What instructional practices would you say are the most beneficial to domestic and/or heritage language learners?
I: what would you um from your experiences as a learner what do you think of some of them more effective instructional practices (.) for domestic learners and then for both heritage and domestic learners
S: well I really find that I liked how the summer course was taught especially for domestic learners because uh aside from Russian III we were all domestic learners uh in Russian III we had um one heritage learner come and somebody who was also a domestic learner continuing their Russian uh and I find that just the variety of study materials the long hours of just being forced to speak in Russian and hear Russian it was all very helpful but in as far as just learning a language I think that helpful things for domestic learners um(.) would be repetition um consistency and reinforcing what we learn sometimes I find that I don’t always get what I’m learning in the beginning of the semester in Russian and force so much now so I kind of forget something but I remember years of learning French and just the repetition of exercises and drills we just had the same thing to take home and you hated it but you remember it and you know it and I don’t really have to think in English before I speak French uh but I’m still struggling very much with Russian because I don’t think there’s the reinforcement yet at least
Reflections – Do you feel that rote memorization is a necessary component of language learning? In Will 1, Will feels his language learning experience would be enhanced by gaining an appreciation of how native speakers use language to express the world around them and, perhaps, how these conceptualizations are reflected in the syntax. Whereas, in Rebecca 6 and 7, Rebecca expresses that repetition is necessary in order to retain grammar and vocabulary. In your own teaching approach do your emphasis more on form or function? Would your approach vary if your class consisted of only heritage or domestic language learners and not both? Why or why not?
