For Heritage Language Instructors
LIN199: Exploring Heritage Languages is a first-year seminar taught at the University of Toronto, by Naomi Nagy
This is an active-learning course in which students collect and organize information about heritage languages, then use comparative variationist methods to compare variable patterns in heritage and homeland conversational speech. They look for speech patterns that differentiate first-, second-, and third-generation speakers, and homeland from heritage speakers, and look at the effects of cultural and language attitudes and usage, providing a useful, alternative to the “interference from English” approach commonly adopted.
This helps:
- Develop information literacy through opportunities for writing with a “real” audience
- Encourage students who are HL speakers to get involved in research
- Learn about the structure and variation in HLs, through fieldwork and analysis.
- Train students to consider HLs in their sociolinguistic context
- learn about the ethnolinguistic vitality of heritage languages in Toronto, the resources available for speakers and learners, and the ways the HLs are spoken.
- Learn about the definition(s) of "heritage language”
You can see its syllabus here, and you are welcome to adapt it, or any of these assignments, for your own use.
The course includes these assignments:
- Homework 1: Start blogging
- Homework 2: Getting familiar with library resources
- Homework 3: Learning about the structure of a Heritage Language
- Homework 4a: Analysis of changing complexity in a HL (for students who know a heritage language)
- Homework 4b: Neighborhood profile (for students who don't know a heritage language)
- Homework 4c: Exploring attitudes toward heritage languages
- Homework 5a: Linguistic analysis (for students who know a heritage language)
- Homework 5b: Ethnic Orientation Questionnaire (for students who don't know a heritage language)
- Homework 6: Formal report
