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Re-exposure Effect in Bilinguals under Language Development (REBUILD)-The Acquisition of Heritage Language in Returnee Children and Mutual Effects of Experience and Cognition

Project description

A closer look at language-crossed youths

The linguistic journey of immigrant children has come under a fresh spotlight. Many young minds traverse a complex linguistic terrain as heritage speakers, embracing a minority language at home while immersed in a society dominated by a different tongue. However, these bilingual heritage speakers exhibit a diverse range of proficiency levels in their heritage language (HL), far beyond what is observed in their monolingual counterparts. With the support of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the REBUILD project will focus on returnees, a lesser-explored group who transition from foreign majority language schools to their native HL environment. It explores the factors shaping their HL outcomes. By dissecting grammar, cognition and environmental influences, REBUILD sheds light on the intricate tapestry of bilingual heritage.

Objective

Many (immigrant) children are heritage speakers (HSs; bilinguals who acquire a minority language at home, different from the majority societal language in which they are growing up). Ultimate attainment of the heritage language (HL) varies considerably amongst individual HSsmuch more profoundly that what can be noted in monolingual counterpartsdespite being naturalistic natives from birth. Understanding what factors explain/predict such differences in HS outcomes is a necessary first step in assessing and, ultimately, being able to meet the educational/interventional needs for bilingual HL development. Re-exposure Effect in Bilinguals Under Language Development (REBUILD) propose a novel approach that combines offline and online methods and focuses on a severely understudied, yet crucially important group of heritage speaker bilinguals, namely returnees. Returnees are children of immigrant families who spend a significant portion of their formative developmental years (school age) in a foreign majority language context, a typical HL scenario, yet return to their native HL environment, often as older children or teenagers. This research is important for the global reality in which HL bilingualism proliferates and HL returnees increase year-on-year. Examining the development of returnees native HL from the point of re-exposure to the native environment opens up new directions. While research shows that HL bilingualism (HLB) grammatical outcomes vary significantly, findings are largely limited to contexts in which children grow up and stay in an environment where the native HL is a minority language. Environment transitionsas in the case of returneesopen an exciting opportunity to tease apart internal (grammatical structure, non-linguistic cognitive abilities) and external factors (input, use) accounting for HLB.

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Topic(s)

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HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2022-PF-01

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Coordinator

UNIVERSIDADE DO MINHO
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 156 778,56
Address
LARGO DO PACO
4704 553 Braga
Portugal

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Region
Continente Norte Cávado
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

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