Heritage Language Education

In the political and educational spheres, heritage language education has emerged during the past decade as an important component of language education formats in the United States. Better said, the concept has reemerged, for it has been present in American education for a long time under other names. This new attention to heritage language education reflects a series of developments in society at large, as well as within the education profession itself. Driving this reappearance are important demographic shifts in the United States, especially the rising proportion of students in the K-12 system who speak languages other than English or who come from homes with such languages in active use. The social and linguistic needs of these students, both with respect to acquiring English and maintaining their home language, have led to a reassessment of long-held assumptions about the process of second-language acquisition and best practices in teaching language. This entry reviews, in a general way, the basic elements of the concept of heritage language education and its place among other aspects of language teaching and learning.

Immigrant families with access to voice over Internet protocol telephony (VOIP), the Internet, Univision, Al Jazeera, and other international media no longer feel the need to abandon ancestral languages to become “good Americans.” Finally, a range of scholars and government analysts, discussed further later, has begun to focus on the uses of heritage languages and their speakers as resources for promoting U.S. economic, diplomatic, and defense interests around the world.

Within the field of bilingual education, the focus on heritage languages offers a critical opportunity to break through the fossilized debate between the extremes of bilingual education versus English-only programming, Hispanic versus Anglo, and immigrant versus native-born. The discourse of heritage languages presents gentler, less abrasive positions than those that have characterized that debate. Despite—or perhaps because of—the renewed attention currently paid to heritage language education from such disparate academic and practitioner communities, important differences have emerged: They range from fundamental definitions to the issues that should drive a research agenda that can advance heritage language education in the nation.