Paper short abstract:

Our paper uses the example of a child who has been learning Japanese as a heritage language at our school for 3 years. It will demonstrate language development in a global context through interviews with the child and its parents and lead to discussion about the role of the classroom.

Paper long abstract:

We have now been organizing classes for learners of Japanese as a heritage language for three years. We wanted to avoid assessing the divers and rich languages young people learning Japanese as a heritage language have, according to standardized criteria. That is one of the reasons why we started our own classes. Though we have been putting our teaching philosophy into practice, sometimes, we have had some misgivings about "progress" that cannot be clearly seen. Does the classroom change something for children? How should we understand their linguistic development? Do we contribute to their learning? To answer these questions, we would like to look back over our last three years of teaching and rethink the role of the classroom.

Our case study is based on a 10-year-old boy who has been learning Japanese as a heritage language once a week for 3 years. Our objective is to demonstrate and analyze the child's development in various contexts so as to explain the role of the classroom and also reassess the child's linguistic progress by focusing on his personal development. We will be interviewing Simon (pseudonyme) and his parents about life at school and at home, about learning Japanese and about friendships. Depending on our results, we will try to interpret the significance of the classroom for the child.

Contrary to our teaching philosophy, this case study will remind us that we judge the linguistic competence of children according to the standardized criteria we have and that we do not pay attention to other factors. However, if we change our point of view, what is not immediately visible can become visible. It is not because we cannot see something that it is absent. We hope to rethink the role of the classroom. Our paper will also lead to discussion about the assessment that teachers usually make in the classroom of a child's linguistic competence.