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Developing language autonomy of HLs: Language portfolios and data-driven grammar instruction
by Irina Dubinina
The presentation will provide practical suggestions to address two central gaps in linguistic performance of heritage speakers: 1) limited context of language use, and 2) lack of attention to morphological details.
1).Heritage learners often feel apprehensive about using their heritage language in contexts that are unfamiliar to them. Since their experiences with the language are rather limited, almost any context that is outside of the oral discourse in the familial setting falls in this category. The language portfolio approach aims to develop HLs' language skills and expand the domain of language use.
2). Heritage learners (HLs) fail to pay attention to small grammatical morphemes due to being underexposed to the structural patterns of the full variety. The presentation will advance a pedagogical approach that trains HLs' linguistic intuition by teaching them to detect grammatical patterns in linguistic problem sets. This data-driven approach allows HLs to induce grammatical rules, focuses their attention on the form and meaning of grammatical morphemes, and may facilitate their acquisition of the grammatical norms.