Heritage language classes and bilingual competence: the case of Albanian immigrant children in Greece

ABSTRACT

The present paper reports on a questionnaire survey conducted in the course of a broader research project on bilingualism (BALED). It compares two groups of Albanian immigrant parents in Greece with respect to their practices for supporting minority language development. The first group includes parents (N = 35) whose children receive systematic instruction in the heritage language; the other group (N = 167) comprises parents who do not send their children to heritage language classes but may support Albanian language maintenance in various ways. Αccording to their parents’ reports, all children were dominant in Greek. Our purpose was to compare the two groups with regard to (i) language use patterns among family members, (ii) parental practices in support of the minority and the majority language, and (iii) children’s language competence in the respective languages. Τhe ultimate aim is to explore the relations between parental practices and children’s competence in the minority language. Results indicated that parents who send their children to heritage language courses also engage more often in practices which promote literacy in the heritage language at home. These children were reported by their parents to possess literacy skills in Albanian to a higher degree than children who do not attend systematic instruction in this language. Our findings corroborate previous research (e.g. Bylund, E., and M. Díaz. 2012. “The Effects of Heritage Language Instruction on First Language Proficiency: A Psycholinguistic Perspective.” International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 15 (5): 593–609; Chumank-Horbatsch, R. 1999. “Language Change in the Ukranian Home: From Transmission to Maintenance to the Beginnings of Loss.” Canadian Ethnic Studies Journal 31 (2): 61–75; Schwartz, M. 2008. “Exploring the Relationship between family Language Policy and Heritage Language Knowledge among Second Generation Russian-Jewish Immigrants in Israel.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 29 (5): 400–418) suggesting that literacy development at home and especially attendance of heritage language instruction are extremely beneficial for its development without disrupting the development of the majority language.

KEYWORDS:

• Heritage language classes
• complementary schools
• minority language development
• Albanian
• Greek

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Sotiris Tantos whose contribution to the statistical analysis of the data was particularly helpful.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

Marina Mattheoudakis is Associate Professor of English, specializing in CLIL and teaching methodology in general. She has been involved in many research projects both in Greece and internationally.

Aspasia Chatzidaki is an Associate Professor at the University of Crete. Her research interests lie in sociolinguistic aspects of bilingualism and in teaching Greek as a Second Language, She has published articles related to minority and bilingual education -in Greece and abroad- and has been involved in related research projects.

Christina Maligkoudi is a sociolinguist with a a Ph.D. in Intercultural Education, currently working as an instructor of Modern Greek at the School for Modern Greek. She has also taught related subjects at the University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki and has participated in numerous projects of intercultural education.

Notes

1. Complementary schools are usually voluntary, community organizations, aiming at teaching heritage languages and transmitting cultural elements to the second and third-generation of speakers of a particular community (Creese and Martin 2006; Garcia, Zakharia, and Otcu 2013; Lytra and Martin 2010).

2. According to Maligkoudi (2014), while the first Albanian immigrants came to Greece over twenty five years ago, Albanian immigrant communities in several cities and regions in Greece did not emerge before 2001 (the last documented ‘school’ was founded in 2008). It is also noteworthy that, despite the large numbers of Albanian immigrants who have settled in Greece in the last twenty years, both provision for and attendance rates of ‘complementary schools’ providing courses in the minority language and culture remain relatively low (Maligkoudi 2014).

3. The term ‘heritage language’ will be used throughout the article interchangeably with ‘minority language’ to refer to language courses organized by immigrant communities. The first term has gained wide currency in Northern America and Australia (as the title of several publications and journals testify) but is used to a much lesser extent in the European context.

4. BALeD stands for Bilingual Acquisition and Language Development (http://www.diglossia.gr/index.php/research-teams)

5. The ‘Mother Theresa’ (‘Nene Tereza’) complementary school was founded in 2004 and uses premises offered by the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Classes run on Sundays for 90 min and the total number of pupils does not exceed 100 with an age range between 6 and 15 years. Teachers offer their services on a voluntary basis (Maligkoudi 2010, 2014).

6. The option ‘sending him/her to additional Albanian course’ was used to differentiate between the two groups.

7. The number of legal permits for Albanian immigrants in December 2011 was 388,666, in June 2014 there was a decrease and their total number was 302,148 (Hellenic Statistic Authority 2014).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Thalis project BALED: ‘Bilingualism and Bilingual Education: the development of linguistic and cognitive abilities in different types of bilinguals’ [MIS 377313] which was co-financed by Greece and the European Union (European Social Fund) (NSRF 2007–2013) within the framework of the Operational Program ‘Education and Lifelong Learning’.