Critical Language Awareness in Heritage Language Education
Summary
Critical Language Awareness (CLA) in heritage language education represents an approach that foregrounds learners’ understanding of the relationships between language, power and identity. Emerging from critical pedagogy and sociolinguistics, it encourages heritage speakers to scrutinise dominant language ideologies, to reflect on their own multilingual practices and to challenge prescriptive norms. In practice, CLA integrates analysis of code-switching, language variation and the socio-historical forces that shape standard and non-standard varieties. It fosters learner agency by linking classroom inquiry with real-world language communities, thus reinforcing both linguistic maintenance and cultural empowerment. Globally, educators have adapted CLA to diverse contexts, from Spanish programmes in the United States to community-based Korean and Filipino heritage classes. This body of work underscores the practical value of critical reflection in sustaining heritage languages, promoting inclusive pedagogy and supporting learners as active negotiators of linguistic diversity.
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Critical Language Awareness in Heritage Language Education publication trend
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Technical terms
Critical Language Awareness: A pedagogical orientation that enables learners to analyse how language practices reflect and reproduce power relations.
Language Ideologies: Beliefs and attitudes about language that influence perceptions of legitimacy, correctness and value.
Code-switching: The practice of alternating between two or more language varieties within a discourse or conversation.
Heritage Language: A language spoken by a community member that is tied to cultural or familial origins rather than the dominant societal language.
References
- Attitudes and Expectations towards Heritage Language Instruction: Evidence from Korean and Spanish in the US. Languages (2021).
- Language Ideologies in the Spanish Heritage Language Classroom: (Mis)alignment between Instructor and Students’ Beliefs. Languages (2022).
- Critical Language Awareness in the Spanish as a Heritage Language College Classroom. Languages (2022).
- Teaching Critical Vocabulary to Filipino Heritage Language Learners. Education Sciences (2021).
- Building Connections and Critical Language Awareness between Learning Communities Collaborating across Two Distant States. Languages (2022).
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