Almost one in five households in the US speak a language other than English, yet where are the literacy statistics? This article will delve into an under-researched facet of a large piece of the United States' population.
Amongst heritage language speaking, or HL speaking, university students surveyed from Texas Tech, [x]% said they are comfortable speakinng in their heritage language, but only [x]% said they were comfortable writing. Why does this phenomonena occur? To better understand, we need to define what a heritage speaker is.
"A student who is raised in a home where a non-English language is spoken, speaks or at least understands the language, and is to some degree bilingual in that language and in English"
- Who Are Heritage Langauge Learners? by the ILETC
Heritage languages are the minority in a community. This means that no formal education in early childhood is typically given in that language. Instead it's in these formative years where children learn to read, write, and socialize with peers in ways that foster fluent-speaking levels in the community's language. For heritage speakers, this leaves a dilemma; what do you do when your predominant source for language learning is your household? How extensive can your vocabulary be having never written literature class essays or made doctor's appointments in a heritage language?
Univeristy gives the unique oppurtunity of allowing heritage language speakers access to foreign language classes where they can essentially "relearn" their heritage language. However, is this really necessary? In a country where English is the predominant lanugage, how often will an HL speaker with Vietnamese heritage find it necessary to speak, let alone write, in Vietnamese?
While there are multiple options that can be explored in how to improve literacy rates amongst non-English speakers here in the US, should it be even done? How necessary or even motivated to pursue literacy are heritage speakers, especially university students with a more formal access to gaining literacy? Through interviewing and surveying HL speakers in a university, a better picture of the relationship between heritage languages and their speakers can be found.