Online Hub of Heritage Language Resources: Use With Adults With Limited Education and Literacy

A great deal of instructional practice with adult learners who have migrated to a new country (with a new language) and who have limited education and literacy in their first/native/heritage language(s) focuses on their learning the language of the country they have settled in. This makes sense, given that they need to participate effectively in the social, educational, and economic life of the host country. At the same time, research documents ways that available materials in learners' heritage languages can promote language proficiency and reading and build a sense of agency (e.g., Bigelow, 2009; Bigelow & Vinogradov, 2011; Cummins, 2005; Cummins & Danesi, 1990; Polinsky & Kagan, 2007). Simpson (2017) argues that social integration should be multilingual, taking the migrants' heritage languages into consideration. There is a growing interest in implementing multilingual approaches in language teaching (Council of Europe, 2011) and using heritage languages in adult literacy development (UNESCO, 2017). After a brief review of this research and perspective, the presenters will describe a newly created online hub of heritage language resources, with links to collections of books, audio files, and other materials that can be accessed, used in instruction, made available to learners, and used by learners outside of class; https://www.leslla.org/resources-in-mother-tongues. The goals of the hub are to provide easy access to high-quality reading materials, in learners’ heritage languages, to make sure that individuals and communities can maintain and possibly continue to develop literacy in their heritage/home languages and that younger members of the community can keep using their home languages and become literate in them. Presenters will close by briefly describing ways that instructors can implement dynamic, multilinguistic instruction and that the resource hub can be used as a component of this approach.