Eric 2

Do you feel that the teacher uses different instructional practices based on whether a student is a domestic or a heritage language learner? Describe the relationships between domestic and heritage language learners in your Korean class.

I: Do you, u:m, perceive the teacher to use different instructional strategies (2) for, for the different groups?

E: U:::m, not really. Um. I think (2) sh:::e, she doesn’t expect u:m, the same things necessarily sometimes.

I: How so?

E: U::m, if, if a domestic speaker is saying a dialogue and the:n (3) uh, mispronounce something but like gave a good effort, she would say like good job, wherea—whereas like, a guess a heritage speaker, if they said something, um, she would definitely correct them. Like that’s how it was I think in like Korean 2, but more like in 3 now, now that like domestic speakers, if you’re in Korean 3, you’ve come this far that like you actually are putting like a pretty good effort in. Whereas like the heritage speakers, most of them, like, kind of don’t care as much. Not all of them, I’m not saying all of them, but like, some of them. Like, they’ll say things and they’ll just talk down and like mumble, they don’t really care. So it’s, it’s not really like that apparent anymore.

I: Mm-hm, mm-hm. Um, and what about how the students themselves interact in the class, do you see any differences between the two groups?

E: Mm, not really, I mean, at this point, we’ve been, we’ve all been together so long that um, we have like, when we break up into pairs we just naturally, uh, will turn to the person we sit next to, we just like, everyday you sit in the same seats and stuff, so like the same people talk to each other, amongst each other, I mean, it’s, I don’t think there’s any preferential treatment because this person uh, knows it better than this person, it’s just who you’re friends with I think.

I: And students, you don’t see a break down then among the students, uh, along those lines either, they’re just, you’re all just friends because you’ve been doing this for so long.

E: Yeah, pretty much.

I: And so there’s not, would you say then that there really isn’t a distinction, if somebody were to, were to just walk in and just see how everyone’s talking, I couldn’t say Oh that must be, they must be domestic, they must be heritage and they must have split them off, themselves off.

E: Yeah. Well it would probably be easier, for like the most part, I mean, people like myself would probably be hard to, to figure out.

I: But if just say I couldn’t, I couldn’t see what anybody looked like, if I could just see how they interacted. Would, would it be hard for me to, t:o, u:h, pick up clicks, or because you’re all such a tight…

E: U:::h, I think you could probably pick up clicks, but I wouldn’t say it’s because they’re domestic or heritage.

I: Ok. So you have different kinds of relationships that are not based on, on your (language).

E: Yeah.

Reflections – Compare the student impressions of if the teacher uses distinct instructional practices for domestic versus heritage language learners (Casey 1, Sara 1, Eric 2, and Li-Ting). What is your reaction? Do you find that you have different expectations for domestic learner performance than for heritage learner performance? Do you feel students should be held to the same standards for a specific course level? If not, what strategies do you use to assess individual student progress? Is there a relationship between a student’s perception of fairness and their learning investment in the class?

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