The Role of the Heritage Language for Writing in the Language of Instruction

• In Event: 31.035 - The Role of Heritage Languages for Academic Achievement: International Research Perspectives

Abstract

In education research and related disciplines it has been widely discussed in which ways the acquisition of abstract contextualised language (CALP, cf. Cummins 2000) in the first language of heritage speakers influences the acquisition of elaborated language skills in the second language. To date, however, it has not been explored in detail what kind of features are actually transferred and how external factors may influence this process. The paper aims to explore this by focussing on the mutual influence of written competence in L1 and L2 and the impact of cognitive and extra-linguistic factors. Concretely, it will be discussed how the language of instruction can profit from written competence in L1 and what this knowledge means for educational practice.
Based on the Dynamic System Theory (de Bot et al. 2007) which claims that all languages spoken by an individual form part of a larger dynamic system and are intrinsically linked, we start from the assumption that written discourse competence in L1 and L2 are interdependent and that a high level of written discourse competence in L1 is imperative to written discourse competence on L2. Moreover, we assume that writing abilities in both languages are influenced by cognitive factors on the one hand (metalinguistic awareness) and social and attitudinal factors on the other (socio-economic status and language attitudes of both students and parents).
The current study is conducted with 300 nine-graders who grew up with Turkish, Italian and Greek as a first and German as a second language: The text corpus consists of argumentative and narrative texts in L1 on L2. The texts are analyzed according to a framework including various levels of the text (lexical, syntactic and stylistic features, macrostructure and discourse mode, see Riehl 2013). The text levels in L1 and L2 were correlated with each other and with social and attitudinal data obtained by questionnaires and language biography interviews with students and parents. The cognitive aspects are explored by a specially develop Language Awareness Test in both languages.
The outcome of the study shows that text production abilities in both languages are interdependent, especially when the students have reached a certain underlying proficiency in one of the languages. It can be demonstrated that mainly macrostructural features and discourse stance are transferred. Here, metalinguistic awareness and attitudinal factors have a significant impact on the transfer process.

Authors

• Claudia Maria Riehl

• Julia Meyer, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München