| Publication |
2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Language education for home-background speakers or heritage learners has recently attracted significant attention in many countries. This case study reports on some of the findings on these speakers' backgrounds, profiles and language identities, utilising the data collected from a survey and focus group interview with 10 tertiary-level Japanese home-background speakers. We found that although all are classified as 'home-background speakers', they are a very heterogeneous group of students in terms of their backgrounds and language identities. This paper also discusses the implications of the findings for Japanese language education designed for this group of students, and points to the necessity of understanding the diverse needs of these students when educators are developing courses of study for them.
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