Innovation in Language Learning

For immigrant children belonging to minority groups there are often no L1 learning opportunities in the host country where the educational system does not take into consideration the students’ background. The outcome can be a significant slow-down of L1 or even shift into L2. Such loss carries a significant impact on the children’s self esteem and their relationships with family members as well as on their academic performance. This paper presents part of an ongoing research that investigates individual bilingualism of second-generation Albanian, immigrant children in Greece where immigrants constitute 8,1% of the total population, with 72% of them coming from Albania. More specifically, it investigates the outcome of contact between the two languages, Greek and Albanian, and the patterns of language choice and use by young Albanian immigrant students in a Greek primary school, as well as the detection of signs of language shift. The research participants are Albanian immigrant Primary School students aged from 8 to 11 divided in two groups: early bilinguals (students who came to Greece at a pre-school age) and late bilinguals (students who came to Greece at an older age). The data collected came from interviews through which the participants’ linguistic biographies were elicited and from recordings of informal communication among the participants.  For this specific presentation I will focus on findings that derive from the participants’ linguistic biographies, aiming at the identification of the patterns of communication with people of the same linguistic group, the investigation of the incentives, the rationale and the conditions these patterns stem from, as well as the investigation of the factors which affect the participants’ repertoire. Results so far reveal that language transmission is problematic in the cases of the participants who were born in Albania while the possibility of non-acquisition of L1 remains a reality for the participants who were born in Greece or came to Greece in infancy. In sum, data showed very low levels of competence and use of Albanian-although the participants failed to admit- and a rapid shift into Greek with Albanian carrying a rather symbolic function.