Education is one of many factors that contribute to the phenomenon of language maintenance-language shift. Societal ideology and attitude toward a second language other than a country’s official languages contributes to the macro picture. This suggests that whereas education is important in efforts at language maintenance, particularly for minority members of society, other factors prevent language shift and promote language maintenance for minority languages at both the societal and global levels.

Such minority languages can be considered heritage languages, which is the focus of this present research study. A heritage language (HL) can be defined as a language that is spoken not by the dominant culture, but in the family or associated with the heritage culture (Krashen, Tse & McQuillan, 1998). The term heritage language is sometimes used interchangeably with mother tongue, ethnic language, nonofficial language, and minority language. For the purposes of this article, HL refers to all languages that are not the official language(s) of a country.

The overall purpose of this investigation is to explore the relationship between HL programs and HL maintenance of second-generation Chinese Canadians in Ontario, Canada. More specifically, the ethnographic case study underlying this investigation examines a particular HL program from the perspectives of (a) administrators and teachers, (b) students, and (c) parents. The 14 participants―two program administrators, two teachers, three parents, and seven students―were from a Cantonese Chinese HL program site located in a large urban city with a high immigrant population. They participated in an in-class questionnaire, classroom observations, and semi-structured interviews. In this article, we specifically look at the findings pertaining to the teacher hiring process, the teaching and learning resources available in these programs, and the issue surrounding the organization model of HL schools on Saturdays.

HERITAGE LANGUAGE EDUCATION IN ONTARIO: WHAT WAS AND WHAT IS

In Canada, each province has its own Ministry of Education to govern its educational affairs, including HL education. The Ontario provincial government first introduced its HL program in 1977 (Cummins & Danesi, 1990). The program aimed to promote students’ HL maintenance and to deepen their cultural awareness, understanding, and expression through the study of heritage languages (Ontario Ministry of Education, 1991). School boards must provide HL instruction if at least 25 parents request such a program. There exist different organizational models for the HL programs, such as the integrated extended-day-school model, after-school model, late-afternoon or evening model, weekend model, and summer school model; however, all organizational models are offered outside of mainstream school hours (Ontario Ministry of Education, 1991).

Legislation surrounding Ontario’s HL program met the demands of the 1970s-1980s time period, when a majority of the HL students were first-generation Canadians who had a background of their home culture and language prior to their immigrating to Canada. These students’ L1 was their language of focus in the HL program as well as their primary language of communication. However, much of that has changed today. Students now attending the HL program are second-generation Canadians whose everyday social and academic language is English. They may not have the same deep socioemotional connections to the language and culture had by first-generation Chinese Canadians in the 1970s to 1990s.

Since its inception, the HL program has changed its name to International Language Program. Despite the name change, the legislation has not been changed, added to, or improved.

Without the appropriate legislation and governmental policies that reflect this change in student demographics and learning needs, the HL program is not likely to successfully reach its goal of promoting nonofficial language learning and maintenance. Its failure to evolve with time and hence respond to educational research and the evolving needs of the students has resulted in a stagnant Ontario HL program that lags behind that of other Canadian provinces (e.g., Alberta and British Columbia) where students are offered bilingual programming to learn about the language and culture of English and a second language other than French (British Columbia Ministry of Education, 2003; Government of Alberta, 2011).

SELECTED FINDINGS

The following findings were collected through semi-structured interviews, in-class questionnaires, and classroom observations. Participants shared their personal stories and experiences to depict and illustrate the role of the government, the school, the family, and the community in the language maintenance phenomenon.

The Teacher Hiring Process

At this school board, its Continuing Education department oversees the hiring of HL teachers. The board’s Continuing Education office conducts interviews in the presence of an HL administrator, an assistant administrator, and a community member who speaks the language for which the applicant is being interviewed. This interview is conducted primarily in English; for some questions, the applicant is required to answer in both languages (e.g., English and Cantonese Chinese). The community representative assesses the applicant’s language ability―by listening to the oral responses in the specific language and by reading through the written response to a specific question that all teacher applicants must answer―and makes a recommendation. The current hiring practice does not evaluate the teachers’ second language pedagogy skills. Rather, it ensures the teachers’ proficiency in only the target language; but even then, this evaluation by one community member can be rather subjective. As suggested by Snow (2006), the assumption that a person can teach a language if he or she is proficient in the target language is ill-informed and has no merit. The simple fact that a person is proficient in a language does not necessarily make the person a good teacher-candidate of said language.

The Teaching and Learning Resources

Students enrolled in this particular Cantonese Chinese HL program are each provided with a black-and-white textbook and exercise book. The textbook and exercise book are undoubtedly useful in providing a critical guide for the teachers, students, and parents alike in terms of the material that the program aims to cover and teach, particularly for the elementary HL program where there are no Ministry documents to outline the learning outcomes and expectations.

Nevertheless, the two teacher participants found some of the passages and lessons in the textbook to be somewhat irrelevant to today’s Chinese Canadians. The lack of pretty, colorful pictures within the text makes Cantonese Chinese learning even less appealing and interesting to the students, particularly at the elementary level. If the textbook included more relevant topics along with full-color pictures, comparable to those found in mainstream classroom texts, students would then be able to utilize and transfer some of the skills acquired during regular school into the HL classroom.

Of the different activities observed in the two classrooms, it is clear that both teachers did not rely solely on the textbook for lesson planning and teaching. In the case of Yasmeen, she picked specific contents from the textbook to guide her lessons. In Kalista’s class, she employed the teaching strategy of scaffolding to create mini lessons, which builds onto the main focus of the actual lesson based on the textbook.

This Cantonese Chinese HL program site conducts its classes in vacant classrooms of a regular secondary school over the weekends. If society does indeed value the teaching of heritage languages and genuinely believes in the importance of heritage language learning, students and teachers would have access to the same kind of resources such as relevant textbooks, exercise books, learning technology, and accommodation and remediation for those with special learning needs, all of which can be found within the regular school setting. This, unfortunately, is far from the truth. Signs posted by the regular schoolteachers can be found throughout the classrooms, asking the HL teachers and students to not remove written notes from blackboards, to not rearrange furniture, and to not touch the computers. Needless to say, this does not create the most welcoming learning environment. It should not be surprising at all if some of the students, or even teachers, feel inferior or marginalized. As a researcher with a minority background, I have experienced these feelings too. This sense of intimidation is entirely contrary to the HL program’s positive goal, which is to welcome students of all backgrounds to learn another language.

Attending School on Saturdays

When HL program classes are held on Saturdays rather than within the regular school schedule during the week, as is the case with the selected Cantonese Chinese HL program, the classes can be held in the empty school facilities that would have otherwise been left vacant. This efficient use of facility resources, along with the ease in scheduling for both the administrators and the parents, is a definite advantage to holding HL programs over the weekends. Administrators would have fewer problems in the scheduling of room allocation without having to juggle between regular and HL classes; likewise, parents would not have to rearrange the schedule of their children’s after-school extracurricular activities in order to accommodate after-school HL classes on weekdays.

This setup, however, also has its disadvantages. The weekly two-and-a-half-hour classes provide students with once-a-week Cantonese Chinese language exposure within the formal classroom setting. During the two-month research period, these weekly classes were frequently interrupted by occasions such as professional development day, family day weekend, and March break. The fact that these HL classes are held on a weekly basis already limits students’ overall exposure to language input and output opportunities within a formal classroom setting. These frequent breaks only prolong the period between weekly exposures.

In this study, some student participants expressed resentment about having to attend HL classes on Saturdays. They felt that Saturdays should be reserved for leisure activities. On the basis of the students’ responses to the questionnaire, it is obvious that they have a positive attitude toward learning Cantonese Chinese. Nonetheless, they feel robbed of their free time because other students only have to attend school during the regular school week while they (the HL students) have to put in one extra day each week to learn the language. This observation can be extrapolated to other students, such as those who do not have as positive an attitude toward Cantonese Chinese learning as do the student participants. One can only imagine how this resentful feeling could intensify among those students. This, in turn, can result in an even more negative attitude toward Cantonese Chinese learning.

ENTERTAINING THE WHAT IFS

What If . . . the Teacher Hiring Process Were Different?

An interview process in which the HL administrator, assistant administrator, and the community member all speak the language for which the applicant is being interviewed would be ideal. This way, the applicant’s teaching and language abilities would both be examined during this interview process. However, if there were no HL administrator or assistant administrator who could speak the target language, then an alternative could be to include a panel of community members so that the evaluation process of the individual’s language abilities could be more a collaborative decision and hence more objective.

What If . . . There Were a Ministry of Education Curriculum Document That Outlined Heritage Language Education at Both the Elementary and Secondary Level?

The proposed curriculum document need not be language-specific; however, it should provide a guideline for HL teachers by clearly detailing the overall and specific expectations of each grade level, as well as some recommendations regarding common teaching pedagogies appropriate for teaching HL as both a first and second language. Such a document would provide a blueprint for school boards to better guide the existing province-wide HL program. It would also ensure continuity in language learning skills between grade levels. Furthermore, it would serve to inform parents about what they can expect from the students’ participation in the HL program.

What If . . . We Had Integrated Bilingual Programs Instead?

The integration of HL classes into the regular school day would provide students with more consistent exposure to the language and, according to researchers such as Ballinger and Lyster (2011), this would also increase the likelihood of students’ language retention. In the case of integrated HL classes, even when there is a break for professional development day or other statutory holidays, a break would never be more than a few days before students resume their heritage language instructions again. This integrated model would certainly reap more benefits for the overall student language-learning experience than would the current weekend model.

CONCLUSION

The findings of this ethnographic case study are of broad interest internationally. The language teaching and learning issues surrounding second-generation students are as relevant to the second-generation Chinese Canadian student taking a heritage language class in Canada as they are to the second-generation Turkish German student taking a Turkish foreign language class in Germany. In a language environment where minority languages need to constantly battle with the official language(s) of the host country, the future of these minority languages remains uncertain.

Society needs to take a firmer stance on what it strives to achieve through these heritage language programs. Such programs are created to promote the learning and teaching of minority languages as well as their maintenance. Though in theory, the government and society support these language maintenance causes, reality seems to suggest otherwise, as there continues to be a lack of teaching and learning resources and support within these programs. This kind of lackluster effort cannot be justified given what is at stake for these students: learning another language and gaining an understanding of one’s roots.

REFERENCES

Ballinger, S., & Lyster, R. (2011). Student and teacher oral language use in a two-way Spanish/English immersion school. Language Teaching Research, 15, 289-306.

British Columbia Ministry of Education. (2003). The languages 5 to 12 template -development package. Retrieved from http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/irp/pdfs/international_languages/2003langtemp512.pdf

Cummins, J., & Danesi, M. (1990). Heritage languages: The development and denial of Canada’s linguistic resources. Toronto, ON: Our Schools/Our Selves Education Foundation.

Government of Alberta. (2011). International Languages Programs. Retrieved from http://education.alberta.ca/teachers/program/interlang.aspx

Krashen, S., Tse, L., & McQuillan, J. (Eds.). (1998). Heritage language development. Culver City, CA: Language Education.

Ontario Ministry of Education. (1991). Heritage languages: Kindergarten to grade 8. Toronto, ON: Queen’s Printer.

Snow, D. (2006). More than a native speaker. Alexandria, VA: Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages.

Tiffany Ng is a doctoral student at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. Her research interests are in the areas of second language education, particularly minority language education, as well as language teaching using technology and music within multilingual contexts.