03.A.8 Heritage Speakers discussion

From: Christine Gonzales
Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2012 8:14 AM
To: Uinise Langi
Subject: heritage speakers

Uinise,

in the meantime, here is what i have done with a heritage speaker in my Spanish class and an RM I found in my German class (I didn't remove him because I only have 1010 this semster).

Heritage speakers: at times they do not know all the spelling, vocabulary nor exotic grammar, word order. They may be in your class because there is no second-year class.

1) When true beginners have a very simplistic (slightly idiotic) assignment, the heritage speakers may find it had to write or speak that simply.

a) If they are speaking in pairs with a true beginner (especially if it is an oral conversation test, I make it clear to the heritage speakers that they must speak on the others' level, so that the true beginners do not get lost.*

b) If they are speaker in pairs with each other, then I encourage them to speak on their own level(s).

c) If the heritage speakers are writing, I make it clear to them that they must follow whatever grammar rules I am assessing with that assignment.

However, I give them more leeway to write sometimes slightly different things, because they mentally cannot imagine that they are really supposed to write something as simple as I have just assigned. Example: I assign students to write in present time talking about what they do every day, using the vocabulary they have in chapter 1. The heritage speaker uses more vocabulary and soon relates a story about what he did recently in past time. I don't get to see much of his present-tense verb conjugations, nor all of the vocabulary I wanted to see, but I am usually ok with that, because I realize that what I asked for is in the same part of his head as what he wrote about; also, as a native-speaker, he doesn't stop to differentiate between present tense and past tense. So, I don't penalize him.

d) the heritage speakers sometimes have their own agenda, and sometimes they write things which are way off of what was assigned. Example: I assign some simle writing about university life, aned the heritage speaker soon segues into writing about how he wants his children to get a better education than he got. At this point, his writing has changed from exploring new vocabulary / structures, to expressing something vitally important to him personally which is related to the topic.

As the instructor, you can think about two things:

1) This person is now using your assignments as a journal. Will you maybe assign your heeritage speakers to keep journals and write in them every week or every so many days? I.e., will you give them different assignments from the rest of the class?

2) From what they write, you need to correct whatever is beining learned in your class right now, so do you also correct the rest of it---their harder mistakes---or do you not have time to correct separate things? Do you tell them to go over certain parts with their relatives from back home?

The returned missionary (and also some heritage speakers):

He basically gets perfect or almost perfect scores on his written and oral tests. I encourage him to do more, but I hold him responsible for more accuracy: if he chooses to write and say simple things on the level of the chapter in question, I do not penalize him, but I espect him to be able to say and write a few things somewhat more correctly than the rest of the class, because I know he knows them.

Two thoughts:

I: What happens in German, and most languages, is that students converse on simple level appropriate to whatever chapter, but there are inevitably some things which are also logicalk to say on the saame topic, but they are actually very complicated and their grammar does NOT belong to that chapter. I avoid saying them, but sometimes they occur to students, and they chirp them out, ask me how to say them, etc.

I either paraphrase it with material from this chapter,

I may tell them the right way but caution them not to learn that yet because it will take their concentration away from what they need to learn right now, so I say,

"go ahead and say it this other (wrong) way (which is logical in our present chapter), and later you will learn how to use that other ending I mentioned."

But, I require the RM to say it the right way.

Example, 'my family' in German is 'meine Familie' in Chapter 1, but when we get to chapter 3, we learn that 'with my family' is 'mit meiner Familie'. right now I let everybody except the RM say/write 'mit meine Familie', and in Chapter 3 the rest will learn that new ending.

II: All students need to identify and use fluent, or native-speaking friends and relatives as their support system. They must lose their fear of conversing with these people, and they must train them to respond on ther learners' level. Therefore, the students must be the ones to lead the conversations. They must also respectully get their older relatives to understand the concept of role-playing: maybe they can say to grandma or auntie, may we please pretend that we are both young 15-year old girls & we don't know each other?

Then, the student has to ask most of the questions, because the student has to control the level of discourse difficulty and range. So, the student asks grandma, 'Hello, what's your name?' If this is too impossible in a culture, then the instructor has to figure out a way to make it work to have a converstion between a learner and the relatives, friends.

I also teach my students how to converse with themselves-their right hand and their left hand talk to each other.

I want to hear your ideas. gotta go corect papers now

See you soon,

Christine

From: Uinise Langi [utuaone@bruinmail.slcc.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, October 02, 2012 4:54 PM
To: Maggie Spicer
Cc: Christine Gonzales
Subject: Re: FW: SLCC FOLK FESTIVAL WED 10 OCT

Is there anything my Tongan language and culture students can do or is it too late?

On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 4:12 PM, Maggie Spicer <Maggie.Spicer@slcc.edu> wrote:

Hello again everyone,

You are invited to attend the first SLCC International Folk Festival, held in the Redwood Student-Center Event Center on Wednesday, October 10th, from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM.

It is student-sponsored; it includes song and dance performances from around the world, food sampling and information tables. Some of you or your students are either performing or going to be at the tables. Please forward this to your students.

If you wish to help make this an annual event, please contact christine.gonzales@slcc.edu.

Thanks,

Maggie