Bicultural Identities of Heritage Language Learners and Their Language Choices: Whole School Community

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Three
  In Roundtable Session: Schools, Communities, and Families in Collaboration (Table 3)

Abstract

This qualitative case study with a descriptive statistical analysis of heritage language learners’ language skills explores how Turkish American communities in the U.S. support their children’s heritage language maintenance with the help of Heritage Language school (HLS). As predicted, HLS and the whole school community contributed to learners’ speaking skills positively. However; statistical analysis of HL learners’ spoken data show they have troubles in their HL acquisition of inflectional morphology in Turkish. The inconsistencies between children and parents in terms of how they approach the HL led children to adopt more bicultural identities. The findings have important implications for children who are bilinguals attending a HLS and for pre-service teachers at public schools who could have HLLs in their classrooms.

Author

• Ozge Yalciner, University of Kentucky
  Presenting Author