Panel 3.1. Grammar in the Heritage Context, Part 1

Moderator: Claire Hitchins Chik (University of California, Los Angeles)

Relative Clauses in Child Heritage Speakers of Turkish in the United States

• Aylin Coskun Kunduz (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
• Silvina Montrul (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

This study investigates the comprehension and the production of relative clauses (RCs) by 32 child Turkish heritage speakers (HSs) in the U.S. and 48 monolingual Turkish children. Child HSs showed lower accuracy rates and better performance in English with increasing age, suggesting vulnerability of Turkish RCs in this group.

Pragmatic Skills in Heritage and L2 English Speakers: Evidence From the Speech Acts of Requesting and Apologizing

• Sagit Bar On (Bar Ilan University)
• Natalia Meir (Bar Ilan University)

The study investigated adult heritage English speakers` usage of requests and apologies, and compared their realization patterns in English and in Hebrew to two bilingual base-line groups: Hebrew-dominant bilinguals (born to Hebrew-speaking families and raised in Israel), and English-dominant bilinguals (born to English-speaking families and raised in an English-speaking country).

Putting Things in Order: On Areas of Stability and Change in the Heritage Russian Word Order System

• Oksana Laleko (State University of New York at New Paltz)

The talk examines the dynamics of change in a flexible word order system. Drawing on acceptability judgments data from heritage Russian, I argue that heritage language word order change (i) is not restricted to the strengthening of the predominant SVO pattern and (ii) may occur independently of dominant language transfer.

Panel 3.2. Motivation among Learners

Moderator: Sanja Lacan (University of California, Los Angeles)

Motivation of Persian Heritage Learners in the Milieu of Iran-America Politics

• Alyeh Mehin-Goldbaum (The University of Arizona)

In the context of political tension in Iran-America relations, this study uses ethnography of Persian language classes at the University of Arizona to answer the question: to what extent are Persian heritage learners willing to be identified with the Iranians inside the country or in diasporic communities?

Using the COD Model to Understand Desire and Motivation of Heritage Learners from Former French Colonies

• Agnes Tounkara (FACE Foundation)

In this article, we want to examine the success of the French Heritage Language Program (FHLP), with the French speaking immigrant community, through the COD model developed by Francois Grin and elaborated by Joseph Lo Bianco with a focus on Desire to explain students' motivation.

“Defining the Elephant in the Language Classroom”: Three Types of Arabic Heritage Language Learners

• Yehia A Mohamed (Georgetown University)

• Khoulood Sakbani (Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar)

This study presents a comparison of heritage language students’ motivation, skills, needs, and expectations from the perspective of distinct categories of learners and emphasizes the importance of understanding different needs and motivations in addition to discussing the importance of developing a profile for a variety of HL students when designing instructional resources and materials.

Panel 3.3. Impacts of COVID-19

Moderator: Susan Bauckus (University of California, Los Angeles)

The Effect of COVID-19 on Multilingual Families’ Language Usage: Evidence from a Quantitative Study in Israel, Germany, Cyprus and Sweden

• Natalia Meir (Bar Ilan University)
• Sviatlana Karpava (University of Cyprus)
• Natasha Ringblom (University of Stockholm and Umeå University)
• Vladislava Maria Warditz (University of Potsdam)

We will provide a snapshot of the dynamics of the language usage in Minority-Heritage-speaking families in the four countries, and we will summarize the perception of the bilingual families on micro- and micro- factors which trigger changes in bilingual family`s language policies during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bilingual Development During the Pandemic: Were Sibling Effects Amplified by COVID-19 Confinement?

• Sarah Surrain (University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston)

A potential silver lining of the COVID-19 crisis was a boost to Emergent Bilinguals’ home language exposure and maintenance during school closures. This longitudinal multi-method study examined the separate and combined effects of days in confinement and older siblings’ language use on the bilingual development of preschool-aged Spanish-English Emergent Bilinguals.

Learning during the Pandemic: Effective Strategies for Student Assessments in Remote Learning

• Peisong Xu (Yale University)

This presentation is a review of evaluation tools on students’ learning performance in a remote learning environment. It will illustrate how IPA can be successfully incorporated in the curriculum of a Chinese heritage course through a variety of interactive and collaborative learning tasks inside and beyond the classroom.