Linguistics Colloquium Series: Dr. Patricia C. Hironymous and Piper Rooney

Native English Speakers with Non-Native Writing Errors

Past Event

Thursday, February 17, 2011 2:20 PM to 4:00 PM EST
Johnson Center 3rd floor Room C

Heritage language speakers have become the focus of several studies in the last few years (Valdés 2001, Fishman 2001, Polinsky 2005, Carreira 2007). The term “heritage language” refers to a language acquired at an early age in the home that is different from the dominant language of the community. A “heritage language speaker” is someone who may still speak his or her heritage language or only understand it at some point later in life. With respect to order of acquisition, a heritage language (HL) is the language acquired first by the child, but usually at school age the child has to switch to the dominant language of the culture he or she is living in (Polinsky 2005). Thus, the language which was acquired second becomes the dominant language for the speaker. Although HL speakers have always been a part of American culture, it is only recently that colleges and universities in this country have begun to address the needs of this population by establishing formal centers and programs such as the Center for World Languages at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the English for Heritage Language Speakers Program at Georgetown University. These institutions and others have offered foreign language courses designed for HL speakers for even longer, e.g. Spanish for Native Speakers, but only a few such as Georgetown University have begun to provide English instruction for HL speakers. With respect to English usage, HL speakers are a distinctive group, separate from students for whom English is a second language (ESL), including those labeled as generation 1.5 learners. ESL and generation 1.5 students are non-native speakers who make many typical non-native writing errors. HL students can appear non-native in their writing, but they are native speakers of English.

Most college and university assessment centers ask students what their first language is in order to determine if an English test or an ESL test should be given. A native speaker of English would answer that his or her first language is English, even if a second had been learned at some point, since English was the dominant language in the home. An ESL student would say his or her first language is Japanese, Arabic, Spanish, or some language other than English, since that was the language spoken in his or her home country. This common, seemingly direct question is not as easy for the HL speaker to answer. For example, the student’s first language might have been Spanish, but the dominant language became English. This group of speakers can end up in either an ESL course or a developmental English or freshman composition course depending on how they answer that question and how they are tested. Unlike ESL learners, HL speakers are born in the United States or come here at an early age (Carreira 2007). They will often be given an English placement test based on the fact that they are citizens and/or have no discernable accent.

Many people would consider ESL, 1.5, and HL speakers to simply be bi-lingual. However, there are some differences with respect to language usage. First, unlike ESL students, HL speakers will usually speak English with their friends even though everyone in the group might have the same HL (Carreira 2007). They may or may not engage in code switching; if they do, it is usually only a word or two from the HL. The HL is seldom used in social or educational settings outside the home environment. ESL students will typically use their native language in social situations unless the listener is a non-native speaker of that language; even a casual observer will notice a variety of languages in the halls at break time outside an ESL classroom. A second distinguishing characteristic of HL speakers concerns their use of the HL in the home environment, usually with relatives who do not speak the dominant language of the community. When HL speakers use their HL, they often lack extensive vocabulary and an awareness of dialectical differences within the HL (Polinsky 2000). In addition, they may not vary the register appropriately (Polinsky 2000). Because of problems with vocabulary, dialect, and register, HL speakers may feel uncomfortable speaking the HL with relatives or others that they feel have had higher education in the HL (Carreira 2007). Colleges and universities such as those mentioned earlier offer courses in various HLs to help with these problems, but what about the English side of the equation?

A less common question being asked is whether or not similar difficulties can be found in the HL speaker’s English. Students who place into developmental English courses do so because they typically lack an extensive vocabulary, varied, complex, and appropriate sentence structure, and higher-level reading skills. HL writing can include common developmental English errors such as run-ons or fragments, but an HL speaker might produce other types of errors that are unique to the group. For example, an HL speaker may produce a passive such as *The dogs are walk in the evenings, lacking a past participle for the passive. However, the same speaker might produce The tests are given regularly, when the past participle is irregular; this is a non-native error but the opposite of a typical ESL error. Another example may be found in the use of double negative constructions such as *They didn’t see nothing. Although many developmental instructors deal with these in student writing, they may not be aware that this could be language transfer (see Ellis 1997) rather than a basic error. To illustrate, an English speaker might continue to insert a pronoun in subject position when it is unnecessary in the second language he or she is learning. Thus, the native speaker of English might say *Yo trabahando aqui for I am working here because English requires a subject in a sentence, unless it is a command. At some point, language transfer becomes less significant to the learner and appropriate forms such as Trabahando aqui are fully acquired. Double negatives can be found in many of the world’s languages, e.g. Spanish, Italian, Russian, Arabic, and many speakers of these languages come to the United States. Are the double negatives so often found in developmental student writing the result of language transfer or simple error? If it is language transfer, then telling students to correct or edit for double negatives has little meaning. They sound just fine to them, just as *Yo trabahando aqui might sound just fine to an English speaker. If HL speakers transferred this double negative construction at an early point during their acquisition of English, and it was reinforced in the language community, then this is not simple error which must be “corrected.”

How many HL students are there? Like many colleges, we simply did not know. Our study from the fall of 2009 revealed that almost 75% of students enrolled in 36 sections of developmental English at Glendale College are HL speakers. Their instructors saw student errors such as those mentioned above but were puzzled by the fact that their students were native English speakers. To better serve this population, we are piloting a developmental English course in the fall of 2010 designed for HL speakers. We are co-teaching the course and will include some curricular and statistical information from it in the presentation. Just as there are gaps in the language development of the HL, there appear to be gaps in the acquisition of the dominant language. A developmental English course must fill in those gaps if HL speakers are to be successful in an academic environment. Once we understand the nature of these writing errors, we can better meet the needs of this previously unrecognized and underserved student population.

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