A parents’ perspective on the importance of maintaining children’s heritage language

Abstract

Parents’ belief about their heritage language is the key to whether their children learn and/or maintain their heritage language. This thesis explores parents’ perspectives on the importance of maintaining their children’s heritage language, even though they are far away from their home country. This research also aims to find how parents are teaching/maintaining their heritage language with their children. The parents’ expectations from the host country in this regard is also established. Qualitative research was adopted using two research tools, namely questionnaires and interviews, to collect the data. First, prospective participants from a primary school in the central area of Malta were invited to fill in a questionnaire, following which a one-to-one interview with six of the prospective participants took place. The selected participants had to have strong beliefs about maintaining their heritage language with their children to be eligible to take part in this study. Since only six participants completed the questionnaire, with five of them having very strong views in relation to maintaining their heritage language and one also being in favour, all participants were eligible. All participants mentioned different activities and actions practised with their children to encourage positivity towards their heritage language. Most of the participants stated that they had no expectations from the state/school, although feasible suggestions to help in their journey were given. Finally, the study calls for an update to the National Curriculum Framework to allow all students attending Maltese schools to have access to instruction in their heritage language, and to offer them the opportunity to achieve a strong sense of identity irrespective of their country of origin.