While previous studies have shown that drawing upon funds of knowledge benefits teaching and learning in many educational settings, there is little inquiry into funds of knowledge in Chinese heritage language education. Employing ethnographic methods, I explored the evidence of funds of knowledge in early childhood settings in a community-based…

Despite research evidence showing that home language maintenance is important both individually and societally, the task of managing and encouraging it has traditionally fallen to minority language communities and families, tending to lead to inter-generational language shift. Teachers' discourses about responsibilities for language maintenance,…

This study was conducted within the context of bilingual Arabic-Hebrew medium preschools in Israel which were established to incorporate instruction in the native languages of both majority and minority children in the classroom. Bilingual education in various settings produces a wide variety of outcomes in terms of language proficiency, cultural…

This study investigated Korean heritage speakers' Korean language proficiency (i.e. morphosyntax, collocation, and lexicon) in relation to their attitudes, motivation, and age at immigration (AI). Seventy-six adult Korean-Australians with Korean literacy participated. Overall, participants showed high levels of Korean proficiency in all three…

The development of script schema, as a source of narrative knowledge, is an essential stage in this knowledge construction. This study focused on the role of bilingual versus monolingual preschool education in the development of script schema knowledge in Russian (L1) and Hebrew (L2) among Russian/Hebrew-speaking children in Israel. The preschool…

Disparities emanating from South Africa's apartheid history still pose a number of challenges to the country, especially in education. Since the transition to democracy in 1994, the prescribed government school curriculum has undergone several revisions in an endeavour to set standards and provide instruction of a high quality. On the language…

Heritage learners comprise a substantial proportion of second language learners, including L2 Korean learners. Previous studies have shown that the vast majority of heritage language learners display weakness in orthographic accuracy. Due to their previous extended exposure to oral discourse and limited experience in written language, heritage…

Spanish heritage language (SHL) programmes in post-secondary institutions must continue to redesign their curricula to accommodate the needs of a growing Latino population with a broad range of bilingual competencies. Despite the proliferation of research in heritage languages, pedagogically based research that incorporates students' voices is…

This paper, based on the findings of a qualitative study, discusses the influence of Ghana's recently introduced English-only language-in-education policy on pupils' classroom communicative practices and learning generally. It highlights how the use of English--an unfamiliar language--creates anxiety among students and stalls effective classroom…

This qualitative study investigates attitudes toward heritage language (HL) maintenance among Chinese immigrant parents and their second-generation children. Specific attention is given to exploring (1) what attitudes are held by the Chinese parents and children toward Chinese language maintenance in the USA, (2) what efforts are engaged in by the…

This article presents results of a study on a weekend Chinese community school in a mid-Atlantic state that looks at parents' perceptions of the challenges the school faced in teaching Chinese to heritage versus non-heritage learners. Survey and qualitative interviews with parents show differences in their expectations regarding teacher…

This paper explores issues of teaching and learning Chinese as a heritage language in a Chinese heritage language school, the Zhonguo Saturday School, in Montreal, Quebec. With a student population of more than 1000, this school is the largest of the eight Chinese Heritage Language schools in Montreal. Students participating in this study were…

Investigates how second-generation Korean-American students form and transform their senses of ethnicity through their participation in Korean language classes. An ethnographic study was carried out at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where most Korean language courses were populated by second- and 1.5-generation Korean Americans.…

Transcripts were made of teacher-student conversations in four Hawaiian classrooms in which Korean is taught as a heritage language. The study examines the use of the sentence-ending particle "yo," the meaning of the particle, the way it is used in interaction, and its sociopragmatic implication. The following research questions are…

Twelve Spanish-speaking school-aged children participated in an 8-week pretest/posttest design investigation targeting improvement of their communicative competence through a narrative intervention program. Also examined the efficacy of providing an intervention in the children's native language. Findings revealed that use of a narrative…