ERIC Number: EJ912629
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2010
Pages: 21
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1550-7076
EISSN: N/A
"There Is No Space for Being German": Portraits of Willing and Reluctant Heritage Language Learners of German
Dressler, Roswita
Heritage Language Journal, v7 n2 p1-21 Fall 2010
Some heritage language learners (HLLs) are comfortable identifying themselves as such, while others are decidedly reluctant to adopt this term (Pino & Pino, 2000). HLLs in this paper are defined as those students having a parent or grandparent who speaks German or those who have spent a significant part of their childhood in a German-speaking country (as suggested in Beaudrie & Ducar, 2005, p. 13). This paper highlights case studies of six HLLs of German at the post-secondary level who are participants in a motivation study (Dressler, 2008). Three students are "willing" HLLs. The additional three case studies are of students that I will call "reluctant" HLLs of German, and this paper explores the reasons behind their reluctance and the components of self-identification, which include language identity (Block, 2007; Pierce, 1995); language expertise; affiliation and inheritance (Leung, Harris, & Rampton, 1997); cultural artifacts (Bartlett, 2007) and positioning (Block, 2007). (Contains 1 table and 11 notes.)
Descriptors: Case Studies, German, Heritage Education, Native Language Instruction, Second Language Learning, Student Attitudes, Learning Motivation, Self Concept, Language Proficiency, Foreign Countries, Interviews, Questionnaires
National Heritage Language Resource Center and UC Consortium for Language Learning & Teaching. 1333 Rolfe Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1411. Tel: 310-825-1138; Fax: 310-206-5183; e-mail: hlj@international.ucla.edu; Web site: http://www.heritagelanguages.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Canada
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A