Marina Mattheoudakis

Language education of adult immigrants in Greece: current trends and future developments

The increasing number of immigrants living and working in Greece has proven to be a challenge for the social as well as educational policy of this country. In order to help adult immigrants to integrate into society and facilitate their access to the job market, the Greek state has introduced special language education programmes. This paper discusses the current trends in Greece regarding immigrant language education and presents findings of a survey which aimed at exploring immigrants’ language needs and preferences. The results of this survey indicate a high interest by immigrants in learning Greek but a very low level of enrolment on and attendance of language courses. As a knowledge of Greek is necessary to improve immigrants’ socio‐economic and professional status, it is suggested that cooperation between immigrant associations and educational policy‐makers is necessary for the design of successful language programmes and the promotion of Greece’s policy of integration.

Heritage language classes and bilingual competence: the case of Albanian immigrant children in Greece

ABSTRACT The present paper reports on a questionnaire survey conducted in the course of a broader research project on bilingualism (BALED). It compares two groups of Albanian immigrant parents in Greece with respect to their practices for supporting minority language development. The first group includes parents (N = 35) whose children receive systematic instruction in the heritage language; the other group (N = 167) comprises parents who do not send their children to heritage language classes but may support Albanian language maintenance in various ways. Αccording to their parents’ reports, all children were dominant in Greek. Our purpose was to compare the two groups with regard to (i) language use patterns among family members, (ii) parental practices in support of the minority and the majority language, and (iii) children’s language competence in the respective languages. Τhe ultimate aim is to explore the relations between parental practices and children’s competence in the minority language. Results indicated that parents who send their children to heritage language courses also engage more often in practices which promote literacy in the heritage language at home. These children were reported by their parents to possess literacy skills in Albanian to a higher degree than children who do not attend systematic instruction in this language. Our findings corroborate previous research (e.g. Bylund, E., and M. Díaz. 2012. “The Effects of Heritage Language Instruction on First Language Proficiency: A Psycholinguistic Perspective.” International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 15 (5): 593–609; Chumank-Horbatsch, R. 1999. “Language Change in the Ukranian Home: From Transmission to Maintenance to the Beginnings of Loss.” Canadian Ethnic Studies Journal 31 (2): 61–75; Schwartz, M. 2008. “Exploring the Relationship between family Language Policy and Heritage Language Knowledge among Second Generation Russian-Jewish Immigrants in Israel.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 29 (5): 400–418) suggesting that literacy development at home and especially attendance of heritage language instruction are extremely beneficial for its development without disrupting the development of the majority language.