Slavic and East European Language Programs and Heritage Language Communities

Authors

  • Susan Kresin University of California, Los Angeles

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21226/T2C014

Abstract

Among Slavic and East European heritage communities, the post-1989 geopolitical situation in Central and Eastern Europe has changed both emigration patterns and core aspects of the relationship between speakers in the homeland and abroad. Many speakers have both an enhanced motivation to maintain their heritage languages and greater resources to do so. As a reflection of this increased interest in Slavic and East European heritage languages, recent years have witnessed a rise in the number and scope of community language schools, established primarily by parents who wish to ensure that their children maintain active use of their heritage languages. At the same time, many Slavic and East European language programs at the college level have increasingly come under threat, due to the combination of reduced enrollments, greater administrative focus on class sizes, and a loss of federal funding. In this paper, using Czech as the base language, I suggest that by placing a greater emphasis on connections with heritage communities, we may be able to enhance the viability of Slavic and East European programs at the college level. This potential is supported by a marked increase in research on heritage language learners over the past two decades, which provides a foundation for curricular adjustments that address the specific needs of heritage language learners.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Susan Kresin, University of California, Los Angeles

Lecturer, UCLA Russian Flagship Program Student Coordinator

Downloads

Published

2017-03-04

Issue

Vol. 4 No. 1 (2017): EAST/WEST: JOURNAL OF UKRAINIAN STUDIES (ISSN 2292-7956)

Section

Articles - Thematic Section

License

Copyright (c) 2017 East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Ⓒ 2023 Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta, and EWJUS (East-West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies). For permissions and other inquiries, please contact the Editor-in-Chief: bilenky@ualberta.ca

Author's Rights

The Author transfers and assigns to EWJUS (East-West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies) and the CIUS (Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies), during the full term of copyright and any extensions or renewals of that term, all copyright in and to the Work published in EWJUS by the Author, including but not limited to the right to publish, republish, transmit, sell, distribute and otherwise use the Work in electronic and print editions of EW:JUS and in derivative works throughout the world, in all languages and in all media now known or later developed, and to license or permit others to do so.

Notwithstanding the above, EWJUS grants back to the Author the following distinct rights: 

  1. The non-exclusive right to use, reproduce, distribute, publicly perform, and publicly display the Work in any medium in connection with the Authors’ academic and professional activities, including but not limited to teaching, conference presentations, and lectures. 
  2. The non-exclusive right to create derivative works from the Work. 
  3. The non-exclusive right to make full use of the Work in future research and publications, including the right to republish the Work in whole or in part in any book that one or more of the Authors may write or edit after the Work has appeared. 

The Author represents and warrants that the Work is the original work of the Authors and that it does not violate or infringe the law or the rights of any third party and, specifically, that the Work contains no matter that is defamatory or that infringes any literary or proprietary rights, intellectual property rights, or any rights of privacy. The Author also warrants that he or she has the full power to make this agreement, and if the Work was prepared jointly, the Author agrees to inform the Authors of the terms of this Agreement and to obtain their written permission to sign on their behalf. The Author agrees to hold the Journal harmless from any breach of the above-mentioned representations.

Works published by EWJUS are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Under the terms of this license:

  • You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
  • You may not use the material for commercial purposes.
  • If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material.