Short Visits to a Home Nation can Enhance Heritage Language Skills

It is well documented that consistent use of a home language can support its maintenance while living in a host country. Using the heritage language regularly in the host country whether with family, with friends, or while engaged in other activities (i.e., sports, after school activities, cultural clubs) are all key elements that support maintenance of the heritage language. An important additional activity that has been shown to enhance heritage language skill maintenance is visits to the home country.

Research by Vailliki Chondrogianni and Evangelia Daskalaki shows that while ongoing use of a home language in a host country is essential, short visits to a heritage nation can greatly enhance the home language outcome. These researchers followed children living outside of Greece, who used Greek as a home language, and who went to Greece for short visits. They found that some of the most vulnerable aspects of heritage language maintenance were bolstered by visits to the home country. Specifically, visiting Greece and interacting with a variety of speakers in many different contexts improved the heritage language learners vocabulary skills and correct reproduction of grammatical structures in a sentence. The researchers concluded that visits to the home country were linked to more “accurate use of the language.”

Chandrogianni and Daskalaki found that visits to a home country allows the heritage language learner the opportunity to experience the language used in a natural context and allows him or her exposure to using the language with a variety of different speakers (those familiar and unfamiliar and those of various status), across different contexts (formal and less formal situations), and offer spontaneous opportunities to use the language. While it is not possible for all heritage language learners to visit their home country, there may be ways to emulate the experience.

This research can be employed to encourage schools and heritage language programs to offer opportunities for learners to speak with people who live in the country of origin regularly. Providing these interactions on an ongoing basis, even in a virtual format, may enhance the learner’s ability to practice their skills among a variety of speakers, across different settings, and allows for exposure to how the language is used in the country of origin. For example, a school class could have weekly chats with students in a school in the country of origin or talk on a regular basis with seniors in a retirement home in the country of origin. There are many creative ways that the benefits of talking with the residents of host country can be realized to enhance heritage language learner’s outcomes.

Photo credit: Charu Chaturvedi on Unsplash.

Information for this piece was sourced from:

Chondrogianni, V. & Daskalaki , E. (2023). Heritage language use in the country of residence matters for language maintenance, but short visits to the homeland can boost heritage language outcomes. Froniters in Language Science, 2, 25 September 2023, https://doi.org/10.3389/flang.2023.1230408