Korean Heritage Language Teachers' Investment Embodied in Their (Flexible) Instructional Language Use

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Seventeen
  In Roundtable Session: Necessary Visibility: Teachers' Critical Language Awareness and Resistance to Dominance (Table 1)

Abstract

Building on the theoretical concepts of translanguaging and teacher investment, this study examined community-based Korean heritage language teachers’ perceptions of their instructional language use. The qualitative analysis of the in-depth interviews with 21 Korean heritage language teachers revealed that teachers’ instructional language use was rooted in multiple language ideologies (e.g., monolingual ideology, language-as-a-resource orientation). The participating teachers pursued Korean-only instruction with an intention to strengthen students’ heritage language learning. Nevertheless, they simultaneously adopted flexible language uses to provide emotional and cognitive scaffolding for students. By making minority language teachers' voices visible, this study provides insights into complexities that ethnolinguistic minority communities experience when supporting their children's heritage language learning and, resultantly, bilingualism and biliteracy development.

Authors

• Kwangok Song, University of Kansas
  Presenting Author

• Sumin Lim, University of Texas - El Paso
  Presenting Author