INVITED SPEAKERS

Curricular Models for Teaching Heritage & Non-heritage Learner

Different curricular models are being practiced by different (commonly and less commonly taught) language programs for teaching heritage and non-heritage learners. Some programs have two tracks where heritage and non-heritage learners never come together. Other programs start with separate tracks and then they bring them together at higher levels of instruction. However, there are many programs (including South Asian and non-South Asian) which do not or cannot separate them at any level due to limited resources or small enrollments. The question is how these programs manage to cater to different linguistic and non-linguistic needs of their heritage and non-heritage learners in the same classroom. What kind of instructional and placement strategies are being used to serve these different types of populations? And, to what extent these strategies are working? I will explore these questions in the proposed paper. I’ll also try to define the term “heritage learner” for South Asian languages because different models best serve different types of heritage learners.