September 23, 2024
HLE Network developed an infographic 9 Myths about Heritage Language Education in 2022 that is helping to debunk common misconceptions about this important form of education. Since it's launch, the infographic has has been well received by advocates of linguistic diversity: it has been translated into Tamil by the British Tamil Examination Board, and a Persian translation of the infographic by London's Rustam Persian School reached Iranians worldwide via an online publication for the Persian-speaking diaspora.
The most recent endorsement of the infographic is by Julie Waddington, Assistant Professor in Language and Literature Education at the Faculty of Education and Psychology at the University of Girona in Catalonia, Spain. In her recently published book entitled Questioning the Native Speaker Construct in Teacher Education: Enabling Multilingual Identities and Decolonial Language Pedagogies (2024), she draws inspiration from the 9 Myths infographic. We are thrilled to have this recognition from the field of teacher education.
The book challenges the idea that language teachers who are "native speakers" of a language are superior to those who learned the language later in life. The book is written for researchers, academics, and postgraduate students in the fields of language education, applied linguistics, and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL).
In Chapter 7 "Identifying as multilingual," Waddington includes activities to use in teacher education. In Activity 7.1 "Exploring myths about heritage language education" (pages 112 - 113), the 9 Myths as outlined in our infographic serve as discussion prompts.
Many thanks to Julie for endorsing infographic and its message! Getting teachers to discuss these misconceptions during their training will hopefully put us one step closer to eradicating the myths.
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