Family-School-Community Partnerships in Safeguarding Heritage Language
University of Hawaii at Manoa
ABSTRACT
Language is an important part of any society because it enables people to communicate and express themselves. When a language dies out, future generations many lose the ability to completely understand their culture. The family, school and community play a very important role in preserving the heritage language from being endangered. They can create productive partnerships to safeguard the existence of heritage languages. In schools, with strong family partnerships, teachers understand students who come from other cultures more easily; the school can become the natural extension of home, aiding in the preservation of families’ cultures, values and language (Henderson and Berla, 1994). The community can also work in partnerships with the family and school to stabilize and strengthen heritage languages. This study is a descriptive analysis on how family, school and community in Hawaii create partnerships in safeguarding the home languages and cultural heritage of Filipino immigrants and what programs/activities they create to promote the use of their heritage languages. It also explores common issues and challenges related to language preservation. The data of this study consists of field notes, participant’s responses from a questionnaire- checklist and surveys, transcript of audio-recording of participant’s talk collected during the interview. The works of Krauss (2007), Batigo (2005) Duckyoung (2013), Trudgill (2007), Hymes (2010) Man & Sarkar (2007) and Lewis (2011) have influenced the researcher in the development of her research on language preservation.
KEYWORDS
Heritage Language, Language Preservation,