Teaching Arabic as a Heritage Language

Rasha ElHawari

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781351014656
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Theory & Practice

Teaching Arabic as a Heritage Language is a practical guide to Arabic pedagogy for Heritage Learners of Arabic.

Exploring the teaching of Arabic as a foreign language (TAFL) in North America and Europe, it covers sociocultural topics such as diglossia and religion alongside theoretical approaches to Heritage Language Learning. It also provides a new and detailed definition of the heritage language learner (HLL) of Arabic. The role of the professor and the material are explored to ensure a successful learning experience. The latest advances in HLL are considered together with the recent and recommended changes in classroom practice, giving rise to the recognition of the individual needs of heritage learners.

This is an indispensable resource for instructors, researchers, and students in the fields of TAFL and TASOL, as well as linguists interested in Arabic language learning and teaching.

Part 1

Arabic as a heritage language

Part 1 presents an overall look at heritage languages and the Arabic language. Chapter 1 starts by defining what is meant by a heritage language in general. Examples of heritage languages in the US, Canada, and Europe are outlined. This is followed, in Chapter 2, by a look at the Arabic language across the Arab World. Arabic diglossia is explained, and the varieties of Arabic are introduced. Then, in Chapter 3, Arabic outside the Arab world is looked at. The relation between Arabic and religion as well as the historic spread of Arabic are presented. Part 1 is meant as a general overview of the main issues the book covers: heritage language and Arabic. In order to do that, it starts by establishing the domains these cover so that in Part 2 the heritage language learner (HLL) of the Arabic classroom is presented in detail.

1 What is a heritage language?

1.0 Introduction

This book looks at what is meant by a heritage language (HL), who is a heritage language learner (HLL), and what needs to be known about this learner. It also looks at the Arabic language as a language used both inside and outside of the Arab World, as well as Arabic as a HL. HL learning is an emerging branch of linguistics, more specifically of Second Language Acquisition (SLA); more and more learners in the Arabic language class belong to this group. Over the last two decades, heritage language learning is becoming a recognized subbranch in second language learning. It is receiving attention in different places in both North America and Europe. Research in HL in both North America and Europe is growing for almost similar reasons. Chapter 1 looks at what is meant by a HL and how the term can vary in scope and meaning. The differences are a result of which language is discussed, where the language is used, and who is defining it. It also presents different groups of HLLs in different places in the West. The chapter aims at identifying the scope of this subfield in language learning, as well as sharing the progress in the field in order to better understand the language learners. This allows the reader to better place Arabic as a HL in context.

1.1 A definition of heritage language

As the name implies, a heritage language is a language of a people that belongs to the past: the near or far past. It can be the language of the parents, grandparents, or of an older people. This language is no longer the present dominant language at the place where the individual, in this case the HLL, lives. There are two main reasons why this language of the past is no longer present. It can be either because a group of speakers of this language moved away from the main group of speakers of the language; or it can be because a new group of people with a different language took over and became the dominant speakers in a place. Montrul (2010, p. 4) gives a broad definition of heritage speakers to be “child and adult members of a linguistic minority who grew up exposed to their home language and the majority language.” Montrul looks at the HL development more as a form of bilingualism and does not discuss the linguistic proficiency nor the psychological, sociopolitical, or socioeconomic perspectives of HLs.

When discussing HLs, there are different distinctions that need to be clarified. In order to define what exactly is meant by an HL, one has to look at the location and the users of the language. Also, an attempt to explain how languages move from place to place clarifies how they become what is known as a HL. HL acquisition is developing in the US, Canada, and Europe. Even though the concept of HL is the same in all these places, it can be referred to in different terms, and its scope can vary according to the situation in the specific place where the HL is being used. There are external factors, both geographical and political, that affect the definition of HL. It is important to note that when this book discusses HL, it is limiting it to HL in the field of language learning and from the foreign language educator’s point of view. The book does not look at the cultural, social, or anthropological perspectives, as these would be different.

This chapter looks at HLs in the US and Canada (North America¹) and how they differ and change. Also, it briefly looks at HLs in Europe, as this shows the reader how the concept of HLs differs with place.² The chapter looks at language policy and how HL education is not the same in all places and how it is influenced by elements such as history, politics, and demographics. The last section in this chapter gives a brief outline of a number of HLs in North America. This establishes the ground to see how Arabic as a HL fits in the bigger scope of HLs.

A definition of all that is incorporated in the term “heritage language learner” is more than often incomplete, as this changes from place to place, from time to time, and from language to language, as well as differing according to the approach to the topic. The following section looks at a number of different types of HLs in order to present a clear idea of what is meant by the term. HLs differ from one place to another according to where the HL is; they are influenced by elements such as history, politics, and demographics. For the average North American, when we talk about HL, the first thing that comes to mind is the language spoken and used by Native Americans, the indigenous people, who inhabited North America before the Europeans ever arrived to this land. This is partly true, but, as we have seen above, HL has grown in the world of today to include much more than the language of the indigenous people.

With the continuous flow of immigrants into North America, there has been a continuous growth in the number of languages these people bring with them, especially after the political changes the world saw during the twentieth century and continue to see until the present time. Thus, a general definition of the HL in the field of language learning is, as Fishman (2001) explains, the language that students are exposed to at home. It occurs in the case where the family speaks another language at home and does not speak the main language of the community. This learner is familiar, to a certain extent, with the home language, but is not necessarily proficient in it. They can be developed in the speaking and listening skills more than the written skills as they might not have been formally taught to read and write this language (see Section 5.2).

Heritage languages are usually languages of the past; they belong to the family history – the connection to the past can be gone or it can still be present. The reason why they are of the past can differ. One way to divide or group HLs is based on when in the past were they used and why they ceased to become the language of the majority. Fishman (2001) and Makoni (2018) talk about different types of HLs, and they discuss definitions given by other linguists. HLs can be classified in different ways, and a brief summary of how both linguists see HL is presented below. They look at languages based on the time these languages were used in North America and follow a chronological order starting with the oldest languages used followed by the more recent ones.

Fishman (2001) classifies three categories of heritage languages: indigenous heritage languages, colonial heritage languages, and immigrant heritage languages; a fourth category or group of HL is ancestral heritage languages, which is discussed by Makoni (2018). These groups are briefly presented below.

1.1.1 Indigenous heritage languages

Indigenous heritage languages are the languages that were spoken in the US and Canada before English, Spanish, or French was ever spoken on the continent. The exact number of the languages spoken in the US and Canada before the first settlers arrived is estimated to be between 300 languages (Krauss, 1998) and 450 (Burnaby, 2007); it is difficult to know the exact number. Today there are around 155 indigenous languages in use to various degrees, with 57 of these languages spoken by a few elderly people only and not by the younger population. These languages were not accepted the Europeans. Early after arriving in North America, they worked on establishing the European languages on the new continent and minimized the presence of indigenous languages.

In the nineteenth century, Residential Schools were established in the US and in Canada. The main aim of the schools was to assimilate the indigenous children into the European ways of life including language, culture, and Christianity (Smith, 2010). The experience of the indigenous students in the residential boarding schools was extremely negative. In Canada, from the 1870s until the mid-1990s, when the last school was closed, more than 150,000 indigenous students were sent to Residential Schools where they were forced to forget not only their language, but also their culture and traditions (Wilk, Maltby, & Cook, 2017). The position of the governments of the US and Canada has changed over time. The former Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, has apologized for the Indian Residential School System (Government of Canada, 2008). Today, the number of speakers and users of the indigenous heritage languages is decreasing and the government has acknowledged the gravity of the system that tried to eradicate the identity of the first inhabitants of North America, and it has established a system where the language and culture are being supported and encouraged. Teaching indigenous languages is supported by the government, and university programs in Indigenous Studies are welcomed.

1.1.2 Colonial heritage languages

Colonial heritage languages refer to the languages that were spoken mainly in the US by the settlers who arrived before the English speakers. This includes Spanish, Dutch, French, and German. These languages were part of the earlier languages used in the US, but as the majority of new immigrants at the time were from Britain, English became the language of the majority. German was the only language that continued to be the mother tongue of speakers across the generations, is still used in parts of Pennsylvania. This is for reasons specific to this particular group of speakers, who held on to the language as part of their culture and identity. Yet, at times German was looked upon with suspicion in the US (see Section 1.2).

It can be argued that even the English language came to the US with the immigrants, so it was a colonial language, not a HL; it has become the official language of the country and as such it is no longer neither a colonial language nor a HL.

1.1.3 Immigrant heritage languages

Immigrant heritage languages is a term used to refer to languages that came with immigrants from their motherlands after the US became an independent country. These include Spanish, German, and Italian, among other languages. Often these languages will overlap with the colonial language, such as in the case of Spanish. Actually, Spanish is the most prominent case of modern HLs in the US, and the research on Spanish as a HL is key to this emerging field.

Immigrant HLs in the US can be divided the into three stages based on the chronological facts and the role of political events on HLs. This immigrant HL group saw changes at three key turning-points: (a) after independence, (b) after World War II, and (c) the turn of the century, more specifically after 2011. These crucial turning points in the history of the US have led to a change in the public views and attitudes to certain HLs. For instance, Fishman (2001) points out that the view of the immigrant languages changed considerably during WWII. Not all languages were treated equally. If one looks at the case of German, for example, one will notice that the German speakers were eyed with suspicion and there was a decline in the registration in the schools teaching German at that time.

1.1.4 Ancestral heritage languages

Makoni (2018) notes that the languages of the African Americans is a distinct group of its own, which he refers to as the ancestral heritage languages. Makoni (2018) explains that the HL(s) of the American-born Africans (ABAs) has been lost, as it was spoken...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• List of abbreviations in alphabetical order
• Introduction
• Readership
• PART 1 Arabic as a heritage language
• PART 2 Heritage language learning pedagogy
• Index