I'd like to review a 30-minute video from 2020 featuring Stephen Krashen (who turns 80 this year) on Bilingual Education. There is a great deal about heritage languages that would seem to pertain to te reo Maori.
I'll use Bart de Feijter's notes (from the comments section) and expand them a little.
0:14 Two goals in Bilingual Education
0:17 Goal #1 Development English: Children in bilingual programs do better in English reading.
0:59 Goal #2: Development heritage language.
1:16 Krashen's work summarized; language acquisition happens through comprehensible input. Not through studying vocabulary lists and grammatical structures.
2:35 Krashen's work is corroborated by studies in related fields.
4:15 Newmark: comprehensible input needs to be paid attention to. Krashen: therefore input needs to be compelling.
4:58 Case evidence for the use of (compelling) stories as comprehensible input in language acquisition.
7:47 Conclusion: motivate learners of languages with compelling stories, everyone likes those.
10:25 More stories at home lead to improved school results. Stories act as a conduit to book reading.
11:12 Language teaching program developed by Beniko Mason
11:29 Phase #1 Story listening: the goal is to make the story comprehensible. This leads to efficient vocabulary acquisition
12:21 Phase #2 Compelling reading: allow learners to self-select their reading. Fiction is much more efficient than non-fiction (and surprisingly even for academic vocabulary acquisition).
18:31 Example of compelling reading for (academic) vocabulary acquisition and general knowledge.
20:05 Habits of mind: reading leads to increased empathy, problem-solving and more.
21:00 Phase #2.1: Guided Self-Selected Reading (GSSR): Start with 2-3 years of easy reading.
Make children readers.
24:13 James Crawford: no disadvantages to developing heritage language, wonderful advantages:
24:35 #1 Bilinguals do better in schools than monolinguals.
24:57 #2 Practical advantages: economical, easier to get work. If you want, it's good to know your customer's language.
25:28 #3 Profit from family's wisdom
25:42 Development heritage language
25:54 #1 Use of language at home: helpful but limited
26:27 #2 Heritage language classes: usually better
Breakthrough: reading fiction efficient way of acquiring heritage language, lack of comprehensible material makes it difficult though.
Pleasure reading builds knowledge and positively and effectively influences language acquisition.
