Second Language Learning and Language Teaching

Language maintenance and bilingual language teaching
The aim of language maintenance or ‘heritage’ teaching is to teach minority lan-
guages to speakers of that language. Many ethnic groups want to keep their own lan-
guage alive in their children. One possibility is the bilingualism by choice of
bringing up children with two languages in the home. Many groups also collectively
organize language maintenance classes outside the official educational system; in
London, classes for children can be found taking place in Chinese, Polish, Greek and
other languages, after normal school hours or at weekends. Mandarin Chinese is
now being learnt by 30 million adults around the world (Graddol, 2006).
The mainstream educational equivalent is educating minority children through
their first language. At one extreme is the notion that children should be taught
solely through the minority language – Bantustans in South Africa or Turkish
migrants’ children in Bavaria – resulting in the minority speakers becoming a seg-
regated enclave. More common, perhaps, is the notion that children have the
right to have access to their first language through the educational system. 
In Sweden, for example, there are playgroups run in minority languages for pre-
school children and summer camps for older children (Arnberg, 1987). Denmark
has 24 German kindergartens and 18 German schools in its German-speaking areas
(European Commission, 2006). The position of Maori in New Zealand has been
revitalized in part through the provision of ‘language nests’ – preschool play-
groups in which Maori is used (Spolsky, 1989b).
The assumption of maintenance classes is that minority language speakers have
the right to continue with their own language and heritage, regardless of the offi-
cial central language of the country. To quote Tove Skutnabb-Kangas (1981),
‘Bilingualism is no longer seen as a passing phase, but rather as something good
and permanent, something to be striven for.’ Transitional language teaching is
neutral about the value of the minority language; bilingual teaching actively
encourages a multilingual society. In England, the terms historically evolved from
‘English for immigrants’ to ‘multicultural education’ to ‘bilingual teaching’ to
‘English as an additional language’. Changes in slogans, of course, do not necessar-
ily reflect changes in practice.
One form that this emphasis on bilingualism takes is the propagation of other
official languages through the school system. In Indonesia, 10 per cent of children
speak Bahasa Indonesia as a first language, but 75 per cent learn it at school
(Laponce, 1987). Canada has been famous for the experiment of ‘immersion’
schools, where English-speaking children are educated through the medium of
French. Whatever the hotly debated merits or demerits of immersion, it resembles
elite bilingualism. Wallace Lambert (1990) opposes its use with minority children,
as ‘it fuels the subtractive process and places the minority child into another form
of psycholinguistic limbo’.