ABSTRACT
It is estimated that Cherokee is spoken as a first language by fewer than 5,000 individuals, mostly of the grandparent generation or older, and is thus “severely endangered.” But the number of speakers of Cherokee as a second language continues to grow, thanks to Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma’s language revitalization movement, which includes Tsalagi Dideloquasdi, the Cherokee immersion school. In this new sociolinguistic domain, elementary school students spend their days immersed in Cherokee culture and language as they study academic subjects. Although the Cherokee syllabary, the orthographic system developed by Sequoyah in the early 1800s, is integral to the immersion curriculum, it has not been well understood how the polysynthetic rules of Cherokee are internalized by students as demonstrated through their writing. This chapter explores the ways in which young, English-dominant writers select from their unique internal linguistic representations to communicate ideas in Cherokee, and how they engage in translingual practices to fit their communicative needs. The nature of their written output suggests the need for purposeful focus-on-form input, corrective feedback, and ample practice to allow for students’ internalization of complex forms, as well as opportunities for stimulated recall exercises that raise awareness of how Cherokee polysynthesism works and that engage students in more productive self-regulation.
