Home and School Language Practices and Their Effects on Heritage Language Acquisition: A View from Heritage Italians in Germany
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This paper intends to provide some speculative remarks on how consistency and continuity in language use practices within and across contexts inform heritage language acquisition outcomes. We intend “consistency” as maintenance of similar patterns of home language use over the years. “Continuity” refers to the possibility for heritage language speakers to be exposed to formal education in the heritage language. By means of a questionnaire study, we analyze to what extent Italian heritage families in Germany are consistent in their use of the heritage language with their children. Furthermore, by analyzing the educational offer related to Italian as a heritage language across different areas in Germany, we reflect on children’s opportunities to experience continuity between home and school language practices. Finally, we interpret the results of previous studies on Italian heritage language acquisition through the lens of consistency and continuity of language experience. In particular, we show that under the appropriate language experience conditions (involving consistency and continuity), heritage speakers may be successful even in the acquisition of linguistic phenomena that have been shown to be acquired late in first language acquisition.
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- Authors
- Caloi, I., & Torregrossa, J.
- Affiliations
- Goethe University Frankfurt (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Caloi, Irene
- Torregrossa, Jacopo
- ORCID
- Torregrossa, Jacopo
- Venue
- Languages
- Publisher
- MDPI AG
- Published
- 2021-03-17
- Volume
- 6
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 50
- ISSN
- 2226-471X (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3136759511
- Cited by
- 24
- References
- 65
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 9 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 3
- FWCI
- 11.87
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Languages (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Publication Server of Goethe University Frankfurt am Main (Goethe University Frankfurt) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Linguistics and Language › Multilingual Education and Policy
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Language Development and Disorders
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning
- Keywords
- heritage language acquisition, home language practices, school language practices, heritage language education, second language acquisition, language maintenance
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