Why Should Formal Linguistic Approaches to Heritage Language Acquisition Be Linked to Heritage Language Pedagogies?

Abstract

The main goal of this chapter is to provide a link between formal heritage language studies and heritage language pedagogy, two areas of research that, despite being highly relevant to each other, have traditionally been approached from very different perspectives. Studying and understanding the mental reality of heritage speaker (HS) grammars—its acquisition and processing—is not only relevant for theoretical linguistics and psycholinguistics. Insights from linguistic studies on HS grammars are also of primary importance for language pedagogy because such insights reveal that HSs’ pedagogical needs are considerably different from second language learners (Rothman, Tsimpli and Pascual y Cabo, 2016). We know that HS grammars are not broken, meaning pedagogical approaches bespokely designed for HSs should not have the aim of “fixing” them. Rather, instruction for HSs should be more akin to language arts class (what all natives have as children as opposed to language skills classes imparted to non-native adults). Recent work has shown that when HSs, defined by the context of the acquisition in early childhood, receive significant literacy training in the heritage language as part of their primary education they show very few to no differences from age-matched monolinguals in adulthood (see Kupsich and Rothman, 2016). In this chapter, we will provide a summary of what theoretical and psycholinguistic studies on HSs have revealed over the last two decades in such a way that the trends are understood by an audience who focuses on pedagogical intervention. We will also explicitly make the link between why understanding the aforementioned is of central importance for the development of heritage speaker pedagogies. We will conclude by offering insights into how formal linguistic properties of heritage language grammars can be implemented in developing more efficient pedagogical approaches to heritage language speakers in a classroom setting.