Literacy Skills in Heritage Languages as a Resource for Second Language Academic Proficiency in Multilingual Adolescents

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

Abstract

Despite the wide scholarly acceptance of the role of academic registers in the language of instruction as a solid indicator for the educational success of adolescents with an immigrant background (Bourne 2013, Cummins 2000, Schleppegrell 2004), the role heritage languages play in its development is yet contested (Gogolin & Neumann 2009). On the one hand, large-scale comparative achievement studies point to a relationship between heritage language use at home and lower school performance (Klieme, Artelt et al. 2010). On the other hand, educational and psycholinguistic studies found that transfer of higher order literacy skills is more adequately explained by means of Cummins’ interdependence hypothesis (Dressler and Kamil 2006). Building on these findings, the paper aims at pinpointing the role of productive written skills in the heritage languages in explaining variation in academic language performance in the majority language (German) in the phase of later language development. Further, it discusses the role of other common predictors for academic language performance of multilingual speakers.
Based on bilingual written samples from 94 Turkish- (n=41) and Russian-German (n=53) 15-year-olds and on data from a background questionnaire, OLS regression analyses were conducted to find adequate predictors for variation in academic language performance. Language proficiency in German, Turkish and Russian was measured with the validated instrument “Fast Catch Bumerang” (Lengyel, Reich et al. 2009), which elicits written texts based on a series of nine pictures. In addition, working memory skills were measured with a sub-test of the “Hamburg-Wechsler-Intelligenztests für Kinder“ (HAWIK-IV) (Petermann and Petermann 2010). Other background variables were collected based on the data of the questionnaire on language use, socio-economic background and cultural capital. Missing data was replaced by plausible values using multiple imputation (Rubin 1987).
The results confirm the relevance of productive written skills in the family languages in predicting German academic language performance. In particular, adjectival use significantly contributes to explain the most variation in academic language performance in German. In contrast, socioeconomic status, cultural capital and working memory are less strong predictors. In addition, the school type (academic or lower tracks) seems to be a better proxy for social-economic background in adolescents than common measures, such as the ISEI. The final model explains 31% of variation in the performance.
The research provides solid arguments towards explicitly fostering writing skills of migrants in the heritage languages in order to achieve high levels of biliteracy. However, more research with larger and more representative samples and including more background variables is needed in order to assess the effects of heritage language proficiency on school success and not only language.

Authors

• Joana Duarte, University of Hamburg

• Ingrid Gogolin, University of Hamburg