+ What is the hub?

The Heritage Language Resource Hub collects and organises links to digital libraries and platforms that contain books and multimedia materials in migrant adults’ heritage languages (also known as home languages, native languages, first languages, L1s, mother tongues, languages of origin). It is a tool to facilitate access to online resources, foster literacy in adults’ and children’s heritage languages, and support maintenance and development of those languages.

+ Who is it for?

The Heritage Language Resource Hub collects resources that can be used in different contexts, from private to public. These Guidelines are written for teachers and tutors and focus on second language and literacy teaching. Nevertheless, the Heritage Language Resource Hub is for a variety of user groups:

• Adult migrants who speak one or more heritage languages, have limited education and literacy in these languages and now live in a country where a different language is spoken, read and written (LESLLA learners). They are likely to be neglected because they lack the social capital to maintain their languages in resettlement and are geographically dispersed.
• Literacy and second language teachers (LESLLA teachers), literacy in heritage language teachers, tutors, and facilitators.
• The various figures who form the social networks of adult migrants and influence their attitudes toward reading: family and community members, volunteers, members of non-profit organisations, mediators, cultural institution staff who work as facilitators in heritage language maintenance and intercultural initiatives, and librarians in multilingual libraries.
• Third-generation children of immigrant families and students of heritage languages as a second language.
• The Hub also helps teachers and tutors convey to parents the reasons for using reading materials in their heritage languages, the benefits of using them, and how they can use them.

+ Why is it important?

Instructional programmes for adult migrants who do not speak the majority language and have limited education and literacy in their heritage language usually focus on learners’ linguistic, social, and cultural integration. This makes sense, given that they need to participate effectively in the social, educational, and economic life of the host country. However, there is now a growing trend which sees bi-/multilingualism as a resource rather than an impediment for individuals and societies.

A growing worldwide movement focuses on heritage language maintenance and development. This includes influential international organisations such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the Council of Europe (CoE), and national institutions like the National Heritage Language Resource Center (NHLRC) and the Coalition of Community-Based Heritage Language Schools in the United States. They advocate for a bilingual or multilingual approach to education in linguistically and culturally diverse societies, in both developing and immigration countries. This approach fosters a sense of identity and language and cultural strength. It contributes to social cohesion in contexts in which only the majority language has been valued, sustained, and developed. At the same time, research has highlighted that learners’ heritage languages can promote language proficiency and reading and build a sense of agency. It has been documented that heritage language education provides the best start for the children of immigrants and supports better academic achievements. Developing or maintaining literacy in the heritage language in a supportive sociocultural environment has proved to be a key factor in enabling speakers to succeed in a second language.

From the linguistic and cognitive perspective, individuals benefit from being bilingual (knowing two or more languages) at any age. Very young bilingual children can better adjust to environmental changes, and older bilingual people can experience fewer symptoms of cognitive decline. They are often more creative and better at solving complex problems than are monolinguals, have positive attitudes about other language groups and more knowledge of and respect for other cultures, and learn additional languages better because they have an understanding of how languages work.

As for second language and literacy learning, research in cognitive science and L2 acquisition has highlighted the positive correlations between being literate and second language acquisition, between literacy in the heritage language and learning to read and write a second language, and between intensive reading and literacy development. Easy access to high-quality reading materials can stimulate a different relationship with the written word in adult learners, such as reading during leisure time and reading for pleasure.

Approaches have been developed that focus instruction on the fact that learners may be bilingual and on ways to develop that bilingualism. These include the pluralistic and intercultural approaches promoted by the Council of Europe and the use of translanguaging as a pedagogy with bilingual learners. At the heart of these approaches is the notion that a person’s linguistic repertoire (the whole of the languages that a person knows) is individual, dynamic, malleable, evolving and, above all, unitary. The repertoire is not made up of the addition of separate languages. People use the languages of their repertoire strategically and in creative ways to interact and communicate. These conceptions of the linguistic behaviour of bilingual individuals and their linguistic repertoires invoke principles that inspire language teaching. The entire linguistic repertoire of the speakers (including regional varieties and registers) is involved in learning a new language and contributes to the joint creation of meaning and knowledge in a class group.

Changes are also occurring in teaching literacy and heritage languages in immigration contexts. The initial step is to focus on expanding oral proficiency in the heritage language, particularly for those who are not first-generation adult immigrants, and then on developing literacy in that language alongside the majority language. Instruction also needs to be specialized to reflect the diverse language, cultural, and life experience profiles of individuals in a given classroom. It needs to provide engaging, effective heritage language pedagogy, in which it is crucial to understand the mental reality of heritage speakers’ linguistic systems and the social reality of their life experiences.

The Heritage Language Resource Hub is in line with these trends. It provides easy access to high-quality reading materials in learners’ languages; to make sure that individuals and communities can maintain, and younger members of the community can continue to develop, their heritage language; and to help both older and younger members of the community expand use of their heritage languages and become literate in them.

+ What resources and languages are available?

The platforms and digital libraries that the Heritage Language Resource Hub brings together belong to non-profit organisations and aim to support the right to literacy in heritage languages where access to high-quality, engaging reading books and educational materials is limited. This support is needed above all in developing countries, where education for all is hindered by poverty, war, or gender. Here, the heritage languages can be majority languages and languages of schooling (like Urdu) or minority endangered languages (like the languages on the website of the Nanetya Foundation in the Heritage Language Resource Hub). In the second case, the resources provided by digital platforms serve to sustain primary education in the native languages.

The support to literacy in the heritage languages is also needed in post-industrial countries where migrants' languages are not recognised and valued. The Heritage Language Resource Hub focuses on languages which are less widely spoken, or more dispersed in the diasporas, and do not have easily accessible literature. These languages are settled in the receiving countries along the routes of the migrant populations. The linguistic panorama of immigration countries changes over the time and flexible, easy-to-update tools are needed to meet the needs of the migrant populations.

We invite the users of the Heritage Language Resource Hub to explore the websites starting from the languages which form the specific multilingual space where they live. In some areas and educational settings, one language dominates in the migrant population, while in others diversity is the rule. The largest international websites (Global Storybooks and Global Storybook by countries, African Storybook, Bloom Book Library, StoryWeaver), and some websites serving specific geographical areas provide the same reading materials translated into several languages, including many European languages. Further, they make available user-friendly apps to translate, adapt, and create books. This way, they can meet the diverse needs of users in different regions. Given the use of English as a lingua franca around the world, most of these websites are in English. Although the long-term goal is to include non-English websites in the Heritage Language Resource Hub, users from non-English speaking countries can nevertheless take advantage of the flexibility of the resources accessible through the Hub. (See examples in the section "Suggestions on how to use the Language Hub" below.)

Due to the primary goals of the digital libraries, most of the resources available are children's books. When books for adult and adolescent learners are available, this availability is mentioned in the description of the particular resource. Adult educators are well aware of the need to avoid educational materials that are aimed at children when working with adults. This does not imply that they are useless for adults. They can be used in ways that are suitable for adults (see suggestions below). Mostly, adults can find valuable resources for reading together in families or in community centres.

+ How can I use the Hub?

• Respect readers’ interests and attitudes.
• Select, with or for readers, materials that are appropriate to their literacy competence, but challenging enough to allow for further learning.
• Support/develop readers’ autonomy in choosing the reading materials.

Foster learner autonomy with choosing materials:

• Help them to focus their interests, curiosity, passions, and needs.
• Help them to find the resources responding to their interests.
• Help them to select a book that responds to their interests, for example reading together the title, looking at the pictures, giving a glance.
• Help them to find ways to translate the books into other languages.
• Help readers think of ways to enhance the pleasure of reading; for example, by discussing the book after they have read it, reading it aloud to other people, watching a movie related to the topic, reading other books on the same topic.

Train readers to use the Hub:

• Provide learners with needed digital and literacy skills to navigate the hub.
• Train them to navigate the Hub pages.
• Train them to identify the relevant links.
• Train them to download and use the necessary applications (e.g., Adobe reader).
• Train them to download the books and open them on different devices. Show them how to develop similar books on the same topic, with the same characters, etc.

+ Suggested Readings

August, D., & Shanahan, T. (2006). Developing literacy in second-language learners: Report of the National Literacy Panel on language-minority children and youth. Lawrence Erlbaum.

Beacco, J.-C., Byram, M., Cavalli, M., Coste, D., Cuenat, M., Goullier, F., & Panthier, J. (2016). Guide for the development and implementation of curricula for plurilingual and intercultural education. http://www.coe.int/t/DG4/linguistic/Source/Source2010_ForumGeneva/GuideEPI2010_EN.pdf

Beacco, J-C., Little, D., & Hedges, C. (2014). Linguistic integration of adult migrants: Guide to policy development and implementation. Council of Europe. https://rm.coe.int/16802fc1cd

Bhatia T. K. & W. C. Ritchie (Eds.) (2012). The handbook of bilingualism (pp. 406–436). Blackwell Publishing.

Bigelow, M. (2009). Social and cultural capital at school: The case of a Somali teenage girl. In N. R.Faux (Ed.), Low-educated second language and literacy acquisition: Research, policy, and practice: Proceedings of the Second Annual Forum (pp. 7-22). The Literacy Institute, Virginia Commonwealth University.

Candelier, M., Camilleri-Grima, A., Castellotti, V., de Pietro, J.-F., Lőrincz, I., Meiẞner, F.-J., Nougerol. A., & Schröder-Sura, A. (2012). FREPA. A framework of reference for pluralistic approaches to languages and cultures competences and resources. https://www.ecml.at/Portals/1/documents/ECML-resources/CARAP-EN.pdf?ver=2018-03-20-120658-443

Council of Europe. (2020). Linguistic integration of adult migrants. https://www.coe.int/en/web/lang-migrants

Creese, A., & Blackledge, A. (2010). Translanguaging in the bilingual classroom: A pedagogy for learning and teaching? The Modern Language Journal, 94(1), 103–115.

Cummins, J. (2000). Language, power, and pedagogy: Bilingual children in the crossfire. Multilingual Matters.

Fishman, J. A. (2004). Language maintenance, language shift, and reversing language shift. In T. K. Bhatia & W. C. Ritchie (Eds.), The handbook of bilingualism (pp. 406–436). Blackwell Publishing.

García, O. (2009). Bilingual education in the 21st century: A global perspective. Wiley-Blackwell.

García, O., & Kleyn, T. (Ed.) (2016). Translanguaging with multilingual students: Learning from classroom moments. Routledge.

Haznedar, B. (2020). Bilingualism and multilingualism. In J. K. Peyton, & M. Young-Scholten (Eds.), Teaching adults with limited literacy: Theory, research, and practice. Multilingual Matters.

Haznedar, B., Peyton, J. K., & Young-Scholten, M. (2018). Teaching adult migrants: A focus on the languages they speak. Critical Multilingualism Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 6(1), 155–183.

Kagan, O. E., Carreira, M., & Chik, C. H. (2017). The Routledge handbook of heritage language education: From innovation to program building. Routledge.

Krashen, S. D. (2011). Free voluntary reading. Libraries Unlimited.

Migration Policy Institute. (2019). It’s time: Beginning to shift the adult education instructional paradigm to value support for integration. Paper presented at the meeting of the Coalition of Adult Basic Education, New Orleans, LA.

Minuz, Fernanda, Haznedar, B., Peyton, J. K., & Young-Scholten, M. (2020). Using materials in refugee and immigrant adults’ heritage languages in instruction: Challenges and guidance for teachers and tutors. In G. Neokleous, A. Krulatz, & R. Farrelly (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Cultivating Literacy in Diverse and Multilingual Classrooms. IGI Global.

Peyton, J. K. (2012). Understanding adult learners as multilingual/multicultural individuals: Practical and research implications. In M. Bigelow & P. Vinogradov (Eds.), Proceedings from the 7th annual LESLLA (Low Literate Second Language and Literacy Acquisition) Symposium. University of Minnesota.

Peyton, J. K., Ranard, D. A., & McGinnis, S. (2001). Charting a new course: Heritage language education in the United States. In J. K. Peyton, D. A. Ranard, & S. McGinnis (Eds.), Heritage languages in America: Preserving a national resource. Center for Applied Linguistics.

Peyton, J. K., & Young-Scholten, M. (Eds.) (in press). Understanding adults learning to read for the first time in a new language: Multiple perspectives. Multilingual Matters.

Trifonas P. P. & T. Aravossitas (Eds.) (2018). Handbook of research and practice in heritage language education (pp. 187–206). Springer International Publishing.

UNESCO Bangkok. (2008). Improving the quality of mother tongue-based literacy and learning: Case studies from Asia, Africa, and South America, Bangkok, Thailand. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000177738

UNESCO. (2017). Reading the past, writing the future. UNESCO. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000247563

UNESCO. (2008). Family literacy: A global approach to lifelong learning; effective practices in family literacy and intergenerational learning around the world—UNESCO Digital Library. UNESCO. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000177753

Young-Scholten, M., & Maguire, M. D. (2009). Stories for extensive reading for LESLLA. In J. Kurvers & I. van de Craats (Eds.), Low educated adult second language and literacy acquisition. Research, policy and practice. Proceedings of the 4th Annual Conference (pp. 145–157). LOT.

Young-Scholten, M., Peyton, J. K., Sosinski, M., & Manjón Cabeza, A. (2015). LESLLA teachers’ views of the knowledge and skills they need: An international study. In I. van de Craats, J. Kurvers, & R. van Hout (Eds.), Adult literacy, second language, and cognition. LESLLA Proceedings 2014 (pp. 165–185). Centre for Language Studies.