[Bhavya] Hello, welcome Dr. Gabriela Nik. Ilieva to initializing UCLA's podcast series on -- based on heritage language students. I would like to introduce Dr. Ilevia, she's director South Asian language programs at New York University. She teaches Intermediate and Advanced Hindi, an Ancient Indian literature, and Modern South Asian literature in translation at New York University. Hello Dr. Ilevia.

[Dr. Ilevia] Hello, hello Bhavya, how are you?

[Bhavya] I'm fine. Thank you. [pause] So -- so we are here to --

[Dr. Ilevia] Thank you for inviting me, by the way, um, I've followed the work of the Center. There's a lot that we're learning from the research that is being shared there. So thank you for inviting me for this podcast.

[Bhavya] Thank you so much for being part of this podcast series. So, would like to know about your thoughts of Hindi heritage language learners -- who are Hindi language learners and foreign language learners? According to your--

[Dr. Ilevia] Uh, one of the interesting experiences I've had at New York University is that, since 1998, our classrooms have been full with mostly heritage learners. And this, to me at that time was a new experience, because I came from the University of Minnesota, where most of the learners in the Hindi classrooms were foreign language learners. So I was, uh, almost, sort of surprised and I was bewildered, because I didn't know how to teach them. I knew they were a different kind of learner. Their, their skills were quite different, their path of progress was different, and I didn't have the instruments. So, I started reading. I started looking for training and so forth. The heritage language learners are a very, very diverse group, um, especially when we talk about Hindi. As most the other languages are as well, um, Spanish, or French, or Chinese, Russian -- you know, when, when we're talking about these heritage learners, we're never going to think about them in a monolithic way. We're never going to imagine that they're a very cohesive kind of group, because of the variety of language situations and complexities that exist in South Asia. Particularly for Hindi learners in um, in, in, sort of - a semi broad way, we can define them as learners who have emotional attachment to Hindi AND, or another South Asian language through family. This is a modified definition that I'm using from Makolinsky and Kagan from an article in 2007. So this is a sort of a semi broad definition, just an emotional attachment, and it doesn't include any type of specific skills in Hindi or another South Asian language. A sort of a more narrower, and maybe more useful definition, is that learners, um, -- these are learners who actually have some proficiency in Hindi and its cultures. And these are the heritage learners who might be coming from directly, um, as an ancestral group, coming directly from a family where Hindi is spoken[pause] or Urdu. Sometimes the classes offered at the U.S. universities are Hindi/Urdu, even Hindustani. So it is useful at times to consider Urdu as well. So we have this ancestral group that comes with some proficiency in the language and the cultures. But we also have a language associate group, um, and these are students who have some proficiency in a cognate language. Such as, for example, Gujarati, Rajastani, Chindi, Marathi, ...Punjabi... uh for Urdu, Chindi, Pashto, Bolo etc. So these are language associates, with a background in a cognite language. And now we have to consider also a language associate group who have some proficiency in a non-cognite language. That could include dummy or Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu, or ...for example, [...]. In, in nowadays Pakistan, also a Dravidian language. So these two big groups of the Ancestral -- the direct connection with the language -- and the language associate -- cognate or non-cognative -- these two groups, they are students who come with some skills, with some receptive, at least, skills. There's a third group. And these are students that we call, or we can call culture associate. They cannot produce language, even their understanding of language is very limited; however, theyare students who live in an environment, in a community where the language is not spoken, but a lot of the cultural practices are exercised. A lot of the cultural products are being used and shared. So they're exposed to the culture -- a lot of, in the local language, a lot of the stories are being told. So, they are also exposed to some of the perspectives, the cultural perspectives. And these are the students who come from Fiji, from Guyana, from Trinidad, from South Africa. Some years ago, maybe a decade ago we were including in this group, Culture associate group, also Americious, students from the [???] -- and Singapore. But nowadays, they seem to have proficiency, which is created in a structured, systematic environment because Hindi is included in the high school systems of these places. So, we have to think about what kind of heritage learners they are, and maybe we can create a subgroup within, within the ancestral one. But, this is a question for researchers to think about and to come to a consensus. So generally speaking, these are the groups of hindi learners whom we categorize as heritage language learners.

[Bhavya] Yes, I can see it's a very broad, big group of heritage language learners, especially in Hindi. So how do you define a foreign language learners in Hindi, who are learning Hindi?

[Dr. Ilevia] Foreign language learners come with no background, and they are exposed to the language in a very different way. For example, let's imagine, um, Hindi proficiency as a wall built by bricks -- these bricks are language units. Whether they're like scenes, whether they are morphological units, whether they're syntactical units. We build with foreign language learners with no background. In Hindi, we build a wall, brick by brick, step by step. We try to create a meaningful environment for them in order to have a context, to have a real life motivation to learn the language and to practice to language. But, we are gradually producing the bricks in terms of instruction, they are gradually understanding these bricks, mastering these bricks and building a wall with these bricks. Whereas the heritage language learners proficiency wall is actually built in, in many cases. Why? Because they already have receptive skills. They already can make meaning from what they hear, or sometimes from what they read, mostly from what they hear. And the wall is built, but the wall --because the language was learned in very non-systematic way through exposure, through sporadic interactions --the wall misses some, some bricks, and we as instructors are constantly diagnosing our heritage learners and finding out which brick is missing to fill in and what we need to do in order to improve this proficiency wall that our heritage language learners have in the classroom. So, in a way, the, the skills that the foreign language learners have [pause] formed during the process of learning are very different than the skills that heritage language learners have formed during the process of acquiring the language, before they come to the classroom,and when they come to our classroom. What we notice is that, for example, foreign language learners usually come with different motivation. Often they're interested in academic knowledge about, uh, the culture. Academic knowledge about the language. They're interested in content areas like literature, geography, history, politics. Whereas our heritage language learners, because of their personal and emotional relation to the language and the culture --they are more familiar and they're --and they're more interested to explore further popular culture. And in this way, we see how there is a definite need, not only to differentiate in terms of -- because of the difference in their skills -- but also the difference in their interests and kind of motivation they bring to the classroom.

[Bhavya] So I, eh --it seems that we have touched on prominent characteristics. And for the sake of a little bit of clarity, we will be using "HLL"s for Hindi heritage learners and foreign language learners, we will be using "FLL"s. So I can see that these are some of the prominent characteristics of HLLs, which differentiate

them from the foreign language learners. So what are the post-OPI -- What are some differences or the similarities among HLLs and FLLs second language production, based on the ACTFL OPI rating results?

[Dr. Ilevia] What, what --what I've done over the years since 2008 is run a Hindi and Urdu teacher-training program at New York University. And along with the basic principles of teaching, they are also trained in, in the ACTFL OPI protocol (oral proficiency interview protocol). When I'm, when I'm saying, when I mentioned the principles --the basic principles of teaching, I mean standards-based instruction. I mean performance assessment based instruction. I mean proficiency based instruction, student-centered instruction, use of authentic materials instruction, use of the target language, Hindi, most of the time in the classroom-based instruction. So along with

these principles, we consider it extremely important, extremely useful for these teachers to be aware of 1) What are the ways for a, for a teacher to assess the oral skills of their students in the classroom --for either placement purpose or for diagnostic purpose --So that they can serve better their learner community, in terms of material development and use of strategies in the classroom. ACTFL has offered us an opportunity to invite trained instructors, like Professor [???], our late trainer, and Shaheen Praveen, who have come to NYU. We've done also in collaboration with Columbia University, every year, sometimes twice, to train our teachers. So, although I haven't been trained officially by ACTFL, I have been engaged and involved in the trainings over more than 13 years. So I've, I've, I've received around 20 such trainings --full four days, OPI training. So what I've done, I recorded a lot of the practice interviews and the sample interviews of the teachers and the instructors, and I looked into how,

what --what the behavior of the teachers who are less familiar with the protocol and less familiar with the assessment criteria, how they proceed during the interview compared to, for example, a trained instructor. My interest was the, was the teachers; however, while recording and while listening, I -- I was struck by certain very clear, characteristics that made the heritage language learners very different than the foreign language learners who came for these practice interviews. So what I did is I, I looked into those who were [pause] they were assessed they were rated at the intermediate level, um, range, and I compared. So what--what I, what I, what I found out is that of course, I already mentioned that they seem to have very good interpersonal skills. The heritage language learners, possibly because of the way they learn the language, they could negotiate the ambiguity in a way better than the foreign language learners. They used guessing strategies. They used also some circumvention strategies, or without any hesitation, they would plug in an English word or an English expression within a syntactical units in Hindi. So they, they seem to use a little bit better intonation, a little bit better articulation. Some fillers, even. And often they could avoid --they could simplify certain, certain answers. So these sort of skills during their oral production, um, during these practice interviews definitely were strengths that they used very consistently. And, and again, I'm making sure that we realize that I'm talking about intermediate level and foreign language learners at the intermediate level as well, whose strategies to negotiate them [to a degree], were less developed. Who would sound and look almost frustrated when they wouldn't know a particular word, but they wouldn't plug-in as easily English, the way heritage language learners would. They would themselves move the conversation in a direction that was suit of requiring higher proficiency level language to talk about their academic interests. Whereas the heritage language learners, very interestingly, we would keep the conversation in a direction that is--that can be personalized, that is personalized and is related more to popular culture rather than academic culture. And hence, they didn't this--these topics, they didn't require a higher proficiency level in order--in order to express their, their thoughts. The foreign language learners definitely [pause] preferred the cards -- so, so during, during the OPI training, there are these cards with situations described in English that the student needed to do role-play based on these situations with the interviewer. So the students, you could see the foreign language learners because of lack of -- or, or weak skills, interpersonal, they would rather produce in a presentational mode, something than get in a back-and-forth type of interpersonal dialogue with interviewer. Whereasthe heritage language learners, they actually preferred the intrapersonal format and not so much the presentational. So in a way, these kind of characteristics, they have some implications. And these implications are pedagogical implications --and when I was making this comparison of the proficiencies, proficiency walls of the foreign language learners and the heritage language learners, and how gradually brick-by-brick we build in a more expected way, and in a more clear way the wall of the Foreign Language Learners --for us, the wall of the heritage language learners is not, is not that clear. We don't know it that much, and we need to explore it all the time so that we can challenge them enough for them to move to another sublevel and another level of, of the language. So in a way, what, what we, what we can hear is that the heritage language learners have several weaknesses or missing bricks or weak small bricks, such as, I would say, they, they over personalize, as I mentioned, their production.They cannot, um, appropriately use a higher register language when tasked to speak in an imagined, formal environment. They struggle with inconsistencies in terms of using honorifics. They combine this conversational upcase, [??], and then the [??] form, the one that signifies relationship on the horizontal line, is more used than the app form, which is the vertical sort of, the vertical line of sort of relationship in pragmatic terms. So they are inconsistent in using honorifics. Of course, we can guess that this is the kind of environment in which they were exposed to the language, in which dates in which they acquired the language when they were young. Another weakness, an area of improvement that we identify in these OPIs is relatively inconsistent control of gender. Frequent inaccuracies in the plural form, especially the direct form. In a way, the plural oblique form is used as the default plural. [????]. So these are some inconsistencies that we need to pay attention to, um, including the use of [???], the reflexive possessive pronoun. And one of the most interesting experiences I've had with my students, not only in terms of their production during OPIs, but also working based on these OPIs, working with them on mastering passive voice and subjunctive. What happens is, in Hindi, we have these intransitive verbs, like [???] versus [???]. So, our students prefer these intransitive verbs to the use of passive, uh passive voice. And it, it, it, it becomes a very focused and a very targeted type of activity to work with them on the differentiation between transitive and intransitive verbs and how we promote the object of the transitive verbs into a subject position in order to use the passive voice. And by the way, foreign language learners usually don't struggle so much with the passive voice. Which is a very interesting situation for me as a, as a, as an instructor. And another, another struggle I've had with my students is their overuse of [??????] versus a situation where we are trying to practice [????]. And so you're talking to someone, you're making suggestions about a trick that, that person can, can do. You might want to, you, you could, sort of a polite suggestion, use of subjunctive is our target. However, they overuse of [???] in this situation, which was sort of unexpected for me to find out. So just to sort of finish this thought here, these OPIs --although again, I emphasize the fact that they were, they were conducted by teachers in training, the production volume was enough for me to do this research and to find these patterns of strengths and areas for improvement that our heritage language learners in particular exhibited as features of their production.

[Bhavya] That is quite interesting. And talking about the challenges that you have mentioned, what are the some effective strategies that can be applied by the interviewer during the oral proficiency interviews for HLLs proficiency placements?

[Dr. Ilevia] This is, this is a good question. The reason why we're more and more using OPI or OPI-like interviews is because we're -- we have to give credit to STARTALK for helping us create a pipeline between the community schools. In some areas like California where you are Bhavya, and New Jersey mostly, and to some extent in Washington State, Florida, where there are, there are also there's articulation of Hindi curricula, not only at the community level, but also in the school systems. So this pipeline, when they come to us in the, at the university level, they are not the sort of unprepared, inexperienced in terms of learning Hindi heritage language learners. They already were a part of a classroom. They already were a part of some kind of systemic approach to their learning. And we as instructors, we need to know more about them. We need to know more about their skills, about their proficiencies. And working with them, from the very beginning requires our knowledge about them --who they are, their profile. And it is different, it is varied. Therefore, we need to do some testing even before they come to the classroom. This testing is not necessarily based on instruction. It is not based on something that they practiced. It is not necessarily focused on familiar content--content and context. And we are looking into the students. We are trying to get the students to elicit from the students enough production that can demonstrate their performance within a range. Because the kind of assessment of proficiency we do three--through OPIs is independent of instruction. It is sort of spontaneous. It has a broad content and context. And we need to observe sustained performance across tasks and contexts in order to be able to rate the particular student at a proficiency sublevel. So, so this is sort of the, the, the gist of what we need in terms of OPIs and the reasons why we, we do them. But of course, along with that, we talk about a more integrated assessment technique that is needed, because the students are their, their, their background, and their skills are so diverse and so complex that only one type of assessment is not going to work. We should have our, our way of doing formal and summative assessment also needs to be diverse, also needs to be complex. We need to make sure that while assessing our students, we put centrality of authenticity in, in our curriculum. Authenticity is what students have been exposed to --our heritage learners, they lived in a particular environment, they live in a particular family. They were exposed to specific cultural practices that are authentic. So, not putting emphasis on authenticity in the classroom and moving away from real life for the heritage language learners is actually detrimental. So therefore, approaches like Project-Based Teaching, Performance Based Teaching, student-centered teaching, anchoring everything we do in real life context is one way to to, to give the students this type of confidence and continuity in order for them to be able to make enough production or show us their, their receptive skills in, in, in a more contextualized way. In addition, in terms of the multiplicity of sort of measures for assessment. We should always add questionnaires before our classes --surveys with self assessing questions, with open-ended questions for short essays --they could be, of course, oral if no literacy skills are yet present. We need to think about reading, prompt-based answers. And also some researchers are talking about using [???] about 200 words that sort of give us the basics of language and allow us to perform minimum communication. The --the type of diversity of learners, as I said, needs to be addressed with a diversity strategies and diversity of feedback. Therefore, our heritage language learners, they need abundant formative feedback. They need, on the one hand, ongoing guidance, and on the other, they need to perform in, in different contexts in and produce varied samples of, of language for the, a teacher to be able to assess them correctly in order to continue supporting their learning and building their proficiency. E-e--another diversity, we need to bring in the classroom, especially nowadays with the unfortunate pandemic situation, we were fortunate to start using more actively and more efficiently virtual meetings. So, native speakers, we started bringing into our classrooms so that the source of, of language is not only the teacher, it's not only the self and the peers, but it's also native speakers live, interacting with, with our students. One of the most interesting, I would say, approaches to learning with heritage language learners is while they're learning and while they practice, they are very comfortable in the interpersonal mode of communication. Once they learned and ones they practiced, then they become confident in the presentational mode of communication. Our heritage language learners do not produce a lot of volume while they are among the community. And there they have learned how to simplify and how to be brief. And our push as instructors is to actually have them produce more volume and teach them not to be brief. And then teach them not to avoid a particular topic or a particular subtopic or even word. So in a way, bringing in, in the interpersonal mode, a native speaker with a new topic, unexpected topic, is something that gives them, gives the students some confort, because the interpersonal mode is what they're sort of more comfortable with. Of course, the interpretive mode is also there, but the while in the interpersonal mode, they get to learn new and practice it right away. With the Foreign Language Learners, this is a little bit more challenging, because they need a lot of preparation. This preparation, in a way takes them to a more comfortable, controlled environment in which they're presenting. And no questions are asked and no responses needed. But it's their thoughts, their skills, and they are in control of the kind of production that they prepared. And the interpersonal mode is actually a little bit more challenging for the foreign language learners. So sometimes when we're talking about this sequence of the modes, you start with interpersonal, you move through --no, sorry, You start with interpretive, you move to interpersonal, and finally you get to presentational. I would say that we can differentiate in terms of the sequencing, because often some of the heritage language learners need to brainstorm. And this is a kind of quick production that is in a presentational mode. Then, this is the diagnosing of what they know, how they can talk about it. And then the teacher moves on to Interpretive, uh to the interpretive mode and now filling in what during the brainstorm, during the brainstorming session was not covered. And then moving on to interpersonal and presentational. For foreign language learners, brainstorming is fine, but often the teacher knows what they know and how, and how they can use it. So the teacher, the teacher moves, starts with interpretive, possibly and hopefully contextualized interpretive tasks. And then the presentational often would come to give some confidence in the new topic when they are in control, and then the interpersonal mode can, can follow. So in a way, diversifying the sources with native speakers and diversifying the sequencing of the modes of communication is also a part of our strategies to deal with the difference between heritage and foreign language learners. Some of the, some of the most important aspects of our work is to rely on research and to, to use research to inform our targeted instruction and assessment. And what we need to do more in our field of Hindi pedagogy is we need to develop descriptive taxonomy of categorical strengths and weaknesses for our learners. Whether they're heritage god language learners in comparison to foreign language learners, or just as separate categories. And we need to work out sample, sort of, techniques and describe sample techniques for how we encourage consistent linguistic pattern production. Mastering certain linguistic patterns. How we do it in, in our diverse mixed stabilities classroom.

[Bhavya] I must say, this is, like, wonderful having a differentiated assessment integrated as part of the assessment, as well as the pedagogical strategy that you are applying while teaching Hindi, as a second language in a mixed ability classrooms. So this is a really, really, really good strategy that we all can learn. And with some examples that you have given and including the incorporation of native speakers of Hindi as a source of comprehensible input, or as a source to build up the oral proficiency of the language learners in the classroom is definitely a good strategy. So, do you think that the use of high register Hindi is a true assessment of Hindi proficiency at an intermediate to advanced level among HLLs? And Why?

[Dr. Ilevia] Yes. I --I'm , I remember being, in a way, surprised at the fact that when prompted to spiral up within a topic, when prompted by the interviewer to use higher level language, they would produce the volume needed, meaning text type. They use more complex syntax. They use relative, co-relative. They use different kinds of subordinate clauses. So the text type is there for a higher level; but the register, the style of speaking, is inappropriate to the context and the content that they're assigned. So, in a way, Let's imagine we're in an ACTFL OPI session, interview session. And the interviewer, after talking about health and food and the issues of personal habits versus what is good and what is bad, um, very good intermediate level --wants to move up to nutrition and wants to spiral up to what the school system or the university system do to improve the nutrition, sort of, offerings on campus. Imagine you are and--and now it's the role-type. Imagine you are the chair of a student club and you're talking to the deans about [pause] tell us ideas for how our canteens, our restaurants around campus can be better, what can be done better to serve the health of the students? At this point, the student is supposed to not talk about self, not talk about their habits, not talk about their likes and dislikes, but move up to a little bit of a higher register and use, use language appropriate for this kind of setting and context. Well, often heritage language learners, we don't know whether they can, because they again, personalize and they would say "All my friends or my mom brings me food or my friends and we cooked together". And it's not the kind of sort of formal language that they were asked to use. Is the prompt enough? And Maybe it's insufficient, is insufficiently detailed or not well formulated prompt for the students. That's why they're not doing it. Or the students actually cannot move up. We don't know when, when the, when the interviewer is very practiced, they know how to spiral up. They're more trained to do that. But during our practice interviews, I noticed a lot of, of this inability of the language learner to move up. And during these spiral--spiraling up but probes. So, so this is why I, I, I, I think that one of the most obvious weaknesses is when, during the interviews, they cannot move to the formal. And the formal style of speaking is actually an indication of a more advanced, or the advanced level. That's why I think that with heritage language learners, avoiding the tendency to personalize is a way to push them to move to the next level. So, depriving them of any chance to personalize meaning, giving them a role, very clear role where they're supposed to talk about the community, about a particular agenda, about a particular issue needs to be very specific in order for them not to move back to where they're comfortable, the personalization. This is why when we are talking about the implications, once we figure these differences between the foreign language learners and heritage language learners, we know that we, we're sort of in, if they are in one classroom, we're supposed to do things at the same time differently for the two groups, we use micro teaching techniques that are Top-down techniques. As I was saying, diagnosing what's missing, staying in a very clear real life context and having the students use as much as they can. And we are sort of filling in the needed parts. Whereas the foreign language learners, the FLLs, they need the micro-teaching. They need the brick by brick, which is bottom-up strategies. In addition, I would say that heritage language learners need to be challenged with academic knowledge, because that kind of choice for topics would bring their formal style of speaking and understanding. Whereas foreign language learners need popular culture, more popular culture, because academic knowledge for them is -- they know the content very often in English, but they, they need to practice and to practice at the intermediate level. Popular culture is how they would not challenge themselves too early to speak at a higher level. That's why academic knowledge versus popular culture is another, another choice we make in the classroom. Um, heritage language learners do benefit from research tasks, because they have used them in, in their past, the language only for communication. So more interpretive, more research-based tasks are needed, and more presentational tasks for HLLs --with specific role assignments. Whereas the foreign language learners, they need immersion. They need experiential tasks. They need to go to the community. They need to work with native speakers. They need to be exposed to a non-structured environment to get used to navigate ambiguity. And I would say that interpersonal tasks is what they're less comfortable in, and that's why often we need to sequence it after the presentation of tasks to give them confidence. But these are some strategies that we can use in the classroom to differentiate between the heritage language learners and the foreign language learners --and of course, there are more, and I'm sure there are a lot of practitioners out there that work in these mixed stabilities classrooms where they need to be very innovative. When, when we are thinking about assessment [pause] I usually want to make this difference between assessment goals that are OF learning --they are summative, they're the high-stakes goals for placement, for promotion, for retention that informs the sta-- the stakeholders. And also the second, the second group of goals is FOR learning. So one is OF learning (about the learning) and the other one is FOR learning. Learning, meaning this is the formative, the low stakes, the diagnostic, the, the, the, the type of assessment that informs instruction. So, we mentioned OPIs. OPIs are both use of learning and for learning, and we have plenty, now, of computer-generated dynamic tests that inform the stakeholders, and that's why my emphasis in the classroom with our students is for learning, so that what we find out based on our diverse instruments of assessments, and especially the performance of the students, informs our instruction to develop better, faster, and more efficiently, their language skills.

[Bhavya] I think the integration of [???] with the PBLs is an excellent form of having an assessment where the students get a chance to take their language proficiency towards the performance in the real life situation. Thank you, Dr. Ilevia for such a wonderful idea, and it's a really good idea to have it in a second language classrooms in a, in a diverse with both HLLs and FLLs in the classroom to bend their modes of communication, the second language here in case of Hindi. So how does OPI help Hindi language teachers to better design and implement Hindi curriculum and lessons that best suit the language and needs of both FLLs and HLLs?

[Dr. Ilevia] Um, OPIs or OPI-like interviews and being trained in doing them is extremely important, I think. And they teach us how to listen to the students better and how to give prompts to the students in order for them to be able to produce more volume. Next type is what we struggle in the classroom, especially orally. Because if, if it's a classroom of 15 students, you can imagine that only if, if we break up in groups, the, the class, then students will have more chance to practice and to speak. So the OPIs are informing us about our strategies to listen under the flow and to give these prompts that would help the student without frustrating them to try to spiral up their language production. Another, another --when, when you mentioned raft, this is, this is what a STARTALK--sorry, ACTFL cards ar. They are situational, they are very specific. They create a situation for the student, or for the students, to interact. I remember visiting in New Jersey, the [???], or no -- the [???] program, where they were using, with the intermediate students, very interesting cards. The theme of the camp, the STARTALK camp was "Environment". And the cards were ACTFL-like situations. Imagine your neighbor through --in your yard, garbage. Please. Go there. Be respectful, and try to explain why this is wrong or what needs to be done. So, the students were enjoying so much these kind of interactions that were created by the teachers about the environment, about their own yards, about, about their community and residential areas and so forth, that it-it sort of made me realize how important the OPI training was for these teachers who went through it at least once, and how proficiency targeted these cards were. So, I was in awe with, with this program that year and with the kind of engagement they designed for their students. The RAFT --you mentioned, and that's why I'm giving this example. I -- I also am adding to the role, as we know, Roll audience, format and topic. Jennifer Eddie has also added "S" at the end, which is special language, where actually we ask the students to follow a checklist of language structures that we want them to use. So this is the special language, whether we are targeting subjunctive, whether we're targeting, let's say, [???]. Relative, co-relative, syntactic, syntactical patterns, or just [??] construction, the aggregative -- doesn't matter. So this is a special language, but what I'm adding also to Jennifer's plan is reverse roles. So the role and the audience are reversed. And creating not only the presentational task for --you are speaking in a role to an audience, or you're writing in a particular role to a particular readership --but also reverse. Now you are the audience and you are asking questions, and you'll have your own concerns so that the raft becomes a part, not only of presentational tasks, but also of interpersonal tasks. In a way to serve better the two groups of learners, the foreign language learners and the heritage language learners.

[Bhavya] So adding "S" to the RAFT is definitely going to build the critical thinking and analytical skills of both HLLs and FLLs, that is, it's a wonderful strategy. So doo you have any resources to share with our audience or Hindi teachers who would, can take as an example for integration of RAFT or a PBL approach?

[Dr Ilevia] We've , uh -- Our Hindi virtual site is where we've put a lot of lesson plans and a lot of sample performance tasks, and a lot of units. With the particular back --backward design format where the proficiency is identified, where the objectives, being can-do statements, are articulated, where the performance task is described, where the language structures, the targeted language structure,s are also described and the learning episodes are listed. So virtual Hindi is a place to look at this. In addition, we have a few PowerPoints that are shared in the teacher training resources on Virtual Hindi that might be useful. A lot of the, a lot of the thoughts and observations I shared with you about the heritage language learners they're on the slides available in the teacher training resources menu. And of course, anyone can contact me, I can send, I have hundreds of slides and presentations on different topics. I will be more than willing to share. Especially knowing that a lot of our teachers in the field struggle moving the students from the intermediate to advanced level. In a way, the intermediate level is the longest plateau that they inhabit. So moving them to the advanced level and trying to modify our tasks in a way to move the students from intermediate to advanced level is what I think is challenging right now. For example, if, if the role is of tour guides, how do we move them to go up, stay with the same topic, but go up to use more complex structures. So, they become NGO workers. Then the customers, as audience becomes interns for the NGO workers, then the poster presentation becomes job internship or job presentation, and the region and CT description, the multi-day tour becomes the issue agenda, becomes multi month project for the NGO. And then the topic from travel becomes in--internship. And then the special language, for example, how do you explain and describe for the intermediate level, where there's a city map and geography, cultural attraction, sightseeing monuments, activities and foods. But moving up to advanced level, then, instead of explaining, describe, we need to say convinced, reject, argue. The topics are environment protection, local craft, art support, Heritage Preservation, healthy green living education. So this smooth transition to a higher, a higher level, more abstract level topic and the task requires a higher proficiency level production, and this is the way we sort of make sure that our tasks are well-designed to move them on the continuum, on the proficiency continuum. Maybe faster. What, what we, what we are thinking about is tasks that are structured in real life, that are open-ended so that some innovations, some creativity, and hence motivation, can be a factor in these tasks. So, in a way, moving from explicative to argumentative, from descriptive to convincing, from straightforward, to complicated, from more structured, to less structured from self and community focused to discipline based. And in this way, our learners can transition to higher order tasks and a higher proficiency level production.

[Bhavya]This is amazing. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for sharing this wonderful resource and your thoughts and insight on topics related to heritage language learner and OPI. And thank you so much for all you're doing and for sharing today. Thank you.

[Dr. Ilevia] You're welcome. Thank you.