Acehnese Students’ Belief and Practice in Maintaining Their Heritage Language

The reduced ability to speak heritage language of certain people occurs when the person will interact with the new environment, society, language, and culture in the new place. This kind of reduced ability causes maintenance of heritage language become so urgent in order to preserve the heritage language. This study examined the English department students’ perceptions and practice in the process of heritage language maintenance; particularly to analyze their beliefs and practice in the preservation of their heritage language (Acehnese Language). To do so, this study uses a qualitative method in analyzing the data. The data collection is done by conducting an in-depth interview with ten participants. The result of study showed that all participants agreed the maintenance of heritage language is important to preserve the cultural asset and identity. They also agreed that families and environment affect their heritage language. Furthermore, they maintain their heritage language by using it in daily communication and it also supported by several media as music, social media and reading materials. Based on the findings, it is recommended that the immigrant students and their parents take a serious effort in maintaining their heritage language, consider that the language is cultural asset and identity. It is also suggested that the future researcher to dig deeper to search about topic related to heritage language maintenance because heritage language gradually replaced by majority language.