Guest lecture by Marit Westergaard, UiT The Arctic University of Norway. All interested are welcome to this seminar arranged by the research area Language learning and language teaching.
Abstract
It is increasingly common for children to learn a first language that is not the majority language of the society in which they grow up, and these heritage bilinguals make up a considerable proportion of students in any Scandinavian classroom. In this talk, I will first discuss the concept of heritage language and some important issues in the field. I will then provide some examples of my own research on various heritage populations, ranging from Russian children in various European countries to elderly Scandinavian heritage speakers in North America. Towards the end of the talk, I will ask the question whether bilinguals have an advantage when learning further languages, providing a couple of examples as well as a theoretical model that may account for this.