the ongoing conversational activity, requested that the child translate the problematic item, modeled and assessed her language use. The instructional exchanges were asymmetrically organized: the parents positioned themselves as “experts”, insisting on the child’s active participation, whereas the child’s (affectively aggravated) resistance was frequent, and the parents recurrently accommodated the child by terminating the language instruction. The study argues that an examination of children’s agency, and the social dynamics characterizing parental attempts to shape children’s heritage language use, can provide significant insights into the conditions for language maintenance

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Can German Remain a Vital Heritage Language in the United States?

Heritage Language Journal ◽

10.46538/hlj.10.3.3 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 10 (3) ◽

pp. 305-315

Author(s):

Renate Ludanyi

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Language Proficiency ◽

Heritage Language ◽

The United States ◽

Language Instruction ◽

German Language ◽

Language Schools ◽

The U.S ◽

Culture And Language

The demise of German as a pervasive language for 300 years in the United States is due to historical and demographic reasons. Creating an awareness of Germany as an important country and strengthening the role of German teaching has gained advocates in educational and political circles in Germany as well as in the United States. Less understood and supported is the situation of German as a heritage language,despite a multitude of native German speakers who reside in the United States, in part due to global economic needs and who continue to be attracted to German as a language of use. This article describes the work of private German language schools to develop language proficiency, opportunities to use German, and a desire to speak it,and pleads for more research on German as a heritage language and interest in German language conservation.Although Austria and Switzerland also contribute to the preservation of their culture and language abroad by maintaining schools, cultural forums, etc., this article will focus primarily on Germany’s efforts to develop German language instruction in the U.S.

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Children’s language exposure and parental language attitudes in Russian-as-a-heritage-language acquisition by bilingual and multilingual children in Canada

International Journal of Bilingualism ◽

10.1177/1367006917740058 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 23 (2) ◽

pp. 457-485 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Veronika Makarova ◽

Natalia Terekhova ◽

Amin Mousavi

Keyword(s):

Language Proficiency ◽

Heritage Language ◽

Language Use ◽

Language Maintenance ◽

Language Attitudes ◽

Heritage Language Maintenance ◽

Study Results ◽

The Family ◽

Language Exposure ◽

Research Questions

Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions: The research study presented in this paper aims to describe some aspects of the maintenance of Russian as a heritage language among bilingual/multilingual children in Saskatchewan, Canada. The study focuses on the relationship between parents’ language attitudes and children’s language exposure on the one hand and child language proficiency on the other hand. The research questions are as follows. What are the language attitudes of Russian-speaking parents in minority settings? Is there a connection between parents’ language attitudes and children’s language proficiency? What is the scope of Russian language exposure of bilingual/multilingual children within and outside of the family? Is there a connection between this exposure and children’s language proficiency? Design/Methodology/Approach: The study was conducted within a Variationist Sociolinguistics framework. The following methods were employed in the study: a questionnaire study of parents’ language attitudes and of language use within and outside the family; an assessment of children’s speech production based on narratives elicited from children with the help of pictures (language proficiency parameters). Data and Analysis: Thirty parents (aged 31–43) and children (aged 5–7) participated in the study. The questionnaire addressed to parents included 52 demographic and research questions. A statistical analysis of parents’ language attitudes and language use by parents and their children as measured against language proficiency parameters was conducted with the help of correlation analysis. Findings/Conclusions: Study results indicate that Russian-speaking parents in Saskatchewan are interested in passing Russian to their children. The study also suggests that language exposure parameters, as well as language attitudes held by parents, correlate with children’s heritage language fluency. Originality: The study indicates that even in environments unfavorable for heritage language maintenance, a child can still successfully acquire Russian as a heritage language. Significance/Implications: The study clarifies the set of parameters relevant for heritage language maintenance among bilingual/multilingual children. It also suggests the importance of bilingualism/multilingualism for some groups of the immigrant population in Canada.

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