Rohan Sharma was raised speaking both Hindi and Punjabi with his parents.
But having grown up in the U.S., the first-year undeclared student was educated in English and was unable to perfect his reading and writing in his native languages.
An event at UCLA this weekend aims to investigate more effective methods to teach heritage speakers such as Sharma. The National Heritage Language Resource Center at UCLA, which promotes and researches ways to teach heritage speakers more effectively, will host its second International Conference on Heritage/Community Languages on Friday and Saturday in Covel Commons.
Heritage languages are languages spoken by the children or grandchildren of immigrants. Speakers grow up speaking their heritage languages but are then primarily educated in English.
Although heritage speakers speak the language fluently, they usually lack the fundamentals of reading and writing, said Shushan Karapetian, a graduate student at UCLA whose research focuses on heritage languages and who will speak at the conference.
Heritage speakers often face disadvantages in learning their native language at school since classes are primarily designed for English speakers with little or no background in the language, said Maria Carreira, a professor at California State University, Long Beach who will present at the conference.
Sharma plans on taking Hindi classes at UCLA to improve his knowledge of the language and understand the culture, saying it will allow him to better connect with his relatives. He took a Hindi class earlier in his education to learn how to write but didn’t pursue it.
This is a typical situation for heritage speakers because most immigrant parents want their children to master English, viewing it as the key to social mobility, and don’t put much emphasis on the native language, Karapetian said.
More than 60 million people in the U.S. speak a language other than English at home.
Young speakers often find themselves facing a conflict of identity because they are expected to know their heritage language when growing up in an ethnic community in the U.S., she said.
On one hand, they are told repeatedly by parents that they must learn their native language. But on the other, parents often do not offer them enough resources, such as teaching them to read and write, seeing English as more important, Karapetian said.
Marcelo Suรกrez-Orozco, dean of the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, said heritage languages spoken by certain communities serve as a function of our history as a country of immigrants.
Carreira thinks many teachers are using the wrong methodology to instruct heritage speakers because they were trained to teach native English speakers.
Her presentation at the conference will address issues with methodology. She also plans to speak to professors about how to educate students to diagnose weaknesses on their own.
She emphasized the benefits of technology, such as giving a student a specific assignment online to work on while the teacher addresses another student’s needs. She said heritage speakers should also seek the help of second language learners, who usually have a better base in writing the language.
UCLA currently offers classes in Spanish, Vietnamese and Korean specifically designed for heritage speakers.
Orozco said it is not sufficient for parents alone to teach their children.
“If you leave heritage languages to the private domain of citizens at home, you are fundamentally bypassing responsibility that society has to provide its children and future citizens to provide all tools they will need in this new 21st-century world,” he said.