Advances in Spanish as a Heritage Language [1 ed.] 9789027266873, 9789027241917

Citation preview

Advances in Spanish as a Heritage Language S TUD IES IN BI L INGUAL ISM

edited by

Diego Pascual y Cabo

49

john benjamins publishing company

Advances in Spanish as a Heritage Language

Studies in Bilingualism (SiBil) issn 0928-1533

The focus of this series is on psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic aspects of bilingualism. This entails topics such as childhood bilingualism, psychological models of bilingual language users, language contact and bilingualism, maintenance and shift of minority languages, and socio-political aspects of bilingualism. For an overview of all books published in this series, please see http://benjamins.com/catalog/sibil

Editors Jason Rothman

University of Reading & UiT, the Artic University of Norway

Ludovica Serratrice Universty of Reading

Advisory Editorial Board Sarah Bernolet

Aafke Hulk

Monika S. Schmid

Ellen Bialystok

Judith F. Kroll

Darren Tanner

Elma Blom

Tanja Kupisch

University of Illinois Urbana Champaign

Kees de Bot

Terje Lohndal

Bangor University

Ghent University York University

Utrecht University

University of Amsterdam Pennsylvania State University University of Konstanz

University of Essex

Enlli Thomas

Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Ianthi Maria Tsimpli

Marc Brysbaert

Gigi Luk

Harvard University

Sharon Unsworth

Cécile De Cat

Viorica Marian

Northwestern University

Marilyn Vihman

Annick De Houwer

Loraine K. Obler CUNY

Li Wei

Cheryl Frenck-Mestre

Johanne Paradis

University of British Columbia

Marit Westergaard

Belma Haznedar Erika Hoff

Pennsylvania State University

University of Groningen Ghent University University of Leeds University of Erfurt

Aix-Marseille Université Bogaziçi University Florida Atlantic University

Cambridge University Radboud University Nijmegen University of York University College London

Michael T. Putnam

UiT, the Artic University of Norway

Ute Römer

University of Florida

Georgia State University

Volume 49 Advances in Spanish as a Heritage Language Edited by Diego Pascual y Cabo

Stefanie Wulff

Advances in Spanish as a Heritage Language Edited by

Diego Pascual y Cabo Texas Tech University

John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam / Philadelphia

8

TM

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.

doi 10.1075/sibil.49 Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from Library of Congress: lccn 2016014931 (print) / 2016024988 (e-book) isbn 978 90 272 4191 7 (Hb) isbn 978 90 272 6687 3 (e-book)

© 2016 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Company · https://benjamins.com

To Teo and Pau, my favorite heritage speakers

Table of contents Acknowledgements Introduction Charting the past, present, and future of Spanish heritage language research Diego Pascual y Cabo

ix

1

Unit I:  Formal approaches to Spanish as a Heritage Language Formal linguistic approaches to heritage language acquisition: Bridges for pedagogically oriented research Jason Rothman, Ianthi Maria Tsimpli & Diego Pascual y Cabo

13

A new look at heritage Spanish and its speakers Almeida Jacqueline Toribio & Barbara E. Bullock

27

On the nuclear intonational phonology of heritage speakers of Spanish Rajiv Rao

51

Relative clause attachment preferences in early and late Spanish-English bilinguals Jill Jegerski, Bill VanPatten & Gregory D. Keating

81

Losing your case? Dative experiencers in Mexican Spanish and heritage speakers in the United States Silvina Montrul

99

Unit II:  Educational approaches to Spanish as a heritage language Current issues in Spanish heritage language education Kim Potowski Advances in Spanish heritage language assessment: Research and instructional considerations Sara M. Beaudrie A general framework and supporting strategies for teaching mixed classes Maria M. Carreira

127

143 159

 Advances in Spanish as a heritage language

Understanding identity among Spanish heritage learners: An interdisciplinary endeavor María Luisa Parra

177

Heritage language healing? Learners’ attitudes and damage control in a heritage language classroom Ana Sánchez-Muñoz

205

Unit III:  Future lines of development in heritage language education Emerging trends with heritage language instructional practices: Advances and challenges Marta Fairclough

221

New directions in heritage language pedagogy: Community service-learning for Spanish heritage speakers Kelly Lowther Pereira

237

Heritage language learning in study abroad: Motivations, identity work, and language development Rachel L. Shively

259

Online courses for heritage learners: Best practices and lessons learned Florencia Giglio Henshaw

281

Flipping the classroom: A pedagogical model for promoting heritage language writing skills Julio Torres

299

Afterword Looking ahead Maria Polinsky

325

Author Index

347

Subject Index

351

Acknowledgements The final product that you see here today is nothing, if not the result of a team effort. Contributions have been many and varied: be it with a chapter, with a review, with mentoring, with editorial support, or even with time to help me brainstorm solutions for various challenges. Among many others, I am indebted to Dalila Ayoun, Sara Beaudrie, Melissa Bowles, Barbara Bullock, Jennifer Cabrelli Amaro, José C ­ amacho, María Carreira, Cecilia Colombi, Maite Correa, Alex Cuza, Ana de Prada Pérez, Laura Domínguez, Idoia Elola, Anna María Escobar, Marta Fairclough, Josh Frank, Kim Geeslin, David Giancaspro, Florencia Giglio Henshaw, Inmaculada Gómez Soler, Susan Hendriks, Claudia Holguín, Mike Iverson, Jill Jegerski, Olga Kagan, Gregory Keating, Tanja Kupisch, Jennifer Leeman, Juana Liceras, Amalia Llombart, Gillian Lord, Kelly Lowther Pereira, Andrew Lynch, Silvina Montrul, Julia Oliver Rajan, María Luisa Parra, Masha Polinsky, Kim Potowski, Rajiv Rao, Leah Roberts, Ana Roca, Jason Rothman, Liliana Sánchez, Ana Sánchez Muñoz, Ludovica Serratrice, Rachel Shively, Carmen Silva-Corvalán, Marta Tecedor, Almeida Jacqueline Toribio, Julio Torres, Ianthi Maria Tsimpli, Kees Vaes, Guadalupe Valdés, Elena Valenzuela, Bill VanPatten, Damián Vergara Wilson, and Eve Zyzik. I am also grateful to my students and colleagues at Texas Tech University. Particularly, I am thankful for the assistance provided by Josh de la Rosa Prada and Cheryl Maqueda during the laborious editing process. Most notably, I’d like to thank Erin Collopy, chair of the Department, for her continuous support on this and on many other projects. I feel mostly indebted to Lloyd Allred, James Lemon, Theresa Madrid, and Stephanie Santos whose help and patience towards me these last few years have been comforting and unfailing. Finally, I wish to thank Laurie, my beloved wife, whose companionship, support, and advice I most cherish and value.

Charting the past, present, and future of Spanish heritage language research Diego Pascual y Cabo Texas Tech University

In September of 2014, coinciding with the celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, the United States Census Bureau published a news release reporting that the Hispanic1 population had reached the 54 million people mark. By mid-2016, that number had already increased to over 55 million people. And this growing trend is not expected to slow down anytime soon since large numbers of Hispanics continue to relocate in US territory. Considerably faster than what had been previously estimated, this figure establishes the US as the second largest Hispanic community in the world (only after Mexico with approximately 122 million people). Unsurprisingly, such demographic changes have had (and will continue to have in the years to come) a significant and direct repercussion on many spheres of US society. From economy to politics, from the media to the arts, the Hispanic presence cannot be denied. Testimony to this is the large number of US Spanish-language television networks, radio-stations, newspapers, and magazines that have surfaced to meet the ever-growing demand. Given this backdrop, and in recognizing its increasing value and universality, Spanish has unquestionably become the US “foreign language” of choice across secondary and postsecondary education. For quite some time now, most students have been choosing to study Spanish over French or German not just as a way to fulfill their foreign language requirements, but as a practical investment that will translate into gains in tomorrow’s job market (see e.g., García, 2009). Regrettably, a somewhat different scenario – one of language loss across generations – is observed among large numbers of Hispanic immigrants and their offspring. In addition to the natural shift that generally takes place around the 3rd generation (e.g., Klee & Lynch, 2009), many newcomers choose to abandon important aspects of their heritage, including their traditions, their lifestyle, and their language to speed up the process of acculturation (e.g., Niño-Murcia & Rothman, 2008;

.  Herein, the terms Hispanic or Latino are used interchangeably, with no distinction and without any negative connotation.

doi 10.1075/sibil.49.01pas © 2016 John Benjamins Publishing Company

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Diego Pascual y Cabo

Potowski, 2010). ­Furthermore, other reasons accounting for such language loss include, but are not limited to the barrage of political discourses that delegitimize immigrant languages/cultures and the internalization of prejudiced assimilativeideologies in the face of the prevalent ­American monolingualism/monoculturalism (e.g., Pavlenko, 2002). For example, cases such as the English Only Movement during the 1980s or the more recent Arizona ­anti-immigrant law have only worsened the already rather negative feelings and the stigma associated to this language and its users (e.g., Potowski, 2010). That said, as early as the 1970s but especially in the 1980s, scholars such as Roca, Valdés, Zentella and colleagues were instrumental in articulating convincing arguments regarding the overall positive value of (Spanish-English) bilingualism, biculturalism, and biliteracy in the US. Since then, there has been an exponential increase in the number of studies and publications focusing on this important ­topic.2 As a whole, this still-developing line of inquiry has raised questions regarding social, linguistic, and educational inclusion, which in turn have allowed for the field to significantly move forward. While still gaining insights into what bilingualism and biculturalism really mean (e.g., Crawford, 1992; Piller, 2001), we are now more familiar with what future directions to take and what the challenges that we need to overcome are. For example, in addition to the purely linguistic concerns, it is of crucial need that we become more attuned with linguistic attitudes and ideologies (e.g., Rivera Mills, 2012), linguistic identity (e.g., Leeman, 2012), social inclusion (e.g., Fairclough, 2005) as well as with language policy and planning (e.g., Martinez, 2012). Creating, developing and fomenting awareness of these issues can translate into increased access to and opportunities for maintaining home/minority dialects (e.g., Rivera Mills, 2012). Supported and fortified by this enriched understanding, growing numbers of higher-ed institutions as well as high schools across the nation are pushing towards the inclusion of Spanish courses for native/bilingual/heritage speakers in their curricula. Recent changes in this respect have been nothing short of exceptional.3 For example, it should be noted that while in the 1990’s only approximately 18% of higher-ed institutions in the US offered courses this particular population, this percentage rose to

.  For an overview of scholarship on Spanish in the US, we refer the reader to Roca (2000), Colombi & Roca (2003), Lipski (2008) and Beaudrie & Fairclough (2012). .  In fact, the Hispanic youth, as the largest and youngest minority ethnic group in the US, is being particularly targeted on many fronts, not just linguistically (Carreira & Beeman, 2014), since by force of numbers alone, the kinds of adults these young Latinos become will help shape the kind of society America becomes in the 21st century (Taylor, 2009).



Charting the past, present, and future of Spanish heritage language research

almost 40% by 2011 (Beaudrie, 2011, 2012). More recent reports continue to foresee a bright future for this sort of courses as they continue to grow exponentially all over the country (Tecedor & Mejia, 2015). Fortunately, these programs are not growing just in quantity, but also in quality. Little by little, as we become more cognizant of the issues discussed earlier, we are better able to reach a wider net of Spanish-speaking ­students in many meaningful ways. For example, the expansion rather than replacement approach and the incorporation of seminal principles of linguistic instruction such as language maintenance, bilingual range expansion, transferring of literacy skills or engagement with the community are now commonplace in most if not all courses for native/bilingual speakers (e.g., Valdés, 1997). Unfortunately, even in this context of (apparent) linguistic headway, not everyone shares this view. For example, the changing conditions of the current linguistic panorama pose an important challenge to more traditional understandings of what language is and/or what it should be. Take for instance Piña-Rosales, Covarrubias, Segura, and Fernández (2010) guide to speaking Spanish “correctly.” In this publication, from a dogmatic and normative perspective that permeates from beginning to end, Piña-Rosales et al. present a number of solutions and strategies to “help” speakers use the Spanish language decorously in the context of the US. As noted by Lynch and Potowski (2014), such a stand on language is misleading as it reveals not only indifference to many of the issues involved in language contact situation, but also a complete disregard to the millions of speakers that are found in such a context. Our goal herein, and the purpose of this edited volume in general, is a different one: we aim to provide an objective and linguistically informed view of Spanish in the US, generally referred to as Spanish as a heritage language, a term on which we expand below.

1.  Spanish as a Heritage Language The term heritage language is currently used to identify a minority/immigrant language that differs from the dominant/societal language for any given context (e.g., Fishman, 2006). Justifiably then, those who speak a heritage language are generally referred to as heritage speakers4 (HS) but have also been called semi-speakers, pseudo-bilinguals, or incomplete acquirers (Dorian, 1981; Baker & Jones, 1998; Montrul, 2008).

.  For a detailed overview of the different features that characterize heritage speakers, and how these differ from traditional second language learners, we refer the reader to Potowski and Lynch (2014) as well as to Beaudrie, Ducar and Potowski (2014).





Diego Pascual y Cabo

As is usually the case for most immigrants, learning the majority language is ­central to a full social integration and professional functioning. Nevertheless, despite the supremacy of a prevailing societal language, the heritage language continues to be used to different degrees in the household. Given this, their offspring generally acquire the heritage language naturally, in the family environment, and from early on. That said, and despite generalizations, HSs do not represent a homogeneous group. While it is true that most HSs end up being proficient speakers of the societal language, their command of the heritage language is generally characterized by a great deal of variability. That is, while some HSs can use the heritage language fluently and effortlessly, others struggle when performing basic language functions. Even more drastic is the case of individuals who have maintained strong cultural ties to the heritage language but that have no linguistic competence beyond some knowledge of culturally significant lexical items. The HS linguistic differences observed are generally accounted for in Polinsky and Kagan’s (2007) broad and narrow definitions of HS. According to the broad definition, linguistic competence is not regarded as an essential exclusion criterion and thus, an individual is considered a HS provided that she/he has been able to maintain strong cultural connections with the heritage culture. The narrow definition suggests that, in addition to the cultural ties, a HS must have at least minimal communicative capacity in the heritage language. Given the wide-ranging nature of the work included in this volume, either definition is adopted according to the specifics goal(s) of each chapter. Crucially, the societal imbalance of the languages involved combined with the age of exposure to the societal language have been shown to be deterministic in an individual’s linguistic development (e.g., Valdés, 1997; Montrul, 2008). That is, placement in the abovementioned linguistic continuum depends not only on the exposure to the heritage language (and to the heritage culture) but also on the timing of such exposure. In this sense, the term simultaneous bilingual is used to refer to someone who acquired both languages from birth. Sequential bilinguals, on the other hand, differ from simultaneous bilinguals in that they first grew up as monolingual speakers of the heritage language. Consistent exposure to the societal language does not generally start until around the age of 4/5 years old, coinciding with the beginning of their formal education. From that moment on, opportunities to use the heritage language are mostly restricted to the home environment and a gradual shift in linguistic dominance is generally observed. Except in some very exceptional cases, eventually blending (both culturally and linguistically) into mainstream ­society is the natural outcome. From a strictly formal linguistic point of view, the field of Spanish HS bilingualism has been mainly concerned with examining the nature of HSs’ linguistic k­ nowledge as their heritage language develops under reduced input conditions (See the work of Cuza, Montrul, Rothman, Valenzuela among many others). This is of interest to



Charting the past, present, and future of Spanish heritage language research

the linguistic community since, despite the noticeable similarities in the processes of acquisition (i.e., acquisition takes place from birth and naturalistically), the consensus is that HSs often exhibit differences in their knowledge and use of the heritage language when compared to age-matched monolingual speakers. Although such ­differences have been documented in different domains (e.g., phonetics, phonology, syntax), the area of morphosyntax seems to be especially vulnerable to c­ rosslinguistic influence (e.g., Rothman, 2009; Montrul, 2008, 2010, 2016; Pascual y Cabo, 2015). This particular outcome of language acquisition has been generally referred to under the umbrella term incomplete acquisition (e.g., Montrul, 2008), but can also be explained in terms of language attrition or complete acquisition of contact varieties (e.g., Putnam & Sánchez, 2013; P ­ ascual y Cabo & Rothman, 2012). As noted earlier, the last decades of research have yielded key advances in all areas of research on Spanish HS bilingualism including, but not limited to, applied and formal linguistics, sociolinguistics, and educational linguistics. As a result of these advances, we now have a fundamental knowledge of the main issues involved in the acquisition, development, and maintenance of Spanish as a heritage language. But, as the number of Spanish HSs continues to grow, so does our need (as well as our responsibility) for a better understanding of these issues. We hope that this volume, which we introduce next, is able to capture current debates in the field so as to lead the way to other questions that future research will need to address.

2.  This volume The present volume focuses on recent developments of Spanish as a heritage language in the context of the United States, a topic that is approached from two interconnected points of view. First, although in this particular setting, Spanish is a prima facie ­example of a heritage language, it is definitely not the only one (see e.g., Potowski, 2010). In other words, Spanish is but one example of the heritage language phenomenon and thus, the general contributions included in this volume can also be applicable to other heritage languages in different contexts such as Turkish in Sweden, or Arabic in France. Second, while the role of the Spanish-speaking immigrant community in the US is consistently becoming more noticeable, no one can deny that this minority group (broadly speaking), and its language as an extension, also suffer from strong prejudice and stigma (e.g., Parodi, 2008). Interestingly, such strong sentiments are not repeated, at least not to the same degree, in places such as the United Kingdom or Australia, even if the majority/minority language combination is held constant. As is true of all cases of bilingualism, Spanish heritage language development cannot be fully described or explained without first understanding and then bringing together all the linguistic and sociolinguistic aspects involved in all of these contexts. However,



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Diego Pascual y Cabo

before such enterprise can be meaningfully undertaken, it is worthwhile to address these issues separately and exhaustively. Thus, the study of Spanish in this specific sociolinguistic environment renders this, a topic in dire need of special attention. Additionally, despite there being a fair amount of scholarship on Spanish as a ­heritage language (e.g., Colombi & Roca, 2003; Roca, 2000; Beaudrie & Fairclough, 2012; Beaudrie, Ducar, & Potowski, 2014; Potowski & Lynch, 2014; Potowski & Carreira, 2004, 2014; Potowski, 2005; Valdés, 2001), resources that appropriately combine formal theoretical and experimental studies, classroom oriented research, and pedagogically oriented insights are not only very limited, but also do not meet the soaring demands of the field. By bringing together the most recent developments from all of the abovementioned angles of orientation, we aim to lessen this gap in the literature. A central feature of this volume is our commitment to provide state-of-the-art research on Spanish HS bilingual development from a variety of perspectives and theoretical backgrounds. With this, we aim not only to inform those readers interested in Spanish as a heritage language, but also to serve as a reference tool upon which other scholars and practitioners can advance the field further. To achieve this goal, we have specially commissioned all chapters presented herein, bringing together therefore the work of a total of 21 HS specialists. To ensure the quality of the volume, a total of 42 reviews were solicited. We are indebted to the following reviewers for their thoughtful comments and suggestions: Ann Abbott (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Evelyn Duran (Lehman College), Vanessa Elias (Indiana University), Idoia Elola (Texas Tech University), Maria Fionda (University of M ­ ississippi), Josh Frank (University of Texas, Austin), Isabel Gibert Escofet (Universitat Rovira I Virgili), Florencia Giglio Henshaw (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), Inmaculada Gómez Soler (University of Memphis), ­Nicholas Henriksen (University of Michigan), Mike Iverson (Indiana University, ­Bloomington), Jill Jegerski (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), Alejandro Lee (Central Washington University), Verónica Loureiro Rodríguez (University of Manitoba), Kelly Lowther Pereira (University of North Carolina, Greensboro), Dalia Magaña (University of California, Merced), Joanne Markle LaMontagne (University of Toronto), Trudie McEvoy (University of Arizona), Kim Potowski (University of Illinois, Chicago), Ana de Prada Pérez (University of Florida), Rajiv Rao (University of Wisconsin, Madison), Alegría Ribanedeira (Colorado State University, Pueblo), Josh de la Rosa Prada (Texas Tech University), Rebeca Ronquest (North ­Carolina State University), Francisco Salgado (CUNY, College of Staten Island), María Spicer-Escalante (Utah State University), Cathy Stafford (University of Wisconsin, ­Madison), Michael Tallon (University of the Incarnate Word), Greg Thompson (Brigham Young University), Julio Torres (University of California, Irvine), Damian



Charting the past, present, and future of Spanish heritage language research

Vergara Wilson (University of New Mexico), Daniel Villa (New Mexico State University), and Alvaro Villegas (University of Central Florida). As previously discussed, the 16 chapters included in the remainder of this ­volume address several lines of research, all pertaining to the overarching theme of Spanish as a heritage language. These chapters are organized into 3 thematic units, with each one introduced by top scholars in their respective subfields of study. The first unit, “Formal Approaches to the Study of Spanish Heritage Speaker ­Bilingualism” is introduced by Jason Rothman, Ianthi Tsimpli, and Diego Pascual y Cabo (­Chapter 2). Included in this section are empirical and theoretical explorations of the incorporation of corpus data as a new form of observation for characterizing the ­Spanish of heritage speakers in the United States (Chapter 3 by ­Jacqueline Almeida Toribio & Barbara Bullock); nuclear tonal configurations based on utterance type and pragmatic meaning (Chapter 4 by Rajiv Rao); relative clause attachment preferences (Chapter 5 by Jill Jegerski, Gregory Keating, & Bill VanPatten); and structural simplification and case erosion with respect to dative experiencer verbs (­Chapter 6 by Silvina Montrul). Kim Potowski introduces the second unit of the volume entitled “Educational Approaches to Spanish as a Heritage Language” (Chapter 7). Some of the discussions included within this unit relate to academic placement of heritage language learners (Chapter 8 by Sara Beaudrie); attending to the needs of heritage language learners in mixed classrooms (­Chapter 9 by María Carreira); the relationship between Spanish heritage language education and identity (­Chapter 10 by María Luisa Parra); and linguistic attitudes towards the heritage language (­Chapter 11 by Ana Sánchez Muñoz). Marta Fairclough (­Chapter 12) is responsible for the i­ntroduction of the third and last unit of the volume. The main goal of this unit is to provide the reader with a sense of what future lines of development within heritage language instruction are likely to be as well as what the advantages and/or challenges of these practices might look like. The discussions included within this unit are the incorporation of community engagement/ service learning in the heritage language curriculum (Chapter 13 by Kelly Lowther Pereira); heritage language learners and the study abroad experience (Chapter 14 by Rachel Shively); the use of 100% online courses to teach heritage language learners (­Chapter 15 by ­Florencia Giglio H ­ enshaw), and the implementation of the flippedclassroom approach (Chapter 16 by Julio Torres). To conclude the volume, an afterword by Maria Polinsky presents an integrated summary of the main ideas discussed within these units and addresses the future development of the field both in terms of research and instructional practices. It is our hope that the diversity of approaches included herein as well as the ideas presented provide a valuable resource for researchers, students, and professionals working in diverse areas of Spanish as a heritage language.

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Diego Pascual y Cabo

References Baker, C., & Jones, S. P. (1998). Encyclopedia of bilingualism and bilingual education. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Beaudrie, S. (2011). Spanish heritage language programs: A snapshot of current programs in the Southwestern United States. Foreign Language Annals, 44(2), 321–337.

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Beaudrie, S. (2012). Research on university-based Spanish heritage language programs in the United States: The current state of affairs. In S. Beaudrie & M. Fairclough (Eds.), Spanish as a heritage language in the United States: The state of the field (pp. 203–221). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Beaudrie S. M., & Fairclough, M. (2012). Spanish as a heritage language in the United States: The state of the field. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Beaudrie, S. M., Ducar, C., & Potowski, K. (2014). Heritage language teaching: Research and practice. New York, NY: McGraw Hill. Carreira, M. (2014). Spanish as a heritage language. In J. I. Hualde, A. Olarrea, & E. O’Rourke (Eds.), The handbook of Hispanic linguistics. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Carreira, M., & Beeman, T. (2014). Voces: Latino students on life in the United States. Santa ­Barbara, CA: Praeger. Colombi, C., & Roca, A. (2003). Mi lengua: Spanish as a heritage language in the United States. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Crawford, J. (1992). Hold your tongue: Bilingualism and the politics of ‘English only’. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley. Dorian, N. (1981). Language death: The life cycle of a Scottish Gaelic dialect. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Fairclough, M. (2005). Spanish and heritage language education in the United States. Struggling with hypotheticals. Madrid: Iberoamericana. Fishman, J. (2006). Acquisition, maintenance, and recovery of heritage languages: An “­American tragedy” or “new opportunity”? In G. Valdés, J. Fishman, R. Chávez, & W. Pérez (Eds.), Developing minority language resources: The case of Spanish in California. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. García, O. (2009). La enseñanza del español como lengua extranjera. In H. Lopez Morales (Ed.), Enciclopedia del español en los Estados Unidos. Madrid: Santillana. Klee, C. & Lynch, A. (2009).  El español en contacto con otras lenguas. Washington, DC: ­Georgetown UP. Leeman, J. (2012). Investigating language ideologies in Spanish as a heritage language. In S. Beaudrie & M. Fairclough (Eds.), Spanish as a heritage language in the United States: The state of the field (pp. 43–59). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Lipski, J. (2008). Varieties of Spanish in the United States. Washington, DC: Georgetown ­University Press. Lynch, A., & Potowski, K. (2014). La valoración del habla bilingüe en los Estados Unidos: Fundamentos sociolingüísticos y pedagógicos en Hablando bien se entiende la gente. Hispania, 97(1), 32–46.  doi: 10.1353/hpn.2014.0025 Martinez, G. (2012).   Policy and planning research for Spanish as a heritage language.  In S.  Beaudrie & M. Fairclough (Eds.), Spanish as a heritage language in the United States: The state of the field (pp. 61–99). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.



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Montrul, S. (2008). Incomplete acquisition in bilingualism. Re-examining the age factor (Studies in Bilingualism 39). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.  doi: 10.1075/sibil.39 Montrul, S. (2010). Current issues in heritage language acquisition. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 30, 3–23.  doi: 10.1017/S0267190510000103 Niño Mucia, M., & Rothman, J. (2008). Bilingualism and identity: Spanish at the crossroads with other languages (Studies in Bilingualism 37). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

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Parodi, C. (2008). Stigmatized Spanish inside the classroom and out: A model of language ­teaching to heritage speakers. In D. M. Brinton, O. Kagan, & S. Bauckus (Eds.), Heritage ­language education: A new field emerging (pp. 199–214). New York, NY: Routledge. Pascual y., & Cabo, D. (2015). Issues in Spanish Heritage Morpho-syntax. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 8(2), 389–401. Pascual y Cabo, D., & Rothman, J. (2012). The (il)logical problem of heritage speaker bilingualism and incomplete acquisition. Applied Linguistics, 33(4), 1–7.  doi: 10.1093/applin/amr040 Pavlenko, A. (2002). ‘We have room for but one language here’: Language and national identity in the US at the turn of the 20th century. Multilingua, 21, 163–196.  doi: 10.1515/mult.2002.004 Piller, I. (2001). Naturalization language testing and its basis in ideologies of national identity and citizenship. International Journal of Bilingualism, 5(3), 259–277.

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Piña-Rosales, G., Covarrubias, J., Segura, J., & Fernández, D. (2010). Hablando bien se entiende la gente: Consejos idiomáticos de la Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española. Miami: Santillana USA. Polinsky, M., & Kagan, O. (2007). Heritage languages: In the ‘wild’ and in the classroom. ­Language and Linguistics Compass, 1(5), 368–395.  doi: 10.1111/j.1749-818X.2007.00022.x Potowski, K. (2005). Fundamentos de la enseñanza del español a los hablantes nativos en los ­Estados Unidos. Madrid, Spain: Arco/Libros. Potowski, K. (2010). Language diversity in the United States. Cambridge: CUP. Potowski, K., & Carreira, M. (2004). Towards teacher development and national standards for Spanish as a heritage language. Foreign Language Annals, 37(3), 421–431.

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Potowski, K., & Lynch, A. (2014). Perspectivas sobre la enseñanza del español a los hablantes de herencia en los Estados Unidos. Journal of Spanish Language Teaching 1(2), 154–170.

doi: 10.1080/23247797.2014.970360

Putnam, M., & Sánchez, L. (2013). What’s so incomplete about incomplete acquisition? A prolegomenon to modeling heritage language grammars. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 3(4), 478–508.  doi: 10.1075/lab.3.4.04put Rivera-Mills, S. V. (2012). Spanish heritage language maintenance.  In S. Beaudrie & M. ­Fairclough (Eds.), Spanish as a Heritage Language in the United States: The State of the Field. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Roca, A. (Ed.). (2000). Research on Spanish in the United States: Linguistic issues and challenges. Somerville MA: Cascadilla Press. Rothman, J. (2009). Understanding the nature and outcomes of early bilingualism: Romance languages as heritage languages. International Journal of Bilingualism, 13(2), 155–165.

doi: 10.1177/1367006909339814

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 Diego Pascual y Cabo Taylor, P. (2009). Between two worlds: How young Latinos come of age in America. Pew Research Center, Washington, DC. (updated edition, July 1, 2013). 〈http://www.pewhispanic.org/2009/12/11/between-two-worlds-how-young-latinos-come-of-age-in-america/〉 (23 February, 2015). Tecedor, M., & Mejía, B. (2015). Spanish as a heritage language in US higher education. Conference presentation delivered at the 2nd Symposium on Spanish as a Heritage Language, Lubbock, February 2015. Valdés, G. (1997). The teaching of Spanish to bilingual Spanish-speaking students: Outstanding issues and unanswered questions. In M. C. Colombi & F. X. Alarcón (Eds.), La enseñanza del español a hispanohablantes (pp. 8–44). Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Valdés, G. (2001). Heritage language students: Profiles and possibilities. In J. K. Peyton, D. A. Ranard, & S. McGinnis (Eds.), Heritage languages in America: Preserving a national resource (pp. 37–77). Washington, DC & McHenry, IL: Center for Applied Linguistics & Delta Systems.

unit i

Formal approaches to Spanish as a Heritage Language

Formal linguistic approaches to heritage language acquisition Bridges for pedagogically oriented research Jason Rothman1, 2, Ianthi Maria Tsimpli3 & Diego Pascual y Cabo4 1University 3University

of Reading / 2UiT, The Arctic University of Norway / of Cambridge / 4Texas Tech University

The goal of this chapter is to lay out the central themes of heritage language acquisition research adopting a formal/theoretical linguistic perspective.  Specifically, we aim to provide a detailed discussion of the nature of heritage language grammars. In doing so, we will address the debates on how to explain heritage speaker competence differences from monolingual baselines and more. This chapter will not be limited to discussions of Spanish as a heritage language, but rather will highlight the important role that Spanish has played and will continue to play in the development of heritage language acquisition studies. Finally, we will offer some comments/insights on how the information covered regarding the formal linguistic properties of heritage speaker knowledge should be considered for and implemented in heritage language pedagogies and thus dealing with heritage speakers in the classroom setting.

1.  Introduction As is true of all cases of language acquisition, Heritage Language (HL) acquisition can be studied from multiple traditions. The questions that motivate research programs from different perspectives are therefore necessarily destined to be only partially overlapping. The fields of study to which this book makes a significant contribution illuminate this statement. Although there is a justifiable need for some level of independence between (abstract) theory and practice, strict independence in HL studies runs antithetical to everyone’s goals. It is fair to say that researchers interested in HL pedagogy would achieve better results if their endeavours built on knowledge obtained from HL acquisition in naturalistic contexts. Equally, heritage language development in the classroom setting provides an indispensable testing laboratory for questions and hypotheses formulated by formal linguistic HL theorists. The connections that the two

doi 10.1075/sibil.49.02rot © 2016 John Benjamins Publishing Company

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sides should have cannot be overstated. However, at present, there is little ­connection between formal linguistic and pedagogically oriented HL researchers, despite compelling reasons to the contrary. Within this context, the purpose of this chapter is threefold: (i) to provide the reader with a brief introduction to formal linguistic studies of heritage language acquisition; (ii) to serve as a bridge between the two subfields of study so as to invite greater collaboration as we have laid out the need for above; and (iii) to introduce the chapters included in this unit. Formal linguistic studies examining HL acquisition in the “wild” have mostly focused on describing the grammatical competence of adult heritage speakers, and on theorizing about how/why these grammars developed in the ways they did. That is, formal linguistic studies look at the (mostly adult) outcomes of ­naturalistic ­language acquisition in a very specific sociolinguistic situation that defines the parameters of HL bilingualism. In the past decade or so, there has been a proliferation of research of this type. On the whole, this research has consistently shown that HL bilinguals – especially under favourable conditions of access to ample input of high quality – have sophisticated HL grammars; however, they are to various degrees and in various domains significantly different from age-matched monolinguals (see e.g., Montrul, 2008, this volume; Benmamoun, Montrul & Polinsky, 2013 for review). Details aside for now, such a consistent result is very appealing to formal linguists for the conundrum it presents. After all, HL bilinguals are native speakers of the HL since, like monolinguals, they acquired the HL naturalistically in early childhood (see Rothman & ­Treffers-Daller, 2014). So, why should they be significantly different from monolingual controls? There are obvious variables that will at least partially factor into any reasonable ultimate answer to this question. For example, the fallacy of comparing bilinguals and monolinguals (e.g., Bley-Vroman, 1983), the role of formal education and literacy in monolingual knowledge, the comparability of the quantities and qualities of the inputs each group receives are all factors which could contribute to differences of HL speakers from monolingual controls (see Pascual y Cabo & R ­ othman, 2012 for discussion). Equally clear, however, is that none of the aforementioned variables alone or even in combination would explain the range of differences seen in HL competences. For the theoretical linguist then, HL bilinguals in the “wild” provide a naturally occurring laboratory to test important questions of considerable debate. For example: (i) Under reduced input, what parts of grammar seem particularly robust and what parts of grammar are more affected? (ii) What does this reveal about the nature of language and its mental constitution? (iii) What do HL bilingual outcomes tell us about the nature vs. nurture debates in linguistics? More pedagogically focused studies of HL acquisition necessarily focus on other questions, precisely because they deal with similar sets of bilinguals outside of the “wild.” In a way, HL bilinguals in the classroom are a proper subset of all HL



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­ ilinguals since they necessarily include only those that seek formal training and b literacy of the HL. By definition, assuming the focus is on the traditional questions, formal linguistic researchers have tended not to be primarily interested in what happens in the classroom context since the classroom itself constitutes an additional, specific variable (but see, e.g., Montrul & Bowles, 2010). Such a mindset, however, has largely resulted in a missed opportunity for the typical formal linguist. Studies in the classroom setting, when carefully constructed, could be very productive towards adjudicating between various proposals of how and why heritage grammars differ from monolingual ones, a point to which we will return in greater detail. Classroom HL studies must deal with a different reality than formal linguistic studies do. As is true of all language classrooms, the HL classroom brings together a heterogeneous population. Even though all students are HL bilinguals, it is very unlikely that any given cohort will be of the same linguistic proficiency level. This heterogeneity produces linguistic challenges similar to those of the L2 classroom. Pedagogically oriented HL studies often seek to examine what particular interventions do for HL bilinguals, what their specific needs are, and the like. In this respect, HL pedagogy can shed light on the areas of HL grammar which are more vulnerable, benefit more or less from intervention, and, perhaps, belong more to the periphery than to the core. Ideally, a mutually beneficial relationship could exist between pedagogically oriented treatments of HL acquisition and formal descriptions from the HL. For example, specific classroom interventions designed on the basis of what formal ­linguistic studies reveal about HL competence can test theoretical questions within language pedagogy. A very good example of such good practice can be seen in Potowski, Jegerski and Morgan Short’s (2009) study of the development of past subjunctive in Heritage bilingual Spanish, using testing between two teaching methodologies. Our point here is not to suggest that there are no connections between formal linguistic and pedagogical oriented approaches to HL bilingualism, but rather that there is room for more profitable and more pervasive connections. For such connections to be maximally beneficial, an open dialogue of understanding must be established. This means that formal linguistic discussions need to be accessible to HL pedagogy by presenting the research itself and the debates within their sub-field in an appropriate and theory-neutral way. The main purpose of this ­chapter, then, is a concise first attempt at building this bridge. Beyond briefly covering the basics of what formal linguistic studies have described related to HL bilingual grammars as well as the theoretical positions within formal linguistic theory on how and why HL grammars take the shape they do, we will inject our views in terms of what is at stake from a formal linguistic perspective related to these positions. Specifically, we will discuss the consequences of the terminology that derives from such perspective for pedagogically oriented researchers and teachers.

 Jason Rothman, Ianthi Maria Tsimpli & Diego Pascual y Cabo

We see this discussion as the first building block of the bridge between formal HL approaches and HL pedagogy in view of the possible far-reaching i­ mplications that clarity and specificity in theoretical approaches can bring to the implementation of research in teaching practice. In particular, misunderstanding findings which reveal HS differences from monolingual norms can promote a pedagogical point of departure that is unintended by formal linguists as it is linguistically inaccurate. Similarly, the view of “fixing” heritage grammars from a broken state to an unbroken one via pedagogical intervention in no way derives from formal linguistic concepts or ­empirical data sets.

2.  F  ormal linguistic approaches to HL bilingualism: The data trends and the debates 2.1  Who qualifies as a HL bilingual? As pointed out in the introductory chapter of this volume, it is perhaps prudent to start this section by defining what a HL bilingual is taken to be in the context of (most) formal linguistic studies. It might seem evident that all researchers would agree on and thus use the same profile characteristics when determining which individuals qualify as HL bilinguals. However, this is not immediately clear in practice. Indeed, for certain purposes and research questions, a broad, inclusive definition might be useful. For example, a HL learner – note that learner is used ­purposefully – might be anyone who has (strong) familial ties to a particular language and/or ­culture, for example, a second or third generation Korean-American. This person might not speak Korean, but has been somewhat exposed to the language indirectly all her life and very much brought up in the traditional culture. Under a situation where this individual matriculates in a Korean class at University-level, understanding that this individual brings motivations and some linguistic/cultural knowledge that the non-Korean-descendant learner has is useful and might justify treating this person as a HL learner for teaching and pedagogically-oriented research purposes. However, given the questions that formal linguistic studies focus on, such an individual is not a HL bilingual, at least not in the sense we typically understand for heritage speakers. A heritage speaker (HS) – emphasis on the speaker – usually refers to HL bilinguals that have – to various degrees – naturally acquired communicative competence in the HL. Within the framework of formal linguistics which seeks to describe and explain the grammar of HSs, some grammatical competence in the HL is presupposed. Thus, despite the fact that different formal linguistic studies examine various levels



Formal linguistic approaches to heritage language acquisition 

of HS ­proficiency – usually assessed in comparison to age-matched monolinguals (see P ­ ascual y Cabo & Rothman, 2012; Putnam & Sanchez, 2013; Bullock & Toribio, this volume for issues with this practice) all these studies investigate speakers of a HL acquired naturalistically in a home setting. Although various formal linguistic ­definitions of HS and HL exist (see e.g., Montrul, 2008; Benmamoun et al., 2013), we offer the one below taken from Rothman (2009) as the one we follow herein, noting that all available definitions accord with the basic characterizing descriptors. A language qualifies as a heritage language if it is a language spoken at home or otherwise readily available to young children, and crucially this language is not a dominant language of the larger (national) society…. the heritage language is acquired on the basis of an interaction with naturalistic input and whatever in-born linguistic mechanisms are at play in any instance of child language acquisition. Differently [from monolingual acquisition], there is the possibility that quantitative and qualitative differences in heritage language input, influence of the societal majority language and differences in literacy and formal education can result in what on the surface seems to be arrested development of the heritage (Rothman, 2009: 156) language or attrition in adult bilingual knowledge.

In light of the above, we can summarize a HS as a bilingual speaker of the HL who developed knowledge of the HL naturalistically. A HS is either a simultaneous bilingual (2L1) of both the HL and the societal language or initially a monolingual of the HL who became an early child L2 learner of the societal language. More often than not, the HS becomes dominant in the societal language, which often corresponds to the sole language of her formal education throughout her lifespan and the language in which she primarily socializes outside the home, starting in early childhood. As obvious as it should be that eventual dominance in the societal language does not change the fact that the HSs are L1 acquirers of the HL (uniquely or the HL is one of two L1s), it is not always clear that HSs are treated, as they should be, as a sub-type of native speakers of the L1 (see Leal Mendez, Rothman & Slabakova, 2015; Rothman & Treffers-Daller, 2014).

2.2  What do formal linguistic studies reveal? Rather than delve into too many details with respect to individual data sets, we will endeavour to concisely explain the general trends that formal linguistic research has revealed with respect to HS competence. Inevitably, this means we will oversimplify complex issues. We refer the reader to two sources that comprise in-depth and accessible state-of-the-science reviews of much of the empirical work on formal linguistic HS studies that are very exhaustive to the date of their publications, (a) Montrul (2015), and (b) Benmamoun, Montrul & Polinsky (2013).

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A survey of HS studies overwhelmingly shows that HS competence tends to differ from matched monolinguals in the following ways: 1. HL grammatical competence and performance differ from monolingual norms to various degrees in various domains. 2. HSs often show partial knowledge as opposed to an utter lack of knowledge. 3. Heritage language competences can differ significantly from one another whereby some are much more “proficient” holistically (and in various domains) than others. Observation (1) refers to the fact that HSs often perform on a continuum across different domains of grammar. For example, generally speaking HSs tend to show better conformity in the phonological domain than in some areas of morphology and syntax (but see Rao, this volume). We could further divide trends within a single domain. Within morpho-syntax, for example, it has been observed that HSs are more likely to parallel monolingual native speaker knowledge in core syntactic properties as opposed to interface-conditioned properties (e.g., Sorace, 2011). Take for example, gender assignment and agreement. In Spanish, assignment/agreement of gender is both a lexical and syntactic property. Gender assignment on the noun itself is a lexical process that specifies the gender value (masculine or feminine for Spanish) as part of the entry of the word. Gender agreement within the D(eterminer) P(hrase) involves the matching process of the lexical gender feature of the noun with the gender features of articles, demonstratives quantifiers and adjectives that co-occur with that noun. This matching process is a syntactic operation with morphological and phonological implications on the form of all the agreeing items (e.g., ‘el’ vs. ‘la’ etc). HSs are accurate with gender agreement, meaning the syntax of gender is in place, whereas they have some issues with lexical gender assignment (see Montrul, Foote & Perpiñán, 2008). Observation (2) seemingly overlaps with the final example offered for observation (1). That is, HSs often show partial knowledge of particular properties of grammar as opposed to utter lack of knowledge. Consider subjunctive mood in Spanish. Unlike English, Spanish has a complex system of mood encoded in specific morphology on the verb. HSs of Spanish exhibit differences from monolingual Spanish speakers with use of subjunctive mood morphology (e.g., Montrul, 2009; Montrul & Perpiñán, 2011). However, some uses of the subjunctive are much more variable than others. In fact, HSs at high levels of proficiency are quite accurate with the subjunctive when it is syntactically obligatory, as is the case with volitional contexts introduced with the verb querer ‘to want’ (e.g., Pascual y Cabo, Lingwall, & Rothman 2012). In other contexts where the subjunctive is possible but not obligatory and in which the choice of indicative vs. subjunctive depends on semantic-pragmatic properties, HSs tend to differ more significantly from monolingual controls. In a study



Formal linguistic approaches to heritage language acquisition 

comparing subjunctive mood in purpose clauses (i.e. after para que ‘in order to’) with relative clauses where the use of subjunctive depends on the absence of presupposition, Giancaspro (2014) shows that HSs perform just like native monolinguals in the former but not in the latter context. This study indicates that at least partial knowledge of subjunctive is available to HSs since in certain (semantic) contexts they too, like monolingual controls, are sensitive to mood distinctions, while in other contexts their knowledge differs from that of controls. Observation (3) refers to the fact that HSs’ knowledge of the HL is not as consistent across individuals as one expects of other sets of native speakers, particularly monolinguals. This fact is not at all surprising when one considers the continuum of exposure type (quantity and quality), their individual patterns of use of the HL, the level of literacy they have in the HL, the status of the HL in the society in which they live, or their access to other speakers of the HL. These differences do not normally pertain to native monolinguals, at least not in the same way. While we typically do not use terms like intermediate and advanced levels to describe monolinguals, these terms are used in HS studies to equate their relative level as compared to matched monolingual norms. It is worth pointing out that one could, using the same rubric of an idealized standard comparison, observe such differences across monolinguals (see Dąbrowska, 2012), although this is beyond the scope of this chapter. Suffice it to say, that HSs even when seemingly under very comparable input conditions do not always show the same level of conformity that one expects in monolingual contexts. Although variables must conspire to explain this, it is possible in a HS context to have members of the same family differ significantly from one another despite the fact that key indicators such as Socio Economic Status (SES) that normally explain differences in monolinguals are controlled for. Proficiency tendencies for particular HL groups, at least in the US where HSs have been studied most prolifically, have been noted. Whereas Spanish and ­Portuguese HSs in the US tend to be at the intermediate to advanced proficiency levels, HSs of Russian and Korean tend to achieve lower levels of proficiency. This observational fact is likely a by-product of the sociolinguistic realities of particular languages in a particular environment. One can imagine that Russian HSs, for example, in another context such as the Ukraine will differ in this regard to those studied in the US.

2.3  How and why: The debates on sourcing different outcomes As alluded to above, it is not the case that HSs’ knowledge of the HL is entirely different from that of monolinguals. Indeed, for some domains of grammar HSs perform indistinguishably from some monolinguals (e.g., Leal Méndez et al., 2015). Much of the focus of the field, however, has been on the differences HS grammars often present. The reason for this is two-fold: (a) differences are abundant enough to be considered representative and (b) differences are theoretically relevant on

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v­ arious planes. By abundant, we are referring to the fact that it is not at all difficult to uncover some degree of difference between native monolinguals and even the most proficient of HSs at various grammatical points. By significant and theoretically relevant, we are referring to one of the core questions of HS studies from a formal linguistic perspective: How and why does early naturalistic acquisition of a native language result in differences between native monolinguals and HS populations in adulthood? Answers to this question promise to have far-reaching implications for linguistic and acquisition theories. To name just a few, uncovering the variables that conspire to explain these differences will shed light on the role input has (e.g., quantity and quality) for acquisition more generally and specifically for the acquisition of particular properties, on the selectively vulnerable domains of grammar in bilingualism, and on the role of age of acquisition on grammatical outcomes (see Tsimpli, 2014 for a critical overview). A major focus of formal linguistic HS studies – probably the main source of debate as well – regards various proposals that attempt to answer the question above regarding the source of differences between the end-state grammars of monolingual vs. HS bilingual early native acquisition. Although it is clear that bilingualism itself is a factor and influence from the societal language – typically the dominant language of HSs – can explain some of the differences, it is equally apparent that these two considerations alone or together could not explain the gamut observed. There are four hypotheses that are formalized in the literature. To our mind, none of them are mutually exclusive to the others. In other words, it is possible – likely in our view – that each of these proposals explains in part a subset of the differences and that all contribute to HS end-state differences. The first proposal is that arrested development is a main contributor (see ­Montrul, 2008). Arrested development refers to a point in the developmental sequence of HL acquisition where development ceases, that is, at a point in child language acquisition short on convergence on the adult variety of the HL. Presumably, arrested development correlates with reductions in input and the start of shifts in dominance towards the societal language at which point further development in the HL does not occur. This view is often referred to by the label incomplete acquisition. The general idea of incomplete acquisition is that HSs, for a myriad of reasons, do not fully acquire the HL. The second proposal is that of HL attrition, the non-pathological loss or erosion of previously acquired linguistic representations (Polinsky, 2011). The idea is that HSs have acquired a HL grammar not qualitatively different from monolinguals but with certain properties lost or eroded as the HS shift in dominance towards the societal language. Note that both of these proposals, in our view, make some presuppositions about the input available to HSs. Something can only be incompletely acquired or acquired and lost – the case of attrition – if the exposure to the HL that the HSs receive



Formal linguistic approaches to heritage language acquisition 

­ rovided the cue within the input that could lead to convergence on the monolinp gual variety in the first place. The third proposal, alternatively, focuses more on the qualitative nature of the input to which HSs are exposed, offering the possibility that some of the differences in HSs might be traced back to qualitative differences in the input provided to them by speakers of the HL who themselves might be undergoing attrition or as a result of not having been exposed to certain structures given a lack of formal education in a standard monolingual variety (Sorace, 2004; Rothman, 2007; Pires & Rothman, 2009; Montrul & Sanchez-Walker, 2013). This approach is known as input delimited differences in the literature. Under such a view, systematic differences between HS and monolingual varieties are viewed as dialectal differences. As such HSs can be said to fully acquire the HL, just a different variety than the one monolinguals acquire. The fourth proposal is that HSs differences reflect a different path of acquisition than monolinguals (Putnam & Sanchez, 2013). Like proposal three, such a view sidesteps the issue of labelling HS as incomplete. Instead, the idea is that HS grammars are complete grammars of a different kind than monolinguals. ­Differently from arrested development or attrition, there is no stopping of development or reversal. Instead, there is a change in path, which is a point at which HS children diverge from monolingual children as they both continue to develop towards a steady state grammar. Of these four proposals, the most influential to date has been incomplete acquisition. The term incomplete acquisition to describe the state of HS grammars is almost a ubiquitous term. Disentangled from any evaluative meaning that one might assign to the term, to which we return in the next section, it is clear why this view is the most accepted. In the first place, provided one accepts the monolingual comparison against which incompleteness is benchmarked, it is descriptively accurate. Secondly, if it is used, as it often is, as an umbrella term referring to differences as opposed to being linked exclusively to arrested development then the other three proposals could be subsumed under it as contributing factors that give rise to incomplete acquisition. Although no linguists who have used this term – ourselves included historically – have intended to convey any evaluative innuendo, it is not clear that this term is either descriptively accurate or especially useful for non-linguists (see Pascual y Cabo & Rothman, 2012 for discussion). In the next section, we will develop this further, specifically linked to how it relates to HL classrooms.

3.  The classroom is not a locus of completion As stated from the outset, our goals herein are to summarize the research that formal linguists have carried out and link this research to scholarship and practice in HL pedagogy. We now turn to our second goal.

 Jason Rothman, Ianthi Maria Tsimpli & Diego Pascual y Cabo

Formal linguistic studies can contribute to HL pedagogy if there is properly contextualized dissemination and translation of findings, specifically for pedagogically oriented purposes. Formal linguistic studies provide descriptions of loci of differences between monolinguals and HSs. For pedagogical purposes, explaining how and why differences obtain is of little use (unless the source of said differences may be metalanguage or literacy development), but knowing what those differences are can be very useful. Formal linguistic research also endeavours to correlate variables that might explain why some HSs are relatively less divergent from monolinguals than others. Knowing how HSs differ from the monolingual standard and which variables reliably correlate to intragroup differences across HSs of the same HL can facilitate the creation of empirically-informed pedagogies for HSs of any given HL and also for specific subsets of HSs of that particular profile. As just described, one might get the wrong impression that HL education is meant to complete an incomplete process. In other words, formal linguistic studies can inform where the “holes” in knowledge are, so that specific interventions can be designed to fill in the gaps. As always, context is extremely important. In the situation of a HL classroom, HSs are generally being taught a particular standard variety. For many, this will also be their first exposure to literacy in the HL. As we see it, HSs need instruction on ­literacy, the standard grammar, and cultural knowledge. Thus, HL teaching ought to be viewed as akin to language arts education in monolingual settings, geared at age and context appropriate levels of maturity, meta-linguistic and meta-cognitive knowledge. In many places, to be sure, this is happening. A key piece to the success of educating HSs in their HL is to understand that HSs are not linguistically broken simply because they are different from monolinguals, and so the goal of HL education is not to fix them but to consolidate developed or developing knowledge of the HL. Communicatively competent HSs are native speakers of a dialect of the HL, however different from a monolingual standard. Seen this way, adult HSs who take classes in the standard variety of the HL might be better viewed as a specific type of third-language learners, as suggested by Polinsky (2015). In any case, just like the goal of teaching standard American English across the United States in language arts classes is not intended to replace dialectal variation, but rather to provide educated pupils with another variety/register that in certain contexts might be expected and more appropriate, so too is the case of teaching standardized varieties to HSs. Formal linguistic studies that repeatedly show differences between HSs and monolingual norms are simply documenting in real time a naturally occurring process of emerging dialect formation. HL speakers are thus speakers of a variety whose characteristics are primarily defined by bilingualism itself, namely by external factors (input quality and quantity) that have been repeatedly shown to affect language development in bilinguals, and developmental patterns which affect the timing of emergence and mastery of specific phenomena in monolingual and bilingual children alike



Formal linguistic approaches to heritage language acquisition 

(­Tsimpli,  2014). As we mentioned, it is because HSs provide a unique glimpse into processes that are integral to many questions of importance to language and cognitive sciences that so many formal linguists and psycholinguists have studied them in the past two decades in particular. In our choice of labels, such as incomplete acquisition, we might have given the impression that the job of HS teaching is to complete a stunted (incomplete) acquisition process. We challenge this approach by suggesting that a promising relationship between formal linguistics and HL pedagogy is one of informing what the specific needs are of HSs who already speak a closely related variety to the new standard one the classroom seeks to provide. Up to this point, we have addressed two of the three goals we posited at the ­outset of this chapter: we have provided an introduction to the formal/theoretical study of heritage speaker bilingual development and we have underscored the importance of building bridges between theory and practice. Next, to address our final aim, we ­present an integrated summary of the four chapters included in this unit.

4.  Reviewing the chapters in this section Our earlier claim that heritage languages are not incomplete is not meant to deny the seemingly ever-present differences observed with regards to HS knowledge and use of the HL (e.g., Pascual y Cabo & Rothman, 2012). Such differences have been documented in a variety of properties and domains, with those found in the area of morphosyntax being singled out as most vulnerable (e.g., Montrul, 2008, 2010; ­Rothman, 2009; Pascual y Cabo, 2015). Although to date many developments have been made and have allowed the field to move forward in our understanding of HS bilingual development, there remain open theoretical and empirical issues which require additional research. Thus, to further advancements in the field, the four chapters included in this section analyse new data on a variety of properties and provide different viewpoints on current debates. Additionally, in line with the general spirit of advancement and development that this v­ olume aims to convey, is the effort to build bridges between different methodological approaches, perspectives and even (sub)disciplines. In this sense, Jacqueline Toribio and Barbara Bullock’s proposal (Chapter 3) aims to close in on the distance between HL formal/theoretical research and language variation studies by presenting a corpus-based approach as a new form of observation for characterizing Spanish as a HL. The integration of this novel approach into the general HL research program allows for new analyses, which, in turn, can make new and meaningful connections between the HL, its speakers, and the HL input they are exposed to. As discussed, while most previous research on HSs has examined knowledge and use of ­morphosyntactic properties, the areas of phonetics and phonology remain

 Jason Rothman, Ianthi Maria Tsimpli & Diego Pascual y Cabo

largely understudied (but see e.g., Amengual, 2012; Au, Knightly, Jun & Oh, 2002, Rao, 2014). Filling an important gap in the literature is, therefore, Rajiv Rao’s experimental study on Spanish HS nuclear tonal configurations (Chapter 4). Rao’s data indicate that utterance type (statements and questions) and pragmatic meaning influence nuclear intonation differently for HSs than for native speakers. According to Rao, the differential nature of the (intonational) input to which HSs are exposed seems to be responsible for the outcomes observed. In Chapter 5, Jegerski, VanPatten, and Keating examine ambiguous relative clause attachment preferences among HSs and adult L2 learners. Employing a computerized off-line sentence interpretation task, they found that while late bilinguals favored a single attachment strategy in both of their languages, as in Dussias and Sagarra (2007), heritage bilingual participants exhibited distinct attachment preferences in each of their languages. Jegerski et al. take this to indicate that early bilinguals may be more likely to use language-specific sentence comprehension strategies, which is more in line with a two-processor model of bilingual sentence comprehension. In an examination of structural simplification and case erosion of Spanish indirect objects and dative experiencer verbs (gustar-like), Silvina Montrul (Chapter  6) observes that not only HSs, but also first generation immigrants, and (to some extent) native speakers from the same linguistic background show a tendency to accept ungrammatical sentences without the required preposition “a.” Consistent with previous research (e.g., Silva Corvalán, 1994; Pascual y Cabo, 2013; Pires & Rothman, 2009) she contends that in addition to limited exposure to input during late childhood, the structural changes observed can also be related to the individual grammars of some of the HSs’ input providers (i.e., first generation immigrants), who may have undergone attrition.

5.  Some concluding remarks In an effort to provide a broad base for the discussions that will follow in this thematic section, we started our contribution by laying out the central topics and main research trends in the field of HS acquisition from a formal/theoretical linguistic perspective. Some of the issues included in this discussion were (i) the definition of HS, (ii) the differential nature of HS linguistic outcomes, and (iii) the source of the HS differences. Additionally, we have provided a rationale for linking formal linguistics to HL pedagogical approaches. Specifically, our goal was to raise awareness about the inadequacy of the label incomplete acquisition to describe the documented HS competence differences from monolingual baselines on the basis that its use may encourage unwarranted misinterpretations and misgeneralizations. Lastly, we have summarized the four chapters included in this section. As we see it, the w ­ ide-reaching discussions included therein are good examples of the kind of



Formal linguistic approaches to heritage language acquisition 

research needed to yield a more fine-grained understanding of the issues of interest to the field of HS acquisition/bilingual development. To be sure, such an understanding is needed to continue to gain insights which will shape (and constrain) future research and practice in the field.

References Amengual, M. (2012). Interlingual influence in bilingual speech: Cognate status effect in a continuum of bilingualism. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 15(3): 517–530.

doi: 10.1017/S1366728911000460

Au, T. K., Knightly, L., Jun, S. A. & Oh, J. (2002). Overhearing a language during childhood. Psychological Science, 13, 238–243.  doi: 10.1111/1467-9280.00444 Benmamoun, E., Montrul, S., & Polinsky, M. (2013). Heritage languages and their speakers: Opportunities and challenges for linguistics. Theoretical Linguistics, 39, 129–181. Bley-Vroman, R. (1983). The comparative fallacy in interlanguage studies: The case of systematicity. Language Learning, 33, 1–17.  doi: 10.1111/j.1467-1770.1983.tb00983.x Dąbrowska, E. (2012). Different speakers, different grammars: Individual differences in native language attainment. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 2(2), 219–253.

doi: 10.1075/lab.2.3.01dab

Dussias, P. E., & Sagarra N. (2007). The effect of exposure on syntactic parsing in Spanish–­ English L2 speakers. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 10, 101–116.

doi: 10.1017/S1366728906002847

Giancaspro, D. (2014). Heritage speakers’ production of intensional and polarity aubjunctive. Conference presentation delivered at the 2015 Hispanic Linguistic Symposium, West Lafayette, IN. Leal Méndez, T., Rothman, J., & Slabakova, R. (2015). Discourse-sensitive clitic-doubled dislocations in heritage Spanish. Lingua, 155, 85–97.  doi: 10.1016/j.lingua.2014.01.002 Montrul, S. (2008). Incomplete Acquisition in Bilingualism. Re-examining the Age Factor [Studies in Bilingualism 39]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.  doi: 10.1075/sibil.39 Montrul, S. (2009). Incomplete acquisition of tense-aspect and mood in Spanish heritage ­speakers. The International Journal of Bilingualism, 13(3), 239–269. doi: 10.1177/1367006909339816 Montrul, S. (2010). Current issues in heritage language acquisition. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 30, 3–23.  doi: 10.1017/S0267190510000103 Montrul, S. (2015). The Acquisition of Heritage Languages. Cambridge University Press. Montrul, S., & Bowles, M. (2010). Is grammar instruction beneficial for heritage language ­learners? Dative case marking in Spanish. Heritage Language Journal, 7, 47–73. Montrul, S., Foote, R., & Perpiñan, S. (2008). Gender agreement in adult second language ­learners and Spanish heritage speakers: The effects of age and context of acquisition. ­Language Learning, 58, 503–553.  doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9922.2008.00449.x Montrul, S., & Perpiñán, S. (2011). Assessing differences and similarities between instructed L2 learners and heritage language learners in their knowledge of Spanish tense-aspect and mood (TAM) morphology. The Heritage Language Journal, 8(1), 90–133. Montrul, S., & Sánchez-Walker, N. (2013). Differential object marking in child and adult ­Spanish heritage speakers. Language Acquisition, 20(2), 109–132.  doi: 10.1080/10489223.2013.766741

 Jason Rothman, Ianthi Maria Tsimpli & Diego Pascual y Cabo Pascual y Cabo, D., & Rothman, J. (2012). The (il)logical problem of heritage speaker bilingualism and incomplete acquisition. Applied Linguistics 33(4), 1–7.  doi: 10.1093/applin/amr040 Pascual y Cabo, D., Lingwall A., & Rothman J. (2012). Applying the interface hypothesis to ­heritage speaker acquisition: Evidence from Spanish mood. In A. K. Biller, E. Y. Chung, & A. E. Kimball (Eds.), BUCLD 36: Proceedings of the 36th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 437–448). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press. Pascual y Cabo, D. (2013). Agreement reflexes of emerging optionality in heritage speaker Spanish. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Florida. Pascual y Cabo, D. (2015). Issues in Spanish heritage morphosyntax. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 8(2), 389–401.  doi: 10.1515/shll-2015-0015 Pires, A., & Rothman, J. (2009). Disentangling sources of incomplete acquisition: An explanation ­ ilingualism for competence divergence across heritage grammar. International Journal of B 13(2), 1–28.  doi: 10.1177/1367006909339806 Polinsky, M. (2011). Reanalysis in adult heritage language: A case for attrition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 33, 305–328.  doi: 10.1017/S027226311000077X Polinsky, M. (2015). When L1 becomes an L3: Assessing grammatical knowledge in heritage speakers/learners. Bilingualism Language and Cognition, 18, 163–178.

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Potowski, K., Jegerski, J., & Morgan-Short, K. (2009). The effects of instruction on linguistic development in Spanish heritage language speakers. Language Learning, 59, 537–579.

doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9922.2009.00517.x

Putnam, M., & Sánchez, L. (2013). What’s so incomplete about incomplete acquisition? A ­ prolegomenon to modeling heritage language grammars.  Linguistic Approaches to ­Bilingualism, 3(4), 476–506. Rao, R. (2014). On the status of the phoneme /b/ in heritage speakers of Spanish. Sintagma, 26, 37–54. Rothman, J. (2007). Heritage speaker competence differences, language change and input type: Inflected infinitives in heritage Brazilian Portuguese. International Journal of Bilingualism, 11(4), 359–389.  doi: 10.1177/13670069070110040201 Rothman, J. (2009). Understanding the nature and outcomes of early bilingualism: Romance languages as heritage languages. International Journal of Bilingualism, 13(2), 155–165.

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Rothman, J., & Treffers-Daller, J. (2014). A prolegomenon to the construct of the native speaker: Heritage speaker bilinguals are natives too! Applied Linguistics, 35(1), 93–98.

doi: 10.1093/applin/amt049

Silva-Corvalán, C. (1994). Language contact and change: Spanish in Los Angeles. Oxford: OUP. Sorace, A. (2004). Native language attrition and developmental instability at the syntax-­ discourse interface: Data, interpretations and methods. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 7, 143–145.  doi: 10.1017/S1366728904001543 Sorace, A. (2011). Pinning down the concept of  ‘interface’ in bilingualism. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 1(1), 1–33.  doi: 10.1075/lab.1.1.01sor Tsimpi, I. M. (2014). Early, late or very late? Timing acquisition and bilingualism. Keynote ­article in Epistemological Issue of Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 4(2), 283–313.

doi: 10.1075/lab.4.3.01tsi

A new look at heritage Spanish and its speakers Almeida Jacqueline Toribio & Barbara E. Bullock The University of Texas

In this chapter we advocate for the value of new forms of observation for characterizing the Spanish of heritage speakers in the United States. As is widely recognized, Spanish acquired in bilingual contexts is different from Spanish acquired in monolingual settings; and, yet, the nature of bilingual U.S. Spanish has not been adequately documented, even as the field of heritage language studies advances. Here, we motivate the need to more accurately describe heritage Spanish and to quantify variation in heritage Spanish speech. More importantly, we propose a means of doing so; specifically, we endorse a corpusbased approach, which allows for baselines that are vital in informing heritage Spanish research.

1.  Introduction In this chapter, we advocate for the value of new forms of observation for characterizing the Spanish of heritage speakers in the United States. It is largely assumed that ­Spanish acquired in bilingual contexts is different from Spanish acquired in monolingual settings; and, yet, the nature of bilingual U.S. Spanish has not been adequately ­documented. Here, we motivate the need to more accurately describe heritage U.S. Spanish, and we propose a means of doing so. Specifically, we endorse a corpus-based approach to the study of heritage Spanish, one that adopts an emic practice in data collection, and introduce the Spanish in Texas Corpus Project (Bullock & Toribio, 2013), our first step towards involving heritage speakers in recording the continuity and innovations that are manifested in their communities. A parallel incentive for adopting a corpus-based methodology to heritage Spanish is to bring heritage language studies in line with other studies of language variation. As will be demonstrated with reference to Spanish in Texas, the scenario of Spanish in the U.S. invites us to contemplate questions that remain central in language variation, particularly the role of language contact, and the Spanish in Texas Corpus permits

doi 10.1075/sibil.49.03tor © 2016 John Benjamins Publishing Company

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us to begin to address them. Consider, in this respect, the following examples, which illustrate what appears to be an innovative extension of the verb agarrar.1 (1) Agarrar + NP a. Yo me esforcé para agarrar becas. [MF017] ‘I exerted myself to get scholarships.’ b. Agarré mi certificado, y con eso ya empecé. [AF130] ‘I got my certificate, and with that I started.’ c.  Ellos agarraron esa tradición allá en México y aquí lo hacen todavía cada año. [AM064] ‘They got that tradition there in México and here they still do it every year.’ d. ¿Cómo agarraste el trabajo aquí? [AF004] ‘How did you get this job here?’ Is this innovative use of agarrar attributable to contact with English, i.e., is the ­construction calqued on the productive English collocation ‘get + NP’? Does the innovation have consequences elsewhere the grammar, e.g., in the reduction in frequency or displacement of Spanish-language alternatives? Questions such as these remain unresolved because of the dearth of data on this variety and on the oral vernacular from which it developed. Scholars of U.S. Spanish often base their analyses on observations that are ­sporadic, and as a consequence, they potentially misapprehend the presence of particular features or constructions. For instance, the semantic extension of agarrar in (1) may be perceived as an innovation in Texas or U.S. Spanish, when in fact it may be diffused even among Spanish-speaking monolinguals in Mexico. Conversely, an especially salient feature, such as the hacer +V sequences in (2), might be imputed as a wide-spread property of Texas varieties, when it might instead be restricted to a small network of speakers. (2) Hacer + VEnglish

a. Mi familia también estaba contenta de mí, cause no hice drop out. [AF004] ‘My family was also happy with me because I didn’t drop out.’ b. Nos podían hacer discipline más que ahora. [AF006] ‘They could discipine us more than now.’

.  The data discussed throughout this paper is drawn from the Spanish in Texas Corpus (Bullock & Toribio, 2013), one component resource of the Spanish in Texas Corpus Project. Each example is identified by a unique speaker code, indicating speaker’s place of birth (Mexico/U.S.A/Other), gender (M/F), and participant number.



A new look at heritage Spanish and its speakers 

c. Había un niño que me hacía mucho bully porque mi pelo estaba muy largo. [MF066] ‘There was a boy who bullied me because my hair was very long.’ d. … para que hagamos translate. [AF006] ‘So that we can translate.’ In presenting an accurate portrait of heritage Spanish and rendering heritage Spanish data relevant to studies of language variation, what is needed are large, representative corpora with extensive metadata about the speakers and communities. The remainder of the chapter is organized as follows. Section 2, ‘Heritage ­Spanish and its speakers,’ situates our work within sociolinguistics and discuss the benefits of corpus-based inquiry in the study of heritage lects. Section 3, ‘Documentation,’ ­presents our efforts to document heritage Spanish, beginning with Spanish speakers in Texas: §3.1 describes heritage speakers’ role in gathering language data in their communities, §3.2 details the processing and current web presence of the corpus data, and §3.3 delineates some of the many benefits accrued by the collection and inspection of authentic language samples. Section 4, ‘Variation,’ discusses the two above-mentioned collocations – agarrar + NP (§4.1) and hacer + VEnglish (§4.2) – and demonstrates that a corpus-based approach to investigating these innovations in heritage U.S. Spanish can illuminate enduring questions about language in the context of language contact. The discussion in §4.3 elaborates on the implications of our endeavors in this area for how we study and describe heritage language forms. Section 5 concludes the chapter by summarizing the benefits yielded by corpus-based studies for heritage learner classrooms and communities, for our chosen ­disciplines, and for society more generally.

2.  Heritage Spanish and its speakers Commenting on the multiple dimensions of the study of language in the early ­twentieth century, Ferdinand de Saussure (1916 [1986: 7]) writes, “In the lives of individuals and of society, language is a factor of greater importance than any other. For the study of language to remain solely the business of a handful of specialists would be a quite unacceptable state of affairs.” Over the past decades, scholars across sub-disciplines of linguistics have adopted Saussure’s position and sought out ways to open up discussions of language, inspiring all speakers – learners, parents, practitioners, and laypersons alike – to an appreciation of the importance of the study of social and ethnic lects. As one example, Walt Wolfram’s pioneering efforts on sociolinguistic variation in North Carolina have prompted popular conversations on historical and cultural legacy and laid the foundation for lasting impact with innovations in K-16 curricula. And in

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California, Guadalupe Valdés has made significant strides in engaging with elective and circumstantial second-language learners and their parents and teachers to design pedagogical practices that support and supplement the learners’ multiple repertoires as well as advance the development of standards that adequately reflect the richness of the lects that learners possess. Outside of sociolinguistics (Wolfram) and educational linguistics (Valdés), the fields of Heritage Language Studies and Hispanic Linguistics continue to struggle with documentation and evaluation of heritage Spanish. With some exceptions – among them, Ana Celia Zentella, María Carreira, and Kimberly Potowski – linguists have done little to promote public discussion or to provide advocacy on behalf of heritage Spanish learners or opportunities for learners to speak for themselves. Instead, much energy has been devoted to what Valdés has called the challenges of ‘curricularizing’ heritage language in line with foreign language studies. The there lies in the need to identify a prescribed Spanish language norm (typically the elevated norma culta) and to correct deviations from it. This approach neglects the resource that is precisely the linguistic variation that heritage learners bring into the classroom, and it wholly disregards the learners’ need to understand and deploy diverse, often nonsanctioned language forms in managing their everyday interactions in the communities they inhabit. Alternatively, heritage speakers’ linguistic systems have been the object of controlled on-line or off-line experimental tasks, where their speech patterns, judgments, repetitions, reaction times, eye-movements, summarizing etc. are compared to those of monolingual native speakers and advanced second-language learners. In these studies, heritage speakers consistently demonstrate between-group behaviors that distinguish them from each of the other Spanish-speaking study populations, a finding that is most commonly attributed to their language status – ‘heritage speaker’, understood as a macro-variable. Of equal interest, however, is how these heritage speakers differ from each other, and how they differ from one speech context to the next. If we are to understand the language of heritage speakers as a variety of Spanish that presents socially-structured variation, as all varieties of Spanish do, we need to complement existing strands of research with corpus-based perspectives that will allow us to properly analyze the range of factors that contribute to variation. In the following section, we present our first attempt toward capturing the ­Spanish of heritage speakers in the U.S. The model that we propose in pursuing this aim enlists learners in documenting Spanish language speech in their communities and enjoins educators and scholars to curate and share collections of local Spanish speech for pedagogical and research purposes. Such a data-driven approach to Spanish heritage language studies not only affords an agentive role for learners and educators, but also makes available corpora that are vital in informing heritage Spanish research, ­dispelling myths about heritage Spanish and its speakers.



A new look at heritage Spanish and its speakers 

3.  Documentation At present, the picture of U.S. Spanish is clouded by a lack of accessible, ­comprehensive data, and debates about the nature of the variation attested in heritage bilingual Spanish remain unresolved. Decontextualized examples of archaisms, non-canonical morphological and syntactic usage, and English language insertions, as in the samples of oral vernacular speech in (3), may be perceived as a striking divergence from the norma culta, but overstating their presence obscures the fact that they are embedded in a larger linguistic context that provides evidence of a robust Spanish-language grammar. (3) Oral vernacular a. Yo creía que todos los mexicanos y latinos eran asina como yo aquí, pero no, es diferente. [AF083] ‘I thought that all Mexicans and Latinos were like that like me here, but no, it’s different.’

b. Mi papá fue nacido en San Luis Potosí, y se vino para los Estados ­Unidos a los quince años. [AF130]

‘My father was born in San Luis Potosí, and he moved to the United States at age fifteen.’ c. Me gusta … juntarme con mis amigos a jugar bowling o ir a parties, umm, juntarme con mi boyfriend, ir a las movies. [AF004] ‘I like to get together with my friends to play bowling or go to parties, ummm, get together with my boyfriend to go to the movies.’ And, further scrutiny of extended speech shows that the speakers have access to competing Spanish-language forms, and that they may be observed to alternate between them, as shown in (4). (4) Variation in usage a. La verdad me molesta un poco que se me haiga olvidado … se me hayan olvidado ciertas palabras, cierto vocabulario. [MM043] ‘The truth is that it bothers me a bit that I’ve forgotten … that I’ve ­forgotten some words, some vocabulary.’ b.  Mistía mucho de escuela por ir a jugar a otros lugares con otros teams. …Los días que faltaba podía jugar. [MF066] ‘I would miss a lot of school in order to go play in other places with other teams. The days I missed, I could play …’ Whether collected in the field, in the classroom, or in the laboratory, such examples cannot be properly understood without reference to their frequency and distribution in the speech of the individuals who produce them and in the communities in

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which they are found. In countering the mischaracterization of heritage Spanish and its speakers, we need accountable and ecologically valid data. The Spanish in Texas Corpus Project (Bullock & Toribio, 2013) was undertaken as a first step towards providing a public resource of spoken U.S. Spanish.2 Funded through the Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning (COERLL), the purpose of the project is to profile Spanish as it is spoken throughout Texas today and to provide open learning tools that allow learners, educators, researchers, and the general public to explore Spanish language variation via authentic language samples.

3.1  D  ata collection The Spanish in Texas Corpus Project provides a sampling of Spanish throughout the vast territory of Texas. Though the majority of Spanish heritage speakers in the state have historical roots in Mexico, there is a growing population of Spanish speakers with origins in Central America, and there are many Texas residents with no ancestral links to Mexico or Central America who speak Spanish on a regular basis. Accordingly, in creating the corpus, we surveyed how Spanish is spoken by persons who reside in Texas, rather than restrict our sample to those speakers of Mexican heritage or to those born in Texas. This is one motivation for naming the corpus ‘Spanish in Texas’ rather than ‘Texas Spanish’. More importantly, we selected the name to emphasize the fact that the corpus reproduces Spanish as spoken in Texas, and not an emerging or unique lect that is so specific to Texas that it deserves the state name as an attributive adjective. For the purpose of gathering the data for creating the corpus, heritage Spanish speakers (and several non-heritage students educated in dual-language programs) were recruited as interns to collect language samples via semi-structured interviews in their home communities.3 The interview protocol included a set of questions culled from Historias, the National Public Radio StoryCorps Spanish-language segment. In the Historias oral history project, pairs of Latino Americans record an exchange about their life experiences in a mobile studio that travels around the U.S.; a list of questions serves as prompts for the couples. For the Spanish in Texas Corpus Project, interns selected from approximately 70 questions in Spanish that surrounded themes that would be comfortably discussed between friends or family members, e.g., childhood

.  The Spanish in Texas Corpus Project can be accessed online at 〈spanishintexas.org〉. .  All of the interns completed the university-mandated course for researchers working with human subjects and participated in professional workshops in interviewing techniques and video and audio recording. The interns were trained in two locations: in centrally-located Austin, the capital of Texas, and in the Edinburgh/McAllen region of Texas, which borders Reynosa, Mexico, some 500 kilometers to the south of the capital.



A new look at heritage Spanish and its speakers 

memories, family heritage, marriage and partnerships, vocational paths, (im)migration histories, aspirations for the future, identity and language; sample questions are listed in (5).4 (5) Sample interview protocol questions a. ¿Me puedes contar historias sobre las tradiciones culturales que ­celebras en tu familia? ¿Por qué son importantes? ‘Can you tell me stories about the cultural traditions that you celebrate in your family? Why are they important?’ b. ¿Cómo te recordarían tus compañeros de escuela? ‘How would your schoolmates remember you?’ c. ¿Cómo crees que la vida de los latinos es diferente ahora en ­comparación con la época en la que crecieron tus padres? ¿En qué forma crees que no ha cambiado? ‘How do you think the life of Latinos is different now as with the era when your parents grew up? In what way do you think it has not changed?’ d. ¿Cómo conociste a tu esposo/esposa, novio/novia, etc.? ‘How did you meet your husband/wife, boyfriend/girlfriend?’ e. ¿Qué lecciones te ha enseñado la vida laboral? ‘What lessons have you learned from your work life?’ f. Cuando conoces a una persona latina/hispana por primera vez, ¿cómo sabes si hablar en inglés o en español? ‘When you meet a Latino/Hispanic person for the first time, how do you know whether to speak in English or in Spanish?’ g. ¿En qué resultó diferente tu vida de lo que habías imaginado? ‘In way has your life turned out differently from what you had i­ magined?’ The protocol also included a set of questions through which interns collected metadata for each participant, capturing biographical information: sex, date and place of birth, parents’ place of birth, language(s) of education, language(s) used in childhood with parents and siblings, language(s) currently used with family, friends, and c­ o-workers, and a rating of self-perceived Spanish proficiency in speaking, listening, reading, ­writing, and the importance placed on each. This information, which the interviewers entered directly into a Google Survey document in the field, can be informative in analyzing and interpreting how linguistic forms vary as a function of individual and social factors.

.  〈http://storycorps.org/historias/preguntas-sugeridas-de-historias/〉

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The student interns returned to their home communities and selected prospective participants from within their familial and social networks, yielding a sampling of speakers with diverse profiles.5 At the time of this writing, 17 interns had conducted 134 interviews; of these, 96 interviews have been processed for the spanishintexas.org site.6 The 96 participants present the following characteristics: There are 60 females and 36 males, they span in age from 18 to 86, they reside across diverse regions of Texas (El Paso in the far west, Lower Rio Grande Valley in the south, San Antonio, and the central region that includes Austin, Houston, and the Dallas/Fort Worth region), and they are predominantly U.S.-born (n = 54) or Mexican-born (n = 30).7 The interviews ranged from approximately ten minutes to over an hour in length, and the ­primary language used was Spanish, with occasional English insertions.

3.2  Processing and products The Spanish data collected by the student interns was processed to produce online open educational resources.8 Professional transcribers converted the oral interview data to text files, and students subsequently hand-checked these for accuracy. The resultant corpus from the 96 interviews is approximately 550,000 words in size. Each token in the corpus has been annotated for language, part of speech (POS), and lemma, using an automatic algorithm. The verbs were further classified according to person, mood, and tense, and the nouns were marked for gender and number. Under the umbrella of the Spanish in Texas Corpus Project, and with significant student assistance, three resources and accompanying tools were created for end-users: (i) the Spanish in Texas Corpus, (ii) the SpinTX Video Archive, and (iii) the Spanish Grammar in Context. The Spanish in Texas Corpus, designed primarily for researchers, provides the complete set of full transcripts, with accompanying linguistic annotations and speaker metadata. The corpus is open and available for download in several formats in order to facilitate access to data and to accelerate research. In ­addition, there

.  The interns explained the purpose of the study and participants’ rights to each interviewee, and obtained informed consent for participation and, separately, for permission for permanently archiving the video recordings for future research and educational purposes. .  The remaining interviews have not been included in the project materials largely because of problems with sound quality, and two interviews have not been entered into the published corpus because the speakers gave consent only for participation in the study but not for ­permission to archive their recordings. .  The other countries of birth represented were Colombia, El Salvador, Uruguay, Venezuela, Argentina, Peru, Spain, and South Korea. .  “Open Educational Resources”, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation 〈www.hewlett. org〉 (1 June, 2015).



A new look at heritage Spanish and its speakers 

are links to the interview documents and linguistic annotation protocols to encourage and assist others to build on or replicate our work with heritage Spanish speakers in other contexts, because only with sizable corpora can we make generalizations about heritage U.S. Spanish. In order to render the corpus usable to learners and teachers of Spanish, student interns were recruited to extract 500+ short clips (1 to 4 minutes) from the full videos that encompass the larger Spanish in Texas Corpus. The data from the time-aligned files was combined with the output of annotation algorithms, which tagged words at the levels of lemma and POS, and tagged selected phrases for discourse-pragmatic functions. The SpinTX Video Archive is searchable by topic, grammatical feature, speaker, and word, through a friendly web-interface that encourages classroom use and home self-study. The videos in the archive can be downloaded and shared, or the URLs to videos can be readily embedded into a course ­website. Finally, the site features tools for activity development, including a cloze test generator. Complementing the SpinTX Video Archive, the Spanish Grammar in Context provides detailed explanations of points of grammar, illustrated with examples from the corpus. Linguistic variation is highlighted and incorporated into the explanations of many grammatical topics. For instance, the entry for existential haber (6a) is ­followed by an illustration of two variants, the variant found in Spanish of textbooks (6ai) and a vernacular variant (6aii). And a second note points to the perfective and existential forms haiga, haigamos, etc. that are considered archaic, as in (7). In all cases, the examples are linked directly to the video archive. (6) Existential haber ‘to be’ Most grammar books will tell you that the existential haber has only one form in each tense: hay, había, hubo, habría, habrá; unlike English where the existential there + to be agrees with the noun that follows: there is a dog on the porch versus there are two dogs on the porch. However, in many ­dialects of Spanish, and especially in spoken Spanish, the forms of haber also agree with the noun. So sometimes, you will see the forms habían, hubieron, habrían, habrán used as the existential form when the noun that follows is plural. Compare the two variations of the same sentence below. a. Había muchos pájaros allá, miles de pájaros y de todas clases. ‘There were many birds there, thousands of birds of all types.’ b. Habían muchos pájaros allá, miles de pájaros y de todas clases. (7) Existential haber ‘to be’ a. El hecho que yo haiga asistido a la Universidad y tenga los diplomas que tengo ahorita es una barrera muy grande que se ha roto. ‘The fact that I have attended university and that I have the diplomas that I now have is a very big barrier that has been broken.’

 Almeida Jacqueline Toribio & Barbara E. Bullock

b. A la gente se le hace raro pensar vivir en algún lugar que no haiga calles; todo es tierra, todo es rocas. ‘It seemed weird to people to think of living in a place where there are no streets; everything is dirt and rocks.’ The Spanish Grammar in Context site includes tasks for self-assessment via listening and reading comprehension, prompts for writing practice, and quizzes. In addition, the coordination of audio, video, and text accommodates to different learning styles. Finally, the grammar explanations are provided in English, making this resource maximally accessible for anyone who might wish to better understand Spanish grammar and terminology.

3.3  Variation inside and outside of the classroom The development of the resources of the Spanish in Texas Corpus Project was spurred by a desire to bring positive attention to U.S. Spanish and the variation that it presents. Such an undertaking is desirable, achievable, and – to borrow from Wolfram’s (2008) title – it is “in the public interest”. A focus on diversity is desirable for the multitude of advantages it offers: It links language studies to curricula in other disciplines that prioritize diversity, it develops metalinguistic awareness by focusing on learners’ ability to reflect on the history of the language and its contemporary structure and variation, and it improves linguistic skills with diversified and rich input. Moreover, a focus on linguistic variation is achievable: In the heritage learner classroom, contemplation of linguistic diversity engages all learners, benefitting from their lived experiences and their interests in styles and registers. Perhaps most significantly, consideration of ­linguistic variation in the classroom celebrates the diversity that learners enjoy outside of the classroom, and as such, it benefits the larger society.

4.  Variation in heritage speaker Spanish As indicated, one of our primary impetuses in embarking on the Spanish in Texas Corpus Project rests in our desire to document variation in Spanish for the purpose of research. Having collaborated with students in creating the Spanish in Texas C ­ orpus as an initial step towards documenting U.S. heritage Spanish, we can turn to a preliminary linguistic analysis of the speech represented within the corpus. As is by now well accepted, U.S. Spanish is different from other varieties of Spanish, but it is not necessarily deficient or incomplete (e.g., Pascual y Cabo & Rothman, 2012; ­Rothman, 2009). Varieties of Spanish acquired in contact contexts may diverge from those acquired in monolingual contexts (Silva-Corvalán, 1994/2000; Valdés, 2001). This is



A new look at heritage Spanish and its speakers 

not because speakers suffer a failure to perceive, process, or produce the language, as popular stereotypes might suggest, but because of the nature of the input they receive (e.g., Pascual y Cabo, 2013; Pascual y Cabo & Rothman, 2012; Pires & Rothman, 2009; Rothman, 2007, 2009), e.g., the input may be more restricted (Montrul, 2013, 2008) and may present limited styles and registers (Valdés & Geoffrion-Vinci, 2011), or it may simply mirror local bilingual norms (Otheguy & Stern, 2011). The conflict between these sentiments is well articulated in the extract in (8), in which a participant answers the question, “Has living here influenced your ­Spanish?” As observed, she comments on her initial disdain for the oral vernacular of the ‘­subculture’ of the Río Grande Valley, referencing calques (llamar para atrás), slang (órale, vato), and English (Ah good morning). She associates these norms with the rural and uneducated varieties of the working classes, and she is self-critical of her gradual adoption of them, as when she inadvertently uses ’hora (a phonological reduction of ahora). She also inserts an English word (border) in her own speech before recovering the Spanish word (frontera) and concludes by deriding her abilities in English as well.9 (8) ¿Vivir aquí ha influenciado su español? Aquí a veces yo siento como si esta parte de Texas es una subcultura porque no es ni americana, ni mexicana. Y cuando yo vine aquí hace diez años ­cuando yo vine al Valle sabía inglés poquito. Pero cuando llego aquí escucho una estación de radio y dicen “Ah good morning”. Lo que sea en ­inglés. Y luego “Órale, vato….” En seguidita. Entonces… qué raro. …­Cuando yo vine aquí, yo criticaba y yo decía qué feo hablan. O sea, hasta me parecía como pedante, como sangrón… No, pero ése es el estilo de hablar de la gente de aquí. De la gente que nació aquí. De la gente original de aquí. Esta gente… esta gente no… esta gente no se quedó con el español completo de México porque vienen heredando un español de sus abuelos, bisabuelos, gente que se vino cuando no había ni siquiera… border. Cuando no había frontera. Entonces se quedaron con ese español muy, muy limitado de la casa porque esta gente que se vino a trabajar, esto hace tantos años, era gente del campo que no tenía… no tenía la educación de ir a la escuela en México. Y se venían, se venían a trabajar aquí y aquí nacieron sus hijos y bla bla bla. Pero al mismo tiempo también se quedaron sin la educación de aquí porque no tenían el idioma. … Entonces hubo mucha gente de ésa que se quedó sin ninguna de las dos culturas. Sin la de allá y sin la de acá. No sin la cultura. La cultura nunca se pierde. Pero sin educación. Se quedó sin tener educación allá y educación acá. Entonces volviendo a lo

.  The translation of this extended text appears in the appendix.

 Almeida Jacqueline Toribio & Barbara E. Bullock

mismo, a la ­pregunta que ya me desvié por otro lado, este, sí ha influido en mi… la manera de hablar. Y lo que yo criticaba ahora yo lo hago. Y yo me doy cuenta. Pero no siempre me doy cuenta. Antes, antes, yo me daba cuenta cuando iba a cometer el error lingüísticamente hablando. O sea yo iba a decir, “Mañana me llamas para atrás.” Pero yo pensaba “Para atrás, no. Mañana me llamas… punto. Mañana me llamas otra vez… punto.” Yo me daba cuenta. ’Hora no me doy cuenta. Ay, te dije ‘hora’. Yo no decía ‘hora’. Yo decía ‘ahora’. Ahora no me doy cuenta. Es ‘ahora’… Ni siquiera tengo un buen inglés. [MF085] While there is agreement that Spanish in the U.S. differs from that found in other regions in the Americas, less consensus surrounds the extent to which English is responsible for the variation found. There is a propensity among some linguists to reject contact-induced explanations for variation, instead positing alternatives, among these: Similar forms can be found in non-contact varieties, putative innovations can be found in an earlier stage of the language, structural modifications are extensions of existing language-internal patterns, and system-internal processes such as grammaticalization and reanalysis are sufficient to account for the observed variation (see Silva Corvalán, 1994/2000). When a contact explanation is taken as given, there is a strong tendency to apportion this type of language to individuals who are ‘less’ bilingual than speakers of varieties that more closely approximate the standard norm. In our view, the question of what kind of speakers use innovative forms in a contact setting, such as Texas, is a one that is best studied empirically, and it is one of the main questions that motivate our creation of the corpus. Data and metadata are particularly critical to analyses of heritage U.S. S­ panish. Spanish speakers in the U.S. do not constitute a monolithic community; there are regional and social and lects that are manifested in speakers of varied Spanish-­ language abilities – from the recently arrived immigrant with incipient knowledge of English, through the highly literate bilingual speaker, to a third-or fourth-generation heritage speaker who retains minimal Spanish-language abilities. Moreover, in Texas, Spanish has diverse sources, including the ancestral Spanish of early settlers and the Spanish of newer immigrants. In addition, the presence of Spanish in Texas predates that of ­English, and the languages have been in contact since before the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo; this sustained contact may have led to the conventionalized importation of English words, phrases, and grammatical patterns into Texas Spanish (Tex-Mex in the local vernacular) or to the more subtle effects of contact that can be evinced even when speakers produce monolingual Spanish utterances. In the Spanish in Texas Corpus, we recognize ample evidence of the presence of ­English, both covert and overt. In the brief excerpts in (9), from multiple speakers,



A new look at heritage Spanish and its speakers 

the participants’ utterances appear to be fully Spanish, and yet they realize structures that may be semantically or syntactically calqued on English: In (9a) mirar ‘to look’ is deployed in parallel to English, in (9b) comience para atrás ‘to start back’ literally reproduces the English phrase, and in (9c), the Spanish cómo ‘how’ is extended from the adverbial of specific manner to situations of general knowledge that replicate its distribution in English. Although these examples exhibit the influence of English, the utterances are manifestly ‘monolingual’. (9) ‘Covert’ mixing or Convergence a. Si buscara un lugar donde se mirara más o menos mejor. [AF042] ‘If I’d look for a place where it looked more or less better.’ b. Todavía me gusta [la escuela]. Estoy esperando que ya comience para atrás. [AF004] ‘I still like school. I’m waiting for it to start back already.’ c. Aprendí a entender español en la casa, pero nunca aprendí cómo hablar el español hasta llegué al secundario cuando tomé mi primer clase de español. [OF087] ‘I learned to understand Spanish at home, but I never learned how to speak Spanish until high school when I took my first Spanish class.’ In contrast, in the extended extract in (10), the presence of English is overt: the speaker (s) interleaves English-language words and phrases into her Spanish-language ­discourse; the linguistic material is patently identifiable as Spanish or English, by its phonological and morpho-syntactic form.10 (10) ‘Overt’ mixing or Code-switching >>i: ¿Dónde hiciste la secundaria? >>s: La secundaria era Gillén’se llamaba la school, Guillén Intermediate, también estaba bien cerca de la casa. También, ésa antes era la old high school, y luego la hicieron into middle school, so también era … esa todavía está ahí, todavía es middle school. >>i: ¿Y dónde hiciste la preparatoria? >>s:  High school, Bowie High School. Yeah. Era la pride of the lower ­downtown ahí. Sí era una escuela muy bonita. >>i: ¿Y ahí también se impartían las clases sólo en inglés? >>s: Sí, sí, ahí tenían Spanish as a second language, pero nunca, nunca lo agarré.

.  The translation of this extended text appears in the appendix.

 Almeida Jacqueline Toribio & Barbara E. Bullock

>>i: ¿Qué recuerdos tienes de Bowie High School? >>s: ¡Ay, eso me … No, pues high school fue, y era lo que les dije a mis hijas, high school son los four years más bonitos de tu vida. Y eso … enjoy them. Pero pues sí, eran unos años muy bonitos, I had fun. [AF006] Many scholars view these different types of language mixing phenomena as falling along a continuum of bilingual practices (Gardner-Chloros, 2008; Myers-Scotton, 2002), though in the literature, they are commonly differentiated as convergence on the one end and code-switching on the other. We understand convergence to be the enhancement of similarities between two languages (Bullock & Toribio, 2004). In bilingualism scholarship, convergence is also referred to as transfer (Treffers-Daller, 2009; Jarvis & Pavlenko, 2008), interference through shift (Thomason & Kaufman, 1998), and imposition (VanCoetsem, 1990). We hold that the term ‘convergence’ is most apropos in discussions of the covert cross-linguistic effects in the productions of heritage speakers; these speakers are often proficient bilingual speakers (although perhaps not proficient readers/writers) for whom Spanish and English are both source and recipient languages and each may exert influence on the other. In such cases, an unambiguous direction of transference/imposition/influence/interference from one language to another cannot be easily discerned. Code-switching, too, may be bidirectional, in that speakers alternate between languages; however, oftentimes a base language is established. For this reason, it is useful to conceptualize the phenomenon within the two processes identified in Muysken’s (2000) typology as insertional mixing, in which material from one language is nested into the structure of another, and alternational mixing, in which larger constituents (e.g., phrases, clauses) from two or more languages are interspersed. In what follows, we return to the two innovations introduced at the outset – the extension of the agarrar + NP collocation and the bilingual light verb construction hacer + VEnglish – as examples of convergence and borrowing/code-switching, respectively, both of which are found in the Spanish in Texas Corpus, though to varying extents. While the bilingual compound verb demonstrates overt influence from ­English, we will demonstrate, via quantitative analysis of the corpus data, that the extension of agarrar likely arises as well from contact with English. But the main point that we wish to underscore is that the appearance of these forms in the data cannot be fully understood divorced of their social embedding.

4.1  Agarrar + NP In developing the Spanish-English bilingual corpus, we noted the occurrence of ­agarrar + NP, as in (11). As shown, these collocations are built with the Spanish verb agarrar, which canonically means ‘to physically grasp, grab, or seize’, expressing the semantic equivalent of English ‘to get’.



A new look at heritage Spanish and its speakers 

(11) Agarrar + NP a. ¿Sabes qué, mi hija? Tú sí tienes que ir a la escuela y tienes que agarrar tu carrera. [AF003] ‘Know what, my child? You have to go to school to have to get your career.’

b. Necesita agarrar una experiencia en algo. Aunque sea en lavar trastes. Pero necesitas agarrar una experiencia. [AF130] ‘He has to get some experience in something. Even if it’s washing dishes. But he needs to get some experience.’ c.  Si agarraba un setenta, o sea, con eso no me quedaba conforme, o sea, trato de ir por lo mejor siempre. [AF003] ‘If I got a seventy, like, I would not be happy with that, like, I always try to go for the best.’ d. Sí, Alzheimer’s, y pues la tenía que cuidar y pues agarraba dinero de ahí y ahorita ya no trabaja. [AF042] ‘Yes, Alzheimer’s, and then she had to take care of her and then she got money from that and now she doesn’t work.’

e.  You know, they have … tienen que agarrar este amount de latinos, este amount de Anglo, you know, whites, blacks. [AF083] ‘You know, they have to take an amount of Latinos, an amount of ­Anglo, you know, whites, blacks.’ f.

Que hay que trabajar mucho para agarrar lo que quieres. [AF042] ‘That you have to work a lot to get what you want.’

g. Y mi bachelor’s lo agarré en criminal justice. [AF095] ‘And my bachelor’s I got in criminal justice.’ h. Pero me pasó un accidente, perdí la pierna izquierda y ya no me llevaron. Agarré Four F y ya me quedé aquí en El Paso desde entonces. [AM001] ‘But I had an accident, I lost my left leg and they didn’t take me. I got 4F and then I stayed here in El Paso since then.’ i. Ya sea que llegaron tarde, que emigraron de México acá a Estados Unidos y que tenían que agarrar un crédito, o ya sea que les faltaban créditos por falta de atendencia. [MF051] ‘Be it that they arrived late, that they emigrated from Mexico to the United States and that they had to get a credit, or that they lacked ­credits for lack of attendence.’

j. Entonces agarraba una combinación de los dos tipos de vida. [AM0065] ‘So I got a combination of both types of life.’ k. La importancia de ser bilingüe es la … la habilidad de agarrar más trabajos … [AM065] ‘The importance of being bilingual is the ability to get more jobs.’

 Almeida Jacqueline Toribio & Barbara E. Bullock

l. Agarré el bus y me fui hasta la calle, hasta mi casa. [AM001] ‘I got the bus and went to the street, up to my house.’

m. Quería agarrar dinero para irse para comprar un boleto de la estación de buses para irse para San Antonio. [AF131] ‘She wanted to get money to go to buy a ticket from the bus station to go San Antonio.’ In Bullock, Serigos, Toribio, and Wendorf (2015), we examined the potentially innovative uses of agarrar by comparing its patterning in the Spanish in Texas C ­ orpus to its patterning in the 5 million-word oral portion of the Corpus del Español (Davies, 2002).11 As represented in Table 1, agarrar occurs with greater frequency in the Texas corpus than in the monolingual reference corpus: In the Spanish in Texas Corpus, it appears 103 times, while in the vastly larger Corpus del Español, there are a total of 220 tokens, indicating with a statistically high level of confidence that these samples were drawn from populations that are significantly different with respect to the frequency of occurrence of this verb.12 Table 1.  Agarrar + NP

Words

Spanish in Texas Corpus, subset

Corpus del Español

502,329

5,113,249

Agarrar

103

Co-occurring Nouns

trabajo ‘work’

8

lado ‘side’

4

experiencia ‘experience’

6

libros ‘books’

4

dinero ‘money’

5

mano ‘hand’

3

crédito ‘credit’

3

auto ‘car’

2

autobús ‘bus’

2

pata ‘leg’

2

carrera ‘carrer’

2

persona ‘person’

2

español ‘Spanish’

2

inglés ‘English’

2

220

In addition to these frequency differences, agarrar appears with different complements across these two data sets: The nouns that co-occur with agarrar in the Corpus del Español are anticipated complements for this verb in Spanish with the intended

.  This corpus comprises 2,040 interviews; it includes informal speech and Mexican Spanish is well represented. .  A log-likelihood test (likelihood ratio G2 = 134.11, p < 0.0001) returned a highly ­significant difference in the frequency of agarrar between these two corpora.



A new look at heritage Spanish and its speakers 

­ eaning of ‘grasp/catch’; those that co-occur most frequently with agarrar in the m Spanish in Texas Corpus are not. Of the collocations that appear in the Spanish in Texas Corpus, only one appears at all in the much larger Corpus del Español, where there is one occurrence of agarrar trabajo ‘get work’. In subsequent work (Bullock, Serigos, & Toribio, 2015), we tested the linguistic and social factors that predict the success of the verb agarrar relative to its competitors. We also investigated the possibility that agarrar is overrepresented in the corpus not merely because it emerges in constructions that normally take different verbs in S­ panish (e.g., conseguir, obtener, sacar) but also because it may be displacing its competitors with complements in which both are acceptable, e.g., agarrar/coger la mano ‘take someone’s hand’. In order to gain insight into the dispersion of agarrar, we merged the 329 tokens tagged with linguistic properties and with the participant metadata and performed a multifactorial logistic analysis to model the innovative use of agarrar as a function of linguistic and social factors.13 The results indicate that the success of ­agarrar relative to its competitors is favored by three social factors: region, birthplace, and education. Specifically, agarrar is favored in El Paso, and it is used more by speakers born in the U.S. than by those born outside the U.S. and by those who lack Spanish language education, especially in elementary school – all factors that point to agarrar as a contact feature. None of the linguistic factors predicted the use of agarrar over competitor verbs. This means that even though agarrar co-occurs with complements that are usually selected by other verbs in Spanish, it does not appear to be displacing them; rather it is used alongside them as variant in this variety of contact Spanish.

4.2  Hacer + VEnglish Lexical borrowing and code-switching more obviously reflect the intermingling of languages than convergence does. Forms such as pushar and hacer push, in (12), present two means of adopting English-language verbs into Spanish; in the former, the English verbal root ‘push’ is accompanied by the Spanish verbal morphology, whereas in the latter, the English verbal root is juxtaposed to the Spanish hacer, which functions as a light verb and carries all of the relevant morphology (tense/mood/aspect and person/ number). In the Texas corpus, verb roots that are morphologically incorporated also

.  The linguistic factors examined in the study of agarrar were complement (pronoun or  DP), verb person, verb tense/mood, semantics of the complement (physical grasp or not), and translation equivalent (agarrar vs. other). The social factors examined were age, gender, region, birth country (U.S. or not), language of education (high school, middle school, ­elementary school), and self-assessed Spanish-language abilities.

 Almeida Jacqueline Toribio & Barbara E. Bullock

undergo phonological adaptation, e.g., [pu.ʃáɾ], while the bare form that accompanies hacer preserves its English-language phonology: [pUʃ].14 (12) Incorporation of English push a. … que alguien siempre tenía que estar ahí pushándome, para poder avanzar, verdad? So, decidí agarrar una carrera técnica. [AM007] ‘That someone always had to be there pushing me, to be able to ­progress, right? So, I decided to get a technical career.’ b. … Mr. Rodríguez, porque él sí me hacía push mucho para que ­compitiera, que hiciera extra … extracurricular activities y todo eso. [AF006] ‘Mr. Rodríguez, because he pushed me a lot to compete, to do extra extracurricular activities and all that.’ In casually reviewing the corpus, we noticed examples of the integration of English verb roots into Spanish verbal paradigms, e.g., lonchar, mixtear, parquear, cachar, and these were often offered up as examples in response to questions about the p ­ resence 15 of Spanglish, as in (13). But we observed many unflagged uses of the bilingual c­ ompound verb: (13) Hacer + VEnglish

a. Ella es muy inteligente, es la más chiquita, pero hace act muy grown up. [AF006] ‘She is very intelligent, she is the youngest, but she acts very grown up.’ b. Entonces los hago approach con el español. [AF006] ‘Then I approach them with Spanish.’ c. Pues el [día] más feliz fue cuando hice find out que estaba en el top ten percent. [AF006] ‘Well the happiest day was when I found out that I was in the top ten.’ d. Hablamos Spanglish, como dijiste, so hacemos mix el Spanish y el ­English y allá es puro español, so, y luego lo tienen todo perfecto. [AF004] ‘We speak Spanglish, like you said, so we mix Spanish and English and there they speak only Spanish, so, and then they have it all perfect.’

.  We have not yet performed a complete analysis of integrated loanwords in the oral corpus. We intend to do so, with an automated procedure that we have developed and ­successfully applied to a bilingual written text (Toribio, Bullock, Serigos, Neupane, & Ball, 2015). .  Note that the infinitival marker -ar alternates with -ear in colloquial Spanish.



A new look at heritage Spanish and its speakers 

e. En MySpace. Luego me hizo request como su amigo y de allí lo vi en la escuela, so ahí comenzamos a hablar y todo eso. [AF004] ‘On MySpace. Then he requested me as his friend and from there I saw him at school, so then we started to talk and all that.’ f. Me hicieron influence a ir al colegio. [AF004] ‘They influenced me to go to college.’ While bilingual compound verbs are a staple of research on borrowing across ­languages (see Muysken, 2000 for an overview), hacer + VE remains understudied in the U.S., perhaps because it appears to be geographically limited to the Southwest and to particular communities within those regions (Reyes, 1981; Pfaff, 1979; Jenkins, 2003. In the most comprehensive study to date, Vergara Wilson (2012) extracted the complex predicates from 10 interviews in the New Mexico Spanish/English Bilingual ­corpus (Torres-Cacoullous & Travis, 2010). He found 62 tokens (43) types, produced by only half of the speakers; these occurred with high frequency verbs (e.g., hacer dance, hacer walk) and often alternated with simplex verbs (e.g., hacer sew ~coser). Vergara Wilson concludes that the bilingual compound verb represents a grammaticalized form that emerges in bilingual discourse mode. In pilot work (Toribio, Bullock, & Greaser, 2012), we inspected a subset of the Spanish in Texas Corpus (32 speakers; 106,000 words) for the occurrence of this construction. We found only the 12 tokens (11 types) shown in Examples (2) and (12), significantly less than what has been reported for New Mexico. Extrapolating from our data, we might be tempted to say that the compound occurred at a rate of only 0.20 per 10,000 words in the Spanish in Texas Corpus, versus 12 per 10,000 words in the New Mexico corpus, concluding that it is far more frequent in New Mexico than in Texas.16 However, this obscures the fact that the patterns of diffusion, and not just the ­frequency, of these forms are different between these corpora. A closer inspection of the metadata of the Spanish in Texas Corpus reveals that 11 of the 12 examples of bilingual compound verbs extracted from the subcorpus are uttered by two speakers. That is, within the subcorpus, the distribution of these forms is characterized by its burstiness (Katz, 1996) relative to that of the New Mexico as analyzed by Vegara ­Wilson, where the forms might be more widely diffused among the speakers. Thus, while corpora have their benefits, they also have their limitations, particularly small corpora, and these must be taken into consideration before strong claims about the varieties represented can be made. For instance, given the relatively small size of the sample inspected, we cannot know if the hacer + VE construction is used

.  The occurrence of the bilingual compound verb is virtually nil in the two million word Argentine corpus opportunistically examined by Jacqueline Larsen Serigos. In that corpus, hacer was accompanied by the English bare verbs clic, zoom, and surf.

 Almeida Jacqueline Toribio & Barbara E. Bullock

by other speakers who simply did not have occasion to use them when recorded, or whether the forms truly are restricted to just the speech of a few. And since the observations regarding the construction are so limited in number, we also cannot know whether verbs of activity are more amenable to incorporation than verbs of state, or whether verb length or semantic specificity are at issue, as has been argued for other varieties of Spanish in contact with English (Fuller-Medina, 2005). We also cannot know whether hacer + VE constructions are used as repair strategies when heritage speakers encounter word-finding difficulty (as posited by Jenkins, 2003), nor whether they are co-present with other bilingual phenomena (as evidenced in Balam, 2015). Finally, we do not know why these forms occur in the speech of only 3 of the 32 ­speakers that we studied.

4.3  Understanding variation in context Our brief discussion of some of the variable Spanish-language forms produced by speakers in the Spanish in Texas Corpus has underlined both the benefits and the disadvantages of working with corpora of heritage Spanish. With respect to the shortcomings of corpora, it should be evident from the exposition of these examples that even with a sample of about a half million words, the structures that we may wish to examine may occur with such a low frequency that it is impossible to draw robust conclusions. Clearly, more data is desirable. In addition, because each participant responds to the same types of questions, the result is not a general reference corpus, but a specialized corpus of interview data. However, even observations made over this small- to modest-sized specialized corpus can reveal important insights regarding language contact and language change. In the case of the agarrar calque, we are able to conclude with a fairly high degree of confidence that the probability of its occurrence is a function of the social characteristics of its users: They are born in the U.S., largely reside in El Paso, and they are educated mostly in English. And the occurrence of the hacer + VE construction must also be evaluated only by reference to communities of users. What each of these examples shows us is that linguists need be attentive to how heritage language speech forms are embedded in social contexts. We need to be especially cautious about making gross claims about the structure of language varieties such as ‘heritage Spanish’, ‘U.S. Spanish’, ‘New York Spanish, ‘Texas Spanish’, etc., based on limited speech samples or, far worse, casual observations.

5.  Moving forward As a final point, we would like to reflect upon the value of the types of observations that we make about heritage languages in linguistics. Polinsky & Kagan (2007: 372),



A new look at heritage Spanish and its speakers 

among others, have commented at length upon the need to establish the baseline for a heritage speaker, defined as “the language that he or she was exposed to as a child.” As they describe it, the baseline language would constitute a continuum within which the performance of individual speakers could be located. But what kinds of information are necessary in order to begin to establish such a baseline? What we would like to suggest, given what we have learned working alongside heritage speakers in creating the Spanish in Texas Corpus, is that a set of observations must be vast in order to be representative of the range of variation manifestd among a population but, more importantly, that the observations must be ecologically valid, i.e., they cannot be extracted from their social context. Moreover, for a baseline to be of any utility, it needs to be meaningful, by which we intend that it must take account of structured variation, and not linguistic diversity alone. For all of this, we need large and varied corpora that represent repertoires of sociolects, registers, etc., with metadata about the speakers, the discursive context, and the larger social context. In this chapter, we have advocated for an emic approach to collecting such heritage Spanish data – and a ready means for doing so – and for a quantitative comparative approach to its analysis. We suggested that only with empirically reliable heritage Spanish data, metadata about speakers and communities, and replicable analyses can we appreciate the continuity and change that characterizes heritage Spanish. We presented the Spanish in Texas Corpus Project, which reflects our efforts towards that aim, and we exhorted others to collaborate with heritage students in documenting the diversity of Spanish-speaking practices across communities. We did so in the hope of benefitting societies while advancing research. We foresee a future in which heritage speakers are integral in public discussion and scholarship on U.S. Spanish, one in which the observations made of heritage languages are as valued as the theoretical models proposed in accounting for them.

References Balam, O. (2015). Code-switching and linguistic evolution: The case of ‘hacer + V’ in Orange Walk, Northern Belize. Lengua y Migración, 7(1), 83–109. Bullock, B. E., & Toribio, A. J. (2004). Introduction: Convergence as an emergent property in bilingual speech. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 7, 91–93.

doi: 10.1017/S1366728904001506

Bullock, B. E., & Toribio, A. J. (2013). The Spanish in Texas Corpus Project. Center for Open Education Resources and Language Learning (COERLL), the University of Texas at Austin. 〈http://www.spanishintexas.org〉 Bullock, B. E., Serigos, J., & Toribio, A. J. (2015). The use of loan translations and its consequences in an oral bilingual corpus. The International Symposium on Bilingualism. ­Rutgers University.

 Almeida Jacqueline Toribio & Barbara E. Bullock Bullock, B. E., Serigos, J., Toribio, A. J., & Wendorf, A. (2015). The challenges and benefits of annotating oral bilingual corpora: The Spanish in Texas Corpus Project. Under review, Linguistic Variation. Davies, M. (2002). Corpus del Español: 100 million words, 1200s-1900s. 〈http://www.corpusdelespanol.org〉 (12 March, 2014). Fuller Medina, N. (2005). Spanish-English contact in Belize: The case of Hacer+ V. In C. Gurki (Ed.), Proceedings of the 2005 Canadian Linguistics Association Annual Conference (pp. 1–9). 〈http://westernlinguistics.ca/Publications/CLA-ACL/CLA-ACL2005.htm〉 Gardner-Chloros P. (2008). Bilingual speech data: Criteria for classification. In Li Wei & ­ ultilingualism M. Moyer (Eds.), The Blackwell guide to research methods in bilingualism and m (pp. 53–72). Oxford: Blackwell. Jarvis, S., & Pavlenko, A. (2008). Crosslinguistic influence in language and cognition. New York, NY: Routledge. Jenkins, D. (2003). Bilingual verb constructions in southwestern Spanish. Bilingual Review, 27, 195–204. Katz, S. M. (1996). Distribution of content words and phrases in text and language modelling. Natural Language Engineering, 2, 15–59.  doi: 10.1017/S1351324996001246 Montrul, S. (2013). Bilingualism and the heritage language speaker. In T. Bhatia & W. Ritchie, Handbook of bilingualism and multilingualism (second edition; pp. 168–189). Oxford: Blackwell. Montrul, S. (2008). Incomplete acquisition in bilingualism: Re-examining the age factor (Studies in Bilingualism 39). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.  doi: 10.1075/sibil.39 Muysken, P. (2000). Bilingual speech: A typology of code-mixing. Cambridge: CUP. Myers-Scotton, C. 2002. Contact linguistics: Bilingual encounters and grammatical outcomes. Oxford: OUP.  doi: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198299530.001.0001 Otheguy, R., & Stern, N. (2011). On so-called Spanglish. International Journal of Bilingualism, 15, 85–100.  doi: 10.1177/1367006910379298 Pascual y Cabo, D., & Rothman, J. (2012). The (il)logical problem of heritage speaker bilingualism and incomplete acquisition. Applied Linguistics, 33(4), 1–7.  doi: 10.1093/applin/amr040 Pfaff, C. (1979). Constraints on language mixing: Code-switching and borrowing in Spanish/ English. Language, 55, 291–318.  doi: 10.2307/412586 Pires, A., & Rothman, J. (2009). Disentangling sources of incomplete acquisition: An explanation for competence divergence across heritage grammar. International Journal of Bilingualism, 13(2), 1–28.  doi: 10.1177/1367006909339806 Polinsky, M., & Kagan, O. (2007). Heritage languages: In the ‘wild’ and in the classroom. ­Language and Linguistics Compass, 1, 368–395.  doi: 10.1111/j.1749-818X.2007.00022.x Reyes, R. (1981). Independent convergence in Chicano and New York City Puerto Rican bilingualism. In R. Durán (Ed.), Latino language and communicative behavior (pp. 39–48). ­Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Rothman, J. (2007). Heritage speaker competence differences, language change and input type: Inflected infinitives in heritage Brazilian Portuguese. International Journal of Bilingualism, 11(4), 359–389.  doi: 10.1177/13670069070110040201 Rothman, J. (2009). Understanding the nature and outcomes of early bilingualism: Romance languages as heritage languages. International Journal of Bilingualism, 13(2), 155–165.

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A new look at heritage Spanish and its speakers 

Saussure, F. de. (1986). Cours de linguistique génerale. Paris: Payot. Course in general linguistics. Trans. Roy Harris. LaSalle, IL: Open Court. Silva-Corvalán, C. (1994/2000). Language contact and change. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. Thomason, S., & Kaufman, T. (1988). Language contact, creolization, and genetic linguistics. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Toribio, A. J., Bullock, B. E., & Greaser, C. (2012). The bilingual compound verb [hacer + VE] in Texas Spanish: The value of corpus data. Presented at the Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, Gainesville, FL. Torres-Cacoullos, R., & Travis, C. (2010). Testing convergence via code-switching: Priming and the structure of variable subject expression. International Journal of Bilingualism, 14, 1–27. Treffers-Daller, J. (2009). Code-switching and transfer: An exploration of similarities and differences. In B. Bullock & A. J. Toribio (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of linguistic codeswitching (pp. 58–74). Cambridge: CUP.  doi: 10.1017/CBO9780511576331.005 Valdés, G. (2001). Heritage language students: Profiles and Possibilities. In J. Peyton, D. Ranard, & S. McGinnis (Eds.), Heritage languages in America: Preserving a national resource, 37–77. McHenry, IL: Center for Applied Linguistics. Valdés, G., & Geoffrion-Vinci, M. (1998). Chicano Spanish: The problem of the “underdeveloped” code in bilingual repertoires. The Modern Language Journal, 82, 473–501. VanCoetsem, F. (1990). Review of Thomason and Kaufman (1988), Lehiste (1988), and ­Wardhaugh (1987). Language in Society, 19, 260–268.  doi: 10.1017/S0047404500014421 Vergara Wilson, D. (2012). One construction, two source languages: Hacer with an English infinitive in bilingual discourse. In A. M. Carvalho & S. Beaudrie (Eds.), Selected proceedings of the 6th workshop on Spanish sociolinguistics (pp. 123–134). Somerville, MA: ­Cascadilla Proceedings Project. Wolfram, W. (2008). Language diversity and the public interest. In K. A. King, N. ­Schilling-Estes, L. Fogle, J. J. Lou & B. Soukup (Eds.), Sustaining linguistic diversity: Endangered and ­minority languages and language varieties (pp. 187–204). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

Appendix Translation of Example 9. Here sometimes I feel as if this part of Texas is a subculture that is neither American nor Mexican. And when I came here ten years ago when I came to the Valley I knew little ­English. But when I arrive here I hear a radio station and they say “Ah good morning”. Whatever in English. And then “Órale, vato ….” Right away. So … how strange. … When I came here, I criticized and I said how ugly they speak. That is, it even seemed like it was pedantic, brash … No, but that’s the style of talking for the people here. Of the people who were born here. The people originally from here. These people did not keep the full Spanish from Mexico because they ended up inheriting a Spanish from their grandparents, great-grandparents, people who came when there was not even … a border. When there was no border. Then they stayed with that very, very limited home Spanish because these people who came to work these many years ago were country people who did not … did not have the education to go to school in Mexico. And they came to work here and their

 Almeida Jacqueline Toribio & Barbara E. Bullock children were born here and blah blah blah. But at the same time also they were without education here because they didn’t have the language. … Then there were many people who were without any of the two cultures. Without this one and without that one. Not without culture. The culture is never lost. But without education. They remained there without education and education here. Then returning to the issue at hand, the question that I already deviated from, this, yes it has influenced me … the way of talking. And what I criticized now I do. And I realize it. But I do not always notice. Before, before I realized I was about to make the mistake linguistically. So I would say, “Call me back tomorrow. But I thought back, no. You call me tomorrow … period. You call me again tomorrow … period.” I could tell. Now [a.ó.ɾa] I don’t notice. Oh, I said now [ó.ɾa]. I didn’t use to say [ó.ɾa]. I said [a.ó.ɾa]. Now I do not notice. It is [a.ó.ɾa] … I don’t even have good English. Translation of Example 9. >>i: Where did you go to middle school? >>s: My middle school was Guillén, that was the name of the school, Guillén Intermediate, it was also close to the house. Also, that was formerly the old high school, and later they turned it into middle school, so it also was … it is still there, it is still a middle school. >>i: And where did you go to high school? >>s: High school, Bowie High School. Yeah. It was the pride of the lower downtown there, yes it was a very pretty school. >>i: And they also taught clases only in English there? >>s: Yes, yes, there they had Spanish as a second language, but I never, never got it. >>i: What memories do you have of Bowie High School? >>s: Oh, that… No, well high school was, and it was what I told my daughters, high school is the four happiest years of your life. And that … enjoy them, but well yes, they were happy years, I had fun.

On the nuclear intonational phonology of heritage speakers of Spanish Rajiv Rao

University of Wisconsin, Madison This paper employs the Autosegmental-Metrical model and the Spanish in the Tones and Break Indices framework to examine nuclear (i.e., final) statement and question intonation in ten heritage speakers of Mexican Spanish. The statement results indicate that our heritage speakers show evidence of a reduced inventory of phonological targets used to communicate different pragmatic meanings compared to native speakers. Their nuclear question configurations are quite distinct from, yet equally varied as, those of native speakers. The cumulative results imply that the intonation-pragmatics interface evolves differently in heritage and native speakers, and depends on at least utterance type and intended pragmatic meaning. We argue that on a more general level, exposure to diverse forms of intonational input is at the root of the interspeaker differences observed.

1.  Introduction Phonetics and phonology are relatively understudied areas of the linguistic system of heritage speakers of Spanish (HSS). In fact, this seems to be the case across studies on heritage speakers (HS) in general, as highlighted by Polinsky and Kagan (2007, p.  378): “While instrumental studies targeting the phonetics of heritage speech are badly needed, virtually nothing is known about the nature of phonological representations in heritage speakers.” Similar to areas that have received more attention with regard to HS, the sound system of a heritage language (HL) can change over time due to decreased use and influence of the language in HS’ families, educational experiences and social networks (Benmamoun, Montrul & Polinsky, 2010; Rothman, 2009; among others). Based on previous work, one could propose that differences between the grammars of HS and native speakers (NS) are the result of HS’ incomplete acquisition of their HL (Montrul, 2008). However, Pascual y Cabo and Rothman (2012) claim that the notions behind and use of this term have led to certain inaccuracies. One main issue they identify is that the term does not appropriately consider the input to which HS are exposed, which is clearly distinct from that of monolinguals. Such differences in input received by HS are namely due to the presence of multiple ­languages being

doi 10.1075/sibil.49.04rao © 2016 John Benjamins Publishing Company

 Rajiv Rao

a part of HS and their family’s daily lives and/or attrition observed in the variety of the language spoken by previous generations residing in the country of immigration. They also identify methodological challenges associated with evaluating incomplete acquisition versus attrition and problematize the conceptualization of HS’ grammars as resulting from arrested or stunted development. Based on the aforementioned arguments, Pascual y Cabo and Rothman (2012) urge us to avoid thinking of HS’ grammars in terms of completeness with respect to native grammars, but rather as different. The current paper follows this train of thought. While research on HSS’ sound systems remains relatively lacking, in more recent years, we have seen promising growth in experimental, acoustic approaches to heritage Spanish data, mainly at the segmental level. Such studies have addressed both consonants (Amengual, 2012; Au, Knightly, Jun, & Oh, 2002; Au, Oh, Knightly, Jun, & Romo, 2008; Henriksen, 2015; Kim, 2011; Knightly, Jun, Oh, & Au, 2003; Rao, 2014, 2015) and vowels (Alvord & Rogers, 2014; Ronquest, 2012, 2013; Willis, 2005a). The cumulative findings of these segmental studies reveal that factors such as types of exposure to and learning experiences with Spanish, phonological context (e.g., syllable stress, position in a word) and task formality (e.g., reading versus unscripted) result in HSS sounding more native-like than adult second language learners, but still “note-quite-native” (see Rao & Ronquest, 2015 for an overview). Based on this notion, Benmamoun et al. (2010) refer to the possibility of a “heritage accent.” Returning to Pascual y Cabo and Rothman (2012), a heritage accent would most likely emerge due to the distinct forms of input taken in by HSS in their bilingual environment when compared to monolinguals. Since input received across HSS depends on a multitude of factors, some of which were previously mentioned, we would also expect linguistic heterogeneity when drawing comparisons within a group of HSS. At this juncture, we have yet to mention the phonetics and/or phonology of levels above individual segments, or suprasegmental levels. These levels deal with prosody (i.e., intonation, stress, rhythm) and have received even less attention with respect to HSS, and HS in general. Motivated by this research gap, as well as the distinctions drawn between HSS and other speaker types in previous segmental work, the current study focuses on the intonational phonology of statements and questions in the speech of HSS. The idea of examining a variety of pragmatic meanings within these two utterance types is inspired by the chapters in Prieto and Roseano (2010). The studies in their volume particularly highlight that intonational configurations in nuclear (i.e., final) position of utterances are critical in distinguishing pragmatic meaning both within and across utterances types. As such, we choose to investigate intonational variation specific to nuclear position. Furthermore, since Prieto and Roseano (2010), along with other work such as Sosa (1999), show that the intonational system of Spanish dialects demonstrates considerable variation, we limit our discussion of



On the nuclear intonational phonology of heritage speakers of Spanish 

native intonation to Mexican Spanish and our HSS to those of Mexican ancestry. We discuss the phonological targets produced by our HSS through the lens of what we have learned from comparable studies on native Mexican Spanish, with special attention given to De la Mota, Butragueño and Prieto (2010) since their data elicitation task served as the model for the one implemented in our study. The overarching goal of the study is to expand our knowledge of the nature of HSS’ grammars and how they compare to those of NS, specifically with regard to the intonation-pragmatics interface. We must emphasize that we are not gauging HSS’ level of completeness of acquisition of the nuclear intonational system of NS, but rather analyzing and describing each speaker type’s nuclear configurations as being part of a distinct, fully-formed intonational grammar. Due to the previously outlined differences in the linguistic experiences of HSS and NS, we hypothesize that the nuclear intonation of these two groups will show more differences than similarities.

2.  Previous research 2.1  Th  eoretical background In discourse, stress deals with the relative metrical prominence of words, phrases and utterances (Hualde, 2006/2007; Ladd, 1996, 2008). In Spanish, speakers produce syllables bearing lexical stress, which belongs to content words (Quilis, 1999), with increased salience when compared to unstressed syllables. One method of cuing such salience is via accent, which refers to a fundamental frequency (i.e., F0) excursion in or near a stressed syllable (Face, 2003; Hualde, 2006/2007; Quilis, 1999). Accent is the foundation of the Autosegmental-Metrical (AM) model (Ladd, 1996, 2008; Pierrehumbert, 1980), in which relative F0 high (H) and low (L) points, or tones associated with stressed syllables, form monotonal or bitonal pitch accents, or word-level phonological targets. All F0 movement occurring between stressed ­syllables is considered to be phonetic interpolation (Hualde, 2003). Concerning Spanish word- and phrase-level intonation, a transcriptional system called S­ panish in the Tones and Break Indices (Sp_ToBI) framework (Beckman, Díaz-Campos, McGory & Morgan, 2002; Estebas-Vilaplana & Prieto, 2008; Face & Prieto, 2007; Prieto & Roseano, 2010) has emerged from the tenets of AM theory. Henceforth in the current paper, our discussion of phonological targets relies on more recent Sp_ ToBI conventions, particularly those employed in the studies in Prieto and Roseano (2010). In pitch accents, the tone most strongly associated with the stressed syllable is marked with *. When a specific tone exhibits a substantial increase or decrease in F0 level when compared to its previous identical tone within the same phrase, it can be marked as upstepped (¡) or downstepped (!), respectively. Schematics and

 Rajiv Rao

descriptions of common pitch accents in Mexican Spanish (and Spanish in general) are provided in Table 1 and Figure 1 (Aguilar, De la Mota & Prieto, 2009; De la Mota et al., 2010; Estebas-Vilaplana & Prieto, 2008; Hualde & Prieto, 2015). In each of the schematics, the middle third corresponds with a stressed syllable, while the outer thirds reflect a pre- and post-tonic syllable. We will look at the specific manifestations of each of these pitch accents in Mexican Spanish based on utterance type and utterance position in the next subsection. Of particular note is that prenuclear (i.e., non-final) and nuclear pitch accents within phrases are distinguished, largely because Spanish obeys the Nuclear Stress Rule (Chomsky & Halle, 1968), stating that nuclear position of a prosodic domain possesses the highest degree of relative prominence. Table 1.  Common pitch accents in Mexican Spanish and their corresponding F0 ­excursions (adapted from De la Mota et al., 2010: 320–321) Pitch accent

Corresponding F0 movement in/near stressed syllables

L*

F0 is flat and suppressed to the lowest portion of the F0 range.

H*

An F0 plateau in the upper regions of the F0 range without a valley before it.

L+(¡)H*

An F0 valley is anchored to the stressed syllable’s onset and is followed by a rise to a peak that occurs within the stressed syllable, near its offset. The upstepped variant contains a peak higher than its preceding peak.

L+>H*

An F0 valley is anchored to the stressed syllable’s onset and is followed by a rise through the entire stressed syllable that ends in a post-tonic peak.

L*+H

An F0 valley extends through the stressed syllable and is followed by an F0 rise starting at the stressed syllable’s offset and continuing in the post-tonic syllable.

H+L*

F0 is high at the stressed syllable onset and descends throughout the stressed syllable, reaching a low point near its offset. L +>H*

L*+H

H*

L+H*

L+¡H*

H+L*

L*

Figure 1.  Schematics of the pitch accents outlined in Table 1 (modeled after Aguilar et al., 2009)



On the nuclear intonational phonology of heritage speakers of Spanish 

In AM theory, F0 is also associated with other prominent targets located at the edges of the hierarchically arranged constituents seen in (1). These abstract constituents are delimited using specific features that can be pinpointed through acoustic analyses of the speech signal. (1) Prosodic hierarchy IP Intonational Phrase ip Intermediate Phrase PW Prosodic Word F Foot σ Syllable The IP, PW and syllable levels are the most pertinent to this paper.1 IPs are non-­ isomorphic in relation to syntactic structure, are chunks of speech that carry meaning and are terminal junctures in discourse (Rao, 2009). Previous work on Spanish has shown that their right-edge boundaries, transcribed with the symbol %, are phonetically cued by clearly perceptible pauses (>400 milliseconds (ms), Rao, 2010) at their right edge, as well as through final lengthening of vowels, syllables and words (D’Imperio, Elordieta, Frota, Prieto, & Vigário, 2005; Frota, D’Imperio, Elordieta, ­Prieto, & Vigário, 2007; Prieto, 2006; Rao, 2009, 2010). As we will see later, nuclear F0 movement in IPs varies based on utterance type and pragmatic meaning. For now, we provide Table 2 and Figure 2, which outline observed IP boundary tones in Mexican Table 2.  Monotonal and bitonal IP boundary tones and accompanying F0 movement (following De la Mota et al., 2010: 321–322) IP boundary

Corresponding F0 movement

L%

F0 is flat or descending, both of which occur at the lower end of the F0 range.

M%

F0 is ascending or descending but ends at a mid point relative to the F0 range.

H%

Beginning at either an L or H tone, F0 ascends and ends at a high point relative to the F0 range.

HH%

F0 rises drastically at the end of the phrase and ends at the highest F0 level of the F0 range.

LH%

An F0 valley occurs first and is followed by a rising excursion to a relative F0 high point.

HL%

An F0 peak occurs first and is followed by a descending excursion to a relative F0 low point.

LM%

F0 ascends from a valley to a mid point relative to the F0 range.

.  Ips are contained within IPs and are perceived as non-terminal junctures in discourse. Since it is understood that an utterance-nuclear ip boundary bears the same tone as the IP boundary that houses it, we follow Prieto & Roseano (2010) and exclude it from our nuclear configuration transcriptions.

 Rajiv Rao

L%

M%

LH %

HL %

H%

HH %

LM%

Figure 2.  Schematics of the IP boundary tones listed in Table 2

Spanish (De la Mota et al., 2010). These boundary movements generally take place in post-tonic syllables. It should be noted that a difference between the pitch accents from Table 1 and the boundary tones of Table 2 is the presence of a mid (M%) target that can be a monotonal boundary tone or part of a bitonal boundary tone. The PW is a constituent linked to lexically stressed words in Spanish. A word is considered a PW if it exhibits an acoustic cue to stress (e.g., accent, duration, intensity) in its syllable specified as being most prominent.

2.2  The intonational system of Mexican Spanish Previous work on Mexican Spanish couched in the principles of AM theory and, in some cases Sp_ToBI, has addressed the intonation of statements and questions (Ávila Hernández, 2003; Butragueño, 2004, 2006; De la Mota et al., 2010; Estebas-Vilaplana & Prieto, 2008; Kim & Avelino, 2003; Orozco, 2008, 2010; Prieto, 1998; Prieto, Van Santen, & Hirschberg, 1995; Prieto, Shih, & Nibert, 1996; Sosa, 1999; Willis, 2005b). Before outlining the major findings of these studies, we note that while the phenomena summarized here apply to De la Mota et al. (2010) as well, we refrain from detailing their findings until our results section due to their extensive coverage of utterances and pragmatic conditions, and the central role their observations play in the comparisons and interpretations arising from our analysis of HSS. In Mexican Spanish, broad focus statement intonation exhibits downstepping, or gradual F0 peak decay across the utterance. In nuclear position of statements, two trends are commonly attested: F0 rises and peaks within the stressed syllable and then descends to a low boundary, corresponding with an L+(¡)H* L% configuration that breaks downstepping; final lowering occurs, where F0 occurs at a relative low, corresponding with an L* L% configuration. The first of these two nuclear configurations is termed circumflex (i.e., final rise-fall) movement and is perhaps the most noteworthy



On the nuclear intonational phonology of heritage speakers of Spanish 

intonational characteristic of Mexican Spanish because it is observed in a variety of utterance types (Butragueño, 2004, 2006; Quilis, 1999; Sosa, 1999; Willis, 2005b). The pragmatic range of circumflex intonation, which can occur with or without upstep, seems to be broader in Mexican Spanish than in other varieties that contain it, such as Caribbean and Canarian Spanish (De la Mota et al., 2010). Some pragmatic and sociolinguistic variables that previous work identifies as influencing the presence or absence of circumflex movement, as well as the nature of its rise and fall are focus, increased emotion, age, gender, education and social status (Butragueño, 2004, 2006; Orozco, 2008, 2010; Willis, 2005b). In terms of questions, previous work has found that Mexican Spanish’s yes-no variety contains a nuclear configuration in which F0 remains low through the stressed syllable before drastically rising to a high terminal point. Such movement corresponds with an L* LH% configuration (Ávila Hernández, 2003; Sosa, 1999). Considerable variation exists with respect to nuclear movement in wh- questions, as previous ­studies note terminal F0 rises to H%, falls to L% and even circumflex movement f­ollowed by HL% (Ávila Hernández, 2003; De la Mota et al., 2010; Orozco, 2010; Sosa, 1999). Regarding H% versus L%, Quilis (1999) posits that politeness level may play a role in the use of one or the other.

2.3  Relevant characteristics of American English intonation In nuclear position of statements, Pierrehumbert (1980) and Pierrehumbert and ­Beckman (1988) note that H* L% is a common contour. Interestingly, this configuration is similar to the L+H* L% trend observed in Spanish in that there is a final descending movement of F0 and the pitch accent is manifested at a lower level than preceding ones. A key difference between the aforementioned English trend and ­Mexican ­Spanish is that the former does not display circumflex movement at the end of statements like the latter does. While we have focused on one specific trend here, we must note that a considerable amount of nuclear variation exists in English statements (Bartels, 1999). In terms of questions, a terminal rise is cross-linguistically the most common excursion concluding a yes-no question, even in cases of morphological or syntactic cues; however, in the wh- variety, final rises and falls are both attested across languages (Cruttenden, 1997). Regarding yes-no questions, previous research has found that American English speakers (at least to some degree) use high-rising intonation; that is, they begin their terminal movements at a high point in the F0 range, from where F0 continues to rise (Cruttenden, 1997; Levis, 1999). However, previous work has also observed a pattern in which a nuclear low rises to a high terminal point (Hedberg, Sosa, & Fadden, 2004; Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg, 1990). Despite this high- versus low-rise distinction, Levis (1999) argues that this feature does not change listeners’ interpretation of yes-no questions. Contextual factors can influence English yes-no

 Rajiv Rao

questions to end in a final fall to a relative F0 low (Fries, 1965). This terminal fall is clearly more of a dominant trend in wh- questions in English, though exceptional rising cases have been attested (Hedberg et al., 2004). For a detailed discussion of intonational variation in English questions, see Bartels (1999). Comparing the background information on statements and questions in ­Section 2.2 to that of this section informs us that due to the amount of variation in the nuclear intonation of English and Mexican-Spanish questions, the only somewhat clear difference between the two sets of trends is what is found in statements: a higher propensity to produce circumflex movement in Mexican Spanish than in English.

2.4  The intonation of HS The few existing studies on the intonation of HS have helped form the scope of the current paper (see Rao & Ronquest, 2015 for a further discussion of the studies on Spanish in this section). Henriksen (2012) examines tonal configurations of HSS and NS in C ­ hicagoland. His main conclusions are that HSS’ intonational patterns in statements and questions yield more variety, possibly due to language contact with ­English; however, they typically fail to produce the circumflex contour. Alvord (2006, 2009, 2010) investigates the broad focus declaratives and yes-no questions of Spanish-English bilinguals in Miami, with particular emphasis on variation in nuclear excursions of questions and how F0 trends across utterances are used to disambiguate syntactically identical versions of these two utterance types. With regard to variation in questions, he reports that generation plays a significant role: first and third generation speakers use the same, Cuban-like, falling nuclear movement, while the second generation prefers the rising pattern. Additionally, Robles-Puente’s (2014) in-depth study on Spanish-English language contact in Los Angeles includes two speaker groups that can be considered HS of Mexican Spanish.2 The intonational piece of the study, which looks at statements, questions, imperatives and vocatives in both languages, shows that HSS do not demonstrate significant tonal differences between Spanish and ­English productions, meaning their data does not evidence intonational accommodation. Furthermore, HSS born in Los Angeles have tonal behavior that

.  Even though Robles-Puente’s (2014) study shares similarities with the current study (e.g., similar elicitation task from Prieto & Roseano 2010, similar utterance types analyzed), the former is broad in scope because it includes five speaker groups and also English data. The current study has narrowed its focus to only look at Spanish and the potential effect of individual speaker differences on Spanish intonation. It also examines HSS who presently reside and have only resided (while living in the US) in the Midwest rather than Los Angeles. Other than Robles-Puente (2014), further studies addressing the prosody of HSS beyond i­ ntonation are Hoot (2012) and Kim (2015).



On the nuclear intonational phonology of heritage speakers of Spanish 

resembles that of NS. On the other hand, the adult early bilingual HSS’ data set distinguishes itself from those of both control groups. Finally, a study that does not deal with Spanish, but that is certainly related to the current agenda, is Bullock (2009), who prosodically analyzes the speech of HS of French in Frenchville, Pennsylvania. She attributes her speakers’ unique patterns to a combination of contact with English and the transmission of features from the source dialect of this region. An important implication arising from this study is that contact situations yield a more elaborate set of prosodic strategies to convey pragmatic meaning in HLs, rather than merely providing substitution s­ trategies based on the majority language.

2.5  R  esearch questions The research covered to this point motivates the following research questions: 1. What is the inventory of nuclear pitch accent + IP boundary sequences of HS of Mexican Spanish in statements and questions expressing different pragmatic intents?; 2. How do the types and variation of nuclear configurations of HSS compare to those of NS?; 3. Do individual differences between participants seem to influence the results?

3.  Methodology 3.1  P  articipants Ten HSS attending a university in the Upper Midwestern United States participated in the study. First, they completed three pre-task measures (created based on insight in Marian, Blumenfeld, & Kaushanskaya, 2007; Oh & Au, 2005): a language history questionnaire, an English/Spanish self-assessment and a survey in which they responded to statements about their own and their family and friends’ experience with, perceptions of and attitude toward Spanish. The evaluation of these three pre-task tools allowed us to group our HSS according to the categories applied in Oh & Au (2005) and Rao (2015), as outlined in Table 3, which also contains participants’ gender, age, place of birth and the hometown of their parents.3 Unless noted, all places of origin of the parents are in Mexico.

.  While regional differences may be observed in Mexican Spanish intonation (see Section 2 of this paper), the family origins of participants are not expected to create difficulty in interpreting the data set or drawing overarching conclusions from it.

 Rajiv Rao

Table 3.  Background information on the ten HSS participants Participant

Age

Gender

Place of Birth

Parents’ Origin

Classification

CO

18

Male

Wisconsin

Monterrey

Regular speaker

JA

19

Male

Mexico

Guadalajara

Regular speaker

LR

19

Male

Mexico

Orizaba

Regular speaker

DM

19

Female

Mexico

Guadalajara

Childhood speaker

JP

19

Male

Mexico

Aguascalientes

Childhood speaker

MG

21

Female

Wisconsin

Guadalajara

Childhood speaker

MW

19

Male

Mexico

Guadalajara

Childhood speaker

RG

19

Male

Illinois

Atemajac de Brizuela

Childhood speaker

EC

19

Female

Illinois

Mother: Michigan (US) Father: Zamora

Minimal exposure

PE

20

Female

Wisconsin

Texas (US)

Minimal exposure

The first three participants in Table 3, CO, JA and LR are classified as regular ­speakers because they actively and consistently spoke Spanish until at least age 14. They exclusively spoke Spanish at home throughout their childhood, went to bilingual elementary schools at which they had Spanish-speaking peers and continue to use more Spanish in their current family life, as well as with some friends and at their jobs. They are all proud of being Spanish-speakers, believe that Spanish is essential to their past and present cultural and linguistic identity, and feel equally comfortable speaking both Spanish and English in their current lives. Of the two speakers born in Mexico, JA’s family immigrated to the US when he was just one year old, while LR arrived in the US after beginning elementary school in Mexico, but still did the vast majority of his pre-university education in Wisconsin.4 As such, LR received the most monolingual Spanish input as a child of the three regular speakers (as well as across all speakers). The next five participants in Table 3, DM, JP, MG, MW and RG are considered to be childhood speakers, meaning they actively used Spanish before entering school, after which point their use of the language began gradually decreasing. Three of the childhood speaker participants (DM, JP, MW) were born in Mexico and thus had increased exposure to monolingual input as children when compared to the other two ­participants of this speaker group; however, the three speakers in question moved to the US before school age: MW was four, JP was two and DM was one. The

.  The fact that LR did briefly attend school in Mexico initially appeared to be a confounding variable. However, at the time of data collection for this study, he was enrolled in a university-level HSS course. Conversations with his instructor made it clear that his linguistic abilities were similar to those of his classmates, which helped justify his inclusion in the participant pool.



On the nuclear intonational phonology of heritage speakers of Spanish 

c­ ommonality across all five childhood speaker participants is that after enrolling in elementary school, they grasped control of English quickly, continued to gravitate toward it and ultimately began using it almost exclusively in all domains of life at the expense of their Spanish. These five speakers judge themselves as having established a strong ­Spanish base as children, but as being unable to consistently use it as adults. Therefore, they believe they are linguistically stronger in English even though they feel a strong ­cultural connection with Spanish. The last two participants in Table 3, EC (only one native-speaker parent) and PE (third generation), had loose linguistic and cultural associations with Spanish as children and grew up speaking mainly English, except for rare attempts to use Spanish with older Spanish-speaking relatives and at church. They currently rarely use Spanish, do not view it as central to their identity and do not maintain much of a connection with it through family or friends. For all of these reasons, EC and PE are labeled as speakers with minimal childhood exposure to Spanish.

3.2  Data collection materials The participants carried out a task adapted from Prieto and Roseano (2010) that e­ licited balanced amounts of statements and questions as responses to hypothetical contexts.5 We selected the version of the task that was specifically adapted for Mexican ­Spanish (available at 〈http://prosodia.upf.edu/atlasentonacion/metodologia/index-english.html〉). The contexts created the following pragmatic distinctions within the two utterance types: 1. Statements: broad focus, narrow focus, contradiction, exclamative, obvious and uncertain; 2. Yes-no and wh- questions: information seeking, confirmation (only for yes-no type, not wh-), imperative, invitation, echo and counter-expectational. In each of the task items, participants first read a hypothetical context presented to them, followed by a scripted response to that context. When they indicated they were ready to produce an appropriate sounding response based on the situation, they were recorded. We provide sample task items in (2a–b). Recordings were realized in a silent room using Praat phonetics software (Boersma & Weenink, 2014) set to a 44,100 hertz (Hz) sampling frequency, a head-mounted microphone and a MacBook Pro laptop computer. (2) (a) Declarative (exclamation) Participant reads the context: Entras en una panadería y notas un olor a pan muy bueno. Díselo a la panadera. (‘You enter a bakery and notice a really nice smell of bread. Tell this to the baker.’) Participant sees and then produces: ¡Qué olor a pan tan bueno! (‘What a nice smell of bread!’) .  This type of elicitation task may appear to be an artificial way of obtaining data, but Face (2003), among several others, argue that it is a valid method of collecting isolated examples of naturalistic speech.

 Rajiv Rao

(b) Question (information seeking yes-no question) Participant reads the context: Entras en una tienda y pides al tendero si tiene mermelada. (‘You enter a store and ask the shopkeeper if he has jam.’) Participant sees and then produces: ¿Tiene mermelada? (‘Do you have jam?’)

3.3  D  ata analysis Nuclear content words of all the utterances produced by participants were acoustically inspected in order to determine pitch accent and IP boundary labels (following De la Mota et al., 2010; Estebas-Vilaplana & Prieto, 2008).6 Based on the intonational ­patterns summarized in Section 2, nuclear pitch accents were transcribed based on the alignment of F0 peaks and/or valleys in relation to the stressed syllable offset and onset, respectively, in addition to the extent of F0 excursions through the stressed syllable and F0 levels in the stressed syllable as compared to the rest of the utterance. F0 movement had to reach a threshold value of at least 7 Hz in order to be labeled a shift from peak to valley or valley to peak (O’Rourke, 2006; Rao, 2009). Finally, F0 excursions in the stressed and post-tonic syllable(s) of nuclear words were examined in order to transcribe IP boundary tones based on the conventions in Figure 2. The final product of the analysis was a tabulation in which each nuclear content word was coded

F (Hz)

       Syllables Tones

ma

rí L+H*

a

co L*+H

me

man da

ri

nas

L*

L

Figure 3.  A broad focus production of the statement María come mandarinas (‘Mary eats oranges’). An L* L% nuclear configuration is associated with mandarinas (‘oranges’)

.  Prenuclear pitch accents and ip boundaries were also acoustically analyzed and transcribed, but remain outside the scope of the current discussion.



On the nuclear intonational phonology of heritage speakers of Spanish 

F0 (Hz)

for participant, utterance type, pragmatic meaning, pitch accent and IP ­boundary tone. Finally, the nuclear configurations compiled were compared to those of De la Mota et al. (2010), since the data in their study come from native Mexican speakers performing the same type of task. In order to visually represent examples of F0 contours and their corresponding Sp_ToBI transcriptions, we offer Figures 3–6 below, which help set up the upcoming discussion of the results. Figure 3 illustrates a broad focus statement, Figure 4 a narrow focus statement, Figure 5 a yes-no question and Figure 6 a wh- question.

200 175 150 125 100 75 50

Syllables Tones

no

de

L+H* L–

li

mo

nes

L+H*

L%

Figure 4.  A narrow focus production of the statement No, de limones (‘No, of lemons’). A ­circumflex L+H* L% nuclear configuration is associated with limones (‘lemons’)

300 F0 (Hz)

250 200 150 100 50 Syllables Tones

son L*+H

las

nue L*

ve LH%

Figure 5.  A production of the echo yes-no question ¿Son las nueve? (‘Is it nine o’clock?’). An L* LH% nuclear configuration is associated with nueve (‘nine’)

 Rajiv Rao

250

F0 (Hz)

200 150 100 50 Syllables Tones

por

qué L+H*

no

vie

nes

H*

L%

Figure 6.  A production of the invitation wh- question ¿Por qué no vienes? (‘Why don’t you come?’). An H* L% nuclear configuration is associated with vienes (‘come’)

4.  Results 4.1  S tatements Table 4 displays the nuclear pitch accent + boundary tone sequences corresponding with our participants’ productions of statements with different pragmatic intents, in addition to those configurations reported by De la Mota et al. (2010) for native M ­ exican Spanish. In the first row of phonological targets in Table 4, we note that the NS’ statements contain two pitch accent types (L* and L+H*) and four different boundary tones, two of which are monotonal (L% and M%) and two of which are complex (HL% and LM%). While the circumflex configuration, L+H* L%, is the most frequent sequence, occurring in broad focus, narrow focus and exclamatives, we see that the two pitch accents mix with boundary tones in different ways based on pragmatic meaning. Regarding our HSS’ pitch accent distribution in Table 4, L+H* is clearly the most common across the data, in particular, in narrow focus (7/10 speakers), contradictions (9/10), exclamatives (8/10) and statements of the obvious (8/10). Other than the case of contradictions, L+H* coincides with the preferences of NS. A more detailed look at the column on contradictions in Table 4 reveals that six of the ten speakers implement either peak or valley upstep in this type of statement, showing the use of an allotone of nuclear L+H*, corresponding with higher F0 levels within the stressed syllable, as a



On the nuclear intonational phonology of heritage speakers of Spanish 

Table 4.  Productions of nuclear pitch accent + IP boundary tone configurations in ­statements based on speaker and pragmatic condition Broad focus Narrow focus Contradiction Exclamative Obvious

Uncertainty

Native L* L% L+H* L%

L+H* L%

L* HL%

L+H* L%

L+H* LM%

L+H* M%

CO

L* L% L+H* L%

L+H* L%

¡L+H* L%

L+H* L%

L+H* L%

L* L%

JA

L* L% L+H* L%

L+H* L%

L+¡H* L%

L* L%

L+¡H* L%

L* L%

LR

L* L% L+H* L%

L+H* L%

¡L+H* L%

L+H* L%

L+H* L%

L* L%

DM

L* L% L+H* L%

L+H* L%

L+H* HL%

L+¡H* L%

L+H* HL%

L+H* L%

JP

L* L% L+H* L%

L+H* L%

¡L+H* L%

L+H* L%

L+H* L%

L* L%

MG

L* L% L+H* L%

L* L%

¡L+H* L%

L+H* HM% L+H* LM%

L+H* L%

MW

L* L% L+H* L%

L+H* L%

¡L+H* L%

L+H* L%

L+H* M%

L+H* L%

RG

L* L% L+H* L%

L+H* L%

L+H* L%

L+H* L%

L+H* L%

L* L%

EC

L* L%

L* L%

L+H* HL%

L+H* L%

H* L%

L* L%

PE

L* L%

L* L%

L* L%

L* L%

H* L%

L* L%

way of contradicting rather than a boundary tone adjustment. Furthermore, the final lowering configuration, L* L%, occurs mainly in some broad focus statements, which goes along with NS, but also in seven HSS’ uncertainty statements, where NS prefer L+H* M%. Perhaps the most striking difference between our HSS data and those of NS is the overall less diverse boundary tone manifestations in the former group, regardless of classification as a regular, childhood or minimal exposure speaker. For example, across pragmatic conditions, six of the ten HSS only produce the L% boundary tone. The remaining four speakers (DM, EC, MG, MW) also predominantly demonstrate L%; however, their results sprinkle in the monotonal M% (MW) as well as the bitonal HL% (DM, EC), HM% (MG) and LM% (MG). We mainly notice these alternatives to L% in contradictions and statements of the obvious. Despite these differences in boundary tone variation in the expression of pragmatic meaning between HSS and NS, we must also point out that the use of L% by the HSS does match its use by NS in both focus conditions and in exclamatives.

 Rajiv Rao

An examination of the pitch accents and boundary tones in Table 4 shows that the NS and HSS groups pattern most distinctly in uncertainty statements and contradictions (in both pitch accent and boundary tones), followed by statements of the obvious (just boundary tones), and are most similar with respect to broad and narrow focus statements and exclamatives. With respect to inter-HSS-group comparisons, while the regular and childhood speakers do not exhibit any consistent distinctions, EC and PE, the two minimal exposure speakers, are the only two demonstrating a dominance of monotonal pitch accents and boundary tones across all pragmatic categories. The observations regarding EC and PE are most noteworthy in broad and narrow focus cases, where other HSS use both circumflex intonation and final lowering in the former, and almost exclusively use circumflex movement in the latter. Finally, looking at the results of the five participants with periods of monolingual childhood exposure to Spanish in Mexico – JA, LR, DM, JP, MW – separately from the results of the other five speakers does not lead to the emergence of any nuclear configurations particular to the former speaker pool.

4.2  Q  uestions 4.2.1  Yes-no questions Table 5 presents nuclear configuration results in yes-no questions for NS as well as for our ten HSS. The NS nuclear configurations of De la Mota et al.’s (2010) speakers displayed in Table 5 demonstrate that pragmatic intent only influences yes-no questions’ boundary tones. The nuclear pitch accent L*, corresponding with an F0 low, is followed by the complex LH% in four of the six pragmatic conditions covered. The exceptions are confirmation questions, where speakers produce the simple H% rising boundary, and invitation questions, in which a steep rise associated with the complex HH% boundary tone is the preferred terminal structure. In sum, NS’ yes-no question patterns generally do not exhibit much pragmatic-based variation in nuclear tonal sequences. Regarding HSS, the results in Table 5 demonstate the following pitch accents beyond L*: H*, H+L* and (¡)L+H*. However, L* is the dominant pitch accent occurring in the nuclear configurations generated across our speakers. Also, while none of the three alternate pitch accents are associated with any particular speakers, we see that invitation and counter-expectational questions exhibit the most variation from L* (7/10 and 6/10 do not manifest L*, respectively). Concerning boundary tones in Table 5, the HSS only produce three types that do not contain at least one H tone (LM%, M% and L%), as do the NS. The LM% and M% examples appear to be more of an exception; however, L% is an optional boundary tone for all ten HSS in information seeking questions. We must note that the L* L% sequence is only associated with disjunctive types of information seeking questions



On the nuclear intonational phonology of heritage speakers of Spanish 

Table 5.  Productions of nuclear pitch accent + IP boundary tone configurations in yes-no questions based on speaker and pragmatic condition Information Confirmation Imperative Invitation seeking

Echo

Counter-­ expectational

Native L* LH%

L* H%

L* LH%

L* HH%

L* LH%

L* LH%

CO

L* LH% L* L%

L* LH%

L* LH%

H* H%

L* LH%

L* H%

JA

L* LH% L* L%

L* LH%

L* LH%

¡L+H* HH%

L* LH%

L+H* H%

LR

L* LH% L* L%

L* LH%

L* LH%

L* H%

L* LH%

L* HH%

DM

L* LH% L* L%

H* H% H+L* LH%

L* LH%

H* H%

L+H* L%

L* LH%

JP

L* LH% L* L%

L* LH%

L* LH%

L+H* H%

L* LH%

L+H* H%

MG

L* LH% L* L%

L* LH%

L* LH%

L+H* H%

H+L* LH%

L+H* H%

MW

L* LH% L* L%

L+H* H% L* LM%

L* LH%

¡L+H* H%

H* H%

L+H* H%

RG

L+H* M% L* L%

L* LH%

L* LM%

L+H* H%

L* LH%

L+H* H%

EC

L* LH% L* L%

L* LH%

L* LH%

L* LH%

L* LH%

H* H%

PE

L* LH% L* L%

L* LH%

L* LH%

L* HH%

L* LH%

H* H%

(i.e., connected by o ‘or’), where at least one prenuclear ip boundary is manifested. Since these ips cue non-terminal breaks, we suggest that IP-nuclear final lowering is implemented to clearly signal the terminal point of the thought expressed in the question. None of the other five pragmatic categories had a disjunctive example in the task. Furthermore, 9/10 HSS possess the same configuration as the NS in the information seeking variety. This result is identical to that of the imperative category and is similar to that of the echo category (7/10 HSS = NS). Tying the information seeking, imperative and echo categories together implies that, in general, L* LH% is a nuclear configuration that is similarly influenced by pragmatic meaning in both speaker groups. On the other hand, in the confirmation category, where NS prefer the monotonal H%, 9/10 HSS evidence use of the LH% bitonal boundary, in which an F0 low is maintained longer, extending into the post-tonic syllable before beginning its final ascent. The invitation type of yes-no question reveals a different type of boundary tone distinction between HSS and NS, which mainly deals with tonal levels in the stressed

 Rajiv Rao

versus post-tonic syllable. The L* HH% sequence of NS corresponds with a low F0 through the stressed syllable, followed by a sharply rising boundary tone. However, 8/10 of the HSS trend toward reaching a high level of F0 within the stressed syllable (H* or (¡)L+H*), followed by a gradual rise to an H% boundary ending the utterance. A similar finding (7/10 cases) applies to the counter-expectational class. As such, we conclude that the timing of F0 excursions in nuclear words of invitation and counterexpectational questions results in monotonal versus bitonal boundary choices in HSS versus NS, respectively. Within the HSS, 6/10 use either pitch accent or boundary tone modifications to distinguish invitation versus counter-expectational questions, while the other four produce them identically at the phonological level. HSS’ results are most similar to those of NS in information seeking, imperative and echo yes-no questions, and are most different in the boundary tones of confirmation questions, and in both pitch accents and boundary tones in invitation and ­counter-expectational cases. All this being said, we do not observe any clear differences driven by HSS subgroup like the one we noted for statements. This is still the case even if we separate the five speakers who had varying degrees of monolingual exposure to Spanish as children from all other speakers.

4.2.2  Wh- questions Table 6 displays observed nuclear configurations in wh- questions for both NS and HSS. A look at Table 6 reveals that the NS in De la Mota et al. (2010) employ an L+H* pitch accent in four of the five pragmatic conditions associated with wh- q ­ uestions. This is distinct from what we saw in Table 5, in which NS results showed the exclusive use of L* across all pragmatic categories. In terms of boundary tones, the NS data contain four different varieties for five question types, two of which are monotonal (L% and M%) and two of which are bitonal (HL% and LH%). This also differs from Table 5, where only three boundary tones were displayed across six pragmatic categories. Overall, comparing De la Mota et al.’s (2010) data in both question types tells us that there is more nuclear intonational variation in NS’ wh- questions than in their yes-no questions. An examination of the HSS data in Table 6 uncovers some distinct trends compared to what was identified in the yes-no section. However, clear inter-HSS-group trends fail to emerge. Once again, dividing the five participants with some past monolingual exposure to their HL from the remaining participants fails to yield distinguishable patterns. In the information seeking condition, none of the HSS produce the same boundary tone (HL%) as the NS and only three demonstrate evidence of the L+H* pitch accent. Therefore, there is little evidence of a circumflex configuration in the HSS data in information seeking questions. This category contains considerable variation across speakers, with L* being the most common pitch accent, L% the most common monotonal boundary tone and LM% the most attested bitonal ­boundary. Also,



On the nuclear intonational phonology of heritage speakers of Spanish 

Table 6.  Productions of nuclear pitch accent + IP boundary tone configurations in wh- questions based on speaker and pragmatic condition Information ­seeking

Imperative

Invitation

Echo

Counter-­ expectational

Native

L+H* HL%

L+H* L%

L+H* M%

L* LH%

L+H* L%

CO

L* LM% L+H* L% (M%)

L* L%

H* L%

L* LH% L* L%

L* LH%

JA

L* LM% L* L%

L* L%

H* L%

L* LH% L* L%

L+H* H%

LR

L* LM% L* LH%

L* L%

L* LH%

L* LH% L* L%

L* LH%

DM

L+H* M% L* L%

M* M%

L+H* L%

H* H% L+H* L%

L* LH%

JP

L* LM% L* L%

L* L%

L+H* L%

L+H* H% L* L%

L* LH%

MG

H+L* LM% L* L%

L+H* L%

L+H* L%

H+L* LH% L* L%

L* LH%

MW

L* L%

L* L%

H* L%

H* H% L* L%

L+H* H%

RG

H* L% L+H* L% L* L%

L+H* L%

L+¡H* L%

L* LH% L* L%

L+H* H%

EC

L* L% L* M%

L* L%

L* L%

¡H* H% L* HH%

L* LH%

PE

L* L%

L+H* L%

L+H* L%

¡H* H% L* L%

L* LH%

similar to the yes-no type, the L* L% sequences of speakers who produce more than one nuclear configuration in a particular pragmatic category (MW and PE are the exceptions) occur in disjunctive examples in which at least one prenuclear ip boundary is manifested. For the imperative category, only three speakers exhibit circumflex movement like the NS, while six of them demonstrate L* L%, ­corresponding with final lowering. Furthermore, in invitation wh- questions, five speakers’ data yield the same L+H* pitch accent as NS and three contain H* plateaus, but none of their data bears the M% boundary of NS. HSS’ dominant trend is to lower the boundary further, to L%. Regarding the echo condition, NS’ nuclear configuration is identical in yes-no and wh- questions. Recall that HSS trends in the yes-no variety of echo questions were similar to those of HS; however, in wh- echo questions, only four speakers generate the L* LH% sequence. The most noteworthy variation occurs between L* and H* as pitch accents, and L%, H% and LH% as boundary tones (L* L% is only m ­ anifested

 Rajiv Rao

in ­disjunctive cases, once again). Finally, in the counter-­expectational category, three speakers produce the same L+H* pitch accent, but none lower their boundary to L%. In fact, for this category, when considering the seven L*  LH% configurations and the other three sequences containing L+H*, we note that all speakers implement ­utterance-final rising movement, with boundary tones containing H% rather than the falling movement of NS. Overall, compared to yes-no questions, wh- questions yield much more variation across speakers and less examples of HSS data from specific pragmatic categories that reflect NS patterns. This observation raises the question of whether or not HSS’ nuclear configuration data reflect distinctions between yes-no and wh- questions. When looking at the nuclear configurations of each HSS based on common pragmatic conditions in Tables 5 and 6 (10 speakers × 5 categories = 50 comparisons), we observe that 40/50 of such comparisons show different tonal sequences in each question type. Of the ten that are identical, six are within echo questions, which are the same in both question types for NS as well, and four are in the counter-expectational category, where HSS and NS data are quite different across both question types. Therefore, even though the HSS question data and those of the NS from De la Mota et al. (2010) are different, the HSS’ do show evidence of modifying their nuclear intonation based on question type when pragmatic condition is held constant.

5.  Discussion As expected based on previous studies, the nuclear configurations we observed were different in questions when compared to statements, and wh- questions demonstrated the most overall phonological variation. However, looking at HSS data alongside NS data allowed us to identify some interesting intergroup patterns. First, in statements, even though we found evidence of both final lowering and circumflex movement, the HSS demonstrated a strong preference for the L+H* pitch accent (or its allotones) and the L% boundary tone. This differed from NS, who showed a wider pragmatic range of L* and a broader inventory of boundary tones that were used to fulfill distinct pragmatic intents. Nuclear F0 movement across HSS and NS was most similar in broad focus, narrow focus and exclamatives, and was most distinct in statements expressing uncertainty and contradiction. Furthermore, statements were the only utterance type in which we noticed an HSS-subgroup-based difference: the two minimal exposure participants (EC and PE) produced mostly monotonal pitch accents and L%, and thus did not exhibit evidence of circumflex movement. Concerning questions, our HSS data showed a higher degree of similarity to NS data in the yes-no variety than in the wh- variety, particularly in cases of the L* LH% configuration. Nuclear configurations appeared more varied in the wh- questions of



On the nuclear intonational phonology of heritage speakers of Spanish 

both HSS and NS. While both groups realized different combinations of sequences in general (especially with respect to boundary tones), a comparison across HSS’ productions of questions demonstrated that the yes-no/wh- classification distinguished uses of nuclear intonation within the same pragmatic condition. We now point out the main implications of our results for HSS intonational phonology and for differences between HSS and NS grammars that arise from our findings. All of the suggested differences between HSS and NS partially reflect RoblesPuente’s (2014) comments about his early bilingual group from Los Angeles. That is, HSS’ intonational trends do not necessarily resemble those of NS. Furthermore, we have confirmed that most HSS (to different extents) do indeed utilize circumflex intonation in all utterance types. This is a result that was not reported in Henriksen’s (2012) Chicagoland HSS. At times, this nuclear rise-fall trend occurs in the same contexts as NS use it (e.g., narrow focus statements), but in other cases, it is used distinctively (e.g., contradiction statements). Therefore, our results suggest that while both HSS and NS include circumflex movement in their nuclear tonal inventory, and use it with wide scope, utterance type and pragmatic condition affect their respective scopes differently. Exceptions to this claim are the lack of circumflex evidence in the two minimal exposure speakers’ statements, suggesting that increased exposure to and experience with Spanish as children (i.e., the regular and childhood speaker groups combined) are factors that contribute to the development of circumflex intonation and its application to different pragmatic situations across utterance types. This observation is highlighted for statements because English is not typically characterized as bearing circumflex movement in this utterance type, meaning a possible explanation for the statement results of EC and PE is the influence of English intonation as a byproduct of the dominant presence of this language in their lives. In statements, HSS demonstrated less variation of nuclear configurations, or a reduced number of varieties of pitch accents and/or boundary tones, than NS. On the other hand, HSS’ questions displayed just as much, if not more, nuclear variation than those of NS. These comparisons suggest that the development of the intonation-­ pragmatics interface depends on utterance type; statements permit HSS to achieve more pragmatically with fewer pitch accents/boundary tones, while questions allow for an expansion of their tonal inventory based on pragmatic purpose. However, it could also be the case that pragmatic differences trigger intonational modifications in prenuclear position and/or to other prosodic cues (i.e., duration, intensity) to a greater extent in statements than in questions. Within each utterance type, another noteworthy idea is that perhaps nuclear configurations in the grammars of HSS and NS under certain pragmatic conditions (e.g., broad focus, narrow focus, information seeking yes-no and echo questions) do not exhibit much variation because, compared to other conditions examined in this study, they are more frequently occurring in general, and thus more familiar to speakers (see the insights in Bybee, 2006). On the other hand, it

 Rajiv Rao

is possible that less frequent pragmatic conditions lead to more nuclear intonational variation across speaker groups in terms of differences regarding either pitch accents or boundary tones (e.g., contradiction yes-no questions) or both pitch accents and boundary tones (e.g., counter-expectational questions). Overall, we have provided evidence supporting the idea that the nuclear intonational phonology of HSS is generally different from that of NS, as one would predict based on the distinct types of linguistic experiences with and input received in Spanish by each of these two speaker types (Pascual y Cabo & Rothman, 2012). As such, we have confirmed the hypothesis presented at the beginning of this paper. Crucially, we suggest that our attested variation arises from diverse forms of input, resulting in ­different nuclear configurations in HSS and NS. Interestingly, other than the one case noted for statements, our results did not display clear differences between subgroups of HSS, which were based on past and present exposure to the HL. The fact that we cannot come to such a conclusion suggests that for our HSS in general, variation related to factors such as speaking Spanish/English to family members and friends, and exposure to Spanish/English through education, social media, social networks and work (among other factors), leads to different types of individual intonational variation when compared to monolingual speakers of ­Spanish. Even when we teased apart the data for those with some period of monolingual exposure (JA, LR, DM, MW and JP), we still could not identify ways of distinguishing (variation in) their collective nuclear configurations from those of the other HSS participants. In sum, even though we generalized and placed our HSS in three subgroups, it appears that the heterogeneous linguistic experiences of our pool of HSS makes discussing nuclear intonation at the individual level more useful than at the group level, at least for our particular data set. Regardless of the lack of intra-HSS patterns, we can assert that the variation (or a lack thereof) in our HSS’ nuclear tonal configurations appears to rely on the combination of utterance type and pragmatic intent. What are some other possible explanations for the individual variation observed across our HSS? One thought we could further explore is transfer from English. However, upon returning to Robles-Puente (2014), we realize that the implementation of English tonal sequences may not be a satisfactory explanation given that overall, his relevant speakers did not demonstrate significantly different inventories in the two languages. The lack of clear differences between E ­ nglish and Spanish nuclear question intonation also prevents us from relying on a transfer-based account (outside of the one example of the statements produced by EC and PE). Another perspective is to lend support for the arguments of both Bullock (2009) and Henriksen (2012), who claim that the blending of the intonational systems of both English and Spanish does not necessarily force speakers to copy the pitch accents/boundary tones of one language to the other for different pragmatic uses, but rather manufactures an innovative set of these phonological targets. Each of our HSS was exposed to different varieties of



On the nuclear intonational phonology of heritage speakers of Spanish 

English and Spanish since they call come from diverse backgrounds. The interaction between these uniquely diverse sets of English and Spanish input could be what generated the somewhat innovative configurations seen in our individual results, most of which were not very NS-like. Yet another possibility is that the source dialect of each of our individual HSS, presumably that of his/her parents, which is most likely not the same as that of a monolingual speaker residing in Mexico, contains the tabulated nuclear configurations. This would imply that what we have are phonological targets transmitted through input from one generation to the next. However, the first versus second generational differences in questions noted by Alvord (2006, 2010) would suggest that this may not be the case and that social networks may be more influential.

6.  C  onclusion The main goals of this study were to describe the nuclear tonal configurations of HS of Mexican Spanish based on utterance type and pragmatic meaning, to compare these configurations to those emerging in similar NS data and to find out if intra-HSS ­differences contributed to our attested patterns. The variation in both the HSS and NS data examined showed that utterance type and pragmatic meaning influence nuclear intonation, but through different phonological targets in both speaker groups, as well as within HSS. Rather than considering the differences between HSS and NS as incomplete acquisition of the latter’s target grammar by the former, the distinct trends were viewed as expected and natural given the diverse input through which individuals of both groups acquire their grammars (Pascual y Cabo & Rothman, 2012). Even though we divided our speakers by past and present experience with and exposure to Spanish, only one trend emerged based on these classifications. The lack of clarity based on our groupings further reinforced the idea of heterogeneity of nuclear configurations due to each speaker’s experiences with diverse forms of input. Since research on the intonation and prosody of HSS is in its fledgling stages, the remainder of this paper addresses limitations to the current study and questions that remain in hopes of inspiring researchers to pick up where we leave off. Regarding limitations, the data elicitation task from De la Mota et al. (2010) was selected for this study because it allowed us to ensure that all HSS produce the same utterances, which facilitated cross-speaker comparability. However, De la Mota et al. (2010) only used three speakers, all of whom are female, educated individuals from Mexico City. Since the parents of our HSS do not all share Mexico City as their origin and have surely had diverse linguistic experiences within the US after immigrating, it is possible that the HSS versus NS trends that emerged deal with (at least partly) intra-Mexico dialectal differences and/or the influence of participants’ parents’ linguistic situation in the US. In order to control for such variables, future studies could use HSS and NS who all

 Rajiv Rao

have roots in the same city or town and/or who have the same social network. Longitudinal or cross-generational methods would also shed further light on the issues raised here; intonational comparisons between first generation immigrants and speakers of later generations would be particularly welcomed additions to the field because they would potentially eliminate some of the confounds just discussed (Alvord, 2006; Henriksen, 2015; Nagy & Kochetov, 2013). Related work should also include a larger number of HSS from backgrounds other than Mexican because this would help build upon the preliminary claims of this study. Examining prenuclear utterance positions, as well as measurements of phonetic detail (e.g., peak height, alignment, peak and valley comparisons across an utterance) would be fruitful as well. Finally, carrying out perception tests in which NS listen to similar data from HSS would allow us to ­better understand if the differences we have outlined are actually detected and judged as “not-quite-native” or as corresponding with some sort of “heritage accent.” In sum, this study has shed light on the nuclear intonational phonology of HSS while elucidating some similarities and differences between their intonational systems and those of NS. We hope that its findings, implications and suggestions for expansion encourage further work in an area that certainly deserves it.

Acknowledgments I am grateful to Diego Pascual y Cabo for his tireless efforts in putting together this volume. I also thank two anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback on an earlier version of this paper, which led to a significantly improved final product.

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 Rajiv Rao Hedberg, N., Sosa, J. M., & Fadden, L. (2004). Meanings and configurations of questions in English. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Speech Prosody. Nara, Japan. Henriksen, N. (2012). Chicagoland heritage and native Mexican Spanish intonation: Three contact phenomena. Paper presented at Current Approaches to Spanish and Portuguese Second Language Phonology. University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC. Henriksen, N. (2015). Acoustic analysis of the rhotic contrast in Chicagoland Spanish. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 5(3), 285-321. doi:10.1075/lab.5.3.01hen Hoot, B. (2012). Presentational focus in heritage and monolingual Spanish. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. University of Illinois at Chicago. Hualde, J. I. (2003). El modelo métrico y autosegmental. In P. Prieto (Ed.), Teorías de la Entonación (pp. 155–184). Barcelona: Ariel. Hualde, J. I. (2006/2007). Stress removal and stress addition in Spanish. Journal of Portuguese Linguistics, 5(2)/6(1): 59–89. Hualde, J. I., & Prieto, P. (2015). Intonational variation in Spanish: European and ­American varieties. In S. Frota & P. Prieto (Eds), Intonation in Romance. Oxford: OUP. Kim, J. Y. (2011). Discrepancy between perception and production of stop consonants by Spanish heritage speakers in the United States. Unpublished MA thesis. Korea University. Kim, J. Y. (2015). Perception and production of Spanish lexical stress by Spanish heritage speakers and English L2 learners of Spanish. In E. Willis, P.M. Butragueño & E.H. Zendejas (Eds.), Selected Proceedings of the 6th Conference on Laboratory Approaches to Romance Phonology (pp. 106–128). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla ­Proceedings Project. Kim, S., & Avelino, H. (2003). An intonational study of focus and word order variation in ­Mexican Spanish. In E. Herrera Zendejas & P. M. Butragueño (Eds.), La tonia: Dimensiones fonéticas y fonológicas (pp. 357–374). México: Colegio de México. Knightly, L., Jun, S. A., Oh, J., & Au, T. K. (2003). Production benefits of childhood overhearing. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 114, 465–474.  doi: 10.1121/1.1577560 Ladd, D. R. (1996). Intonational phonology. Cambridge: CUP. Ladd, D. R. (2008). Intonational phonology (second edition). Cambridge: CUP.

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O’Rourke, E. (2006). The direction of inflection: Downtrends and uptrends in Peruvian Spanish broad focus declaratives. In M. Díaz-Campos (Ed.), Selected Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Laboratory Approaches to Spanish Phonetics and Phonology (pp. 62–74). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. Orozco, L. (2008). Estudio Sociolingüístico de la Cortesía en Tratamientos y Peticiones. Datos de Guadalajara. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, El Colegio de México. Orozco, L. (2010). Peticiones corteses y factores prosódicos. In E. Herrera Zendejas & P. M. Butragueño (Eds.), Fonología instrumental (pp. 335–355). México: El Colegio de México. Pascual y Cabo, D., & Rothman, J. (2012). The (il)logical problem of heritage speaker bilingualism and incomplete acquisition. Applied Linguistics, 33(4), 1–7.  doi: 10.1093/applin/amr040 Pierrehumbert, J. (1980). The phonology and phonetics of English intonation. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, MIT. Pierrehumbert, J., & Hirschberg, J. (1990). The meaning of intonational contours in the interpretation of discourse. In P. Cohen, J. Morgan, & M. Pollack (Eds.), Intentions in communication (pp. 271–311). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Polinsky, M., & Kagan, O. (2007). Heritage languages: In the ‘wild’ and in the classroom. ­Language and Linguistics Compass, 1(5), 368–395.  doi: 10.1111/j.1749-818X.2007.00022.x Prieto, P. (1998). The scaling of the L values in Spanish downstepping contours. Journal of ­Phonetics, 26, 261–282.  doi: 10.1006/jpho.1998.0074 Prieto, P. (2006). Phonological phrasing in Spanish. In F. Martínez-Gil & S. Colina (Eds.), ­Optimality-theoretic studies in Spanish phonology (Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 99) (pp. 39–60). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.  doi: 10.1075/la.99.03pri Prieto, P., & Roseano, P. (Eds). (2010). Transcription of intonation of the Spanish language. Munich: Lincom. Prieto, P., Shih, C., & Nibert, H. (1996). Pitch downtrend in Spanish. Journal of Phonetics, 24, 445–473.  doi: 10.1006/jpho.1996.0024 Prieto, P. Van Santen, J., & Hirschberg, J. (1995). Tonal alignment patterns in Spanish. Journal of Phonetics, 23, 429–451.  doi: 10.1006/jpho.1995.0032 Quilis, A. (1999). Tratado de fonología y fonética españolas, 2a edición. Madrid: Gredos. Rao, R. (2009). Deaccenting in spontaneous speech on Barcelona Spanish. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 2(1), 31–75.  doi: 10.1515/shll-2009-1035 Rao, R. (2010). Final lengthening and pause duration in three dialects of Spanish. In M. OrtegaLlebaria (Ed.), Selected proceedings of the 4th Conference on Laboratory Approaches to ­Spanish Phonology (pp. 69–82). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. Rao, R. (2014). On the status of the phoneme /b/ in heritage speakers of Spanish. Sintagma, 26, 37–54. Rao, R. (2015). Manifestations of /bdg/ in heritage speakers of Spanish. Heritage Language ­Journal, 12(1), 48–74. Rao, R., & Ronquest, R. (2015). Heritage Spanish phonetics and phonology: Looking back and moving forward. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 8(2), 403–414. Robles-Puente, S. (2014). Prosody in contact: Spanish in Los Angeles. Unpublished Ph.D. ­dissertation. University of Southern California. Ronquest, R. (2012). An acoustic analysis of heritage Spanish vowels. Unpublished Ph.D. ­dissertation. Indiana University, Bloomington. Ronquest, R. (2013). An acoustic examination of unstressed vowel reduction in heritage ­Spanish. In Selected proceedings of the 15th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium (pp. 151–171). ­Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.

 Rajiv Rao Rothman, J. (2009). Understanding the nature and outcomes of early bilingualism: Romance languages as heritage languages. International Journal of Bilingualism, 13(2), 155–163.

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Appendix Information from the three resources below was utilized to classify speakers into the groups employed in Oh & Au (2005). Language History Questionnaire Today’s date: Age: Gender: Place of birth: Place of birth of your parents/grandparents: Number of years residing in the US: Where and for how long in each place? Number of years residing outside of the US: Where and for how long in each place? Uses of Spanish and English: What language did you use more during your childhood before entering school? What is the reason for this? In what contexts did you use Spanish and English? After you began school, how did your use of both languages change? Did you attend a bilingual education program? Did your school(s) have many Spanish speakers? What language do you use more today with your family? Does it depend on the family member with whom you’re speaking? What language do you use more with friends and at social gatherings? Briefly explain. What language do you use more at the university and/or at work (if you work)? Briefly explain. How would you divide (in percentages) your use of each language on a typical day? On a typical day at home with your family? Do you speak any languages besides English and Spanish? Is there any additional information you have not listed that affects your choice of language?



On the nuclear intonational phonology of heritage speakers of Spanish 

Self-assessment of Proficiency in English and Spanish 1.

How would you rate your overall language (reading, speaking, listening, writing) abilities in Spanish? Excellent ____Very good ____Good ____ Fair ____ Poor ____Very Poor ____

2.

How would you rate your speaking abilities in Spanish? Excellent ____Very good ____Good ____ Fair ____ Poor ____Very Poor ____

3.

How would you rate your listening abilities in Spanish? Excellent ____Very good ____Good ____ Fair ____ Poor ____Very Poor ____

4. How would you rate your writing abilities in Spanish? Excellent ____Very good ____Good ____ Fair ____ Poor ____Very Poor ____ 5.

How would you rate your reading abilities in Spanish? Excellent ____Very good ____Good ____ Fair ____ Poor ____Very Poor ____

6.

How would you rate your overall language (reading, speaking, listening, writing) abilities in English? Excellent ____Very good ____Good ____ Fair ____ Poor ____Very Poor ____

7.

How would you rate your speaking abilities in English? Excellent ____Very good ____Good ____ Fair ____ Poor ____Very Poor ____

8.

How would you rate your listening abilities in English? Excellent ____Very good ____Good ____ Fair ____ Poor ____Very Poor ____

9.

How would you rate your writing abilities in English? Excellent ____Very good ____Good ____ Fair ____ Poor ____Very Poor ____

10. How would you rate your reading abilities in English? Excellent ____Very good ____Good ____ Fair ____ Poor ____Very Poor ____ Experiences with and Attitudes toward Spanish For the following statements, please rate yourself on a scale of 1–5 (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

I am motivated to maintain Spanish. I see Spanish as useful for my work. I see Spanish as useful in my social circles. Knowing Spanish is more important than knowing English. Spanish is a central part of my identity and I’m proud to speak it. I am embarrassed to speak Spanish in certain situations because of my pronunciation. My Spanish pronunciation is equal to someone that was born and raised in a Spanishspeaking country. 8. My friends value Spanish. 9. My family values maintaining Spanish. 10. The majority of my friends are Spanish speakers. 11. I prefer listening to sources of media in Spanish rather than English.

 Rajiv Rao 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

I prefer reading in Spanish over English. I have less of an accent in Spanish than English. I am embarrassed to speak Spanish in some situations due to my grammar. I know and use more slang in Spanish than in English. I speak more Spanish than English with my parents. I speak more Spanish than English with my siblings. I speak more Spanish than English with my friends. I speak more Spanish than English with my extended family. I seek out new ways of using my Spanish/of improving my Spanish. I make an effort to travel to the country of my ancestors. My parents think knowing Spanish is more useful than knowing English. I consider myself a native-speaker of Spanish. I consider myself a native-speaker of English. I only use English because I need to have a job. In elementary school, I had more Spanish speaking than English speaking friends. In high school, I had more Spanish speaking than English speaking friends. My Spanish pronunciation is not affected by English at all. My Spanish language abilities are far superior to non-native speakers who learn in the classroom. 30. I feel that knowing Spanish and being bilingual is socially and professionally and advantage for me.

Relative clause attachment preferences in early and late Spanish-English bilinguals Jill Jegerski1, Bill VanPatten2 & Gregory D. Keating3 1University 3San

of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign / 2Michigan State University / Diego State University

Previous research on the interpretation of ambiguous relative clauses among bilinguals has suggested that a single attachment strategy is employed with both languages and that this preference is determined by language exposure (Dussias & Sagarra, 2007). However, most prior studies had targeted late bilinguals, so the present study sought to determine whether exposure is also critical with early bilinguals such as heritage speakers. Twenty-three heritage bilinguals and a comparison group of 21 late Spanish-English bilinguals completed off-line binary choice measures in both languages. The late bilinguals patterned with participants from prior research, showing a similar attachment preference in both of their languages. The heritage bilingual participants, however, exhibited distinct relative clause attachment preferences in each of their languages. Thus, it seems that early bilinguals can be more likely to use language-specific sentence comprehension strategies in each language, despite greater exposure to the majority language, which is more in line with a two-processor model of bilingual sentence comprehension.

1.  Introduction The Spanish of heritage speakers is known to demonstrate interesting characteristics in areas of grammar such as morphology, lexicon, syntax, semantics, and discourse/ pragmatics, in which heritage Spanish often differs from monolingual Spanish or the Spanish of bilinguals formally educated in a country in which Spanish is the majority language (see Benmamoun, Montrul, & Polinsky, 2010, for a comprehensive overview). Much less attention has been paid in the literature to sentence comprehension, which is the highly complex and efficient task of assigning structure and meaning to written or aural linguistic input (e.g., Crocker, 1999). The empirical investigation reported in this chapter targeted one specific aspect of sentence comprehension, the interpretation of ambiguous relative clauses, among heritage speakers of Spanish. For example, with a sentence like The hamster bit my

doi 10.1075/sibil.49.05jeg © 2016 John Benjamins Publishing Company

 Jill Jegerski, Bill VanPatten & Gregory D. Keating

friend who won the big lottery the processor recognizes that who won the big lottery is a relative clause, probably after seeing or hearing only a few words of it, then links it structurally to the noun phrase my friend, which in this case is the only possible attachment point. Thus, it is understood that the winner of the lottery was the speaker’s friend. However, when there is ambiguity of the attachment site for the relative clause, as in The hamster bit the sister of my friend who won the big lottery, the processor must choose between the sister and my friend as attachment sites for the relative clause. There is no absolute grammatical principle that specifies one of the two interpretations, but languages tend to favor one or the other (e.g., Frazier & Clifton, 1996), so this type of sentence comprehension is well suited to the investigation of cross-linguistic influence among bilinguals. From a sentence comprehension perspective, bilingualism is of special interest because it allows researchers to test aspects and nuances of processing in ways that would not be possible with monolingual participants. In investigating the core issue of whether bilinguals employ one processor in both of their languages or two separate processors, we can better understand why the sentence processing mechanism behaves as it does and where and how it acquires its key strategies and principles. For example, language dominance and differential exposure to input – both of which are related to language history variables such as age of initial exposure – have stood out in previous research as critical variables in the acquisition and maintenance of sentence comprehension preferences among bilinguals (Dussias, 2003, 2004; Dussias & Sagarra, 2007). The results of the present study suggest that early exposure to both languages may be important as well.

1.1  Relative clause attachment A great deal of sentence comprehension research has focused on ambiguous relative clauses. Sentences such as (1) below, from Dussias (2003) are of interest because they are ambiguous with respect to the syntax; two different representations of sentence structure are in principle available to the language user who reads the stimulus.

(1) Peter fell in love with the daughter of the psychologist who studied in C ­ alifornia.

In this example, the relative clause who studied in California could be syntactically attached and thereby refer to either of the two noun phrases that immediately precede it, either the daughter or the psychologist. Thus, the reader might understand that it was the daughter who went to school in California or that it was the psychologist who did. Early psycholinguistic study of how readers resolve related types of syntactic ambiguity focused on monolingual English speakers and proposed a general trend towards favoring local or low attachment to the second of the two noun phrases, or the ­psychologist in the above example (e.g., Frazier, 1987).



Relative clause attachment preferences in early and late Spanish-English bilinguals 

Low attachment was believed to be a universal, or language-independent, strategy until Cuetos and Mitchell (1988) researched relative clause attachment in ­Spanish and found that monolingual speakers exhibited the opposite preference towards high attachment. Following this outcome, relative clause attachment has been investigated in a variety of different languages using both off-line (e.g., written binary choice sentence interpretation task) and on-line methods (e.g., self-paced reading, e­ ye-tracking, event-related brain potentials) and it has become evident that both high and low attachment occur widely. Languages that show an English-like low attachment preference include Norwegian, Romanian, and Swedish (Ehrlich, Fernández, Fodor, ­Stenshoel & Vinereanu, 1999), for instance. The high attachment strategy that prevails in Spanish, on the other hand, has also been observed in Dutch (Brysbaert & Mitchell, 1996), Italian (De Vincenzi & Job, 1993), Japanese (Kamide & Mitchell, 1997), and Portuguese (Costa, Maia, Fernández, & Lourenco-Gomes, 2006), among others. Another trend that has emerged is that the low attachment preference sometimes fails to appear in on-line data, which instead shows no clear preference (e.g., Carreiras & Clifton, 1999). Because Spanish and English vary with regard to relative clause attachment preferences, tending towards high and low attachment, respectively, this aspect of sentence comprehension is ideal for examining cross-linguistic influence in Spanish-English bilinguals. It is important to emphasize, however, that these differences between languages are often only seen in the final interpretation of a sentence. A growing body of research (Costa et al., 2006; De Vincenzi & Job, 1993; Kamide & Mitchell, 1997) has broken down the comprehension of relative clauses into at least two distinct phases, in which all languages prefer low attachment in the first phase and some languages shift to high attachment later on, purportedly because purely syntactic restraints are applied first during processing and extra-syntactic specifications for discourse and prosody come later (which will be discussed in greater detail in the section that follows). To illustrate, Costa et al. (2006) observed an immediate low attachment preference for Brazilian and European Portuguese during self-paced reading, but a high attachment preference emerged later on, in the accuracy rates for comprehension questions that f­ollowed the self-paced reading stimuli (i.e., significantly higher accuracy for questions that ­followed sentences with high attachment than those that followed sentences with low attachment). Kamide and Mitchell (1997) found a similar pattern with J­apanese, in which a low attachment preference was immediately evident in the data from a selfpaced reading task, but a high attachment preference emerged in the off-line data from a binary choice sentence interpretation task administered in a separate experiment. Thus, cross-linguistic variation in relative clause attachment preferences is most ­reliably evident in off-line sentence comprehension measures, while on-line measures like self-paced reading can misleadingly suggest on occasion that low attachment is a u ­ niversal preference.

 Jill Jegerski, Bill VanPatten & Gregory D. Keating

1.2  Bilingual sentence comprehension A fundamental question in the study of bilingualism concerns the nature of language in the bilingual mind. Research motivated by this question explores the nature of the representation of two languages in one mind and particularly the degree of independence and interconnectedness between the two language systems. A related issue concerns the description of bilingual sentence comprehension and whether it is accomplished via two independent processors or a single processor that operates on input in both languages. Even some theoretical accounts of sentence comprehension that were not originally articulated for bilinguals can be applied in this case because they make specific predictions regarding the question of whether bilinguals have one sentence processor or two. The Construal Hypothesis (Frazier & Clifton, 1996) predicts that bilinguals would have two distinct processors. In this model of sentence comprehension, the initial phases of relative clause attachment are universal; a syntactic principle known as Minimal Attachment first causes low attachment, then a discourse-pragmatic principle of relevance causes subordinate phrases to be attached to the main constituent in the higher position. Finally, Grice’s maxim of “avoid ambiguity” (Grice, 1989) leads the reader towards low attachment in languages like English, which have two genitive forms. The English speaker has the option to say either the daughter of the psychologist who studied in California or the psychologist’s daughter who studied in California, using either the Norman or the Saxon genitive, respectively. The first is ambiguous, while the latter is not. So the only reason to use the first form, the universal and also ambiguous Norman genitive, is if the relative clause refers to the lower noun phrase, the psychologist. Under this account, Spanish relative clauses would always result in high attachment and English would always yield low attachment, regardless of whether those tested knew one or both languages. A second theoretical account, the Implicit Prosody Hypothesis (Fodor, 1998, 2002), could also account for bilinguals having two different processors. The crux of this model is that readers generate an internal rhythm, stress, and intonation, that is to say, an implicit prosody, which causes text to be broken down into prosodic constituents or phrases in the same way that explicit prosody does with speech. These prosodic constituents in turn influence the representation of syntax and the grouping of units into larger syntactic constituents. In the specific case of ambiguous relative clauses, a prosodic break that occurs just before the clause has been associated with a greater tendency towards high attachment, whereas a prosodic break before the prepositional phrase is associated with low attachment (Fernández, 2007; Teira & Igoa, 2007). To illustrate with the example stimulus given above in (1), with Peter fell in love with the daughter of the psychologist [pause] who studied in California, there is a greater tendency to link the relative clause who studied in California to the daughter,



Relative clause attachment preferences in early and late Spanish-English bilinguals 

but with Peter fell in love with the daughter [pause] of the psychologist who studied in California, there is a greater tendency to connect the relative clause to the psychologist. Cross-linguistic differences in the tendency towards prosodic breaks at one site or the other purportedly can explain cross-linguistic variation in relative clause attachment preferences and preliminary evidence from Fernández (2007) suggests that Spanish may indeed be more likely than English to show a prosodic break just before a relative clause. The theoretical point that is of greatest relevance to the present study is that the Implicit Prosody Hypothesis (Fodor, 1998, 2002) posits that relative clause attachment preferences are based in the phonological subsystem, so bilinguals with two distinct phonologies would be predicted to also have two sentence processors. In contrast to the other two theories is the Linguistic Tuning Hypothesis (Cuetos, Mitchell, & Corley, 1996), which predicts a single, language-independent processor for bilinguals. Linguistic Tuning is essentially a frequency-based account in which the sentence processor is adjusted or tuned on the basis of linguistic input and the accurate resolution of ambiguities encountered in the past. For instance, readers who have had more exposure in the past to relative clauses with low attachment would be more likely to prefer low attachment with ambiguous sentences in the future. With bilinguals, then, processing strategy would come from the language of greatest exposure and would be employed in the interpretation of sentences in both languages. To summarize the theoretical accounts of bilingual processing in this section, there are three models that are of greatest interest to the present study. The Construal Hypothesis predicts that bilinguals would show language-independent comprehension, so Spanish-English bilinguals could show different relative clause attachment strategies in both their languages. Under the Implicit Prosody Hypothesis, the issue of one processor or two rests in turn on the issue of one phonological system or two, which in theory could be independent of language dominance and exposure. Finally, the Linguistic Tuning Hypothesis suggests that Spanish-English bilinguals would have a single processing strategy in both of their languages, according to the relative amount of exposure to each. As far as concerns heritage Spanish bilinguals, Construal and Implicit Prosody would predict different relative clause attachment preferences in Spanish and in English, whereas the Linguistic Tuning Hypothesis predicts that Spanish and English would be processed the same, both showing the low attachment preference that predominates among English monolinguals, given that English is the ­language of greatest exposure among heritage Spanish speakers.

1.3  Relative clause attachment among Spanish-English bilinguals Thus far, the study of sentence comprehension among Spanish-English bilinguals has yielded mostly evidence in support of a one-processor model like the Linguistic Tuning Hypothesis. Fernández (2002) investigated the on-line (self-paced reading) and

 Jill Jegerski, Bill VanPatten & Gregory D. Keating

off-line (questionnaire) relative clause attachment preferences of two different groups of Spanish-English bilinguals in New York City. The bilingual participants were classified and grouped according to language dominance, which was operationalized as relatively higher self-ratings for proficiency in speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Each of the two groups was heterogeneous with regard to order and age of acquisition for Spanish and English. The results of a written interpretation task with 24 critical sentences revealed that the English-dominant group preferred high attachment 48% of the time in English and 55% with Spanish, while the Spanish-dominant group exhibited 73% high attachment in both languages. In other words, each bilingual group tended towards a single interpretation preference that was similar to that of monolingual speakers of their dominant language. In the on-line results from self-paced reading, on the other hand, both English and Spanish monolinguals showed a low attachment preference, but this lack of cross-linguistic variation during on-line selfpaced reading is consistent with the previous research on monolingual Japanese and Portuguese already discussed in the section that introduced relative clause attachment (Costa et al., 2006; Kamide & Mitchell, 1997). There were no reliable attachment preferences in either of the two bilingual groups. While Fernández did not interpret this outcome with regard to the Tuning Hypothesis, the reported off-line data in particular could be viewed as support for the frequency-based model if we assume that language dominance is directly and positively affected by the relative amount of ­exposure to input. Dussias (2003) examined the processing of ambiguous relative clauses by two groups of late bilinguals residing in the United States. The participants were EnglishSpanish and Spanish-English bilinguals, all at a near-native level of proficiency in their respective second languages. On a written sentence interpretation task, the native speakers of English preferred low attachment in both languages. Interestingly, the native speakers of Spanish who had acquired English in adulthood also preferred low attachment in both languages, meaning they had developed a native-like strategy in the second language and had also extended it back to their native Spanish. The same low attachment preference was also evident during self-paced reading in Spanish among both groups. Dussias suggested that this influence of the second language on the first was due to long-term exposure to English, as with Linguistic Tuning, given that the native Spanish speakers had resided in the U.S. for an average of 7.5 years at the time of testing. A subsequent investigation (Dussias, 2004) demonstrated that the same immersion effect could be present among a similar group of late Spanish-English bilinguals who had resided in an English-speaking country for an average of only 3.7 years, thereby providing additional support for Linguistic Tuning. Still, as the author of these two studies points out, language dominance and relative amount of linguistic exposure are two distinct factors that cannot be teased apart in these particular data sets, as longterm second language immersion could also lead to second language dominance.



Relative clause attachment preferences in early and late Spanish-English bilinguals 

This potential confusion was at least partially resolved by a third investigation (Dussias & Sagarra, 2007), in which only an on-line measure (eye-tracking) was used and the participants were again late Spanish-English bilinguals. The two groups had averages of 8.5 months and 7.1 years spent abroad. As in Dussias’ (2003, 2004) previous experiments, the extensive exposure group showed English-like low attachment behavior when processing either language. This time, however, the limited exposure group showed a Spanish-like preference with both languages. Thus, it appears that it may indeed be relative exposure rather than dominance that determines relative clause attachment preferences among bilinguals. It should be noted, however, that the extensive exposure group also had higher English proficiency than the limited exposure group on all of four measures, even though these differences were not statistically significant. Furthermore, the extensive exposure group was residing in the U.S. at the time of testing, while the limited exposure group was living in Spain. The four previous investigations discussed so far all point to a single bilingual processor that operates on both languages, but all four also focused on late Spanish-English bilinguals. Only one prior study targeted relative clause attachment preferences among early Spanish-English bilinguals. Jegerski, Keating, and VanPatten (2014) conducted a self-paced reading study of on-line and off-line relative clause attachment preferences among heritage speakers of Spanish. Forty-six monolinguals and 28 heritage bilingual speakers of Mexican Spanish read stimuli containing temporarily ambiguous relative clauses that were semantically and pragmatically biased towards either high or low attachment, as in (2) below. Each stimulus was followed by an o ­ ff-line comprehension question that queried the reader’s ultimate interpretation of the relative clause. Statistical analysis showed that reading times were longer and question response accuracy was lower when the stimulus was biased towards low attachment, as in (2b), and that these differences were equivalent across both monolingual and heritage bilingual participants. In short, the heritage group showed a monolingual-like high attachment preference in Spanish. Somewhat unexpectedly, and in contradiction to a Linguistic Tuning account, this outcome suggests that Spanish heritage speakers, as early bilinguals, may be less affected by ongoing exposure to English than the late bilinguals tested in prior studies.

(2) a. Miguel discutió con el jefe de la vendedora que tenía un bigote muy largo.  High Attachment

b. Miguel discutió con la jefa del vendedor que tenía un bigote muy largo.  Low Attachment “Miguel argued with the bossM/F of the clerkF/M that had a very long mustache.” One limitation of the Jegerski et al. (2014) study is that it tested relative clause attachment preferences in only one of the bilinguals’ two languages, Spanish. For this reason,

 Jill Jegerski, Bill VanPatten & Gregory D. Keating

while the results do show that bilingual processing is not necessarily determined by the language of greatest exposure or the dominant language, at least in the case of early bilinguals, this is still not direct evidence of two independent bilingual processors. In other words, the high attachment preference that was observed in Spanish might also apply in English among the participant population and the only way to determine this is to test heritage speakers in both Spanish and English. The purpose of the present study was to test relative clause attachment preferences with a novel group of bilingual participants – heritage speakers of Spanish – and in this way advance our current understanding of both the unique characteristics of heritage language and, more generally speaking, bilingual sentence comprehension. Specifically, our research questions were the following: I. Do late Spanish-English bilinguals (comparison group) show one attachment preference or two language-specific preferences in the interpretation of ambiguous relative clauses in Spanish and English? II. Do heritage speakers (i.e., early Spanish-English bilinguals) show one attachment preference or two language-specific preferences in the interpretation of ambiguous relative clauses in Spanish and English? III. Can the Linguistic Tuning Hypothesis, based on differences in language dominance and exposure, account for the comprehension of relative clauses by these two groups of bilinguals?

2.  Method 2.1  P  articipants The 23 heritage speaker participants for the present study were all recruited at a large public university in Southern California and most were enrolled as undergraduate students. There were 5 males and 18 females, all early Spanish-English bilinguals, defined here as having learned both languages by age 6. Most were sequential bilinguals, with Spanish being their chronologically first language, though six reported having acquired both languages simultaneously. Six were born in Mexico but had immigrated to the U.S. by age 4, while the other 17 were born in the U.S. All the participants in this group were dominant in English, operationalized as higher self-ratings for three measures of proficiency, as shown in Table 1. Additionally, as can be seen in Table 1, their self-ratings for English were numerically higher than those of the late bilingual group, although the difference only reached significance for speaking (speaking: t = 4.126, p < .001, reading: t = 1.703, p = .097, understanding: t = 1.657, p = .105), and between-subjects comparisons on the basis of subjective self-ratings should be interpreted with caution. Further background information for both participant groups is also provided in Table 1.



Relative clause attachment preferences in early and late Spanish-English bilinguals 

Table 1.  Participant Background Information Heritage Bilinguals (n = 23)

Age

Late Bilinguals (n = 21)

M

SD

M

SD

25.4

9.1

27.9

7.3

0

0

0

0

Age of onset  Spanish  English

3.8

1.7

15.1

4.4

U.S. residency (years)

23.3

8.9

4.8

4.3

 Speaking

7.57

1.5

9.62

0.7

 Understanding

8.65

1.3

9.67

0.8

 Reading

7.30

2.0

9.62

0.9

 Speaking

8.96

1.0

7.52

1.3

 Understanding

9.17

0.7

8.52

0.7

 Reading

8.87

1.0

8.29

1.3

  % English

61.0

13.4

51.5

18.2

  % Spanish

36.1

12.3

43.9

17.6

  % Other

2.9

6.0

3.7

6.2

Self-ratings for Spanish

Self-ratings for English

Current exposure

The 21 late bilinguals were recruited at two large public universities in Southern ­California and West Texas and had immigrated to the U.S. as adults. There were 9 males and 12 females, all late Spanish-English bilinguals, defined here as having acquired English after the age of 12 years. These participants were also Spanish-­dominant, meaning they self-rated their proficiency in speaking, understanding, and reading as higher in Spanish than in English. Additionally, as can be seen in Table 1, their selfratings for Spanish were higher than those of the heritage speakers (all ­differences significant in independent-samples t-tests, ts > 2.0, ps < .003). A total of 33 individuals in this group originally completed the experiment, but five were excluded for having acquired English before age 12 and seven were eliminated because their language background information was incomplete.

2.2  Materials Language history information was collected using the Language Experience and Proficiency Questionnaire (LEAP-Q; Marian, Blumenfeld, & Kaushanskaya, 2007).

 Jill Jegerski, Bill VanPatten & Gregory D. Keating

The materials for the Spanish component of the sentence comprehension experiment consisted of 10 target sentential stimuli with ambiguous relative clauses, 10 distractors with disambiguated relative clauses, 60 additional distractors, and 10 practice items that were presented at the beginning of the Spanish block. Each target sentence contained a relative clause that was ambiguous in the sense that it could have modified either of two noun phrases that were in the object position of the main clause. In (3) below, for example, the relative clause que ganó la lotería grande could be attached to either la hermana or mi amiga. Each relative clause was four or five words in length and consisted of the complementizer followed by a verb in the past tense and a verbal complement. The nouns, verbs, and adjectives that appeared in the relative clauses were all frequent so that they would be familiar to both groups of participants.

(3) El ratón mordió a la hermana de mi amiga que ganó la lotería grande.



(4) ¿Quién ganó la lotería?

a. la hermana

b. la amiga

On the screen following each sentence was a question that probed the participant’s choice of attachment site for the ambiguous relative clause in the sentence. To illustrate, in (4) above the answer choices, la hermana and la amiga, indicate high and low attachment, respectively. The order of the two response options was counterbalanced such that high attachment was the A option with half of the stimuli and the B option in the other half. Ten sentences with disambiguated relative clauses were included among the distractors to prevent the participants from assuming that all sentences with relative clauses were ambiguous. The 80 total Spanish stimuli appeared in a unique ­random order for each participant. The English materials for the sentence comprehension experiment included 10 sentential stimuli containing ambiguous relative clauses, 10 distractors with disambiguated relative clauses, 20 additional distractors, and 10 practice items that appeared at the beginning of the English block. Other than the total number of stimuli, the English materials were comparable to the Spanish materials. Each of the 40 items consisted of a stimulus screen followed by a question screen. Every target sentence contained two noun phrases followed by an ambiguous relative clause that could have referred to either. For instance, in (5) below, the relative clause who won the big lottery could be linked to either the sister or my friend. The subsequent question screen, as illustrated in (6), probed the chosen attachment site.

(5) The hamster bit the sister of my friend who won the big lottery.



(6) Who won the lottery?

a. the friend

b. the sister



Relative clause attachment preferences in early and late Spanish-English bilinguals 

2.3  P  rocedure The experiment was conducted in a university language processing laboratory with small groups of two or three participants. All completed the background questionnaire first. The computerized off-line sentence interpretation task was administered using SuperLab (Cedrus Corporation, 1992) stimulus presentation software. Participants read instructions and completed a series of practice items before beginning the target items for the experiment. Each stimulus appeared in isolation in the center of the screen. Participants read the sentence and then used a green button on a response pad to advance to the question about that stimulus. The answer to the comprehension question was indicated by pressing one of two response pad buttons marked with the letters A and B. After answering the question, participants pressed the green button again to advance to the next stimulus, and so on through the experiment. Half of the participants completed the Spanish part first and half completed the English part first, for the purpose of counterbalancing. All participants were paid $20 for approximately one hour of time.

3.  Results  Spanish

English

High Attachment 

 . .

 .

.

  

Heritage Bilinguals

Late Bilinguals

Figure 1.  Rates of high attachment for ambiguous relative clauses1

Descriptive statistics for the relative clause attachment preferences of both groups in both languages are given in Figure 1. Preliminary analysis was conducted to d ­ etermine

.  A greater rate (> 50%) of high attachment predominates among Spanish monolinguals, whereas a lower rate (< 50 %) of high attachment is typically exhibited by English ­monolinguals.

 Jill Jegerski, Bill VanPatten & Gregory D. Keating

whether the testing order (i.e., Spanish block first, English block second or vice versa) might have affected attachment preferences in either or both languages. Mean scores reflecting the average rate of high attachment by subject were submitted to a mixed design ANOVA, with Group (Heritage Bilingual, Late Bilingual) and Testing Order (Spanish-English, English-Spanish) as between-subjects factors and Language (­Spanish, English) as a within-subjects factor. The effect of Testing Order was not significant, F(1, 40) = .050, p = .824, nor was the Testing Order × Group interaction, F(1, 40) = .254, p = .617, the Testing Order × Language interaction, F(1, 40) = 1.799, p = .187, or the three-way interaction, F(1, 40) = 1.262, p = .268. Because the order of testing did not appear to have affected the results, it was not included as a factor in the primary statistical analysis. For the main global analysis, mean scores reflecting the average rate of high attachment by subject and by item were submitted to mixed design ANOVAs, with Group (Heritage Bilingual, Late Bilingual) as a between-subjects factor and Language (Spanish, English) as a within-subjects factor in the analysis by subject, and Language as a between-subjects factor and Group as a within-subjects factor in the analysis by item. The effect of Language was significant by subject and approaching significance by item, F1(1, 42) = 13.118, p = .001; F2(1, 18) = 3.369, p = .083, and the interaction was approaching significance by subject and was significant by item, F1(1, 42) = 3.490, p  =  .069; F2(1, 18) = 9.281, p =  .007. There was no main effect of group, F1(1, 42) = .661, p = .421; F2(1, 18) = 3.647, p = .072. Next, post-hoc t-tests were conducted to explore the potentially significant interaction.2 Paired samples t-tests by subject and independent samples t-tests by item examined the difference between Spanish and

.  An anonymous reviewer suggested that post-hocs were not warranted because the interaction was only significant by item and approaching significance by subject (ps = .007 and .069, respectively) in the omnibus ANOVA, but we maintain that to treat this interaction as nonsignificant would be overly conservative and greatly increase the chances of a Type II error, for several reasons. First, our chosen alpha level of .05 is conventional but arbitrary and strict adherence to it in language acquisition research can lead to unnecessarily low levels of experimental power (e.g., Larson-Hall, 2010, p. 102; Mackey & Gass, 2005, pp. 267–268). Second, our conclusions were not based on significance of the interaction itself, but rather of the follow-up t-tests, in which (non)significance was unambiguous (heritage bilingual ps .000 and .019, by subjects and items, respectively; late bilingual ps .276 and .391). Third, the post-hoc t-tests could have alternatively been motivated as planned comparisons rather than on the basis of a potentially significant interaction, given that they were selective and necessitated by the first two research questions. Fourth, in another alternative, if the t-tests had been treated as multiple comparisons rather than post-hocs, in lieu of the omnibus ANOVA, the significance of the effect of Language would still have held in the heritage bilingual group, even after the alpha level was adjusted to .025 to correct for familywise error rate. In other words, any common, conventional analysis would have led us to the same conclusion regarding the results.



Relative clause attachment preferences in early and late Spanish-English bilinguals 

English attachment preferences within each participant group. These revealed a significant difference by language for the heritage bilingual group, t1(22) = 4.325, p = .000; t2(18) = 2.571, p = .019, but not for the late bilingual group, t1(20) = 1.121, p = .276; t2(18)  =  .879, p =  .391.3 Thus, the heritage bilingual group interpreted Spanish and English relative clauses differently, but the late bilingual group interpreted them the same, regardless of language.

4.  Discussion The first research question addressed the issue of one interpretation strategy or two among late Spanish-English bilinguals. Statistical analysis of the data from this group indicated similar rates of high attachment for Spanish and English, suggesting a single set of comprehension routines. This result is consistent with prior research on the processing of ambiguous relative clauses by Spanish-English bilinguals, which had tested similar participant groups. Like the present study, Dussias (2003, 2004) and Dussias and Sagarra (2007) included late bilingual participants whose first language was ­Spanish and who had been residing in the U.S. at the time of testing, and found that these bilinguals employed a single strategy in both English and Spanish. There was, however, a qualitative difference between the results of the present study and those of the aforementioned previous studies. The late bilinguals in the off-line portion of the Dussias (2003) study preferred low attachment in both languages. The late bilinguals in the current study, on the other hand, also interpreted relative clauses similarly in both languages, albeit with a more neutral preference of around 50% (this difference will be discussed in more detail below with the third research question). Still, overall the results for the late Spanish-English bilinguals in this experiment corroborate the conclusion of previous investigations that such individuals show a single interpretation preference with ambiguous relative clauses in both of their languages.

.  An anonymous reviewer expressed concern that the lack of a significant effect among the late bilingual group may have been caused by the low N size of 21 participants, so we conducted a post-hoc power analysis using G*Power (Faul, Erdfelder, Lang, & Buchner, 2007) to determine the likelihood of a Type II error. For the paired-samples t-test comparing the mean rate of high attachment in English versus Spanish in the late bilingual group, at an alpha level of .05 and with an N size of 21, power to detect a medium-sized effect of .50 was .71, which is slightly lower than the conventional cutoff of .80 power. However, if we had followed the recommendation of Larson-Hall (2010, p. 102) to set alpha at .10 in order to increase power, the power of our design would have been .83 and the effect still would not have reached significance. Thus, while we cannot completely rule out a Type II error, we can say that the probability of one was reasonably low.

 Jill Jegerski, Bill VanPatten & Gregory D. Keating

Our second research question addressed the primary issue of one interpretation strategy versus two with Spanish heritage speakers in the U.S. Statistical analysis of the data from this group revealed significantly different rates of high attachment for Spanish and English, reflecting two distinct comprehension strategies. This outcome is consistent with the results of Jegerski et al. (2014), who found a monolingual-like on-line preference for high attachment of Spanish relative clauses among heritage speakers and tentatively concluded that early bilinguals might have different processing preferences in their two languages. Because the previous study only tested heritage speakers in Spanish, however, the data from the present study for both Spanish and English provide important empirical corroboration for the proposal that, unlike late bilinguals, heritage bilinguals have two separate processors and can thus pattern more like monolingual users of each of their languages in this regard. We now look at why our results may have differed so markedly from those of prior investigations. On the basis of previous research on relative clause attachment among Spanish-English bilinguals, which had concluded that bilinguals possessed a single processor that was tuned by exposure to input (Dussias, 2003, 2004; Dussias & Sagarra, 2007), heritage speakers would have been predicted to use a single ­English-like low attachment strategy in both of their languages. Yet, the present offline study of heritage speakers’ Spanish and English and the previous on-line study of heritage Spanish (Jegerski et al., 2014) have provided evidence to the contrary, with heritage bilinguals preferring high attachment for Spanish and low to neutral attachment for English. Thus, there must be something unique about heritage speakers that could account for the unexpected behavior. Past research on relative clause attachment among Spanish-English bilinguals had included only late bilingual participants who had acquired ­English in adulthood, while the heritage speakers in the current study were early bilinguals who had been exposed to both languages by age 6. This is an important difference, as age of acquisition is known to affect at least some types of linguistic knowledge, especially phonology. Previously it was proposed that bilinguals maintained a single language processor in order to conserve cognitive resources (Dussias, 2003), which can be in higher demand among bilinguals during certain language-related tasks. Perhaps this added cognitive load is greatest among late bilinguals, who are forced to resort to a single strategy, and significantly reduced among early bilinguals, who can maintain two independent strategies with less effort, at least in some contexts. This advantage may come as a consequence of better executive control due to lifelong bilingualism. In short, the one-processor conclusion of previous research may be applicable only to late bilinguals. The final research question first asked whether Linguistic Tuning and the previously implicated variables of language dominance and exposure to input can account for the results obtained with the two Spanish-English bilingual participant groups in the present experiment. Let us first address this question with the comparison group



Relative clause attachment preferences in early and late Spanish-English bilinguals 

of late Spanish-dominant bilinguals. As discussed above, the experimental outcome for this group was consistent with prior research in that there was a single relative clause attachment strategy evident with both languages. In previous work by Dussias (2003), this single preference was a clear English-like low attachment tendency, with only 22.8% high attachment in Spanish and 17.8% in English. In the present study, however, the late Spanish-English bilingual group exhibited nearly neutral behavior, with 57.6% high attachment in Spanish and 50.8% in English, which is fairly neutral but more Spanish-like than the tendencies observed in the Dussias (2003) study. This could potentially be the result of different biases present in the experimental materials, which were similar but not identical. For instance, the present study also included a total of 80 stimuli in the Spanish block and only 40 stimuli in the English block, which could have led to more monolingual-like preferences in Spanish across both p ­ articipant groups. Alternatively, the difference could be in the bilingual populations in question. If it is true that the single bilingual processor is set by language dominance or tuned by linguistic exposure, then differences between two bilingual groups with regard to these two variables could affect attachment preferences. For instance, most of the late ­Spanish-English bilinguals in the Dussias study rated themselves equally well in ­Spanish and English, whereas the late bilingual participants in the current investigation rated themselves higher in Spanish. This relatively higher proficiency in Spanish may have served to tilt the scales away from the English-like low attachment strategy and yield more language-neutral performance. Language exposure may have also had a similar effect, given that the late bilinguals in the Dussias experiment had longer exposure to English than those in the present study (mean 7 versus 4.3 years). Therefore, it seems that the variables of language dominance and exposure to input can indeed account for the results of the late bilingual group, so this part of the experimental outcome appears to be consistent with Linguistic Tuning. With regard to the heritage bilingual participant group, on the other hand, language exposure and dominance cannot account for the results. Even a ­hypothetical “balanced bilingual” would not be predicted to have two independent processors under Linguistic Tuning, but rather a single processor of language-neutral or ambivalent attachment preference, since neither language would be the dominant language or the language of greater exposure. What is more, heritage speakers are dominant in the majority language and typically have greater exposure to English than to ­Spanish (particularly as adults), so they would be predicted to have a more English-like attachment preference in both of their languages. But in the present experiment the heritage bilingual group followed a Spanish-like strategy in Spanish and nearly neutral attachment in English. Thus, it appears that language dominance and exposure are not the critical factors determining heritage interpretation of ambiguous relative clauses, at least among this particular population of heritage Spanish speakers in

 Jill Jegerski, Bill VanPatten & Gregory D. Keating

Southern ­California (this is not to say that these two variables do not affect heritage Spanish in other regards, such as morphosyntax and discourse principles, or possibly even with other types of sentence comprehension). Therefore, the Linguistic Tuning model cannot account for the comprehension behavior of the heritage bilingual participant group. Given that the Linguistic Tuning model cannot account for the behavior of the heritage speakers, it seems that only late bilinguals employ a single set of processing strategies with both languages that is determined by the language of greatest exposure. If this tendency arises under the increased cognitive demands of bilingual sentence comprehension, perhaps early exposure to both languages means that heritage speakers have an advantage in managing these demands and are thus not limited to a single universal strategy for both of their languages. In this scenario, Tuning would apply primarily to late bilinguals. If early bilingual acquisition allows heritage speakers to maintain and access two distinct interpretation strategies, then what factors determine these two strategies? The heritage Spanish participants in the present study preferred high attachment in Spanish and had a nearly neutral preference in English, so the overall trend was towards monolingual Spanish behavior. This is the opposite of what would generally be expected from heritage speakers of Spanish, who are commonly assumed to be English dominant with regard to both proficiency and exposure. One possible exception that has been documented is prosody. Fernández (2005) found that early Spanish-English bilinguals in New York exhibit some more Spanish-like prosodic traits while reading aloud in both of their languages. If this prominence of Spanish-like prosody holds for heritage speakers in California as well, and also holds for the implicit prosody that purportedly affects the division of written text into syntactic phrases during silent reading, then future research with this group may point towards the Implicit Prosody Hypothesis as an account of bilingual sentence comprehension. This is clearly a tentative proposal that would need to be corroborated by further study that directly correlates prosodic phrasing and relative clause attachment preferences among heritage bilinguals. Another important step will be to examine the relative clause attachment preferences of heritage Spanish ­bilinguals at lower levels of proficiency, given that the proficiency level of the heritage bilingual group in the present study was relatively high. There is an important limitation of this line of research thus far, which has only examined Spanish-English bilinguals with extensive exposure to English. With the Spanish of Spanish-English bilinguals, the purported default preference for low attachment also coincides with the preferred strategy in monolingual English, so it is impossible to distinguish between reliance on the default and cross-linguistic influence from English. With the English of Spanish-English bilinguals, the default coincides with the monolingual-like low attachment preference, so there is similar potential for



Relative clause attachment preferences in early and late Spanish-English bilinguals 

c­ onfusion. Future research can resolve this outstanding issue by expanding the knowledge base to include bilingual populations that differ with regard to language of exposure, dominant language, and language pairs. In conclusion, the results of the study reported herein corroborate previous evidence that late bilinguals have a similar relative clause attachment preference in both of their languages. However, the heritage bilingual participants in the present investigation exhibited two distinct interpretation preferences, neither of which reflected that of the majority language, so it seems that the one-processor model may apply only to late bilinguals. This suggests that bilingual sentence comprehension may not always be determined by ongoing exposure and language dominance, as with a ­Linguistic ­Tuning account. Continued investigation with different populations of bilinguals is needed in order to further tease apart fundamental language history variables. Finally, as pertains to heritage speakers, the present study has presented evidence that their Spanish does not always differ from that of monolinguals or Spanish-dominant ­bilinguals, nor does it always show influence from English.

References Benmamoun, E., Montrul, S., & Polinsky, M. (2010). White paper: Prolegomena to heritage ­linguistics. National Heritage Language Resource Center. Retrieved from 〈http://nhlrc.ucla. edu/pdf/hl-whitepaper.pdf〉 Brysbaert, M., & Mitchell, D. C. (1996). Modifier attachment in sentence parsing: Evidence from Dutch. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology: Section A, 49(3), 664–695.

doi: 10.1080/713755636

Carreiras, M., & Clifton, C. (1999). Another word on parsing relative clauses: Eye-tracking ­evidence from Spanish and English. Memory & Cognition, 27, 826–833.

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Cedrus Corporation. (1992). SuperLab (Version 4.0.5). San Pedro, CA. Costa, A., Maia, M., Fernández, E., & Lourenco-Gomes, M. C. (2006). Early and late preferences in relative clause attachment in Brazilian and European Portuguese. Poster presented at the 19th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence processing. New York, NY: March 23–25. Crocker, M. (1999). Mechanisms for sentence processing. In Language Processing, S. Garrod & M. J. Pickering (Eds.). Hove, UK: Psychology Press. Cuetos, F., & Mitchell, D. C. (1988). Cross-linguistic differences in parsing: Restrictions on the use of the late closure strategy in Spanish. Cognition, 30(1), 73–105.

doi: 10.1016/0010-0277(88)90004-2

Cuetos, F., Mitchell, D. C., & Corley, M. M. B. (1996). Parsing in different languages. In M.  ­Carreiras, J. E. García-Albea, & N. Sebastián-Gallés (Eds.), Language processing in ­Spanish (pp. 145–187). Mahwah, NH: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. De Vincenzi, M., & Job, R. (1993). Some observations on the universality of the late-closure strategy. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 22(2), 189–206.  doi: 10.1007/BF01067830

 Jill Jegerski, Bill VanPatten & Gregory D. Keating Dussias, P. (2003). Syntactic ambiguity resolution in second language learners: Some effects of bilinguality on L1 and L2 processing strategies. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 25, 529–557.  doi: 10.1017/S0272263103000238 Dussias, P. (2004). Parsing a first language like a second: The erosion of L1 parsing strategies in Spanish-English bilinguals. International Journal of Bilingualism, 8, 355–371.

doi: 10.1177/13670069040080031001

Dussias, P., & Sagarra, N. (2007). The effect of exposure on parsing in Spanish-English bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 10, 101–116.  doi: 10.1017/S1366728906002847 Ehrlich, K., Fernández, E., Fodor, J. D., Stenshoel, E., & Vinereanu, M. (1999). Low attachment of relative clauses: New data from Swedish, Norwegian and Romanian. Poster session presented at the 12th annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, New York, NY. Faul, F., Erdfelder, E., Lang, A. G., & Buchner, A. (2007). G*Power 3: A flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences. Behavior Research Methods, 39, 175–191.  doi: 10.3758/BF03193146 Fernández, E. (2002). Relative clause attachment in bilinguals and monolinguals. In R. ­Heredia  & J. Altarriba (Eds.), Bilingual sentence processing (pp. 187–215). Amsterdam: Elsevier.  doi: 10.1016/S0166-4115(02)80011-5 Fernández, E. (2005). The prosody produced by Spanish-English bilinguals: A preliminary investigation and implications for sentence processing. Revista da ABRALIN, 4, 109–141. Fernández, E. M. (2007). How might a rapid serial visual presentation of text affect the prosody projected implicitly during silent reading? Conferências do V Congresso Internacional da Associação Brasiliera de Lingüística, 5, 117–154. Fodor, J. D. (1998). Learning to parse? Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 27(2), 285–319.

doi: 10.1023/A:1023258301588

Fodor, J. D. (2002). Psycholinguistics cannot escape prosody. In Proceedings of the Speech Prosody 2002 Conference, Aix-en-Provence, France. Retrieved from 〈http://www.gc.cuny.edu/ CUNY_GC/media/CUNY-Graduate-Center/PDF/Programs/Linguistics/Psycholinguistics-Cannot-Escape-Prosody.pdf〉 Frazier, L. (1987). Sentence processing: A tutorial review. In M. Coltheart (Ed.), Attention and performance XII: The psychology of reading (pp. 561–586). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Frazier, L., & Clifton, C. (1996). Construal. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Grice, P. (1989). Studies in the way of words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Jegerski, J., Keating, G. D., & VanPatten, B. (2016). On-line relative clause attachment strategy in heritage speakers of Spanish. International Journal of Bilingualism. Advance online publication. Kamide, Y., & Mitchell, D. C. (1997). Relative clause attachment: Nondeterminism in Japanese parsing. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 26(2), 247–254.  doi: 10.1023/A:1025017817290 Larson-Hall, J. (2010). A guide to doing statistics in second language research using SPSS. New York and London: Routledge. Mackey, A., & Gass, S. M. (2005). Second language research: Methodology and design. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Marian, V., Blumenfeld, H. K., & Kaushanskaya, M. (2007). The Language Experience and ­Proficiency Questionnaire (LEAP-Q): Assessing language profiles in bilinguals and multilinguals. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 50, 940–967.

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Teira, C., & Igoa, J. M. (2007). The prosody-syntax relationship in sentence processing. Anuario de Psicología, 38(1), 45–69.

Losing your case? Dative experiencers in Mexican Spanish and heritage speakers in the United States* Silvina Montrul

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign This chapter examines the gradual loss of dative case marking with dative experiencer verbs among Spanish heritage speakers of Mexican-American origin, first generation adult immigrants from Mexico, and two control groups of Spanish native speakers from Mexico tested in Mexico. According to the results of the written production task, heritage speakers and adult immigrants tend to omit the “a” with gustar-type verbs whereas the native speakers from Mexico do not omit a-marking in written production. Interestingly all bilingual groups, and even several native speakers from Mexico accepted ungrammatical sentences without a-marking in the acceptability judgment task. These results suggest that the erosion of dative case marking with dative experiencer subjects is a tendency already present in the monolingual variety. Although incomplete acquisition and attrition due to insufficient input and use may lead to an eventually different grammar in first and second generation immigrants, the results of this study support the claim that a language contact situation accelerates changes already in progress in monolingual varieties (Silva-Corvalán, 1994). ungrammatical sentences without a-marking in the acceptability judgment task

1.  Introduction Heritage speakers are early bilinguals who grow up exposed to a minority language under reduced input conditions, and they are typically dominant in the majority language. In recent years, an increasing body of research on the grammatical competence of adult heritage speakers has shown that heritage languages vary significantly

*  This material is based in part upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number BCS-0917593, ARRA. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or ­recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

doi 10.1075/sibil.49.06mon © 2016 John Benjamins Publishing Company

 Silvina Montrul

from the baseline, typically taken to be the grammars of first generation immigrants (i.e., bilinguals who are dominant in the minority language) or of monolingual native speakers in the country of origin. Heritage speakers with weaker command of the heritage language than of the majority language often display structural changes in several areas of syntax, morphology and other interfaces (Benmamoun, Montrul, & Polinsky, 2013a, 2013b; Montrul, 2008, 2016; Polinsky, 2006). Although structural influence from the dominant language may be at play in many cases, a key question is what other language acquisition factors drive these changes and contribute to their different grammars at the individual level: is it incomplete acquisition or attrition in childhood due to reduced use of the language (Montrul 2008), is it dialect leveling (Otheguy & Zentella, 2012), is it different input from the first generation due to attrition (Montrul & Sánchez-Walker, 2013; Pires & Rothman, 2009; Rothman, 2007), or is it a change already in progress in monolingual varieties accelerated in a language contact situation (Silva-Corvalán, 1994)? To answer some of these questions we turn to a study of case marking, which is a grammatical area very vulnerable to erosion and loss in heritage language grammars. Examples of case alternations and reassignment abound from Dyirbal (Schmidt, 1985), Estonian in Sweden (Maandi, 1989), Pennsylvania German (Huffines, 1989), Greek (Zobolou, 2011), Hindi (Moag, 1995, Montrul, Bhatt, & Bhatia, 2012), ­Finnish (­Larmouth, 1974), Spanish (Montrul, 2004, Montrul & Bowles, 2009), Russian (­Polinsky, 2006), and Korean (Song, O’Grady, Choo, & Lee, 1997), to name just a few examples. Although these languages vary significantly in the form, number, and types of cases they mark overtly, the general pattern observed in the grammars of the heritage speakers reported in all these studies is that of reduction and simplification of case distinctions. The present study asks whether some forms of case marking erode more than others, especially within a language. This study focuses on the gradual loss of dative case marking with psych verbs like gustar, as in A Juan le gusta la música ‘Juan likes music.’ The experiencer subject in these verbs (Juan) is obligatorily marked with dative case through the preposition “a” and a dative clitic (le). Sentences like *Juan le gusta la música, with no “a”; *A Juan gusta la música, with no dative clitic, and *Juan gusta la música, with no “a” and no dative clitic, are all ungrammatical. Previous studies have documented that Spanish heritage speakers omit the dative case marking with these verbs, producing and preferring nominative experiencers as in ­English (Dvorak  & Kirschner, 1982; Pascual y Cabo, 2013; Montrul, 2014; Prada Pérez  & ­Pascual y Cabo, 2011; Toribio & Nye, 2006). In this study, we compare the extent of erosion of dative marking with these verbs and with indirect objects, which represent distinct types of dative case. Standard generative theory divides case into two types, structural and nonstructural, which differ in their behavior and manner of licensing (Chomsky, 1981). Nominative and accusative case are typical instances of structural case because they



Losing your case? 

are licensed structurally by T or V, are often morphologically unmarked (i.e., phonologically null), and are independent of the thematic role of the DPs. Woolford (2006) proposes that nonstructural case further subdivides into two types, lexical case and inherent case, which also differ in their manner of licensing. The dative case of dative experiencers or dative subjects with psych predicates has been treated as lexical case because it is idiosyncratic; that is, related to a semantically coherent group of verbs with a particular thematic role (experiencer). The genitive is another example of ­lexical case. Inherent case is also nonstructural and semantically based (often linked to semantic roles), but unlike lexical case, it is relatively predictable and less idiosyncratic. Woolford (2006) argues that indirect objects and ergative subjects are marked with inherent case. The dative case of indirect objects is typically linked to goals and beneficiaries, and considered by many to be an inherent case rather than structural case. Butt (2006), however, claims that this assumption could be easily disputed because crosslinguistically goals and beneficiaries are realized as datives by default, and there is regularity and predictability in the realization of dative with indirect objects. In this study, I follow Butt and assume that indirect objects have structural dative case and that dative experiencers have lexical case. The theoretical distinction between structural and lexical case may be relevant to predict and interpret differential effects of erosion of case marking in heritage speakers. In this study, we focus on the loss and erosion of dative case in psych verbs in Spanish, an instance of lexical case. We show that lexical case is significantly more affected than structural case, as with indirect objects, in first and ­second generation Spanish-speakers in the United States. We also show that incipient loss of dative case with psych verbs – manifested with the omission of the “a” – is also evident in the monolingual variety of Spanish spoken in Mexico. This result is consistent with the view that, in addition to being perhaps partially explained by transfer from the ­majority language and incomplete language development or attrition in childhood, some aspects of heritage language development also find parallels in natural diachronic processes, and that the language contact situation may accelerate natural processes of development already present in the monolingual variety (­Silva-­Corvalán, 1994).

2.  Dative case in Spanish: Indirect objects and dative experiencers Spanish has accusative and dative case manifested in the pronoun system, by means of clitic pronouns (lo(s)/la(s) accusative, le(s) dative). Indirect objects are preceded by the preposition “a” and very often optionally doubled by a dative clitic, as in (1). In terms of word order, the indirect object can precede the direct object, as in (2a), although

 Silvina Montrul

Spanish does not have double object constructions like English, as in (2b), because the indirect object must be marked by dative case with the preposition “a” (it is a PP not an NP). (1) Alberto (le) dio consejos a su padre. “Alberto gave advice to his father.” (2) a. Alberto (le) dio a su padre consejos. Alberto  dat. gave to his father advice. b. *Alberto dio su padre consejos. “Alberto gave his father advice.” The dative case of indirect objects is assumed to be structural, checked in the functional category for indirect objects (AgrIOP), and differs from other types of dative case that are semantically and/or lexically conditioned, as with some psych verbs and inalienable possession constructions (see Bruhn de Garavito, 2003; Masullo, 1992). The latter are not the focus of our study. Psych verbs describe psychological states, and subcategorize for an experiencer and a theme argument. However, mapping between thematic roles and syntactic positions is different depending on the type of verb. Belletti and Rizzi (1988) identified three classes of psych verbs in Italian: (3) Class I: temere (fear) Gianni teme questo. “Gianni fears this.” (4) Class II preoccupare (worry) Questo preoccupa Gianni. “This worries Gianni.” (5)

Class III piacere (like) A Gianni piace questo/Questo piace a Gianni. to Gianni pleases this “Gianni likes this.”

Class I psych verbs are straightforward transitive structures: the experiencer is the subject and the theme is the object. Class II has the opposite mapping: the experiencer is the object and the theme is the subject, although this class also alternates like Class III. Class III verbs are unaccusative: the experiencer can appear in subject position but has the case marking of an indirect object (dative). The verb shows agreement with the theme in object position. A property unique to this class is that either one of the two arguments (experiencer or theme) can appear in pre-verbal or post-verbal position. Spanish is very similar to Italian, having the same three classes, but the focus of this study is only the third class, gustar type verbs, as in (6).



Losing your case? 

(6) A Juan le gusta la música/La música le gusta a Juan. to Juan dat. likes music “Juan likes music.” Unlike Italian, which is not a clitic-doubling language, Spanish dative experiencers must be marked with the preposition “a” and doubled by a dative clitic. All the sentences in (7), missing one or both elements, are ungrammatical. (7) a. *Juan le gusta la música b. *A Juan gusta la música. c. *Juan gusta la música. “Juan likes music.”

(no dative preposition) (no dative clitic) (nominative experiencer)

In Montrul (1996), I argued that the obligatory clitic of dative experiencers is related to the clitic-doubling nature of the Spanish language, and is a phenomenon more akin to subject clitic-doubling than to indirect object clitic-doubling. I proposed that indirect object clitics with agentive verbs were the overt realization of object agreement in AgrIOP whereas the dative clitics of dative experiencers were the overt realization of subject agreement in AgrSP, the position of subjects. The obligatory nature of dative experiencer clitics versus the optional nature of indirect object clitics followed from the assumption that dative experiencer clitics are subject agreement markers, rather than object clitics involved in a typical object doubling construction. If dative case with indirect objects is structural, it is assigned in the functional category for indirect objects (AgrIOP), where the clitics check case with the object. Dative experiencers can occupy AgrSP, but come lexically specified with dative marking through the preposition and the clitic. Accordingly, structural nominative, accusative and dative case would be assigned by a rule specified by UG, while the restricted class of dative subjects would be lexically specified and would have to be memorized.

3.  Previous studies Several recent studies have examined different properties of gustar-type verbs in ­Spanish as a heritage language (De Prada Pérez & Pascual y Cabo, 2011; Dvorak & Kirschner, 1982; Montrul & Bowles, 2010; Pascual y Cabo, 2013; Toribio & Nye, 2006), such as the potential omission of the preposition “a” preceding the experiencer, invariable agreement between the verb and the theme, omission of the dative clitic, and the use of a nominative-accusative case pattern altogether, as in ­English. Pascual y Cabo (2013), the most in depth study to date, also considered that ­gustar type-verbs may be reanalyzed as class II psych verbs, allowing both dative-­ nominative and nominative accusative patterns depending on agentivity. Pascual y Cabo tested two groups of S­ panish heritage speakers of Cuban descent, one with

 Silvina Montrul

i­ ntermediate and one with advanced proficiency in Spanish, a group of first generation immigrants (the b ­ ilingual control group), and a group of monolingual speakers born and raised in Cuba. He administered a written grammaticality judgment task including grammatical sentences with gustar verbs and different types of ungrammatical versions of the grammatical sentences that either lacked the preposition, the clitic, or had invariable 3rd person singular agreement. Pascual y Cabo found that the four groups were equally accepting of the grammatical sentences (A Pau le gustan las galletas “Pau likes cookies”), yet the four groups differed on their degree of rejection of the three ungrammatical sentences. The first generation immigrant (bilingual controls) did not differ from the monolingual controls on their ratings of ungrammatical sentences with no “a” or with no dative clitic, and the two groups rejected these two sentence types more categorically than the intermediate and advanced heritage speakers. So, there was a clear difference between the heritage speakers groups and bilingual and monolingual control groups in this study. While sentences with omission of the obligatory clitic received more native like ratings than sentences with missing “a”, all the US groups (bilingual controls and heritage speakers) accepted sentences with invariable 3rd person singular agreement more than the monolingual controls from Cuba. Because all groups accepted the grammatical cases to the same extent, while also accepting ungrammatical sentences to different extents, Pascual y Cabo concluded that these results cannot be taken as loss of dative case altogether, but of innovation due to language contact. While the monolingual speakers only accepted canonical and grammatical sentences, the bilingual speakers also accepted sentences with case and agreement innovations. There was much more indeterminacy and variability of responses in the heritage speakers with intermediate proficiency than in those with advanced proficiency in Spanish, when individual analyses were considered. The fact that the heritage speakers accepted grammatical and ungrammatical sentences suggests that at least some individuals entertain two grammatical analyses of the same sentences, one with nominative case and one with dative case, which is not the case in the monolingual variety tested in Pascual y Cabo’s study. Interestingly, similar acceptance of grammatical dative experiencers and ungrammatical nominative experiencers has been attested in the L2 acquisition of Spanish by intermediate learners whose native language is English (Montrul, 1997), and the fact that the heritage speakers with lower proficiency tended to accept the ungrammatical sentences more readily than the advanced proficiency heritage speakers and the bilingual control group suggests that transfer from English and incomplete acquisition of the heritage language may underlie the patterns observed in the intermediate proficiency heritage speakers. Since the Cuban community in Florida is well established, will similar patterns obtain with Spanish speakers of other regions in the United States, such as speakers of Mexican Spanish?



Losing your case? 

4.  Present study This study examined the potential vulnerability of case marking in Mexican-­American heritage speakers, especially the role of the preposition “a”, which can also be a differential object marker with some direct objects (see Montrul, 2014 and Montrul, Bhatt, & Girju, 2015). The results discussed here were conducted as part of a larger study comparing Hindi, Romanian and Spanish as heritage languages in the United States using production, comprehension and judgments tasks. In this study, we focus on the potential erosion of two types of dative case in Spanish – structural and lexical – as manifested with indirect objects and dative experiencer psych verbs. Because our findings indicate incipient erosion of lexical dative marking in the monolingual and the bilingual variety, the purpose of this study is to link the development of heritage languages with similar diachronic developments in Spanish and other languages. The erosion of case systems is common in the history of languages: Latin had a full-fledged case system compared to the Romance languages derived from it. Similarly, Old English was more heavily inflected than present day English. In fact, according to Lightfoot (1991), Old English had a three way distinction (nominative, accusative, dative) at the morphological and structural levels. By the Middle English period, starting with the case ending of nouns and continuing with pronouns (which were the last ones to disappear), dative case as a syntactic and morphological entity was dropped from the language. Interestingly, English used to have verbs like gustar in Spanish, as in (8). (8) am cynge licodon peran the-dat. king-dat. like pears-nom. “The king liked pears”

Old English

When dative case lost its function, by the Middle English period, these structures were reanalyzed as transitive structures with nominative subjects and accusative objects. Lightfoot (1991) explains that the demise of dative experiencers was very gradual and the two grammars (one with a lexical entry with inherent dative case, one with nominative case) co-existed in the mental representation of speakers for many years leading to some type of internalized diglossia (see Amaral & Roeper, 2014). In addition to developing nominative experiencers (The king likes pears), the loss of dative case in English led to the development of a series of structures that were ungrammatical in Old English, such as exceptional case marking (Mary believes John to be a good friend), preposition stranding (What is that book about?), prepositional passives (This bed was slept in), double object constructions (John gave Mary a present) and indirect passives (Mary was given a present). Although Latin had morphological and syntactic case, Spanish does not have morphological case endings (suffixes) for nouns. As stated earlier, case distinctions

 Silvina Montrul

are still present in the pronoun system. Some direct object, indirect objects and dative experiencer subjects are all marked with the preposition “a,” an instance of dative case (or differential object marking when it appears with direct objects). Indirect objects can optionally be doubled by a dative clitic while dative experiencers must be doubled by a dative clitic. Unlike in English, exceptional case marking, preposition stranding, prepositional passives, double object constructions and indirect passives are not grammatical in Spanish, as shown in (9). (9) a. *María cree Juan ser un buen amigo (ECM) “Mary believes John to be a good friend.” b. *¿Qué es ese libro sobre? (preposition stranding) “What is that book about?” c. *Esta cama fue dormida en. (prepositional passive) “This bed was slept in.” d. *Juan dio María un regalo (double object) “John gave Mary a present.” e. *María fue dada un regalo (indirect passive) “Mary was given a present.” According to MacWhorter (2007) and Meisel, Elsig and Rinke (2013) diachronic language change takes place in bilingual and multilingual contexts where there is language contact at the community and individual level. But as Lightfoot (in press) reminds us, multilingualism or language contact would not be able to account for diachronic changes in Icelandic, which has been isolated for a long time, or Brazilian Portuguese, which has also been undergoing significant language change in the last century. In fact, Silva-Corvalán (1994), in discussing and explaining patterns of language change in the Spanish of Los Angeles, defends the view that language changes under both circumstances, in both monolingual and bilingual or multilingual communities. Silva-Corvalán actually claims that many of the natural changes already present in monolingual varieties are magnified and accelerated in a language contact situation. Her results show that the changes observed with the extension of the copula estar to adjectival contexts typically requiring ser are an example of a change that is already taking place in monolingual varieties of Spanish. Under this view, at least some structural changes observed in heritage language grammars are not innovations or unusual patterns, but part and parcel of the normal process of language evolution. In this study, we consider whether a similar explanation may be extended to the incipient erosion of dative case marking with gustar-type verbs in Spanish in contact with English, at the individual level. Because indirect objects receive case by rule whereas dative experiencers of gustar type verbs must be lexically specified and learned by memory, the prediction is that if dative case is eroded it will start with the lexically motivated cases and not with the structural cases. And because the ­reanalysis of dative experiencer



Losing your case? 

subjects into ­nominative is a common phenomenon in the historical development of many languages (Eythórsson, 2000), we want to establish whether the co-existence of dative experiencers with and without dative case marking in some bilingual grammars is also already present to a lesser extent in monolingual speakers who, unlike heritage speakers and first generation immigrants, do not live in a language contact situation. Our hypothesis is also motivated by findings of a recent study by Montrul et al. (2012) for Hindi as a heritage language. In this study, lexical case (as in dative subjects and specific direct objects) and inherent cases (ergative case in the agent of past perfective predicates) were significantly more eroded than structural dative case with indirect objects.

4.1  P  articipants A total of 77 first- and second-generation immigrants of Mexican origin in the United States were recruited and tested in the central Illinois and Chicago areas, in addition to 41 Spanish native speakers in Northern Mexico (Guanajuato). The participants were divided into five groups: simultaneous bilingual heritage speakers, sequential bilingual heritage speakers, first generation adult immigrants, younger Mexican native speakers and older Mexican native speakers. All the participants completed an extensive language background questionnaire with sixty-five questions about their bilingual language history, patterns of language use along their lifespan and during schooling, self-ratings about their Spanish and English skills, attitudes toward improving Spanish, etc. To complement self-ratings, which are not usually reliable proficiency measures (Flege, Mackay, & Piske, 2002), all participants completed parts of standardized written proficiency tests in Spanish (DELE and MLA), consisting of a cloze passage with 20 blanks and 30 multiple choice questions about vocabulary and collocations. The total maximum of points in this task was 50. This is the same task used in several previous studies of Spanish heritage speakers (Montrul, Foote, & Perpiñán, 2008). The group of simultaneous bilingual heritage speakers (n = 32) consisted of young adults (21 female, 11 male) between the ages of 18 and 28 (mean 20.6), all born to Mexican parents (mother and father) and residing in the United States. They were exposed to Spanish since birth and to English between birth and age 5 (mean 3.8). One of them had completed college and the rest were college students at a large university in the United States. All of them attended elementary school in the United States. Most were schooled exclusively in English and 34.4% received some Spanish instruction through a bilingual program. All of them attended middle school and high School in the United States, and English was the main language of instruction. Eighty percent had instruction in Spanish as a foreign language in middle school and high school.

 Silvina Montrul

Another group was the sequential bilingual heritage speakers (n = 24). These heritage speakers were also young adults (13 female, 11 male) between the ages of 19 and 29 (mean 23.6), all born in Mexico to Mexican parents. They immigrated with their parents to the United States between the ages of 5 and 13. They were exposed to ­Spanish since birth and to English as a second language between age 5 and 13 (mean 6.79). Ninety-five percent were college students at a large university in the United States. All of them reported being exposed to Spanish before age 5, the only language used at home. Except for two, all others in this group of sequential bilinguals attended elementary school in the United States (and six also in Mexico since they moved in childhood). Only 4 (16.7%) received some Spanish instruction in elementary school. All of them attended middle school and high school in the United States, and English was the main language of instruction. They all had Spanish as a foreign language in high school. The third bilingual group were first generation adult immigrants (n = 21). The adult immigrants were between the ages of 40 and 58 (mean 42.57) and were all from Mexico (8 male, 12 female). They immigrated to the United States between the ages of 18 and 47 and had lived 19 years on average in the United States (range 6–35 years). Their mean age of acquisition of English was 20.76 years (range 18–50). They had all received schooling in Mexico. On all self-rating measures, Spanish was their stronger language and English was their weaker language. The study included two groups of monolingual native speakers from Mexico: younger Mexican native speakers (n = 20) and older Mexican native speakers (n = 21). The young adult native speakers (7 male, 13 female) ages 18–25 (mean 21.05) were attending the Universidad de Guanajuato and were tested as comparison group for the young adult heritage speakers. Spanish was their native language and they spoke it in their daily life. They knew some English as a second language, with age of acquisition ranging from 12 to 24 years. The older adult native speakers (7 male, 14 female) were recruited in Guanajuato as comparison group to the first generation immigrants. They ranged in age between 40 and 61 years (mean 46.9). Spanish was their native language and they used it every day. Some had minimal knowledge of English. Table 1 describes basic information about the five Spanish-speaking groups ­collected from an extensive language background questionnaire and a written test of proficiency in Spanish. The table includes information about age at time of testing, age of acquisition of Spanish (AoA Spanish), age of acquisition of English (AoA E ­ nglish), length of residence in the United States (LOR US), length of residence in Mexico (LOR Mexico), self-ratings in English (scale from 1 to 5, where 5 = native ­ability), self-rating is Spanish, self-ratings by skill (listening, speaking, reading, writing) in each language, mean, standard deviation and range on the written proficiency test, as well as information about what language they prefer to speak (Spanish, E ­ nglish, both, it depends).



Losing your case? 

Table 1.  Information about the Spanish-speaking participants United States groups

Mexico groups

Simultaneous ­bilingual HSs

Sequential ­bilingual HSs

Adult ­immigrants

Younger ­native s­ peakers

Older native speakers

N

32

24

21

20

21

age at testing

20.6

23.6

42.5

21.5

46.9

AoA Spanish

at birth

at birth

at birth

at birth

at birth

AoA English

3.81

6.7

20.7

12.5

18.7

LOR US (years)

20.6

16.7

19.5

–

–

LOR Mexico

–

6.8

22.5

21.5

46.9

Spanish feels like L1

46.9%

62.5%

100%

100%

100%

Spanish feels like L2

53.1%

37.5%

self-rating English (scale 1–5)

4.7

4.7

3.4

2.4

1.3

self-rating Spanish (scale 1–5)

4.1

4.4

4.9

5

5

English listening

4.9

4.6

3.4

2.7

1.5

English speaking

4.7

4.5

3.3

2.3

1.4

English reading

4.7

4.5

3.2

2.5

1.6

English writing

4.7

4.3

2.8

2.6

1.3

Spanish listening

4.5

4.4

5

5

5

Spanish speaking

3.9

4.1

5

5

5

Spanish reading

4.0

4.2

4.9

5

5

Spanish writing

3.3

3.6

4.9

5

5

Spanish Written mean

38.18

38.54

41.47

45.45

45.85

Proficiency Test SD

8.06

8.21

8.44

2.99

2.55

(max = 50)

13–49

13–49

15–49

39–50

41–50

range

The heritage speakers rated their English higher than their Spanish, while the adult immigrants and the Mexican native speakers (younger and older) rated their Spanish higher than their English. The five groups differed statistically on their self-ratings in English (F(4,113) = 108.2, p < 0.0001), their self-ratings of Spanish (F(4,113) = 13.89, p < 0.0001), and on the written Spanish proficiency test (F(4,113) = 6.78, p 75%). Furthermore, in a number of cases, including the one below, respondents expressed outright disregard for the needs of HLLs. (Name of book) does not address the needs of HL but it does a good job at the beginning level where the majority of our students take the (name of language) as general language requirement and where we have less heritage learners (15%) than at more advanced levels. (Carreira, 2014: 28)

This comment throws into high relief three interrelated issues that undercut language learning for HLLs in mixed classes, as currently configured. First, for the most part, mixed classes are primarily oriented toward L2Ls, not HLLs (Carreira, 2014). Second, there is a dearth of pedagogical materials for the mixed context. As a result, most mixed classes employ L2 textbooks. Many of these textbooks include HL-learner annotations; but this is not enough. Textbooks, assessment tools, and curricula specifically designed for mixed contexts are needed. And third, there is little understanding, let alone consensus, regarding best practices for teaching HLLs and L2Ls together. It is important to note that these and other issues surrounding mixed classes are present in all programs that teach HLLs, regardless of whether or not they have an HL track. This is because even programs with HL courses at the introductory and intermediate levels contend with such issues at the point in the curriculum where the HL and L2 tracks come together. In reference to that point, Valdés (1997, p. 12) observes that the expectation is that HLLs will “pass undetected as ‘real’ Spanish majors”, which is to say that the expectation is that HLLs will conform to traditional instructional practices, rather than expecting those practices to change to conform to the needs of HLLs. What would it take to make mixed classes responsive to the needs of HLLs, along with those of L2Ls? As a prerequisite to answering this question, the next section ­compares such needs.



A general framework and supporting strategies for teaching mixed classes 

3.  Pedagogically significant differences between HLLs and L2Ls 3.1  L  inguistic differences HLLs’ early language learning experiences in a naturalistic setting (mostly at home), translate into significant linguistic advantages, including more native-like phonological perception and production (Au, Knightly, Jun, & Oh, 2002; Knightly, Jun, & Au, 2003) and a facility with the core aspects of syntax acquired early in life (Montrul, Foote, & Perpiñán, 2008). However, no such advantage is observed with regard to other aspects of linguistic knowledge, in particular, those acquired later in life (­ Montrul, 2012a, b). In terms of functional abilities, many Spanish HLLs can understand and participate in everyday conversations. So much so that in a national survey of college HLLs, a significant majority of Spanish-speakers (68%) rated their listening skills as advanced or native like and a resounding majority (82%) rated their speaking skills in the range of intermediate and above (Carreira & Kagan, 2011).1 Because these competencies lie beyond the reach of most L2Ls, it is widely accepted that HLLs and L2Ls are best taught in separate classes, particularly at the lower levels of instruction, where the gap between the two populations is most pronounced. HLLs who, for any number of reasons, end up in mixed classes at the lower levels of instruction, face daunting challenges, not the least of which include being seen as out to get an easy “A,” as being intimidating to L2Ls and disruptive to the workflow of the class, as well as being inauthentic Latinos for not knowing Spanish (Beaudrie, 2009; Beaudrie & Ducar, 2005; Carreira & Beeman, 2014; Potowski, 2002). Equally ­problematic, the lower levels of instruction typically do not provide the type of instruction that HLLs need to expand their functional skills. Kagan and Dillon (2009) argue that such skills are best developed through macrobased (top-down) teaching. Focused on the big picture, macro-based approaches are discourse based and teach grammar and vocabulary as dictated by function or context (Celce-Murcia & Olshtain, 2000; Kagan & Dillon, 2001). By contrast, micro-based (bottom-up) approaches progress from smaller, simpler units of knowledge, such as grammar and vocabulary, to the discourse level. In foreign language departments, micro-based approaches are more common at the lower levels of instruction because they give less proficient learners the vocabulary and grammar they need to access authentic materials and engage in authentic tasks. Macro-based approaches are more common at the advanced levels, because at such levels learners have the functional

.  These are self-evaluated levels of ability, and for this reason may be inflated, but even taking this into consideration, listening and speaking skills for these students are clearly higher than for the typical L2 student. It is also important to remember that HLLs’ skills can vary greatly, depending on a number of factors. For a discussion of such factors (see Montrul, 2012a).

 Maria M. Carreira

skills to engage in complex and authentic activities from the outset of instruction. Because most HLLs can engage in authentic, everyday activities, it follows that they should be taught using macro-based practices. (see Carreira, forthcoming, 2016) This is not to say that HLLs should not receive explicit language instruction. Research indicates that they benefit from such instruction (Bowles, 2011; Montrul & Bowles, 2010; Potowski, Jegerski, & Morgan-Short, 2009). As such, the question is not whether to include form-focused instruction in HL teaching, but rather when/ how to include it. In keeping with a macro-based approach, authentic materials and tasks should occupy center stage from the beginning of instruction, with form-focused instruction serving a supporting role.2 Because foreign language courses at the advanced levels tend to be macro-based, they are a better fit for HLLs than lower-level courses, which are usually micro-based. However, advanced-level courses are far from perfect. Even highly proficient HLLs are likely to encounter difficulties related to (1) academic Spanish; (2) the Latino achievement gap; and (3) focus-formed instruction. Regarding academic Spanish, HLLs are likely to lag behind L2Ls, both in terms of their ability to access this register and to use it in the classroom context (Beaudrie, Ducar, & Potowski, 2014). This is because HLLs’ main exposure to Spanish comes from the home, primarily in the form of aural, informal language. By contrast, L2Ls learn Spanish in the classroom context, which offers structured exposure to the academic language, including the written registers. Because academic Spanish is both a tool and a goal of instruction at the advanced levels, HLLs are at a significant disadvantage, relative to L2Ls. This is particularly true as it pertains to orthography and accentuation, knowledge of which are a prerequisite for performing well at the advanced levels. It is also true as it pertains to abilities associated with the Advanced and Superior proficiency ratings of the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines (OPI). Such abilities include sustaining a conversation outside the realm of the autobiographical and familiar, communicating in paragraph-style oral discourse, achieving textual cohesion, and using academic vocabulary (Martin, Swender, & Rivera-Martinez, 2013). Accustomed to using Spanish in the context of the home, HLLs are vastly more practiced at discussing familiar, everyday experiences and speaking about themselves, than at using academic Spanish. The opposite is true for L2Ls.

.  It bears noting that both approaches are compatible with form-focused instruction, but differ with the regard to the role or place of such instruction. In micro-based approaches form-focused instruction sustains and drives the progression toward more complex and discourse-based uses of language. In macro-based approaches form-focused instruction follows or emerges from discourse-based activities.



A general framework and supporting strategies for teaching mixed classes 

Related to this issue is the so-called Latino achievement gap, i.e. the lower academic performance of Latino students at all levels of instruction, relative to their non-Latino peers. The factors behind the Latino achievement gap are many and too complex to discuss here. Suffice it to say that they include lower levels of parental education, poverty, frequent relocation, and lack of access to high quality schools (Carreira & B ­ eeman, 2014). Crucially, from the point of view of teaching Spanish in mixed classes, this means that some Latino HLLs may be less prepared than their non-Latino counterparts to engage in the kind of work associated with the advanced levels of instruction, particularly composition and literature courses. Such students may find themselves struggling with academic reading and writing assignments not so much because they lack functional skills in Spanish but because they lack critical academic tools such as effective research skills, learning strategies, and reading and writing abilities.

3.2  Differences in orientation to form-focused instruction Form-focused instruction can also create problems for HLLs. Beaudrie (2009) notes that HLLs are often confused by explicit grammar explanations, which leads ­Beaudrie, Ducar, and Potowski (2014, p. 163) to posit that “teaching methodologies that require manipulating grammar rules may therefore have negative results in performance and methodologies”. In mixed classes, the problem is compounded by the fact that HLLs tend to enter the language learning sequence somewhere beyond the first semester of study, by which time L2Ls have developed some measure of disciplinary literacy, the knowledge and skills associated with particular school subjects (Moje, 2008; ­Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008). In the foreign languages, disciplinary literacy includes knowledge of grammatical terminology, as well as the ability to derive benefit from common pedagogical interventions such as task-based activities and grammar explanations and drills. HLLs’ relative lack of disciplinary literacy in the foreign languages can put them at a disadvantage, relative to L2Ls in mixed classes. On this point, Torres (2013) found significant differences between HLLs and L2Ls in how they responded to a task-based pedagogical intervention targetting the subjunctive that engaged praticipants in describing the behavior of students in a university dorm in adjectival clauses through simple and complex tasks. In keeping with the intended purpose of this activity, the L2Ls focused on form during the task and recognized that the task presented contrasting forms of the subjunctive and indicative. In contrast, the HLLs were oriented primarily to the content of the task – that is, they were concerned with interpreting the meaning of the prompts and reacting as called for in an authentic situation. Put differently, HLLs have a performative orientation with regard to communicative classroom activities, which is to say that they “…adopt a functional orientation to

 Maria M. Carreira

communication and meaning. They focus more on the functions performed through communication…What is important …is the ability to perform” (Canagarajah, 2013, p. 92). In naturalistic contexts, such as those in which HLLs come to learn and use their HL, this orientation is highly effective. This is not the case in language classes that presuppose a certain measure of disciplinary literacy and that are oriented towards developing explicit knowledge of the target language, grammatical accurary, and a facility in the academic registers.

3.3  S ocio-affective differences He (2006, p. 7) argues that identity is “the centerpiece rather than the background of HL development”. Taking a similar perspective, Hornberger and Wang (2008, p. 27) define HLLs as individuals who “have familial or ancestral ties to a particular language and who exert their agency in determining whether or not they are HLLs of that HL and HC” (heritage culture). A survey of HLLs by Carreira and Kagan (2011) bears out the central importance occupied by issues of identity and belonging. Survey respondents reported that their primary reason for studying their home language in college are, first, to learn about their cultural and linguistic roots and, second, to communicate with family and friends in the United States. To meet these goals, Carreira and Kagan (2011) recommend a community-based curriculum, with materials and activities that answer to the experiences of HLLs in the U.S. Similarly, Potowski (2012) advocates for a Spanish HL curriculum that includes the kind of scholarship associated with Latino studies, which is focused primarily on the U.S. Latino experience. A significant part of this experience involves grappling with ambivalence and insecurities surrounding the HL. For example, many U.S. Spanish speakers, including HLLs, struggle to reconcile negative societal ideologies about their own variety of Spanish, with the prestige enjoyed by Spanish as a major world language and a marketable asset (Ducar, 2012; Leeman, 2012). To address these and other concerns, advocates of the Critical Approach propose teaching HLLs about the functions, distribution, and evaluation of dialects and raising awareness of language, power, and social inclusion (Fairclough, 2005; Leeman, 2005; Martinez, 2003; Webb & Miller, 2000). In this regard, Fairclough (2005) perceptively notes that HL learning is not just about filling in grammatical knowledge; it is also about mastering a second ­variant (i.e. the standard language), with all of the emotional issues that entails. While formfocused instruction appears to be an effective approach for addressing grammatical gaps resulting from incomplete acquisition, Fairclough argues that it is not as effective at teaching a second variant. For that purpose, she recommends validating students’ home dialect first and then using contrastive analysis to point out differences between that dialect and the language of instruction (see also Beaudrie et al., 2014).



A general framework and supporting strategies for teaching mixed classes 

By way of summary, Table 1 lists key differences between HLLs and L2Ls aspects that bear on teaching Spanish in mixed classes. Table 1.  Comparative linguistic profile HLLs and L2Ls Domains HLLs

L2Ls

Language Have relatively strong oracy skills (speaking and listening), including native-like pronunciation.

Have relatively strong literacy skills (reading and writing), including orthography and accentuation.

Are most familiar with the informal registers, including home vocabulary.

Are most familiar with the formal registers, including academic vocabulary.

Are accustomed to making spontaneous use of language.

Are accustomed to rehearsed language.

Have implicit knowledge of Spanish and are able to engage in every day conversations.

Have explicit knowledge of Spanish, including grammatical terminology and the routines of language learning.

May speak a non-standard, stigmatized variant of Spanish. Have limited familiarity with the standard language.

Are only, or mostly, familiar with standard/academic Spanish.

Socioaffective

Have a family connection to the language Do not have a family connection to and and the culture and seek personal do not define themselves in terms of the identity through this connection. target language or culture.

Learning

Relative to non-Latinos, are more likely to have academic deficiencies that interfere with classroom learning.

May or may not have academic deficiencies.

Naturally focus on content and meaning, Focus on making form-meaning to the neglect of form-meaning connections. connections. Have low levels of disciplinary literacy, relative to their functional skills in the target language.

Have high levels of disciplinary literacy, relative to their functional skills in the target language.

An important observation that emerges from the above is that HLLs and L2Ls have complimentary skills and experiences vis-à-vis the target language and culture. Put differently, each type of learner knows something that the other type would benefit from learning. In mixed classes, this important fact is frequently obscured by a subtractive view of the skills that HLLs bring to the study of Spanish. Such a view inevitably leads to a search for solutions premised on “fixing” the HLL. The next section discusses an alternative view: one which looks to enhance learning for both types of learners through grouping strategies that serve two overarching purposes; to leverage the complimentary skills of HLLs and L2Ls for reciprocal learning, and to render instruction meaningful and valuable for each type of learner.

 Maria M. Carreira

4.  Flexible grouping 4.1  L  everaging learners’ complimentary skills through reciprocal learning Emerging research sheds light on an effective way to take advantage of the complementary strengths of HLLs and L2Ls in mixed classes. Using an information gap activity, Bowles (2011) designed a series of tasks for HLL and L2L dyads (paired interactions involving HLLs and L2Ls). Some tasks called for spontaneous use of the target language and involved home vocabulary. These were relatively easy for HLLs but hard for L2Ls. Other tasks called for explicit linguistic knowledge and involved writing. These were hard for HLLs but easy for L2Ls. The learners were made responsible for completing the tasks together, relying on each other for help. HLLs leaned on L2Ls for issues of spelling and accentuation and L2Ls relied on HLLs’ intuitive knowledge of the target language for resolving issues of usage. This approach proved effective at making the instructional task fruitful for both types of learners. Not only that, but it gave the learners a keen awareness of their own particular strengths and weaknesses, as well as those of their partner. The positive attitudes generated by this approach may account for an important difference between this study and Potowski (2002), which found that HLLs and L2Ls both felt ill-at ease in mixed classes – L2Ls were intimidated by the oral proficiency of the HLLs, and the HLLs were intimidated by the grammatical knowledge of the L2Ls. Thus, it seems that a critical feature of successful mixed activities is that they instill a sense of individual and collective empowerment through mutually beneficial partnerships between HLLs and L2Ls. In keeping with this idea, the checklist below can guide the design of activities for HLL-L2L dyads: 1. Identify the goal of the instructional task (e.g. practicing the conjugation of irregular verbs, using a grammar feature in semi-spontaneous conversation, etc.). 2. Determine which learner will find this task more challenging (see Table 1). Assign this task to that learner. 3. Incorporate an additional task to challenge the other learner. The cloze (fill-in the blanks) activity below, a staple of foreign language textbooks, serves to illustrate this proposal. The basic task‒deciding between the preterit and the imperfect‒should be assigned to the L2L because he/she will find it more challenging than the HLL, especially if done orally, in a quasi-spontaneous manner. To challenge the HLL, he/she should be asked to write the answer, insuring correct spelling and accentuation.



A general framework and supporting strategies for teaching mixed classes 

_______________ (saber) que en Pamplona se _______________ (dejar) correr a los toros por la calle durante las fiestas de San Fermín. Sin embargo, no lo _______________ (poder) creer cuando ________________ (leer) lo que ___________________ (haber pasado). Un turista _______________ (morir) mientras _______________ (participar) en la fiesta pamplonesa.  (Lunn & DeCesaris, 2007: 22)

In short, the idea with HLL-L2L dyads is to use the complimentary skills of the learners to create opportunities for reciprocal learning. Applied to cultural topics, this strategy makes it possible to explore cultural practices and beliefs from the vantage points of HLLs and L2Ls. Akin to using a contrastive analysis approach to teach dialectal differences, this technique engages learners in comparing cultural practices and beliefs, without passing judgment. The rich discussions likely to result from this approach speak to the possibilities that mixed classes present for leveraging the perspectives and experiences of HLLs and L2Ls to develop intercultural understanding. The thrust of this approach can be illustrated using a staple of L2 textbooks – a reading about the food and eating customs of the Spanish-speaking world. Assuming such a reading about Mexico, the discussion prompts below are designed to engage both types of learners and use their collective insights to arrive at a deeper understanding of the topic.33 a. One thing that many people in the United States don’t realize about Latin ­American cuisine is… b. One thing that many Spanish-speakers abroad (or U.S. Latinos) don’t realize about American cuisine is… Follow up activities can include expanding the original reading by incorporating the information gathered or creating a menu for a hybrid meal that blends the cooking and eating practices of the Spanish-speaking world and the U.S. Readings and other materials more closely associated with HL instruction can also be used this way in a mixed class. The well-known short story by Sandra ­Cisneros serves by way of example. Covering issues that are of interest to HLLs, such as m ­ arriage and gender roles in Mexico and the U.S. and written in a language that is accessible to HL learners, this story is a staple of Spanish HL classes. Not so for mixed classes, which, as discussed earlier are oriented toward L2Ls. As a result, “HL materials” (i.e. materials traditionally associated with HL teaching) are often excluded from mixed classes, to the detriment of both types of learners. HLLs miss out on the opportunity to work .  Though written in English, these and other prompts in this paper would be given in Spanish to students.

 Maria M. Carreira

with the kinds of materials that are best suited to their learning needs, and L2Ls miss out on opportunities to explore issues that are of particular relevance in the U.S. They key to using “HL materials” in mixed classes is to address issues of engagement and accessibility pertaining to L2Ls. The prompts below illustrate how to address issues of engagement with a reading like “My Name,” using a contrastive analysis approach (issues of accessibility will be addressed later). a. Regarding marriage, Latinos sometimes think that mainstream Americans are _________________________. b. Regarding marriage, mainstream Americans sometimes think that Latinos are _________________________. These prompts aim to promote a discussion about the stereotypes that Latinos and mainstream Americans have about each other and, in the process, to foster a deeper understanding of the beliefs and practices of these cultures. This is in line with ACTFL’s Comparisons standard: As students learn a new language and culture, they develop insight into their own language and culture, thus providing them with a deeper understanding of how language works and how cultures reflect the perspectives, practices, and products of the people who speak that language.  (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, n.d., p. 3)

In sum, one key strategy for mixed classes is to create opportunities for reciprocal learning by taking advantage of the complementary strengths of HLLs and L2Ls, in the area of language as well as culture.

4.2  S eparating the two types of learners to address issues of access and engagement Valuable as it is to have HLLs and L2Ls working together, mixed classes should also create opportunities for the two populations of learners to work separately from each other. The following comment speaks to the importance of this for HLLs. In high school I was one of very few Latinos. My friend and I were called the “Mexican kids”. This was always funny to me because my Dad’s family always told me I was American. In school I was labeled Mexican, but to the Mexicans, I am an American….It’s this weird duality in which you are stuck in the middle. Latinos are often told that they are not Americans but also that they are not connected to their heritage. You take pride in both cultures and learn to deal with the rejection….That’s why you seek out other people like yourself. Socializing with people who share a common experience helps you deal with this experience (emphasis added). (Carreira & Beeman, 2014, p. 88)



A general framework and supporting strategies for teaching mixed classes 

This comment dovetails with Agnes He’s view of identity as the centerpiece of HL development and underscores the importance of creating HLL-only niches in mixed classes to provide a safe and comforting environment for HLLs to engage with these issues. Separating HLLs also proves useful for tackling a particularly vexing problem: their seeming inability to grasp grammar explanations and derive benefit from formfocused instructional tasks. Mini-lessons that teach grammatical terminology and that draw HLLs’ attention to form-meaning connections can help correct this problem. Taking the cloze activity described earlier by way of example, a mini-lesson prior to the activity might involve familiarizing HLLs with the terms “preterit” and “imperfect”, explaining the types of difficulties that these forms present, and making explicit the learning goals of this activity (including the form-meaning connections therein). Crucially, this type of intervention renders it possible for HLLs to make sense of and participate in form-focused instructional tasks, alongside L2Ls. Following a similar approach with L2Ls, mini-lessons can target authentic materials and tasks that present extra difficulties for them. “My graduation speech” by Tato Laviera 〈http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/nyregion/13poemweb.html〉 serves by way of example. This poem uses Spanglish and non-standard Spanish to represent the author’s linguistic insecurities and his struggles to find identity. Though largely accessible to HLLs, “My graduation speech” can prove challenging, if not inaccessible, to L2Ls without pre-reading instruction on certain aspects of language and culture. Mini-lessons can provide this instruction, thereby rending it possible for L2Ls to participate in activities alongside HLLs. These examples call attention to the fact that HLLs and L2Ls have different prescribed entry points to readings and form-focused instruction. Making strategic use of this difference, instructors can separate the two groups, offering pre-reading instruction to L2Ls while HLLs take a first stab at the reading on their own. Once this minilesson is done, L2Ls can work on the reading on their own, while the instructor offers a mini-lesson to the HLLs on instructional issues of relevance to them (for example, to study Spanish punctuation and capitalization and to compare standard non-standard features of Spanish, and, in the affective realm, to discuss the rejection experienced by Laviera). Later, both populations can come together to engage in common instructional activities, such as those involving collaborative/reciprocal learning. In short, the idea behind mini-lessons is to give HLLs and L2Ls what they need to derive benefit from all instructional activities and to be able to work together. For HLLs, this often involves helping them make sense of form-focused instruction and, in some cases, targeting deficiencies related to the Latino achievement gap. For L2Ls, this typically involves helping them work with authentic materials. By way of summary, Table 2 lists the main ideas behind the two grouping strategies presented. Together, these strategies support two overarching goals for mixed classes: (1) creating a sense of community where both HL and L2 learners, have i­mportant

 Maria M. Carreira

contributions to make to the class; and (2) addressing issues of access and engagement, so that both types of learners can benefit from the instructional activities of the class and work together. Table 2.  Flexible grouping strategies for mixed classes The language and learning ­dimensions

The socio-cultural dimension

Homogeneous groups (i.e. HLL-only or L2L-only)

For teacher-led mini lessons, for example, to teach grammatical terminology to HLLs and to provide scaffolding for L2Ls for authentic tasks.

To give HLLs opportunities to discuss issues of relevance among themselves, such as identity, rejection, biculturalism, etc.

Mixed groups (i.e. HLL-L2L dyads, and other mixed configurations)

For reciprocal learning, by taking advantage of HLL’s and L2Ls’ complimentary strengths and needs.

To compare the perspectives and practices of Spanish speakers and mainstream Americans, following a contrastive analysis approach.

Operationalizing this proposal requires the use of specialized tools and strategies, as well as adopting an instructional orientation that is focused on the big ideas. The next section offers an overview of the tools and strategies. Following that, the final section of this chapter considers the instructional orientation.

5.  Tools and strategies for mixed classes This section presents four instructional tools that support the proposed use of flexible grouping strategies for mixed classes, namely agendas, centers, the text-to-self connection, and the KWL chart. For additional tools, readers should consult the literature on Differentiated Teaching, in particular Tomlinson (2003, 2009) and Carreira (2011), as well as the literature on the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP), in particular, Echevarría, Vogt and Short (2013).

5.1  A  gendas A learning agenda is a list of exercises or activities that must be completed during a certain period of time. Creating a learning agenda can be as simple as bundling together all homework assignments for a unit of study, rather than assigning them in a piecemeal fashion, from one day to the next. Learning agendas are valuable in highly diverse classes because they make it possible for students to pace themselves, moving quickly through accessible activities and slowing down with more challenging ones to seek help and avail themselves



A general framework and supporting strategies for teaching mixed classes 

of ­additional resources, as needed. In the proposed model, agendas help support the kinds of instructional activities associated with homogeneous groups (see Table 2) by providing purposeful work for one type of learner while the other type meets with the instructor for a mini-lesson. Agendas can be customized to meet the needs of different learners. For example, a customized agenda for HLLs in a mixed class might follow a macro-based approach, while one for L2Ls might be micro-based. With customized agendas, it is important to strive to equalize the amount of work and level of difficulty such that all students feel that they are being treated fairly. Because this can prove rather daunting, customizing is not recommended for instructors that are new to the use of agendas.

5.2  Centers Centers are designated areas that contain materials and activities for student use. They can have a physical location, as in a corner of a classroom, or they can occupy a virtual space, such as in a course’s web page. Well-designed centers include a variety of activities and exercises for a range of levels, offer clear instructions, and employ a recordkeeping system to keep track of the work accomplished by students. In mixed classes, centers should include resources that address the learning needs of each type of learner. For example, they should direct HLLs to resources that are likely to prove useful from the point of view of addressing their socio-affective needs, as well as include activities to help them follow and participate in form-focused instruction and provide help with disciplinary literacy. In the same vein, centers should include activities to help L2Ls access authentic materials that may be linguistically or culturally challenging. Like agendas, centers help support the kinds of instructional activities associated with homogeneous groups by providing opportunities for independent learning for some students while other students meet with the instructor for a mini-lesson or take part in a group activity.

5.3  The text-to-self connection The text-to-self connection is a tool for helping learners connect with a text at a personal level. Two examples of text-to-self connections are given below. a. Copy a sentence from the text that caught your attention. Explain the personal relevance of this sentence to you. b. I agree with/understand what I just read because in my own life… In the proposed model, the text-to-self connection fosters engagement and helps support instructional activities associated with the socio-affective dimension. Answers to

 Maria M. Carreira

the above prompts can form the basis for a group discussion by HLLs on socio-­affective issues and/or they can inform whole-class discussions along the lines discussed earlier, where HLLs and L2Ls compare their viewpoints and experiences following a contrastive analysis approach.

5.4  The KWL chart The KWL chart (What We Know/What We Want to Learn/What We have learned) (Carr & Ogle, 1987; Echevarría et al., 2013; Ogle, 1986) is useful for framing the learning goals at the beginning of each chapter and revisiting them at the end. In the proposed model, the KWL chart supports the kinds of instructional activities associated with HLL-L2L dyads. The KWL charts below simulate answers by HLLs and L2Ls at the beginning of a unit on the past tense. The arrows indicate opportunities for reciprocal learning that emerge from a side-by-side comparison of these answers. KWL charts also provide a roadmap to learning, thereby helping HLLs with form-focused instruction and disciplinary literacy. A KWL chart by an HLL (hypothetical)

A KWL chart by an L2L (hypothetical)

What I know about the past tense: I can tell a story in the past and I can understand when people talk about the past.

What I know about the past tense: I can conjugate regular past tense verbs and some irregulars. I can write most verbs correctly.

What I want to learn about the past tense: I need to learn how to write some verbs. I have some doubts about how to say some verbs.

What I want to learn about the past tense: I want to be able to use the past tense in conversation, without having to think too much.

What I learned

What I learned

6.  The general instructional orientation: Prioritizing the big ideas When teaching, it is always important to stay focused on the big ideas that students should come away with. This is all the more critical in mixed classes, where it is easy to get overwhelmed by the differences between HLLs and L2Ls. Big ideas answer ­essential questions such as: Why exactly are we teaching _____? What would people be unable to do if they did not understand _______? What do we want our students to understand and be able to do five years from now? (Tomlinson & McTighe, 2006, p. 32). For example, asking these questions when teaching the past tense in mixed classes serves to identify common goals for all learners: namely, developing the functional skills to handle some conversations and written communications referring to past



A general framework and supporting strategies for teaching mixed classes 

events and, taking a five-year perspective, learning to use strategies to recover lost abilities as well as develop new ones, as needed. With these big ideas driving instruction, instructional activities for HLLs and L2Ls can be identified and addressed, along the lines proposed – namely, creating opportunities for reciprocal learning between HLLs and L2Ls and giving each type of learner what they need to participate in and derive benefit from all instructional activities. Crucially, orienting instruction around the big ideas extends the horizon of learning beyond any given unit, course, or academic term. In so doing, it reduces the pressure to level the differences rapidly between HLLs and L2Ls and puts the emphasis instead on creating the conditions for long-term language learning. Similarly, orienting instruction around the big ideas puts learning in a wide lens, thereby blurring distinctions between learners that may loom large in the classroom but actually have little bearing on long-term language development and use.

7.  Summary and conclusions To meet the challenges successfully of teaching HLLs and L2Ls together, the curricula, pedagogical materials, and instructional practices of mixed classes must be premised on building on the strengths and addressing the needs of both types of learners. For some aspects of instruction, this may require separating the two populations for targeted instructional interventions, while for others it may involve bringing them together for reciprocal learning. This proposal is just one step in what must be a far more comprehensive effort. Such an effort must not be confined to individual classes and instructors, but must include researchers and practitioners to further explore how to optimize learning in mixed contexts, textbook writers and publishers to create corresponding textbooks and other pedagogical materials, and administrators to support the institutional conditions that make for responsive teaching in mixed contexts.

References American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages n.d. 21st Century skills map. 〈http:// www.actfl.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/21stCenturySkillsMap/p21_worldlanguagesmap.pdf〉 Au, T. K. F., Knightly, L. M., Jun, S. A., & Oh, J. S. (2002). Overhearing a language during childhood. Psychological Science, 13(3), 238–243.  doi: 10.1111/1467-9280.00444 Beaudrie, S. (2009). Receptive bilinguals’ language development in the classroom: The differential effects of heritage versus foreign language curriculum. In M. Lacorte & J. Leeman (Eds.), Español en estados unidos y otros contextos de contacto: Sociolingüística, ideología y pedagogía (pp. 325–346). Madrid: Iberoamericana/Vervuert.

 Maria M. Carreira Beaudrie, S. (2011). Spanish heritage language programs: A snapshot of current programs in the Southwestern United States. Foreign Language Annals, 44(2), 321–337.

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Beaudrie, S. (2012). Research on university-based Spanish heritage language programs in the United States: The current state of affairs. In S. Beaudrie & M. Fairclough (Eds.), Spanish as a heritage language in the US: State of the field (pp. 203–223). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Beaudrie, S., & Ducar. C. (2005). Beginning level university heritage programs: Creating a space for all heritage language learners. Heritage Language Journal, 3(1), 1–26. 〈www.heritage languages.org〉 Beaudrie, S., Ducar, C., & Potowski, K. (2014). Heritage language teaching: Research and practice. Columbus, OH: McGraw-Hill Education. Bowles, M. (2011). Exploring the role of modality: Second language -heritage learner interactions in the Spanish language classroom. The Heritage Language Journal, 8(1). 〈www. heritagelanguages.org〉 Canagarajah, S. (2013). Theorizing a competence for translingual practice at the contact zone. In S. May (Ed.), The multilingual turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL, and bilingual education (pp. 78–102). New York, NY: Routledge. Carr, E., & Ogle, D. (1987). KWL plus: A strategy for comprehension and summarization. Journal of Reading, 31, 626–631. Carreira, M. (2011). Formative assessment in HL teaching: Purposes, procedures, and practices. The Heritage Language Journal, 8(1), 100–120. Carreira, M. (2014). Teaching heritage language learners: A study of program profiles, practices, and needs. In A. Themistoklis & P. Trifonas (Eds.), Rethinking heritage language education. Cambridge: CUP. Carreira, M. (Forthcoming, 2016). Supporting Heritage Language Learners through Macrobased Teaching: Foundational principles and implementation strategies for HL and mixed classes. In Fairclough, M. and Beaudrie, S. (eds), Innovative Strategies for Heritage ­Language Teaching: A Practical Guide for the Classroom, 186–215. Washington D.C.: Georgetown UP. Carreira, M., & Beeman, T. (2014). Voces: Latino students on life in the United States. Westport, CT: Praeger. Carreira, M., & Kagan, O. (2011). The results of the National Heritage Language survey: Implications for teaching, curriculum design, and professional development. Foreign Language Annals, 44(11), 40–64.  doi: 10.1111/j.1944-9720.2010.01118.x Celce-Murcia, M., & Olshtain, E. (2000). Discourse and context in language teaching: A guide for language teachers. Cambridge: CUP. Ducar, C. (2012). SHL learners’ attitudes and motivations: Reconciling opposing forces. In S. Beaudrie & M. Fairclough (Eds.), Spanish as a heritage language in the US: State of the field (pp. 161–178). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Echevarria, J., Vogt, M. E., & Short, D. (2013). Making content comprehensible for elementary English learners: The SIOP model. New York, NY: Pearson. Fairclough, M. (2005). Spanish and heritage language education in the United States. Struggling with hypotheticals. Madrid: Iberoamericana. He, A. (2006). Toward an identity theory of the development of Chinese as a heritage language. Heritage Language Journal 4(1), 1–28. 〈www.heritagelanguages.org〉



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Hornberger, N. H., & Wang, S. C. (2008). Who are our heritage language learners? Identity and biliteracy in heritage language education in the United States. In D. M. Brinton, O. Kagan, & S. Bauckus (Eds.), Heritage language education: A new field emerging (pp. 3–38). New York, NY: Routledge. Ingold, C., Rivers, W., Tesser C. C., & Ashby, E. (2002). Report on the NFLC/AATSP survey of ­Spanish language programs for native speakers. Hispania, 85, 324–329.   doi: 10.2307/4141093 Kagan, O., & Dillon, K. (2001). A new perspective on teaching Russian: Focus on the heritage learner. Slavic and East European Journal, 45(3), 507–518.  doi: 10.2307/3086367 Kagan, O., & Dillon, K. (2009). The professional development of teachers of heritage language learners: A matrix. In M. Anderson & A. Lazaraton (Eds.), Bridging context, making connections: Selected papers from the Fifth International Conference on Language Teacher Education (pp. 155–175). Minneapolis, MN: Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition. Knightly, L. M, Jun, S. A., & Au, T. K. F. (2003). Production benefits of childhood overhearing. Journal of the Acoustic Society of America 114(1), 465–474.  doi: 10.1121/1.1577560 Leeman, J. (2005). Engaging critical pedagogy. Spanish for native speakers. Foreign Language Annals, 38(1), 35–45.  doi: 10.1111/j.1944-9720.2005.tb02451.x Leeman, J. (2012). Investigating language ideologies in Spanish as a heritage language. In S. Beaudrie & M. Fairclough (Eds.), Spanish as a heritage language in the US: State of the field (pp. 43–59). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Lunn, P. V., & DeCesaris, J. (2006). Investigación de gramática. Boston, MA: Thomson Heinle. Martin, C., Swender, E., & Rivera-Martinez, M. (2013). Assessing the oral proficiency of heritage speakers according to the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines 2012–Speaking. Heritage Language Journal, 10(2), 73–87. Martínez, G. (2003). Classroom based dialect awareness in heritage language instruction: A critical applied linguistic approach. Heritage Language Journal, 1(1), 1–14. Moje, E. B. (2008). Foregrounding the disciplines in secondary literacy teaching and learning: A call for change. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 52(2), 96–107.

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Montrul, S. (2012a). Is the heritage language like a second language? Eurosla Yearbook 12(1): 1–29.  doi: 10.1075/eurosla.12.03mon Montrul, S. (2012b). The grammatical competence of Spanish heritage speakers. In S. ­Beaudrie & M. Fairclough (Eds.), Spanish as a heritage language in the US: State of the field (pp. ­101–120). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Montrul, S., & Bowles, M. (2010). Is grammar instruction beneficial for heritage language learners? Dative case marking in Spanish. The Heritage Language Journal 7(1), 47–73. 〈http:// www.heritagelanguages.org/〉 Montrul, S., Foote, R., & Perpiñán, S. (2008). Gender agreement in adult second language learners and Spanish heritage speakers: The effects of age and context of acquisition. Language Learning, 58(3), 503–553.  doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9922.2008.00449.x Ogle, D. M. (1986). KWL: A teaching model that develops active reading of expository text. The Reading Teacher, 39(6), 564–570.  doi: 10.1598/RT.39.6.11 Potowski, K. (2002). Experiences of Spanish heritage speakers in university foreign language courses and implications for teacher training. ADFL Bulletin, 33(3), 35–42.

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 Maria M. Carreira Potowski, K. (2012). Identity and heritage learners. Moving beyond essentializations. In S. Beaudrie & M. Fairclough (Eds.), Spanish as a heritage language in the US: State of the field (pp. 179–199). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Potowski, K., Jegerski, J., & Morgan-Short, K. (2009). The effects of instruction on subjunctive development among Spanish heritage language speakers. Language Learning, 59(3), 537–579.  doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9922.2009.00517.x Shanahan, T., & Shanahan, C. (2008). Teaching disciplinary literacy to adolescents: Rethinking content area literacy. Harvard Educational Review 78(1), 40–59.

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Tomlinson, C. A. (2009). The differentiated classroom: Responding to the needs of all learners. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Tomlinson, C. A. (2003). Fulfilling the promise of the differentiated classroom. Strategies and tools for responsive teaching. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Tomlinson, C. A., & McTighe, J. (2006). Integrating differentiated instruction & understanding by design: Connecting content and kids. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Torres, J. (2013). Heritage and second language learners of Spanish: The roles of task complexity and inhibitory control. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. Georgetown University. Valdés, G. (1997). The teaching of Spanish to bilingual Spanish-speaking students: Outstanding issues and unanswered questions. In C. Colombi & F. X. Alarcón (Eds.), La enseñanza del español a hispanohablantes. Praxis y teoría (pp. 8–44). Boston, MA: DC Heath & Company. Valdés, G., Fishman, J., Chávez, R., & Pérez, D. W. 2006. Developing minority language resources: The case of Spanish in California. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Valdés, G., Lozano, A. G., & García-Moya, R. (Eds). (1981). Teaching Spanish to the Hispanic bilingual in the United States: Issues, aims, and methods. New York, NY: Columbia ­University Teachers College Press. Webb, J. B., & Miller. B. (Eds.). (2000). Teaching Heritage Language Learners: Voices from the Classroom. Yonkers, NY: American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages.

Understanding identity among Spanish heritage learners An interdisciplinary endeavor María Luisa Parra Harvard University

The present chapter presents a general overview of the main advancements in understanding the relationship between the Spanish language and Spanish heritage learners’ identity, and explores the significance of Spanish heritage classes for the students’ identity formation process. Following the conviction that what we teach can only be meaningful if we understand to whom we are teaching, I argue that scholars and educators in the field have come to rely progressively on an interdisciplinary perspective on identity to inform their theoretical frameworks and pedagogical practices. I propose that this interdisciplinary approach has broaded our understanding in four main areas: (a) the importance of the community in shaping Latino ethnolinguistic identity; (b) the impact of the pressures of assimilation to mainstream culture; (c) the significance of so-called “Spanglish” in the construction of Latino identity; and (d) the importance of considering commonalities and individual differences when seeking to define our student body. As more programs for Spanish heritage learners open around the country, I suggest two pedagogical frameworks aligned with the interdisciplinary perspective on identity to support and nurture students’ identity formation in our classrooms: Latino studies and global education. To conclude, I reflect on the road ahead and on the importance of promoting open dialogue between teachers and researchers, while encouraging expert and novice teachers to continue augmenting the resources available to help Spanish heritage learners develop a strong and creative sense of ethnolinguistic identity.

1.  Introduction The study of the relationship between Spanish language and identity is of primary significance to educators and practitioners in the field of Spanish heritage language (SHL), who aspire to empower Spanish heritage language learners (SHLLs) in their cultivation and use of their language in and out of the classroom. Our understanding of the complex identity formation process of SHLLs – and the impact of SHL classes

doi 10.1075/sibil.49.10par © 2016 John Benjamins Publishing Company

 María Luisa Parra

on this process – has seen important advancements in the last decades. The oncecommon idea that SHL classes should aim at “undo[ing] the damage that had been done at home” (Valdés, 1981: xi) through teaching of the standard Spanish norm has fallen largely by the wayside, replaced by more socially responsive agendas centered around empowering students’ use of Spanish and fostering their sense of agency for social change. This development has its roots in the seminal work of Guadalupe Valdés, who, in the late ‘70s and ‘80s, came together with other important authors (see, for example, the volume edited by Valdés, Lozano, & García-Moya, 1981) to call attention to the particular strengths and needs of SHLLs in the United States. Embedded in the spirit of the Civil Rights movement and derived from a deep social commitment to Latino communities (especially those of Mexican-American children and youth in the Southwest), this groundbreaking work provided the basis for defining the autonomy of Spanish as a heritage language, separate from the Spanish taught as a foreign language to English-speaking and non-Latino students. At the center of the theoretical and applied work spearheaded by Valdés was an urgent call to understand the relationship between language ability and learner identity; only by doing so, Valdés argued, could we design effective pedagogical practices to address students’ needs and enhance their strengths as speakers and citizens (Valdés, 1978, 1981). The present chapter presents a general overview of the main advancements in understanding the relationship between Spanish itself and the SHLL identity, and explores the significance of SHL classes for the students’ identity formation process. What are the contributions that have informed our current understanding of this relationship? What are the advancements in current practices and curriculum design that address the language-identity relationship in the classroom? And, looking down the road ahead, what are the steps that educators and researchers can take in order to nurture and strengthen students’ ethnolinguistic identities in our globalized world? I will argue that SHL scholars and educators have come to rely progressively on an interdisciplinary perspective on identity to inform their theoretical frameworks; this perspective draws from many fields, including but not limited to psychology and human development, philosophy and linguistics, studies on bilingualism and linguistic anthropology, sociology and sociolinguistics, immigration, and border and gender studies. The embracing of this new perspective in our profession stems from the conviction that what we teach can only be meaningful if we understand to whom we are teaching. In He’s (2006, p. 7) words, the learner’s identity is “the centerpiece rather than the background of heritage language development.” The chapter is organized in three parts. In the first part, I outline the theoretical underpinnings of the contemporary theories of identity most relevant for our field. The second, most extensive, part of the chapter is organized into four subparts that represent four clustered areas of important contributions that have had a significant



Understanding identity among Spanish heritage learners 

impact on our understanding of the SHLL identity formation process. These areas are: (a) the importance of the community in shaping Latino ethnolinguistic identity; (b) the impact of the pressures of assimilation to mainstream culture; (c) the significance of so-called “Spanglish” in the construction of Latino identity; (d) the importance of considering commonalities and individual differences when seeking to define our student body. Finally, the third part of the chapter, “Rethinking identities in college,” presents research that has shed light on important shifts in Latino identity experienced in collegiate educational settings. I propose two pedagogical frameworks to support and nurture SHLLs in our classrooms: Latino studies (in agreement with Potowski, 2012) and global education. In the final remarks, I reflect on the road ahead and on the importance of promoting open dialogue between teachers and researchers, while encouraging expert and novice teachers to continue augmenting the resources available to help SHLLs develop a strong and creative sense of ethnolinguistic identity.

2.  Theoretical underpinnings of the concept of identity The term “identity” receives frequent use within different disciplines that relate and contribute to the field of Spanish as a heritage language: psychology and human development, philosophy, linguistics, studies on bilingualism and linguistic anthropology, sociology, sociolinguistics, immigration and border studies, and others. Although an exhaustive revision and discussion of the concept of “identity” is beyond the scope of this work, I will outline some of the main ideas put forward in contemporary theories of identity that relate directly to our understanding of the role of Spanish language in the process of identity formation for SHLLs. The concept of identity has undergone a significant reformulation in the social sciences since the last century. The structuralist perspective, which equated identity to a sum of memberships (chosen or given by others) in established, fixed social categories (gender, ethnicity, nationality, age, occupation, social status) has been reconsidered within a post-modern framework, re-envisioned as a process of “becoming” rather than “being” ( Hall, 1996). Proponents of this position (among them Hall, 1990; Hall & DuGay, 1996; Ricoeur, 1992) see discourse as the means of becoming who we are. In Hall’s (1996, p. 4) words: “Identities are constructed within discourse.” In narrating our stories, in dialogues or arguments with others, we enact our identities. Our discourse is not, then, a mere description of the world, but a statement, a “performance” of who we are. In articulating our discourse, we must first consider the temporal and spatial position from which we speak, and second, the recipient to whom we speak – the other, real or imagined (Ricoeur, 1992). For Hall (1990, p. 222), what we say is always “in context,” and this context positions both ourselves and the other in our attempts to

 María Luisa Parra

negotiate understanding. In Ricoeur’s terms, our discourse “attests” (Ricoeur, 1992) who we are, to ourselves and to others. This way of conceptualizing identity – as a process of discourse articulation and a negotiation of meaning between ourselves and others – becomes particularly relevant when we think about multilingual and multicultural environments where speakers with different languages and different cultural backgrounds and values come together and interact in myriad social situations: What language do they choose for communication? What reasons and forces are behind the selection of one language over the other? What if one speaker rejects the other’s language? What if both speakers speak both languages? How do different languages position the speakers, and what is the impact of this positioning on the speakers’ identity? Research in sociolinguistics has shown that when trying to understand speakers’ identities within multilingual and multicultural environments, we need to treat language choice itself as an “act of identity” (Le Page & Tabouret-Keller, 1985): a statement that the speaker identifies with one specific group and not another. These choices position the speaker vis-à-vis the interlocutor, both as an individual and as a member of a group (Romaine, 2011; Valdés, 1981). These choices, however, are never neutral. They encode deep issues of power relations in regard to ethnicity, social class, gender and race. Pierre Boudieu’s work in social theory offers a fundamental contribution to our understanding of the dynamics of language choice, implicating as it does the dimensions of history, power and social structure in the study of language in society. Drawing an analogy between language and economic capital, Bourdieu proposed that any “linguistic exchange is an economic exchange” (Bourdieu, 1991, p. 502) within the “linguistic market” of the society. The linguistic market, like other markets, is never free from the influence of power, which predetermines favored standards and values and legitimizes specific means of communication over others. Naturally, multilingual contexts, more than in monolingual ones, are particularly intricate; Pavlenko and Blackledge (2004, p. 1) argue that language choices “are inseparable from political arrangements, relations of power, language ideologies, and interlocutors’ views of their own and others’ identities.” Multilingual speakers form their identities while navigating a complex system of uneven power structures and continuously negotiating a sense of belonging, backward and forward, between their native communities and the mainstream culture. Scholars in the fields of border and Chicano studies, anthropology, and gender studies have used different spatial metaphors to characterized these contexts of asymmetrical power relations as “borderlards” (Anzaldúa, 1999), “contact zones” (Pratt 2007) or “third space” (Bhabha, 1990). All these proposals see these zones of disparity in power relations between minorities (i.e. women, immigrants, colonized people) and mainstream culture as “epistemological spaces” (Achugar, 2006, p. 99) where speakers



Understanding identity among Spanish heritage learners 

live “in between” languages, sets of cultural values, and power structures. As interstitial areas, these spaces allow for the emergence of (a) critical awareness/consciousness that precedes social change and (b) new and creative forms of “ambivalent” (Block, 2007) and “hybrid” (Anzaldúa, 1999) discourse to empower identities.

3.  Interdisciplinary contributions to our understanding of SHLL identities 3.1  Ethnolinguistic identity: The significance of the community The dynamic conception of identity outlined above, and embraced by contemporary educators and researchers in the field of Spanish as heritage language, has caused a concomitant shift in our understanding of the notion of “community.” In what follows I will summarize (a) this conceptual shift and (b) how student identity might impact (and be impacted by) the relationship with their communities. Today, instead of talking about a “collective” of people sharing certain fixed characteristics, we talk about “communities of practice.” Again, discourse is at the center of this definition: “groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly” (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 1). Drawing on this idea, scholars within the field of gender studies, including Eckert, McConnell-Ginet (1999) and Cameron (2005), use the term “community of practice” to articulate the notion that identity emerges through common linguistic practices that define the community to which the speaker belongs. Given that a significant percentage of the Latino community (around 73% of ­Latinos ages 5 and older: Krogstad, Stepler, & Lopez, 2015) shares the Spanish language as a vehicle for many common linguistic practices, important questions emerge: What is the meaning of the Spanish language itself for the Latino community? Is this meaning part of a SHLL’s ethnolinguistic identity? And, is it related to students’ motivation to enroll in Spanish classes? According to Silverstein (2003, p. 532), ethnolinguistic identity emerges “where people ascribe a certain primordiality to language and a certain consequentiality to language difference. They consider it for one or another cultural reason to be a guide to socially meaningful differences among people and to people’s socially effective membership in groups.” In my view, particularly salient in this definition is the use of the word “primordiality.” The New Shorter Oxford English dictionary (1993) defines the word “primordial” as “existing at or from the beginning of time.”1 In his article, Silverstein (2003,

.  There is also another sense of this word, which I will return to at the end of the chapter.

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p. 532) echoes this use of the word “primordial” to refer to “the autonomous existence of languages – or at least of language – outside of human actors and agents.” However, I would like to offer another reading of the meaning of “primordiality” in the context of language. For many in the Latino community, the Spanish language is “primordial” because it is at the center of the family, which is itself the beginning of the community – the historical and symbolical archetype of any community (Nisbet, 1993). We can see the force of this reading of “primordiality” in the following quote from a report by the Pew Rsearch Center (2013, p. 8) that shows the role of the Spanish language in the socialization of young Latinos and its relation to the “pride” of belonging to the country of origin: Young Hispanics are being socialized in a family setting that places a strong emphasis on their Latin American roots. More say their parents have often spoken to them of their pride in their family’s country of origin than say their parents have often talked to them of their pride in being American – 42% versus 29%. More say they have often been encouraged by their parents to speak in Spanish than say they have often been encouraged to speak only in English – 60% versus 22%. The survey also finds that the more likely young Latinos are to receive these kinds of signals from their parents, the more likely they are to refer to themselves first by their country of origin. (8)

The survey also shows that the preference for English shown by the majority of Latino youth “does not necessarily mean abandoning Spanish” (8): 79% of second-­generation immigrants and 38% of third-generation immigrants report being proficient in ­Spanish – data used by the survey authors to illustrate the “resilience of the mother tongue” (8). Along with “primordiality,” Silverstein identifies another key element in the emergence of any identity, and certainly of ethnolinguistic identity: the “consequentiality to language difference.” Silverstein reminds us that identities emerge as a result of a process of identification with the community through the language, paired with a simultaneous recognition of that individual’s difference from others. As ­Crawshaw, Callen and Tusting (2001, p. 532) propose: “Identity [is] a continuous process of discursive construction involving voluntary acts of self-differentiation through language.” In multilingual communities, children have to make important, if not monumental, efforts to balance identification and differentiation; they must juggle the pressures of assimilating to the mainstream culture (through the learning of English) with the need to maintain their home culture and language. In the following section, I will summarize contributions from the fields of sociology, human development, and immigration studies that have added to our understanding of the impact that living in unequal and undermining environments can have on young Latinos’ overall development and sense of identity.



Understanding identity among Spanish heritage learners 

3.2  L  atino identity and the pressures of assimilation: An ecological perspective The incorporation of an ecological perspective into the SHL field has fostered and improved our understanding of identity development among SHLLs. The ecological perspective2 holds two chief premises: (1) children don’t develop in isolation; they develop through interactions with significant others in their different environments (mainly home and school), and (2) the members of these contexts (i.e. parents and teachers, parents and employers, teachers and administrators) continuously interact with each other while directly or indirectly shaping the linguistic, social, emotional, academic, and economic development of children and students.3 As Hornberger and Wang (2008, p. 6) describe it, an ecological system is a “dynamic interface with the social, educational, cultural, economic and political institutions [where] individuals are the center of inquiry, but they are also always a part of a larger system which they shape and are shaped by various factors in the system.” From this perspective, multicultural and multilingual environments are particularly complex, as they bring together individuals with different languages, beliefs, values, and mores in social, educational, cultural, economic, and political institutions (Hornberger & Wang, 2008). These settings are particularly demanding for members of minority groups who face the major challenge of having to adjust and adapt to the mainstream norms of language, culture, and power. Studies on how immigration impacts the ecological context – and consequently the linguistic and identity development – of children and youths demonstrate that growing up in an environment where one’s home language and culture is undermined, discriminated against, or stigmatized by mainstream values creates an effect of negative “social mirroring”4 (Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-Orozco, 2001, p. 96), which in turn deeply threatens the child’s sense of cultural and linguistic belonging and identity.

.  The ecological model was first proposed in the field of child development by Uri ­Bronfenbrenner (1979) as a response to lab-based research into child development that isolated children from their natural environments. The ecological model conceives of the environment within which a child grows up as a primary source for understanding human behavior and development. .  Recent deportations of undocumented immigrant parents offer a clear and crude example of how a working situation, part of a larger political system, can impact the development of children of immigrants. .  Suárez-Orozco and Suárez-Orozco (2001, p. 98) take this notion from the child psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott. The authors explain that: “the child’s sense of self is profoundly shaped by the reflections mirrored back to her by significant others. Indeed, all human beings are dependent upon such reflections; ‘others’ include not just the mother, but also nonparental relatives, adult caretakers, siblings, teachers, peers, employers, people on the street, and even

 María Luisa Parra

Children and youths need to learn to relate to both their home and mainstream environments in skillful ways, while negotiating between their ethnolinguistic identities and the demands that cultural assimilation imposes (Alba, 2004; Portes & Rambaut, 2001; Rambaut & Massey, 2013; Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-Orozco, 2001). Suárez-Orozco and Suárez-Orozco (2001) have proposed three possible patterns or styles of adaptation. Children of immigration may: (1) embrace total assimilation and identification with the American culture; (2) develop a new ethnic identity that selects aspects of both cultures; (3) develop an “adversarial” identity in their struggle to adapt to the mainstream society. In many cases, these children and young Latinos are at higher risk to drop out of school (Carreira, 2007). Under these circumstances, home language use, as the most prominent identifier of cultural and ethnic identity, is one of the first traits Latino youth negotiate in the process of adaptation. Whether a child keeps or loses the home language will depend on many factors, including positive or negative social mirroring – from the mainstream and home cultures – of their ethnolinguistic identity; educational opportunities that validate and provide opportunities to learn both their home language and English; and opportunities for using their home language in meaningful and valued social contexts. Of course, there are many possible combinations of these circumstances, and as many possible outcomes. Whatever the precise configuration of factors, many Latinos preserve in different degrees the Spanish they learned at home, and use it, mixing it with English, in their daily communication in order to preserve affective ties with their families and to enrich their interactions with Latino peers. In the following subsection, I will summarize some of the main findings concerning the impact of this blended Spanish-English language – so-called “Spanglish” – on SHLL identity.

3.3  Spanglish and SHLLs identity The mixing of Spanish and English into “Spanglish” has been the subject of a number of studies in the disciplines of psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and Latino and cultural studies, among others. Within the field of SHL, this scholarship has provided useful social (Silva-Corvalán, 1994), linguistic (Poplack, 1980) and aesthetic (Sommer, 2004) lenses through which to analyze the use of Spanish and English by Latino communities and the impact of that language use on Latino identity. Researchers in sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics, for instance, have long demonstrated that code-switching (CS) between these two languages is a ruled-governed

the media. When the reflected image is generally positive, the individual (adult or child) will be able to feel that she is worthwhile and competent. When the reflection is generally negative, it is extremely difficult to maintain an unblemished sense of self-worth.”



Understanding identity among Spanish heritage learners 

phenomenon (e.g. Poplack, 1980). Other researchers have emphasized the role of CS in building a sense of in-group identity and solidarity within communities (Romaine, 2011; Silva-Corvalán, 1994; Valdés, 1981). As Carvalho (2012, p. 139) explains in her comprehensive review of CS research: “CS is the hallmark of bilingual competence (not lack thereof), […and] it is rule-governed, serves a plethora of discourse functions, and functions as an important, marker of group membership.” A major contribution to the study of CS among Latinos was made by researchers in the field of conversational analysis who, based on the groundbreaking works of Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson (1974), proposed that CS was a way of “doing” bilingualism (Auer, 1984; Zentella, 1997) as opposed to just “being” bilingual. This new approach aligns well with the post-modern perspective on discourse as a means to enact our identities, and offers novel possibilities for conceptualizing CS not only as a result of interdependence between languages (Cummins, 1979), but as a part of the dynamic process of “translanguaging,” a term defined by García and Li (2014, p. 22) as “multiple discursive practices in which bilinguals engage in order to make sense of their bilingual worlds.” Within this perspective, language is conceived of as “a property of individuals not of the situations” (García & Li, 2014, p. 11) and, again, as a “vital resource” in the process of negotiating and performing social identity (Leeman, Rabin & Román-Mendoza, 2011b, p. 3). Perhaps one of the most powerful examples of translanguaging in terms of the Latino identity formation process is found the following passage from the book ­Boderlands/La Frontera, by the Chicana writer Gloria Anzaldúa: Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having always to translate, while I still have to speak English or Spanish when I would rather speak Spanglish, and as long as I have to accommodate the English speakers rather than having them accommodate me, my tongue will be illegitimate. I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. I will have my voice: Indian, Spanish, white. I will have my serpent’s tongue – my woman’s voice, my sexual voice, my poet’s voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence.” (1999, p. 81)

Many of our SHLLs would identify with Anzaldúa’s need to have their multiple voices heard in Spanglish as they perform their hybrid identities, the result of a “synergy of two cultures with various degrees of Mexicanness [or Dominicanness or Puerto Ricanness, for that matter] or Angloness (Anzaldúa, 1999, p. 85). However, as we saw above, many Latino youth translanguage within an unbalanced socio-cultural and linguistic environment that diminishes and stigmatizes their linguistic practices, and therefore their identities. For this reason, many scholars in the SHL field have embraced what Zentella (1997) calls an “anthro-political linguistics” to unmask “the linguistic ideologies and sociopolitical structures that determine the value of specific languages and the status of their speakers … perpetuat[ing] i­ nequality,

 María Luisa Parra

undermining bilingual’s willingness to maintain and develop his/her bilingualism” (Zentella, 2008, pp. 4,7). This “anthro-political” perspective aligns well with the goals of SHL researchers and educators, who seek to recognize the diversity within the Latino community in terms of socio-economic and educational background, not only within the U.S., but also in the countries of origin. In the next subsection, I summarize key work attempting to define the characteristics of SHLLs while also validating their individual differences in order to understand each student’s identity.

3.4  SHLLs identities: Between commonalities and individual differences. The Spanish-speaking community in the U.S. is diverse in terms of countries of origin, family social class, and levels of formal education. These factors affect individual Latinos’ language proficiency, resulting in a range of specific Spanish variants and registers (Valdés & Geoffrion-Vinci, 1998). The particular Spanish variant spoken by a given family will have features that encode that family’s social class and education, and these features will be transmitted to the offspring. Valdés (2001, p. 9) states: Heritage language speakers in the United States, like their monolingual counterparts in their home countries, reflect the complexities of class and access. The linguistic repertoires of upper-middle-class individuals include a broad range of registers including varieties appropriate for those situations (e.g., academia) in which oral language reflects the hyperliteracy of its speakers. The repertoires of individuals of lower-ranked groups, especially those who have had little access to formal education, are much narrower in range and do not normally include ease with hyperliterate discourse.

Furthermore, children in bilingual communities composed mainly of immigrants from lower socio-economic backgrounds are exposed not only to a narrower range of registers, but also to registers that inevitably undergo important linguistic changes as they come in contact with English (e.g. Silva-Corvalán, 1994). Furthermore, such children will have very few opportunities to attend school programs in Spanish to help them expand their linguistic knowledge to formal and academic settings. The English-speaking community will tend to discriminate against such immigrant groups based on the incorrect assumption that they don’t speak English “well,” while at the same time, they are stigmatized by the Spanish-speaking community for not speaking “­ correct/standard” Spanish. In contrast, SHLLs from a higher social class have access to social networks, possibilities of mentorship and access to knowledge in Spanish, and are likely to have economic resources that allow them to return to their family’s country of origin. In this way, they can reconnect with the language and culture, reinforcing their sense of linguistic and cultural identity.



Understanding identity among Spanish heritage learners 

The diversity outlined above, combined with the different educational opportunities available in Spanish and English in the U.S., results in a broad range of Spanish functional proficiencies (i.e. ability to function in the language), both oral and written (Valdés, 2005). It is these proficiencies that have always been the center of our profession. The integration of bilingualism research with research coming from related disciplines such as sociolinguistics, theoretical linguistics, and second-language acquisition (e.g. Valdés, 2001, 2005) inspired Valdés (2001, p. 2) to propose the following multifaceted definition as the common denominator for the diverse group of SHLLs: “[An HL] student [is an individual] who is raised in a home where a non-English language is spoken, who speaks or merely understands the heritage language, and who is to some degree bilingual in English and the heritage language.”. This definition, based on language proficiency, has usually served as the first and most powerful criterion for defining a Spanish heritage speaker. This criterion fills the need for a “precise account” (Carreira, 2004, p. 2) of the term “Spanish heritage learner”5 and, therefore allows heritage learners to be readily differentiated from both foreign language learners and native speakers. Further, it provides a basis for us to advocate for specific heritage language courses (HL) and design a pedagogical “roadmap” (Carreira, 2004, p. 1) that meets the language learning goals and needs of SHL students in particular. Defining a heritage learner solely by linguistic criteria can, however, be misleading; as Carreira (2004, p. 32) points out, “proficiency-based definitions of SHLLs (or of heritage students of any other language) are the most restrictive and narrow” in the sense that they can exclude individuals with low linguistic proficiency but with “strong family or personal connections to the [heritage language].” Therefore, a “broad” definition of heritage language learner, informed by Fishman’s work (2001), was proposed by Carreira (2004) and Polinsky and Kagan (2007) to encompass factors such as membership in a HL community and personal connection through family background. Under this definition, the student’s motivation to study the language as part of a search for identity became part of the broad definition. In fact, for authors like Hornberger and Wang (2008) and Van Deusen-Scholl (2003) and Lacorte (2003), motivation to study the heritage language – and agency to seek one’s identity – is a defining trait of heritage learners. This motivation to study is an important point to consider, because not all Latino students decide to enroll in SHL classes, nor do all those who do enroll bring the same goals and ambitions into the heritage language classroom. For example, some

.  A heritage speaker motivated to study the HL in a formal setting (Polinsky & Kagan, 2007, p. 29).

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students, usually those with a higher level of Spanish proficiency, promptly enroll in SHL classes out of a desire to improve their Spanish. Others, typically those with lower levels of Spanish proficiency, struggle and feel marginalized by the possibility of taking HL courses, choosing to enroll in foreign language courses instead (Potowski, 2002; Lynch, 2008; Pino & Pino, 2000). At the same time, Beaudrie and Ducar (2005) have found that SHLLs with low proficiency but high exposure to Latino culture may be highly motivated to enroll in SHL classes. The broader definition of “heritage speaker,” including the criterion of motivation, also poses important challenges. Many Latino students struggle not only with the pressure of assimilating into the mainstream culture, but also with doubts about their sense of ethnolinguistic identity. An SHL student’s sense of “membership,” “community ties,” and “strong family connections” is not necessarily free of challenges, doubts, wonders, and conflicts. Students come into our classes with many questions about their Spanish language abilities, having internalized a negative mirroring of the Spanish they speak. They also have doubts about the meaning of their language proficiency in relation to their identity as members of the Latino community. The challenge for SHL educators in this context is to consider the commonalities of SHLLs as a group without disregarding the importance of individual differences (Parra, 2013b). It is important to avoid what Potowski (2012, p. 180) describes as an “essentializing view of identity” that assumes commonalities to be stronger than the differences. By not paying attention to individual differences, we run the risk of disregarding the sometimes subtle, but nevertheless important, differences among our students that result from the complex ecological dynamics of their upbringing.

4.  Rethinking SHLLs’ identities in college The case of SHLLs who decide to study Spanish at the college level provides a clear illustration of how linguistic and cultural identities develop within a specific community of practice. I follow Urciuoli (2008) and He (2006) in arguing that the educational environment in which students enroll in SHL classes (mainly college) can trigger new questions about their identities, about their community membership, and about what it means to study a heritage language. These feelings are magnified by the fact that the college experience typically takes place far from students’ homes, with new peers from other Latino and non-Latino communities. Significant research in the field of SHL education has developed around SHLLs’ identity development in the collegiate context, couched in an awareness of the complex environments students come from. Many educators and researchers have committed to listening to the diverse voices of students in the SHL classroom, taking note of their



Understanding identity among Spanish heritage learners 

reasons, motivations, hopes, and fears for studying and expanding their knowledge of Spanish (Alarcón, 2010; Beaudrie & Ducar, 2005; Carreira, 2004; Martínez, 2012; Parra 2013b; Roca, 1997; Scalera, 2004; Yanguas, 2013). In general, students in these institutions identify themselves with their communities and countries of origin (as Mexican, Salvadoran, Dominican, and the like) (Taylor, López, Martínez, &Velasco, 2013), but will revise this label as they encounter both Latino and non-Latino students in their college careers. I agree with Urciuoli (2008, p. 261) when she says that college is a social transition during which many SHLLs “rethink themselves as Latinos.” The new college environment, decontextualized from students’ original communities, leads students to become aware of their ethnicity – in contrast to the white-Anglo culture generally prevailing in these settings – and the challenges and advantages of that ethnicity. At the same time, college also presents SHLLs with the opportunity to meet other students with different Spanish-speaking backgrounds. Within this new setting, membership in Latino organizations and the study of Spanish brings a “sense of safety” and “linguistic solidarity” to those students who see Spanish as “emblematic” and as a “social touchstone” (Urciuoli, 2008, p. 273). It is important to note that SHLLs with higher Spanish proficiency pose different questions and challenges about their ethnolinguistic identities than those with lower Spanish proficiency. More proficient SHLLs tend to be concerned with the relationship between their Spanish variant and the more prestigious standard Spanish, and with questions of speaking “correctly” and learning the academic register (Alarcón, 2010; Yanguas, 2013). For these SHLLs, questions about their ethnolinguistic identity have to do with: (1) the value of the Spanish variant they speak vis-à-vis the prestige variant supposedly taught in class and (2) the possibility of being recognized as part of an academic community in Spanish (Achugar & Colombi, 2008; Alarcón, 2010). In this context, the hierarchy of Spanish dialects found within U.S. Spanish-­speaking communities and the college classroom becomes relevant and significant. Several sociolinguistic studies have documented this hierarchy among different Latino communities. For instance, De Genova and Ramos-Zayas (2003) studied Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in Chicago, and found that both groups saw Mexican-Spanish as more prestigious than Puerto Rican-Spanish. Zentella (1990), in her study of lexical leveling among Cuban, Colombian, Dominican, and Puerto Rican dialects in New York, found a hierarchy related to race, class and education. The Spanish spoken by middle-class, lighter-skinned individuals with higher degrees of formal education was considered more prestigious that the Spanish spoken by lower-class, darker-skinned Dominicans and Puerto Ricans. Along with these extra-linguistic features, accents also play a powerful role in the hierarchy and value of the different Spanish dialects that meet in the SHL classroom. As Urciuoli (2008, p. 271) suggests, accents are “semiotic complexes through which people locate each other.”

 María Luisa Parra

In contrast to these higher-proficiency SHLLs, students with less Spanish proficiency (or who perceive themselves to have low proficiency) tend to be more insecure and concerned with questions about the legitimacy of being Latino (Martínez, 2003). As noted above, research has shown (Potowski, 2002; Lynch, 2008; Pino & Pino, 2000) that some students in this situation don’t identify themselves as heritage speakers at all, or may consider their Spanish “not good enough” for the heritage classroom and prefer to enroll in Spanish classes for foreign language learners even when SHL classes are offered at their institutions. On the other hand, some SHLLs with low Spanish proficiency – typically those with a rich cultural background – are highly motivated to learn the language in a heritage class despite feeling a lack of confidence (Beaudrie & Ducar, 2005). There is an important and critical affective component to be noted here, a complex combination of anxiety and motivation that relates the study of Spanish to the possibility of overcoming feelings of insecurity and connecting in deeper ways with family, friends and culture in general (Beaudrie & Ducar, 2005; Martínez, 2003; Scalera, 2004; among others). Regardless of the levels of proficiency of a given SHLL, Valdés (1981: 14) contends that, “The possibility here is vital growth in both the confidence and competence for the students in areas which can assure their retaining the Spanish language throughout their lifetime.” If language is the conduit for identity formation (Niño-Murcia & R ­ othman, 2008, p. 16), the motivation for enrolling in our classes is often tied to a desire to explore deep identity questions in a safe manner in a safe space.

4.1  Two pedagogical frameworks to support SHLL identities In order to ensure the realization of this “vital growth,” we need to create in our classrooms collaborative, safe communities of practice where students can voice their concerns in the form of questions and reflect critically on issues of language and identity. We want to provide a space for students to reconnect with, recreate, and enrich the linguistic and cultural experiences that so far have shaped their identities. The end goal is developing what Juan Flores (2000) calls an “alternative ethos”: “an ensemble of cultural values and practices created in its own right to its own ends.” We need, then, to create conditions that foster critical thinking, helping our students to analyze, problematize, discuss, and reformulate issues of culture, language, and identity. Recent proposals (Beaudrie, Ducar & Potowski, 2014; Fairclough & B ­ eaudrie, forthcoming, among others) call for educators who aspire to this ideal to incorporate two main components in their curriculum and class activities: (1) a critical pedagogical approach (Leeman, 2005; Parra, 2016; Villa, 2004) and (2) relevant and meaningful content (Webb and Miller, 2000). Many educators are already working with an interdisciplinary curriculum that incorporates materials from domains such as



Understanding identity among Spanish heritage learners 

s­ ociolinguistics and Hispanic linguistics to promote critical d ­ iscussion around ques6 tions of language and identity with and among students. The goal is to validate and expand the knowledge students already have about Spanish in general and their dialects in particular, setting aside narrow and restrictive perspectives that see heritage varieties of Spanish as “wrong,” “incorrect,” or “deficient.” Educators need to guide SHLLs through the process of disentangling language ideologies (see Leeman, 2012) as a first step towards what Aparicio calls the “decolonization” of SHL (1997, p. 225). In what follows, I suggest two frameworks within which educators can find new resources and expand existing resources in order to nurture and strengthen SHLLs’ ethnolinguistic identity. Researchers, too, will find within these frameworks models for building on their current research agendas. The frameworks suggested pull from the principles of Latino studies (also proposed by Potowski, 2012) and global education.

4.2  L  atino studies Following Potowski (2012), I contend that the theoretical and pedagogical frameworks of SHL education can benefit in meaningful ways by engaging with Latino studies scholarship. The field of Latino studies brings an historical perspective to the many ideological, cultural, political, linguistic, and identity challenges that Latino communities face in their particular relationship to the United States. Research done within this discipline provides important context, for instance, to the labels and stereotypes that have been used to portray Latinos and latinidad throughout U.S history. Latino scholars and writers theorize and reflect upon many key issues for our students, all centered around the common theme of search for identity:7 the impact of immigration; transnational life; imagined communities (Anderson, 1983) – which Juan Flores (2000) has reformulated in his notion of the “Latino imaginary”; the meaning of latinidad; stereotypes of language and race; gender and life in the “contact zone” (Pratt, 2007).

.  Examples of these materials can be found in several textbooks for SHLLs, including Conversaciones escritas (Potowski, 2011), Sí se puede (Carreira & Geoffrin-Vinci, 2007), Palabra abierta (Colombi, Pellettieri & Rodríguez, 2006), Español escrito (Valdés, Teschner, & ­Enríquez, 2008), and Nuevos Mundos (Roca, 2012). .  Many literary works by Latino writers was actually first written in English and translated into Spanish subsequently. This practice offers the opportunity to use the same text with SHLLs of low and high proficiency to discuss the same relevant topics without a language barrier. Consider, for example, the works of Sandra Cisneros (The House on Mango Street), Francisco Jiménez (The Circuit/Cajas de cartón), Esmeralda Santiago (When I was Puerto Rican), Julia Álvarez (How the Garcia girls lost their accents), Junot Díaz (The brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao), and the seminal works of Chicana writers Gloria Anzaldúa (Borderlands/ La frontera: The new meztiza) and Cherrí Moraga (La güera, among other writings on identity and gender).

 María Luisa Parra

Using the principles of multiliteracies (New London Group, 1996)8 and critical pedagogy (Freire, 2005), teachers can problematize the meanings of labels like “Latino” and “Hispanic” (see, for example, Santa Ana, 2004) as categories imposed by the U.S. government in an attempt to homogenize what is, in reality, a heterogeneous group. In fact, Taylor et al. (2013, p. 2) show that, “when it comes to describing their identity, most Hispanics prefer their family’s country of origin over pan-ethnic terms.” Along the same lines, important discussions can develop around the concept of latinidad, mainly used by the entertainment industry, mass media, marketing, and the mainstream film industry to erase important historical, racial, and class differences among the various Latino communities in the U.S. (Dávila, 2012). At the same time, authors such as Aparicio (2003, p. 93) understand latinidad as “a concept that allows us to explore moments of convergence and divergence in the formation of Latino/a (post)colonial subjectivities and in hybrid cultural expressions among various Latino national groups.” As an example, Aparicio highlights Gregory Nava’s movie Selena as a vehicle that can be used to unpack hegemonic notions of Latina bodies, looks, gender ideologies, and hybridity: Nava cast actress Jennifer Lopez, a Nuyorican, to play the role of Selena Quintanilla, the murdered singer, who was Tejana: two women, different Latin American backgrounds, similar body types. According to Aparicio, reclaiming the term latinidad opens up an avenue to explore “affinities and analogies of historical minorities as (post-)colonial subjects” (90). Aparicio says, “To dismiss latinidad as an exclusively hegemonic site is to dismiss the potential for continuing to explore our (post-)colonial historical experiences and for finding affinities and similarities that may empower us rather than fragment us” (103). The term “heritage” is often a new label for Latino youth in the SHL classrooms (Lacorte, 2003; Valdés, 2005); as such, the introduction of this term can afford instructors the opportunity to open up creative and insightful discussions about (a) the accuracy of the term to portray SHLLs and (b) the different meanings of this term in relation to linguistic diversity and language policies in the U.S. (see Van DeusenScholl, 2003 for an extensive review on this issue). A final possibility for incorporating Latino studies and history into the SHL classroom is to examine the history of the field itself. It can be interesting for SHLLs to think about why there is a Latino studies program at their institution (or why not, and what would it take for the community, including students, educators, and administrators, to advocate for it). The history of how Latino studies has emerged as an academic

.  A multi-literacies approach (New London Group, 1996; Kern, 2004; Samaniego & Warner forthcoming 2016) can be a powerful framework to present the many forms (literature, art, music) and mass media means (advertisement, films) through which this concept has been represented stereotypically with the purpose of homogenizing the Latino community.



Understanding identity among Spanish heritage learners 

field, and why different kinds of institutions embrace these programs, reflects the history of the Latino academic community at each institution.9 What does this mean to the particular college community? Can SHLLs play an active role in supporting or requesting these programs at their institutions? By focusing on the wide array of Latino experiences and by guiding critical discussions around the cultural, political and historical meanings of these stories, we give SHLLs – with high and low Spanish proficiency alike – key linguistic and cultural experiences to identify with. Exploring the Spanish language allows students to embrace the range of ethnolinguistic identities found within the Latino community and place themselves in a larger context where they can perceive themselves not only as individuals, but also as part of the “Latino imaginary” (Flores, 2000) experience characterized by strength and resilience (Carreira & Beeman, 2014). It is through this kind of exploration, along with a focus on critical examination of students’ language ideologies and beliefs that SHLLs’ voices can emerge and be remolded in alternative and creative ways. Romaine (2011, p. 20) reminds us that: “Processes of cultural and linguistic reaffirmation are not a return to past traditions or simple revivals of previously existing customs or practices, but often involve active re-creation and refashioning of languages, cultures and identities, whose functions in current contexts differ from those of the past.”

4.3  G  lobal education As we leave behind old paradigms of instruction centered on correction – as we embrace critical pedagogical tenets and an interdisciplinary framework within which is centered the “signature pedagogy”10 of our field (Parra, 2014) – as we make SHLL identity the center of our work – and as more SHL programs are developed ­throughout

.  For example, some institutions offered Chicano studies first, and later on transformed them into Latino studies. In the early ‘90s, some Ivy League colleges opened programs, while others withdrew this possibility (for a historical review of the field, see Flores, 1997; Cabán, 2003). .  Lee S. Schulman proposed the term “signature pedagogy” to designate “characteristic forms of teaching and learning” (Schulman, 2005, p. 52) within a professional field. These pedagogies “organize the fundamental ways in which future practitioners are educated for their new professions” (52) and play a critical role “in shaping the character of future practice and in symbolizing the values and hopes of the professions” (53). In the article “Strengthening our teacher community: Consolidating a ‘signature pedagogy’ for the teaching of Spanish as heritage language,” I contend that several factors, including an ecological perspective on bilingual development, a sociolinguistic and functional approach to language and critical pedagogy, and a focus on multi-literacy and community service, are consolidating the signature pedagogy of our field.

 María Luisa Parra

the U.S. – as all these pieces begin to fall into place, the discourse on globalization emerges as particularly worrisome. We face important challenges imposed by an economic discourse that promotes competitiveness and the commodification of linguistic and cultural diversity. From mass media to textbooks, we are all exposed to (and some would even argue “seduced”11 by) these troublesome messages. Leeman and Martínez (2007) have shown that SHLs are not the exception and are not free from this ideology. The authors analyze several SHL textbooks published between 1970 and 2000 to determine the ideologies espoused by these texts and the interrelationship between these ideologies and the politics of knowledge. They are particularly interested in how these books connect Spanish and Latino identity and the reasons given for valuing and/or studying Spanish. In their analysis, the authors identified a significant shift from “the construction of Spanish as rooted in the local community and linked to a student’s identity, towards its construction as a commodity for economic competitiveness in a globalized world” (37). They also found a shift in the construction of latinidad. Instead of representing this notion as rooted in Latin America (as it was in older books), the most recent books present latinidad as something to be acquired from “a Spanish-speaking world as a site where students can deploy their commodified language skills” (37). Urciuoli (2008) also shows us that, today, the desire to learn Spanish has status implications. The trend may be to consider SHL a commodity or an “advantage” with little affective and cultural importance. Given these considerations, SHL teachers face an indispensable task: we must raise critical awareness in SHLLs about this seductive discourse, provide creative and safe spaces where students can recreate their own ethnolinguistic identities beyond commodification, and empower them to build on their resilience (Carreira & Beeman, 2014) and their linguistic and cultural funds of knowledge12 (Moll, Amanti, Neff & González, 1992). While globalization presents an array of dangers, it also offers an interesting setting in which to foster student’s ethnolinguistic identities. Recent educational proposals (Boix-Mansilla & Jackson, 2011; O’Loughlin & Wegimont, 2002; Suárez-Orozco, 2007) at all levels of education have focused on curriculum development that addresses the needs and challenges of our interconnected and globalized world in the classroom.

.  In his powerful article, Why Revolution Is Impossible: On The Seductive Power Of Neoliberalism (2014), Byung-Chul Han explains how messages about competitiveness, productivity, and success, presented in a “seductive” way, transform any current situation into a possibility for being “free” and successful entrepreneurs. .  Moll, Amanti, Neff and González (1992, p. 133) defined this central notion as “the historically accumulated and culturally developed bodies of knowledge and skills essential for household or individual functioning and well-being.”



Understanding identity among Spanish heritage learners 

Global education is concerned with the “recasting of our understanding of economics, communication, security, cultural identity, citizenship and the environment” (Boix-Mansilla & Jackson, 2011, p. 1). Given the demands of this task, educators need to establish goals that push beyond the limits of traditional instruction within classroom boundaries. The goal of this framework is to foster students’ global competence, their “capacity and disposition to understand and act on issues of global significance” (Boix-Mansilla & Jackson, 2011, p. xiii). Four main capacities are associated with global competence: investigating the world, recognizing perspectives, communicating ideas, and taking action (Boix-Mansilla & Jackson, 2011, p. xiii). Marcelo Suárez-­Orozco (2007), in his introduction to the edited volume Learning in the Global Era, states: [A]n education for the global era is an education for life long cognitive, behavioral, and relational engagement with the world. The skills, sensibilities, and competencies needed for identifying, analyzing, and solving problems from multiple perspectives will require nurturing students who are curious and cognitively flexible, can tolerate ambiguity, and can synthesize knowledge within and across disciplines. (19)

As we read Suárez-Orozco’s thoughts on the importance of fostering “multiple perspectives” through cognitive flexibility, tolerance of ambiguity, and capacity for crossdisciplinary synthesis, we appreciate that many SHLLs, having grown up straddling and struggling between cultural worlds and languages, are uniquely suited to tap into and develop such abilities. Through the lens of global education, we can reframe our students’ ethnolinguistically hybrid, complex identities as another fund of knowledge – acquired, not through the traditional educational process, but through life experience. A version of the four capacities of global competence (investigating the world, recognizing perspectives, communicating ideas, and taking action) has already been integrated into some textbooks (i.e. Potowski, 2011) for SHL classrooms, and can be readily reframed in terms of global education. For example, research projects that investigate how a student’s family members and community use Spanish and English (e.g. Carreira, 2000) can be expanded into research projects to investigate the many aspects of Spanish as a global language (investigating the world). Discussions about language ideologies surrounding the use of Spanish vs. English (or of prestige vs. nonprestige variants of Spanish) from both a normative and a sociolinguistic perspective (see Leeman, 2012; Leeman and Serafini, 2016) can be extended to discussion on the use of Spanish vs. indigenous languages in the students’ countries of origin (comparing perspectives). Many are the possibilities to develop students’ communicative competence in Spanish while they “attest” their identities (Crawshaw et al., 2001), from written journals and personal narratives, from oral presentations that reflect students’ professional interests (Carreira, 2015 in workshop at the Eight NHLRC Summer Institute at Harvard University) to brochures, newspaper articles, and feature writing

 María Luisa Parra

centering on the issues that students investigate in their communities. When carried out as group projects, these activities can foster communities of practice that expand the possibilities for appropriating heritage language to a meaningful purpose. Finally, pedagogical proposals that integrate a community service component (Abbott & Lear, 2010; Carreira & Kagan, 2011; Leeman, Rabin, & Román-Mendoza, 2011a, b; Parra, 2013a; Rabin, 2011) offer ideal sites to reflect on and discuss the impact of globalization on SHLLs’ communities and the identities of community members (for example: how do trends in the global labor market affect both the students’ countries of origin and their local communities?). Students can also explore or design concrete actions that might improve, even in a small way, the conditions in their communities. Moreover, working in the community itself, in professional settings such as medical and law offices, can be an eye-opening experience for students, helping them to acknowledge the value and “sophistication” (Carreira & Armengol, 2001, p. 109) of their home language and cultural background. As Martínez (2012, p. 74) exhorts, the SHL community must itself become proactive, and not just reactive, in its efforts to promote positive attitudes towards bilingualism and bilingual upbringing.

5.  Final remarks In this chapter, I have presented a partial overview of the different disciplines and perspectives that have helped to advance our understanding of the relationship between language and identity for SHLLs. Contemporary theories of identity interact with research from the social sciences and humanities – including psychology and human development, philosophy and linguistics, sociology and linguistic a­nthropology, immigration, border, gender and Latino studies – to provide us with solid theoretical grounds and insights to aid in reformulating our students’ language behavior and practices as they perform their hybrid identities. I have also highlighted recent research efforts that emphasize the importance of college settings as sites where SHLLs can remake and recreate their Latino identities. Research from the disciplines of Latino studies, Latino literature, and global education can be incorporated as part of the SHL curriculum to provide students with new linguistic and cultural models, and expand discussion and reflections on ethnolinguistic identities, particularly in a global context. As our students become representatives of our “super diverse” world (Vertovec, 2007), and as we aim to develop strong SHL programs, “essentializations” (Potowski, 2012) should be avoided. It is important that attention to individual differences be favored and integrated in the current dialogue between teachers and researchers – and, above all, between expert and novice teachers (Parra, 2013b). Research has shown that the lack of understanding of the complex ecologies Latino youths come from leads to situations where Teaching Assistants could diminish SHLLs ways of speaking with



Understanding identity among Spanish heritage learners 

negative effects on the classroom atmosphere, students’ motivation, and their sense of identity (Lacorte, 2003; Potowski, 2001, 2002). Research has also shown that expert and novice teachers differ regarding their process of identifying priorities, setting overall goals, and course planning. Expert teachers are more autonomous and efficient in their decision-making processes as class dynamics unfold (See Tsui 2003, for a summary on this research). For these reasons, it is imperative that these two groups meet in creative spaces (training programs, institutes, workshops) where both groups can collaborate and learn from each other. Much work still needs be done to develop teaching protocols and innovative practices for teaching SHLLs with high and low proficiency, in separate tracks or in the mixed classes still predominant around the country (Carreira, 2014). Differentiated instruction (Tomlinson 1999), proposed for SHL instruction by Potowski and Carreira (2004) should also be considered when discussing issues of identity and its relationship to the Spanish language: each student brings a particular narrative about her identity that needs to be recognized, valued, and nurtured in the language classroom. As I have suggested elsewhere (Parra, 2013b, 2014), the creation of an effective and nurturing classroom for SHLLs (or any learner, for that matter) does not rely on the students’ capacity or the instructor’s methodology as separate entities, but on the relationship between the educator and each student; indeed, this relationship is an essential part of any learning process. Ideally, this relationship should foster a two-way learning process between teachers and students, where everyone’s voice is heard and reshaped through a joint educational process. The goal of our efforts as teachers is to develop a more integral and studentcentered teaching philosophy that contributes to students’ overall sense of wellbeing through positive experience and new knowledge. We want to provide students with a space to find “coherence and continuity” – to develop “hybrid, situated non-conflicted identities within the dominant and heritage sociocultural discourses” they belong to so they can thrive in today’s challenging, globalized world (Val & Vinogradova, 2010, p. 5). SHLLs represent an invaluable resource for their communities and future generations; planning paths for SHLLs to become leaders and advocates for bilingualism and bilingual upbringing should be part of our endeavors (Martínez, 2012). Given all these considerations, we must continue to “fine tune” our listening to hear SHLLs voices in all of their complexity and diversity and to understand “who heritage learners are in various contexts and how they see, perceive, interpret, present and represent themselves in those contexts” (Hornberger & Wang, 2008, p. 6). As we seek to nurture SHLLs’ sense of ethnolinguistic identity, and as we face declining trends in Spanish use among Latinos (Krogstad, Stepler & Lopez, 2015), our SHL classrooms should strive to renew in SHLLs a sense of the “primordiality” of the Spanish language in their lives. In this case, the meaning of the word does not necessarily signify “exist[ence] at or from the beginning of time” (a definition I used at the

 María Luisa Parra

beginning on the chapter in the context of family and community), but rather the second dictionary definition available: a thing “from which another thing can develop.” Let us strive to lead SHLLs down effective and nurturing paths that will allow them to carry into the future an integrated and richer sense of ethnolinguistic identity, community understanding, global citizenship and leadership.

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Leeman, J., Rabin, L., & Román-Mendoza, E. (2011b). Critical pedagogy beyond the classroom walls: Community service-learning and Spanish heritage language education. Heritage Language Journal, 8(3), 1–22. Leeman, J., & Serafini, E. (2016). Sociolinguistics for heritage language educators and students: A model for critical translingual competence. In M. Fairclough & S. Beaudrie (Eds.), Innovative strategies for heritage language teaching: A practical guide for the classroom. ­Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Le Page, R. B., & Tabouret-Keller, A. (1985). Acts of identity. Creola-based approaches to language and ethnicity. Cambridge: CUP. Lynch, A. (2008). The linguistic similarities of Spanish heritage and second language learners. Foreign Language Annals, 41, 252–281. Retrieved August 9, 2012, from the University of Miami website: 〈http://works.bepress.com/andrewlynch/4 〉

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Martínez, G. (2003). Classroom based dialect awareness in heritage language instruction: A critical applied linguistic approach. Heritage Language Journal, 1, 44–57. Martínez, G. (2012). Policy planning research for Spanish as a heritage language: From language rights to linguistic resource. In S. M. Beaudrie & M. Fairclough (Eds.), Spanish as a heritage language in the United States (pp. 61–78). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Moll, L. Amanti, C., Neff, D., & Gonzalez, N. (1992). Funds of knowledge in teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect home and classrooms. Theory into Practice, 31(1), 132–141.  doi: 10.1080/00405849209543534 New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 60–92.  doi: 10.17763/haer.66.1.17370n67v22j160u Nisbet, R. (1993). The sociological tradition. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Niño-Murcia, M., & Rothman, J. (Eds.). (2008). Bilingualism and identity. Spanish at the crossroads with other languages (Studies in Bilingualism 37). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

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O’Loughlin, E., & Wegimont, L. (Eds.). 2002. Global education in Europe to 2015. Strategy, policies, and perspectives. Outcomes and Papers of the Europe-wide Global Education Congress Maastricht, The Netherlands, 15th–17th November. The new shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles. (1993). L. Brown (Ed.), : Oxford: Clarendon Press. Parra, M. L. (2013a). Expanding language and cultural competence in advanced heritage- and foreign-language learners through community engagement and work with the arts. Heritage Language Journal, 10(2), 115–142. Parra, M. L. (2013b). Exploring individual differences among Spanish heritage learners: Implications for TA training & program development. In C. Sanz & B. Lado (Eds.), Individual ­differences, L2 development and language program administration: From theory to application (pp. 150–170). Boston, MA: Cengage. Parra, M. L. (2014). Strengthening our teacher community: Consolidating a ‘signature pedagogy’ for the teaching of Spanish as heritage language. In P. P. Trifonas & T. Aravossitas (Eds.), Rethinking heritage language education (The Cambridge Education Research Series) (pp. 213–136). Cambridge: CUP. Parra, M. L. (2016). Critical approaches to heritage language instruction: How to Foster students’ critical consciousness. En M. Fairclough y S. Beaudrie (Eds.), Innovative approaches in heritage language teaching: From research to practice. Washigton, DC: ­Georgetown University Press.

 María Luisa Parra Pavlenko, A., & Blackledge, A. (2004). Introduction: New theoretical approaches to the study of negotiation of identities in multilingual contexts. In A. Pavlenko & A. Blackledge (Eds), Negotiation of identities in multilingual contexts (pp. 1–33). Clevendon: Multilingual Matters. Pew Research Center. (2013). Between two worlds. How young Latinos come of age in ­America (A Pew Hispanic Center Report). Available from: 〈http://www.pewhispanic.org/files/ reports/117.pdf 〉 Pino, B., & Pino, E. (2000). Serving the heritage speaker across a five-year program. ADLF Bulletin, 32, 27–35. Polinsky, M., & Kagan, O. (2007). Heritage languages: In the ‘wild’ and in the classroom. Language & Linguistics Compass, 1(5), 368–395.  doi: 10.1111/j.1749-818X.2007.00022.x Poplack, S. (1980). Sometimes I’ll start a sentence in Spanish y Termino en Español: Toward a typology of code-switching. Linguistics, 18(7–8), 581–618.  doi: 10.1515/ling.1980.18.7-8.581 Portes, A., & Rumbaut, R. (2001). Legacies: The story of the immigrant second generation. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Potowski, K. (2001). Educating university foreign language teachers to work with heritage Spanish speakers. In B. Johnston & S. Irujo (Eds.), Research and practice in language teacher education: Voices from the field. Selected papers from the First International Conference on Language Teacher Education (pp. 87–100). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, Center for Advanced Research in Language Acquisition. Potowski, K. (2002). Experiences of Spanish heritage speakers in university foreign language courses and implications for teacher training. ADFL Bulletin, 33, 35–42.

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Potowski, K. (2011). Conversaciones escritas: Lectura y redacción en contexto (Spanish edition). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Potowski, K. (2012). Identity and heritage learners: Moving beyond essentializations. In S. M. Beaudrie & M. Fairclough (Eds.), Spanish as a heritage language in the United States. The state of the field (pp. 179–202). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Potowski, K., & Carreira, M. (2004). Towards teacher development and national standards for Spanish as a heritage language. Foreign Language Annals, 37(3), 427–437.

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Heritage language healing? Learners’ attitudes and damage control in a heritage language classroom* Ana Sánchez-Muñoz

California State University ‘Pa’ lo que sirve el español, ya lo hablo suficiente (I speak Spanish well enough for what it [the language] is good for). This statement was shared in class by one student of Spanish as a heritage language when the professor challenged him to be more engaged in classroom discussions and activities. The sentiment that Spanish is not as valuable as other languages “to get ahead in this world” is not a rare predisposition among heritage language learners when they first enroll in a Spanish course. A primary challenge in the heritage language classroom is, first of all, to shift students’ attitudes from a utilitarian perspective (Spanish is only good for home and for grandma’s consejos) to a more positive attitude conducive to expanding registers and improving academic skills in Spanish. This challenge is related to students’ response as well as reproduction of social values assigned to certain languages, specifically to some varieties of a language. For example, the vernacular variety of Spanish that learners come with to the language classroom has traditionally been stigmatized in non-heritage courses. The societal indexing of the home language can lead to linguistic insecurity, inhibition and ultimately an abandonment or rejection of the heritage language by younger generations (Beaudrie & Fairclough, 2012; Schwarzer & Petron, 2005). This chapter investigates the oral discourse as well as the linguistic attitudes of Latino/a speakers of Spanish in a heritage language classroom. The results shed light on heritage speakers’ linguistic confidence and its relation to the heritage language course. Based on the link between motivation and language maintenance, this paper argues that the main goal of a heritage language class should be to help speakers develop linguistic awareness and increased confidence while validating their own vernacular variety.

*  I would like to thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and valuable suggestions. I am also grateful to my graduate student Angelica Amezcua for her help with data collection and to all the heritage language learners who participated voluntarily in this study.

doi 10.1075/sibil.49.11san © 2016 John Benjamins Publishing Company

 Ana Sánchez-Muñoz

1.  Introduction A heritage language learner is one who is learning the language of their ancestors in a cultural context in which it is not the official language or the language of power. Heritage speakers come from diverse backgrounds and have varying degrees of fluency in their heritage language. In the case of Spanish in the United States, although many Latino heritage speakers typically begin acquiring Spanish at home, it is quite common for English to become the primary or dominant language quickly. This is the case due to several reasons, but mainly because of schooling exclusively in English (Gándara & Hopkins, 2010; Silva-Corvalán, 1994). Additionally, speakers consciously or unconsciously feel the general low prestige attached to Spanish in the U.S., which negatively affects language maintenance beyond second-generation speakers. Given the intergenerational language loss that we are still witnessing in the U.S. (despite the fact that Spanish speakers continue to grow in numbers and it is estimated that by 2050 the United States will be the biggest Spanish-speaking country), researchers and practitioners need to pay attention to heritage language teaching and the ways it may grow and evolve at various institutional settings. Much has been written about heritage language learning for over two decades. Some of the topics that have been discussed extensively in the literature include descriptions of the heritage language learner (Valdés, 1997, 2001; Carreira, 2003), heritage students’ perspectives on their own language use and learning process (Beaudrie  & Ducar, 2005; Potowski, 2002), varieties of the language (Villa, 1996), cultural connections (He, 2010); background of the language teacher (Knowles & Brown, 2000), theory behind the heritage language teaching (Carreira, 2007; Lynch, 2003), and inclusion of a critical pedagogical approach in our heritage language courses (Correa, 2011). Together with the research, there are a growing number of heritage programs at the university level organized differently but basically guided by the same core principles of developing the heritage language in the speakers with the ultimate goal of preventing the loss of the heritage language (HL) in future generations. An aspect that plays an important role in language maintenance is the speaker’s motivation for continuing to use their heritage tongue. This paper presents research that examines the link between ethnic identity and Spanish language use among young Latina/o university students. The data are drawn from Latina/o students enrolled in a course of Spanish specifically designed for heritage learners. The effect of this course on the speakers’ linguistic confidence is examined as well as their linguistic and ethnic identity throughout the academic year. Since linguistic insecurity plays a major role in language attrition and loss, it is important to pay attention to and actively develop linguistic confidence through HL courses. The hope is that a better understanding will translate into increased chances of successfully promoting heritage language maintenance in the U.S.



Heritage language healing? 

2.  Identity and confidence in heritage languages All languages can be considered as a continuous range of registers that include oral and written varieties and have different levels of formality from highly formal styles (for example, an article in a scientific journal, a hearing before a court of law) to very informal ones (for example, a family dinner conversation, notes to close friends). Both oral and written academic discourse is situated towards the formal end of this continuum and is characterized by linguistic features such as the use of technical terms, elaborate syntactic structures and morphology, and a high level of lexical diversity (high type/token ratio). By contrast, everyday casual interactions feature colloquial terms, idiomatic expressions, and grammatical fragmentation. Even though most native speakers of a language develop skills in a wide range of registers, heritage and minority language speakers in the U.S. are usually dominant in English, but not in the HL in all domains. This is due to a variety of factors, such as formal education in English (Silva-Corvalán, 1994, p. 9), the higher prestige of English in most bilingual communities in the U.S. (Silva-Corvalán, 1994, p. 9; Valdés & Geoffrion-Vinci, 1998, p. 476), contact with English-speaking children on the playground or in the streets (Sankoff, Thibault, Blondeau, Fonollosa & Gagnon, 1997), and exposure to English through television and other media. In the case of Spanish, even though heritage language speakers (HLS) may start acquiring it at home, most speakers only develop oral conversational registers in Spanish while the acquisition of a wide range of registers in English continues beyond adolescence (Sánchez-Muñoz, 2009). HLS use Spanish primarily for interactions with family and friends as an oral informal variety and that is if Spanish is used at all. Many external factors can help maintain the HL in U.S. Latina/o communities, such as interactions with newly arrived relatives, marriage to dominant Spanish speakers, etc. Yet, linguists have continued to observe the classic generational language loss pattern, which shows that by the third generation speakers have very limited knowledge of their HL (Silva-Corvalán, 1994). Losing fluency in the home language often leads to linguistic insecurity and inhibition that directly interferes with the language development process (Valdés, 2005; Villa, 1996). Heritage speakers of Spanish come to the classroom with a very low linguistic selfesteem. They have internalized deficit discourses about their Spanish, their ­English or both. Yet, most recognize their HL as an intrinsic component of their cultural and ethnic identity (Amezcua, 2014). The HL classroom offers a unique opportunity for linguists and educators to shift the patterns of internalized linguistic “trauma” in HL learners. It is important to understand that even though students may have native abilities in their HL as far as conversational oral production is concerned, most have received no formal schooling in Spanish. Thus, they have not developed the grammar,

 Ana Sánchez-Muñoz

v­ ocabulary, and other skills appropriate for situations other than family and informal settings. Several educators and linguists have stressed the importance of developing and enriching skills in the non-dominant language for bilingual speakers in the U.S. In order to develop pedagogies that specifically target this population of Spanish speakers it is necessary to understand the skills that the learners bring to the heritage language classroom. Spanish is considered a minority language within the U.S. The variety of Spanish that HLS are usually exposed to is a variety that is in constant contact with English. As many studies on Spanish in the U.S. have shown, this situation of contact results in a number of linguistic phenomena such as transfer (Otheguy, García & Fernández, 1989; Silva-Corvalán, 1994; Bernal-Enríquez & Hernández-Chávez, 2001). Previous research has shown that most HLS employ features typical of language contact situations, including calques, borrowings and code switching across registers. Learners express reading and writing difficulty and their confidence is the lowest in the latter ability. Additionally, most have not developed technical and/or formal vocabulary and instead use informal lexicon and casual pronunciations in Spanish regardless of the situation (Sánchez-Muñoz, 2007). Many Latino bilingual students are aware of their limitations in a wide range of registers in their HL vis-à-vis their better command of English. This causes a sense of insecurity and, as we will see, it sometimes involves a questioning of their own ethnic identity. Language is the vehicle through which much of our cultural identity is constructed. The intrinsic link between identity and language is especially important in the educational context as students are learning, actively challenging old ideas and paradigms and discovering new ones. The attitudes students have about their heritage culture and language profoundly affect their self-esteem and their sense of ethnic and familial pride (Tseng & Fuligni, 2000; Oh & Fuligni, 2010). The HL classroom is for many HLS the first real chance to develop other HL registers while increasing linguistic confidence and engaging in an ethnolinguistic identity exploration that I argue is key for HL maintenance.

3.  The HL classroom Given the decades of research and numbers of studies advocating for the necessity of HL curriculum different from Second Language (SL) or Foreign Language (FL) models, we now have many types of HL programs across the U.S. Spanish is the heritage language most widely spoken in the United States; therefore, there are more programs specifically designed for this HLS population than any other heritage language in the nation. What they all have in common is the recognition that ethnic identity is intrinsically linked to language; this, in fact, is a foundational aspect of bilingual



Heritage language healing? 

e­ ducation and heritage languages since its inception (Leeman, Rabin, & RománMendoza, 2011). Traditionally, Spanish has been taught in most high schools and colleges following communicative methods developed for second/foreign languages. The problem is that for the Latino HLS, Spanish is neither a second nor a foreign language. Before the push from linguists and educators for HL curriculum, those HLS who wanted to learn more about their HL did not have an adequate avenue to accomplish such goal. Instead, in the SL/FL classroom, many Latino students struggled with their linguistic confidence and a frequent shaming of their cultural identity. Usually, the focus of the beginner SL/FL classroom is the development of basic grammar and conversational abilities in the target language, which HLS possess. Conversely, at intermediate/ advanced levels, precisely the levels into which HLS are directly placed, it is assumed that learners already have academic knowledge including a number of technical terminology, ability to produce complex syntactical structures, morphology and lexicon; none of which HLS have been typically exposed to. Under these conditions, Anglo and other non-HLS students tend to perform better in the language classroom since they have a formal foundation in the target language that allows them to accomplish the tasks expected of this register: academic writing and reading. The “non-standard” variety of Spanish (often uneducated or rural-origin varieties) that speakers bring to the classroom is directly or indirectly scorned. Consequently, HLS develop linguistic insecurity in their own language and many lose interest in continuing the study of Spanish; unfortunately, for many HLS taking Spanish classes would be more humiliating than enriching. Most linguists and educators agree that a solid Spanish as a heritage language program must include sociolinguistic aspects of the language and its reality within the U.S. context. A HL pedagogy should aim to provide HLS with a critical perspective that will help them understand the complex relationship between languages ​​and sociopolitical structures (Leeman, 2005). The HL program that was used to collect data for this chapter is one that takes into consideration these aspects and includes topics of social and personal identity formation as HLS minority in the U.S. The academic year-long course that is examined in this chapter is designed for students whose home language was Spanish. For this class, students must have had early exposure to Spanish, at home or in their community. While these students may have a higher degree of communicative proficiency than those whose first and primary contact with Spanish occurs in the classroom, they sometimes lack critical exposure to and training in Spanish morphology, syntax, and grammatical structures. This course is developed specifically to address language learning for heritage speakers and provides such practice through a variety of activities that also help students attain a greater awareness of the history and importance of Hispanic and Latino communities in the U.S. Diverse sociolinguistic aspects of the langue are explored including

 Ana Sánchez-Muñoz

language maintenance, loss, dialect diversity, the academic variety and bidialectalism. The class is conducted in Spanish and includes various projects based on work with and in the local communities. The main objective during the first weeks is to build and nurture linguistic confidence in HL learners; the goal is to repair the d ­ amage to ethno-­ linguistic identity and linguistic insecurity that speakers may have suffered throughout their educational or social experience. The following describes in more detail the methodology of this study, including the process of data collection and analysis techniques.

4.  Data collection: HL program and learners In this paper, linguistic self-esteem and confidence is examined in a group of university students taking Spanish as a HL. The relationship between linguistic and ethnic identity is investigated throughout the course of the HL program. The objective is to find out whether a university course specifically designed to meet the needs of this population of speakers has had a positive effect on the perception of themselves as Latino Spanish speakers. This issue is critical because we know that solid linguistic confidence promotes and assists in maintaining heritage languages as well as developing a sense of self within one’s ethnic community (Ada & Zubizarreta, 2001; DuránCerda, 2008). The HLS population examined specifically in this paper consists of 50 young ­Latinos/as between 18 and 23 years old. All participants completed a series of questions about their linguistic and educational background; the national origin of parents and grandparents; and daily use of Spanish (for example, in what contexts and communicative situations they typically use Spanish, with whom they speak in Spanish, what kind of leisure activities revolve around the HL). The objective of this preliminary survey is making sure that speakers constitute a homogeneous group that can be compared when investigating of linguistic confidence. Mostly, students are second generation Mexican Americans/Chicanos (U.S. citizens born of Mexican parents) but the current sample includes five students of Salvadorian descent. This mirrors the makeup of the local Latina/o community outside the university campus where most of the population is of Mexican descent followed by Central-Americans (mainly Salvadorian). The data was collected using two anonymous questionnaires and a series of interviews. The first questionnaire was distributed at the beginning of the academic year and the second at the end. The first questionnaire included questions about Spanish language use, self-perception of skills in Spanish, and a rating of linguistic confidence for each of those skills as of the beginning of the semester. Regarding skills in the HL and the confidence or linguistic insecurity associated with these, the ­questionnaires



Heritage language healing? 

measured confidence in oral and written production and listening and reading ­comprehension. The idea was to get a self-assessment specifying the level of agreement or disagreement regarding ability and confidence on a scale of 0–5 (Likert scale), 0 being the lowest and 5 the highest. The second questionnaire was distributed at the end of the academic year and consisted of the questions in which students were asked to judge (using the same 0–5 scale) whether their linguistic skills and confidence in oral production, listening, reading and writing had improved after having taken Spanish for heritage speakers. ­Further reflection questions about whether there had been a change or negotiation of ethnic identity in relation to their language skills were also included. Each participant was also interviewed individually by the researcher and the researcher’s graduate assistant toward the second half of the school year. In the interviews, students were given the chance to speak as much as they wanted about a variety of topics including (but not limited to) their motivation for signing up for the course, their feelings surrounding their use of the HL, their sense of connection to the language, their identity as Latinas/os. The interview length ranged between 20 and 45 minutes.

5.  Results: Narratives of hurt and healing First, we compare the quantitative results of the questionnaires on linguistic confidence. Then we discuss the themes that surfaced from the individual interviews as well as the open-ended questions in the second questionnaire. These reflections include the idea of the connection between their language and identity and the role of this Spanish class in negotiating such a connection.

5.1  Quantitative results: Ability and confidence in the HL Ratings of perceived ability and confidence in each of the four skills were remarkably similar across participants. Not surprisingly, the scores of ability and confidence closely match in most cases, except in a few of the responses where the level of confidence is lower than that of perceived performance. This is the case at the beginning of the semester in all skills except oral production, for which confidence is scored slightly higher in some cases to perceived ability. It is not surprising that production skills (oral, writing) are viewed as more challenging than receptive skills (listening and reading compression). The results of the questionnaire at the end of the academic year show that there is an increase in both linguistic ability and confidence in all skills. However, it is in the ability to write in Spanish where students perceive a clear improvement. Obviously,

 Ana Sánchez-Muñoz

linguistic confidence increases in this area more than anywhere else after the Spanish HL class. As mentioned above, writing is the factor of greatest concern to students, it is the skill that they have been the least able to develop due to lack of adequate formal education in their heritage language and where they feel more insecure at the beginning of the HL program. In fact, as indicated by the students themselves, writing – in particular, correct orthography – is the main motivation that leads most students to enroll in this course. Figure 1 illustrates the mean values of ability and confidence for the data analyzed in the two questionnaires. Recall that the Likert scale used provides a rating between 0 and 5 for students to choose the value based on their subjective judgment. 

Beginning Ability End ability Beginning Confidence End confidence

.  .  .  .  . 

Oral

Listening

Reading

Writing

Figure 1.  Mean scores of ability and confidence in the four skills of the HL

5.2  Qualitative results: Reflections and interviews The participants in this study were given opportunities through open-ended questions and interviews to express their opinions and feelings about the connection between the HL and their personal and social identity. In the qualitative analysis of the data the following common themes emerged in the reflections of students:

5.2.1  A strong connection between heritage language and ethnicity Most participants admit that Spanish is essential for the vision they have of themselves and their place within the Latina/o ethnic group. For example, HLS identify the notion



Heritage language healing? 

of Latinidad with the ability to communicate in Spanish, as expressed in the following comments:

(1) Spanish helps identify who you are, it is part of your culture, even if you are mixed, like that is my case, my mom is half American […]. I identify as Latina, and when you know how to speak [Spanish] or you want to know how to speak it, you feel part of the community.



(2) Spanish is part of my culture. It is the language that my grandparents passed on to my parents and, like, I want to be able to pass that on to my children too.

5.2.2  Fear of rejection from the ethnic community The loss or abandonment of the heritage language has negative consequences for the individual that faces judgment from other members of their own ethnic group. Such sentiment came about several times during the interviews, as exemplified in the following comments:

(3) Spanish is important to communicate with your grandparents, and stay connected with your culture and for that generation to pass it down to the next generation [….] It is important to continue practicing your culture in this multi-cultural society.



(4) Those who are Latino but do not speak their language, in my view, are ashamed to be WHO they truly are.

Among HLS, a common fear is that losing the ability to function in the HL, one will be rejected, labeled as “Americanized,” and not able to participate fully in the ethnic community. This is something that motivates many Latina/o HLS to improve their Spanish skills.

5.2.3  The fear of being made fun of by others Related to the fear of rejection is the sense of shame that many HLS have internalized, and it is increased with the judgment and negative comments from other Latinas/os, especially relatives who are still in the homeland. This linguistic insecurity and the fear of ridicule is very powerful and often an HLS would rather not interact at all than have to be subject to ridicule by members of the family or the larger community. For example, a student reflects:

(5) I wish my Spanish was better. When I go to Mexico, my cousins laugh at me, they know I speak mocho, I should know more words, so sometimes I don’t want to talk.



(6) When I was younger, I felt ashamed about speaking Spanish; when I was at the store with my mother and I had to translate for her and I really couldn’t.

 Ana Sánchez-Muñoz

Linguistic insecurity is the reason why many heritage speakers enroll in classes like this, they feel their HL is not good enough and they want to improve their abilities. However, as noted in Example 5, it may also be the very reason why many choose to move away from the language and to avoid the shame and stigma that comes with speaking mocho or being a pocho.1

5.2.4  Low value assigned to HL Sometimes this sense of inadequacy in one’s use of the ancestral language leaves deep scars in speakers’ linguistic souls. These scars manifest as internalizations of socially constructed stigmas that deem Spanish as an inferior language in the U.S. Some of the interviews and reflections show that often there is a perceived low value assigned to the HL. Spanish in the U.S.’s public imagination is the language of the menial workers and the undocumented. Reflections by HLS display the negative belief that their knowledge and command of Spanish is good enough for the purposes for which they need and use the language. See for example the following testimonies about the utilitarian value of the HL:

(7) I like Spanish, you know, I speak it with my family. But, like, I only speak it with my mom and my grandparents in Mexico, so I’m okay with my Spanish. Like, I know it’s pocho, but what’s the point of getting better at it. Everybody speaks English here, so…



(8) Taking the class made me change my mind. Uhm, I didn’t think I would wanna take more courses [in Spanish] and stuff, but now I do. I want to read more and write and speak well, cuz I may use it some time. You know, like, before this class, I thought, well here, you know, most jobs you don’t need good Spanish.

Linguistic hierarchies and prejudice affect the language and its speakers (Amezcua 2014); particularly, the HL speakers because language ideologies impact the willingness of this population to continue developing and using the language so, in the long run, maintenance is compromised. Overall, the results indicate that there is indeed a sort of linguistic healing after the completion of this HL course. Namely, the questionnaires and reflections show that students feel an improvement of their Spanish skills. They also express feeling more confident and more ready to use the HL in different contexts within and outside

.  The terms mocho or pocho have several meanings. They are often used as derogatory slang words to refer to U.S. Mexican Americans who lack ‘proper’ Spanish skills (e.g. español mocho ‘careless/mutilated Spanish’).



Heritage language healing? 

their own communities, including their jobs and/or volunteer work. In fact, several students expressed a desire to continue studying and taking more advanced courses in Spanish. For example, one of the participants said that due to the research project assigned for this class (using Spanish in the local community), he has learned about an area that he wants to pursue by helping the Latino community as a nutritionist. He says “Spanish maintenance is important because being exposed to articles in S­ panish […] when I was doing research, I was reading articles in Spanish about [health and] nutrition and it was interesting hearing the perspective of nutrition in ­Spanish […] It definitely has opened a new world of knowledge and understanding of nutrition.” Realizing the value of the language beyond the family environment is an important aspect that can result in motivating HLS to develop their language skills further. ­Additionally, several HLS mentioned that the HL course helped them move pass feelings of shame and inadequacy in their use of Spanish. This is good news as it indicates that courses such as these have a real, positive impact in the speakers’ language ­confidence and by extension can indeed make a difference for HL language maintenance.

6.  Concluding remarks This paper has examined the notions of identity in relation to the use of the heritage language. We looked at linguistic confidence and the role that programs specifically designed for the HLS population can have for maintaining and developing a healthy linguistic and ethnic identity. Specifically, we analyzed data collected in a population of Latina/o college students enrolled for the first time in a Spanish HL program. The results of this research show that most students perceive a significant improvement in their Spanish, especially in writing but also in all other skills. Perceived fluency is tied to linguistic confidence and linguistic confidence in turn may indeed lead to better chances of continuing the use and the improvement of skills in the HL. We also discussed HLS’ feelings or beliefs that either encourage or dissuade the use of Spanish among Latina/o students. Understanding the students’ motivation to (re)learn the language is an important first step to be able to develop an adequate language program that will address the needs of this student population. This study provides evidence of the important role that HL courses may have in healing low linguistic self-esteem and speakers’ negative views of their own language use. The HL classroom can be a site where learners develop as competent speakers of the language and as productive members of their ethnic community, thus promoting heritage language maintenance.

 Ana Sánchez-Muñoz

References Ada, A. F., & Zubizarreta, R. (2001). Parent narratives: The cultural bridge between Latino parents and their children. In M. L. Reyes & J. J. Halcon (Eds.), The best for our children: Critical perspectives on literacy for Latino students. New York, NY: Teacher College Press. Amezcua, A. (2014). Creating agency for heritage language speakers in Chicana/o studies. Unpublished manuscript. Beaudrie, S. M., & Ducar, C. (2005). Beginning level university heritage programs: Creating a space for all heritage language learners. Heritage Language Journal, 3(1), 1–26. Beaudrie, S. M., & Fairclough, M. (Eds.). (2012). Spanish as a heritage language in the United States: The state of the field. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Bernal-Enríquez, Y., & Hernández Chávez, E. (2001). La eseñanza del español en Nuevo México: ¿Revitalización o erradicación de la variedad chicana? In A. Roca & M. C. Colombi (Eds.), Mi lengua: Spanish as a heritage language in the USA (pp. 96–115). Washington DC: Georgetown University Press. Carreira, M. (2003). Profiles of SNS students in the twenty-first century: Pedagogical implications of the changing demographics and social status of US Hispanics.  In A. Roca  & M. C.  Colombi (Eds.), Mi lengua: Spanish as a heritage language in the United States (pp. 51–77). Washington DC: Georgetown University Press. Carreira, M. (2007). Spanish-for-native-speaker matters: Narrowing the Latino achievement gap through Spanish language instruction. Heritage Language Journal, 5(1), 147–71. Correa, M. (2011). Advocating for critical pedagogical approaches to teaching Spanish as a heritage language: Some considerations. Foreign Language Annals, 44(2), 308–320.

doi: 10.1111/j.1944-9720.2011.01132.x

Durán-Cerda, D. (2008). Strengthening la identidad in the heritage learner classroom: ­Pedagogical approaches. Hispania, 91(1), 42–51. Gándara, P., & Hopkins, M. (2010). Forbidden language: English learners and restrictive language policies (Multicultural Education Series). New York, NY: Teachers College Press. He, A. W. (2010). The heart of heritage: Sociocultural dimensions of heritage language learning. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 30, 66–82.  doi: 10.1017/S0267190510000073 Knowles, T., & Brown, D. F. (2000). What every middle school teacher should know. Westport, CT: Heinemann. Leeman, J. (2005). Engaging critical pedagogy: Spanish for native speakers. Foreign Language Annals, 38(1), 35–45.  doi: 10.1111/j.1944-9720.2005.tb02451.x Leeman, J., Rabin, L., & Román-Mendoza, E. (2011). Identity and activism in heritage language education. Modern Language Journal, 95(4), 48–495. Lynch, A. (2003). Toward a theory of heritage language acquisition: Spanish in the United States. In A. Roca & M. C. Colombi (Eds.), Mi lengua: Spanish as a heritage language in the United States (pp. 25–50). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Oh, J. S., & Fuligni, A. J. (2010). The role of heritage language development in the ethnic identity and family relationships of adolescents from immigrant backgrounds. Social Development, 19(1), 202–220.  doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9507.2008.00530.x Otheguy, R., García, O., & Fernández, M. (1989). Transferring, switching, and modeling in West New York Spanish: An intergenerational study. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 79, 41–53.



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Potowski, K. (2002). Experiences of Spanish heritage speakers in university foreign language courses and implications for teacher training. ADFL Bulletin, 33(3), 35–42.

doi: 10.1632/adfl.33.3.35

Sánchez-Muñoz, A. (2007). Style variation in Spanish as a heritage language: A study of discourse particles in academic and non-academic registers. In K. Potowski & R. Cameron (Eds.), Spanish in contact: Policy, social and linguistic inquiries (Impact: Studies in Language and Society 22) (pp. 153–171). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.  doi: 10.1075/impact.22.13san Sánchez-Muñoz, A. (2009). Spanish as a heritage language in the United States: A study of speakers’ register variation. Saarbrücken: Verlag Dr. Muller. Sankoff, G., Thibault, P., Nagy, N., Blondeau, H., & Fonollosa, M. & Gagnon, L. (1997). Variation in the use of discourse markers in a language contact situation. Language Variation and Change, 9, 191–218.  doi: 10.1017/S0954394500001873 Schwarzer, D., & Petron, M. (2005). Heritage language instruction at the college level: Reality and possibilities. Foreign Language Annals, 38(4), 568–578.

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Silva-Corvalán, C. (1994). Language contact and change. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Tseng, V., & Fuligni, A. J. (2000). Parent–adolescent language use and relationships among immigrant families with East Asian, Filipino, and Latin American backgrounds. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 62, 465–476.  doi: 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2000.00465.x Valdés, G. (1997). The teaching of Spanish to bilingual Spanish-speaking students: Outstanding issues and unanswered questions. In M. C. Colombi & F. X. Alarcón (Eds.), La enseñanza del español a hispanohablantes: Praxis y teoría (pp. 8–44). Boston, MA: Houghton-Mifflin. Valdés, G. (2001). Heritage language students: Profiles and possibilities. In J. K. Peyton, D. Ranard, & S. McGinnis (Eds.), Heritage languages in America: Preserving a national resource (pp. 37–77). McHenry, IL & Washington, DC: Delta Systems and Center for Applied Linguistics. Valdés, G. (2005). Bilingualism, heritage language learners, and SLA research: Opportunities lost or seized? The Modern Language Journal, 89, 410–426.  doi: 10.1111/j.1540-4781.2005.00314.x Valdés, G., & Geoffrion-Vinci, M. (1998). Chicano Spanish: The problem of the ‘underdeveloped’ code in bilingual repertoires. The Modern Language Journal, 82(4), 473–501. Villa, D. (1996). Choosing a ‘standard’ variety of Spanish for the instruction of native Spanish speakers in the U.S. Foreign Language Annals, 29, 191–200.

doi: 10.1111/j.1944-9720.1996.tb02326.x

unit iii

Future lines of development in heritage language education

Emerging trends with heritage language instructional practices Advances and challenges Marta Fairclough

University of Houston Although the field of heritage language (HL) education is relatively new, the number of HL students and programs is rapidly increasing. Innovative research to identify teaching practices that better serve this student population is a priority. In this chapter, I present an overview of emerging trends within HL instructional practice. These practices are grouped into the following overlapping clusters that attempt to answer the questions of what to teach and how: (a) linguistic varieties; (b) use of technology; and (c) connections with home-language communities. Within each cluster, I briefly summarize some of the main points regarding advances in teaching practices presented in the chapters in this unit, pointing out the main advantages and challenges.

1.  Introduction Although the field of heritage language (HL) education is relatively new, the number of HL students, cutting-edge teaching practices, and HL programs is rapidly increasing (Beaudrie, 2011, 2012b). This chapter underscores some of the main initiatives that are emerging to better serve the Spanish heritage language (SHL) student population. The overview also summarizes the main ideas of the chapters included in this section. It points out some advantages and challenges of the several teaching practices described in this unit, such as critical awareness of matters related to bilingualism, the flipped classroom model, the use of online technology to deliver HL courses, the incorporation of service-learning in HL instruction, and the issues related to HL students’ study abroad experiences. In order to better organize the information, the developments within HL instructional practices are grouped into three overlapping1 clusters: (a) linguistic varieties; (b) use of technology; and (c) connections with home-language .  A student can connect to communities through technology or learn linguistic varieties through studying abroad or through service-learning. doi 10.1075/sibil.49.12fai © 2016 John Benjamins Publishing Company

 Marta Fairclough

c­ ommunities. While the first cluster attempts to answer the question of what to teach in the HL classroom, the other two offer some insights into how to teach it.

2.  Linguistic varieties Although most HL programs seek to teach the standard dialect and show respect for home varieties (e.g., Jo, 2001; Kondo-Brown, 2010; Rouchdy, 2002; Valdés, 2005, 2006, among many others), growing research points toward the need of teaching alternative dialects as a way to increase HLLs linguistic repertoire by (a) acquiring pertinent sociolinguistic knowledge to foster learner’s understanding of the connection between language and power, (b) developing linguistic awareness using contrastive techniques to notice and acquire additional language forms, and (c) promoting multiliteracies, which contribute to translingual and transcultural competence. More programs seem to be recognizing the value of using the home varieties in the classroom, not only as a starting point to teach the standard variety but for instrumental purposes. Gutiérrez and Fairclough (2006) posit that in addition to teaching the “the hybrid and simplified form of the language” which is the norm in most language programs, “instruction should gradually move from awareness of linguistic variation to productive use of alternative dialects, and from a focus on local varieties, registers, and styles to other varieties, registers, and styles of Spanish around the world” (184, my emphasis). Acquiring multiple language varieties gives the student more communicative options. While it is very likely that there will be many situations where a standard dialect will be needed, home varieties will also be indispensable in certain contexts. For example, practitioners in health or legal professions need to be familiar with both standard and colloquial forms of expressions normally used at the doctor’s office or in the justice system to effectively communicate with patients or clients. A student with a broad linguistic repertoire will be able to decide what varieties to use, when, and with whom. On the other hand, a person proficient only in the standard variety (which is often the case of L2 learners of Spanish) would be at a disadvantage when communicating with speakers of more colloquial US Spanish varieties of the language. Sociolinguistic knowledge is fundamental in achieving this goal. Leeman (2005, 2012) and Martínez (2003, 2012), among many others, emphasize the need for both teachers and students to understand linguistic variation and the complexities of language policies and ideologies. The authors argue that it is imperative to incorporate a broad range of sociolinguistic concepts into the HL curriculum (i.e., linguistic variation; multilingualism; and understanding of the social, cultural, and political aspects of language). Sociolinguistic knowledge will help students develop critical language awareness (Fairclough, 1995) by enabling them to critically examine the role of ­linguistic ideologies, politics, and social hierarchies in relation to languages in order to



Emerging trends with heritage language instructional practices 

better understand their own linguistic situation. As Beaudrie (2015) clearly explains: “Through this approach teachers will be able to equip their students with the sociolinguistic knowledge necessary to make appropriate linguistic choices based on their social awareness. In other words, students will be empowered to determine what language forms they want to speak, with whom, and why.” Assuming that a sociolinguistic approach that promotes critical language awareness frames the curriculum of the SHL classroom, strong contrastive techniques that incorporate awareness of the differences among the language varieties are essential to achieve student success (Fairclough, 2005, 2016). HL learners need to notice forms in order to become aware of differences between various varieties of the HL and to acquire the ability to make conscious choices about what forms to use in which contexts (Schmidt, 1993, 2001, 2010). Juxtaposing the same expression in two language varieties assists students in noticing the differences between them, facilitating the acquisition process (James, 1996). Instruction should focus especially on highlighting subtle differences, since students can easily recognize the obvious ones. Once students notice the different forms, they can more easily distinguish between them and acquire the ability to deploy them consciously. For instance, while teaching the more general term ‘impuestos’ to add to the widely used loanword ‘taxas,’ the SHL learner can easily perceive the difference. On the other hand, the following examples taken from F ­ airclough’s (2005) study illustrate some subtle differences between the two varieties that were not noticed by the students: (a) Yo podía ser mejor estudiante si tratara. Yo podría ser mejor estudiante si tratara. [I would be a better student if (I) tried]. In Example (a) the student produced the imperfect indicative form podía, whereas the expected form would be the conditional podría. Most likely due to the small linguistic distance between the two forms, the student did not realize they were different. (b) Interviewer: Claro, [a]hora, este … ¿pudieras [the actual recording said ‘podrías’] imaginar tu vida sin terminar, sin haber terminado los estudios secundarios, ¿cómo sería? Of course, now, ah…would you be able to imagine your life without finishing, without having finished, your secondary studies, what would it be like?

Interviewee: No, no pudiera, solamente por la razón de que, en mi familia es algo de que sé, no pudieras vivir así. No, I would not [imperfect subjunctive], only for the reason that, in my family it is something that I know, [you] would not [imperfect subjunctive] be able to live like that. In Example (b), the student transcribed a conversation conducted with a peer. The interviewee (and transcriber) did not notice that the interviewer had used a different

 Marta Fairclough

form podrías (conditional) when asking the question, and replaced it with the form from her own variety pudieras (imperfect subjective) when she did the transcription, as can be observed from her reply. In cases such as the one presented in (b), helping students notice the form will facilitate acquisition. Expanding HL learners’ linguistic repertoire through the addition of new language varieties2 contributes to multiliteracies. Samaniego and Warner (2016) indicate that the term, first coined by the New London Group (NLG, 1996) “notes both the variability and the contingency of communication in contemporary globalized societies, which are characterized by the use of new technologies and multimodal text production, as well as shifting notions of discourse community and literacy practices.” Multiliteracies allow students to develop translingual and transcultural competence (e.g., Schechtman & Koser, 2008; Wellmon, 2008). In bilingualism, translanguaging is usually understood as the simultaneous use of multiple languages to communicate. The concept of translanguaging stands in opposition to the idea that a bilingual is two monolinguals in one person, an assertion already challenged by Grosjean (1985), Cook (1997), and more recently by Valdés (2006), among many others. All the aforementioned foundational concepts, from sociolinguistic knowledge to multiliteracies, are essential when teaching HLs. One effective way of putting these concepts into practice is through translation (Ducar, 2009). Although translation has often been viewed negatively (e.g., Cook, 2010) due to its association with the ­Grammar-Translation method practiced a long time ago, translation when used effectively can help students notice the differences (and similarities) between two languages or language varieties, contributing to the development of biliteracy, which Colombi and Harrington (2012) define as the “socioculturally aware use of two languages in the context of literary (reading and writing) activities” (245) and multiliteracies. Gasca (2015) explains that translation can be a beneficial activity for SHL learners because it allows for explicit instruction focused on language gaps or specific problematic linguistic aspects. The author reminds us that although bilinguals are often accustomed to alternating languages or varieties on a daily basis, they must be taught translation strategies. Within the classroom context, translations can be done from English into Spanish or from one Spanish variety to another. During these types of activities, students in many cases offer diverse options for translating a word or a phrase. This frequently leads to opportunities to discuss pertinent sociolinguistic information about the forms students propose, empowering them as sources of ­knowledge while the instructor acts

.  Language “varieties” can be classified on the basis of a number of different dimensions, such as temporal, geographical, social, stylistic, and educational (Silva-Corvalán, 2001). For a comprehensive explanation of the term variety, see Fairclough (2016).



Emerging trends with heritage language instructional practices 

as a facilitator. The key factor is that translations need to be purposeful, with a meaningful and realistic context. Recent SHL research strongly endorses making students’ home varieties central to SHL instruction. Beaudrie (2015) indicates that “[e]xpanding students’ linguistic repertoires to allow them to function in contexts relevant to their reality should be a primary goal of SHL education.” Yet, the results of a study conducted by the author show “what seems to be a wide gap between existing research and ­practice.” Beaudrie analyzed the contents of a total of 62 SHL syllabi collected from four-year public and private universities located in 15 different U.S. states to determine the approach to language variation that each course adopted (eradication, expansion, appreciation, appropriateness-based, or critical). The study found that the most common approach in current SHL syllabi focuses entirely on standard/academic Spanish instruction (i.e., expansion). This model was followed by the appreciation approach, in which the value of the student’s variety is recognized in the classroom. While eradication of the home variety appeared not to be in use any longer, according to the analysis of the sample, the newer appropriateness-based and critical approaches did not seem to have reached most SHL classrooms yet. Beaudrie attributes the lack of treatment of sociolinguistic issues in SHL instruction to a deficiency in SHL teacher training and development.

3.  Use of technology Technology may serve many purposes in the HL classroom. It may be used to learn more about students’ backgrounds or to obtain feedback about the course, materials, and so on. Technological resources are also extremely useful for identifying HL ­learners and administering proficiency and achievement assessment tools to measure their linguistic knowledge (see Beaudrie’s chapter, this volume). This section explores the advantages of the use of technology such as (a) helping develop language skills in a flipped model, (b) differentiating instruction, (c) creating more flexible course delivery systems, and (d) addressing logistic and budgetary constraints, while also pointing out the challenges (as shown in Henshaw’s chapter). An example of incorporating technology in the HL classroom is proposed by Julio Torres in his chapter, “Flipping the Classroom: A Pedagogical Model for Promoting Heritage Language Writing Skills.” It is well known that HL students usually have limited literacy skills due to having little or no exposure to formal education in the HL (e.g., Carreira, 2012; Parodi, 2008). After presenting a comprehensive summary of studies on adult HL writing that discuss topics ranging from the distribution and proportions of spelling mistakes (Beaudrie, 2012a) to the description of writing strategies (e.g., Schleppegrell & Colombi, 1997; Schwartz, 2003, 2005), Torres applies

 Marta Fairclough

the technology-based flipped model as a good alternative for the promotion of writing skills of adult SHL learners. This model, already used in other learning contexts and with other student populations, is based on the premise that the traditional lecture-homework sequence is somewhat inverted. In teaching the course, the author follows Manchón’s (2012) dimensions of learning-to-write and writing-to-learn approaches: “Learning-to-write dimensions refer to the way in which learners develop writing conventions in an L2 (or in this case the HL) whereas writing-to-learn can deal more with language ­learning” (Torres, this volume). He adopts the learning-to-write approach (in this case, the focus was on writing conventions) by having students prepare material ahead of class through the use of technology, rather than simply being passive recipients of content knowledge delivered by the instructor during class. Instead students prepare readings, view short videos or lectures, or do other exercises at home using the content that will be addressed in class. Then, in the classroom they apply that knowledge to activities and receive immediate feedback from the instructor. As the author explains, use of the flipped classroom model as a pedagogical approach is not limited to face-toface classes but is ideal for online or hybrid courses as well. Although the model has great promise, Torres reflects on some of its limitations, which may include “students’ access to technology,” “instructors’ ability or training to create videos,” and “making students accountable for watching the videos” (Torres, this volume). In addition, since the model is relatively new, its effectiveness with SHL learners needs to be evaluated by conducting comparative studies with other instructional approaches. Technology can also be used in differentiated language instruction, which customizes activities to address the needs of students with diverse abilities in a multi-level HL classroom (Carreira, 2012). Henshaw (this volume) underscores that Under the assumption that HL learners constitute a heterogeneous group not only with respect to their degree of bilingualism but also in terms of attitudes, goals and preferences, technology may offer educators the opportunity to successfully meet different students’ needs in the HL classroom, given that one of the main advantages of CALL [computer-assisted language learning] is that it allows for more individualized instruction and personalized learning. The flexibility of web-based courses also offers a possible solution to overcoming logistical obstacles when offering separate face-to-face courses for L2 and HL learners is not a viable option.

As indicated by Henshaw in her chapter, delivery of SHL courses in hybrid format or completely online may be a solution for addressing the needs of mixed classes (of heritage and non-heritage language learners), especially advanced-level courses such as composition, grammar, or content courses. For several semesters the University of H ­ ouston successfully offered Saturday morning advanced-level hybrid courses (50% online; 50% face-to-face) on Spanish Grammar Review for mixed classes. Each  class lasted



Emerging trends with heritage language instructional practices 

90 ­minutes and the rest of the coursework was done online through the B ­ lackboard platform and included specific modules for heritage and non-heritage language learners. In her chapter, “Online Courses for HL Learners: Best Practices and Lessons Learned” (this volume), Florencia Henshaw offers a detailed description of a fully online composition course for HL students and points out some of the advantages and challenges of this delivery format. Her experience and insights are invaluable to those interested in technology for the HL classroom. The author argues that “logistic and budgetary constraints” that restrict the offering of face-to-face courses for HL students in many higher education institutions could be overcome through online instruction that specifically targets the linguistic needs of SHL learners. Among the main benefits is being able to offer classes especially designed for SHL students at institutions that do not have sufficient numbers of HL learners to justify a separate course for them. Through a detailed account of the educational context, course curriculum, ­materials, format and type of activities, as well as the results from an end-of-semester survey in which students gave generally positive ratings to several aspects of the online course experience, Henshaw presents an example of an online SHL course with all the necessary elements, which could serve as a model for others interested in following in her path. Yet, in her concluding remarks, the author acknowledges that “the integration of technology in the HL curriculum remains in its infancy and expresses the hope that as the “understanding of the advantages and challenges of technology-enhanced HL instruction expands, so will the array of course options for HL learners.”

4.  Community connections In the language teaching field, many scholars have argued for using authentic language learning materials and, to the extent possible, creating realistic language contexts that approximate actual communication exchanges. One of the best ways to make language learning “real” is to generate connections with the home language community. Ideally, such connections would start within a familiar context (e.g., family and friends) when students have lower levels of linguistic proficiency and would gradually move to the broader community and the world as students develop their abilities in the language varieties of the HL (Fairclough & Belpoliti, 2016). In the HL education field, a growing number of higher education institutions seem to be following this expanding model by (a) designing cultural projects within the curriculum; (b) incorporating service-learning in HL instruction; and (c) offering study abroad experiences in Spanish-speaking countries to SHL learners. Regarding the design and implementation of cultural projects within the HL curriculum, Fairclough & Belpoliti (2016) propose a series of scaffolded, inquiry-based cultural projects designed to develop proficiency in the HL and geared for students

 Marta Fairclough

at different ability levels. HL learners collect data using a variety of tools (surveys, the Internet, interviews, etc.) to conduct research projects that expand from the immediate context (family and friends) to the broader community (peers and then the broader community), in order to become familiar with different aspects of the HL culture. The students carry out their projects, with scaffolding assistance from the instructor, over a semester-long course, and at the end they present their findings through written essays and oral presentations that require increasing levels of language proficiency based on the SHL course sequence. For these projects, students often use their own language variety for interview or data-collection purposes, whereas they are expected to use standard forms in their final oral and written products, which may contain a mixture of both dialects if they quote language from the interviews. Another example of a cultural project conducted in the community is The Abuelos Project (“Historias de los abuelos”), developed by Ana Roca (2010). Pairs of students interview Spanishspeaking elders, in their native language, about their childhood experiences, cultural traditions, and reasons for immigrating to the United States, thereby developing communication skills as well as historical and cultural knowledge. Once students are ready to move away from familiar contexts, like those described in the previous paragraph, the focus shifts to the traditional goals for the HL c­ lassroom; namely, language maintenance, acquisition of a standard language variety, transfer of ­literacy skills, expansion of bilingual range, development of academic skills in the heritage language, promotion of positive attitudes about the heritage language, and development of cultural awareness (Beaudrie, Ducar, & Potowski, 2014). At this level connecting HL learners with different professions where they can make use of their language skills becomes essential (Martínez, 2010, forthcoming; Martínez & Schwartz, 2012). One of the best ways of creating connections between HL learners and the community and professional applications of HL use is through service-learning. Kelly Lowther Pereira (this volume) describes service-learning as a teaching method that combines community service and academic learning, providing students with real-world experiences that enable them to put their knowledge of the HL into practice. To the author it is imperative that the experience be meaningful (i.e., the service should achieve an actual purpose and be relevant and mutually beneficial to the parties involved) and integrated with the course in order to attain the best results. Lowther Pereira explains that community-based service-learning Has the potential to address the many complexities related to agency, attitudes, ideologies, and identities …. Moreover, HL learners may experience language variation through interaction with members of the linguistically diverse local community, thus contributing to greater dialectal awareness and flexibility. Importantly, HL use in the community may enable students to challenge dominant language ideologies and linguistic hierarchies by showing the cultural and linguistic capital of community and contact varieties of the HL.



Emerging trends with heritage language instructional practices 

Lowther Pereira posits that this model can meet many of the HL learners’ pedagogical, linguistic, and socio-affective needs, mainly by increasing their linguistic confidence, promoting their development of positive cultural and linguistic identities, and fostering both integrative and instrumental motivations. The author presents clear guidelines and essential tips on how to design and implement a service-learning model, starting with how to plan the course, find community partners, and select methods of assessment. The author also cautions the reader about some “logistical hiccups,” such as scheduling and transportation, and particularly about the importance of setting clear expectations for the students and the community partners in order to achieve optimal results. The chapter concludes with a list of short- and long-term benefits of service-learning for both students and the community. Whereas service-learning allows the HL learner to experience language outside the classroom and in real-world situations in the community, Rachel L. Shively’s ­chapter, “Spanish Heritage Learners in Study Abroad,” shows how studying abroad in a Spanish-speaking country offers students opportunities to experience different varieties of Spanish and to develop their communicative and intercultural abilities through authentic social interactions in a variety of contexts, with people in different roles, and for a range of functions, considerably expanding their linguistic repertoire in the HL. The experience abroad can be invaluable because students are able to learn more about their ancestry, explore their identities, and increase their motivation to continue developing the HL in order to communicate more effectively with family members and people in the HL community. Yet, SHL learners may encounter some challenges while studying abroad in a Spanish-speaking country, such as criticism of the language variety they speak or identity discrimination (e.g., ethnicity, social class, etc.), so it is important to not only prepare students, but also those who will be interacting with them during the study-abroad experience. As previously indicated in the introductory section, some of these instructional practices can overlap. An excellent example is Parra’s (2013) work which successfully combines community service-learning with a multiliteracies approach based on ­border and critical pedagogy to advance the linguistic and cultural competence of mixed (SHL and L2) advanced level classes. The final products are creative art projects and written texts in Spanish that explore and critically reflect on issues related to the Latino communities and experiences.

5.  Main challenges in HL education The chapters in this section offer a number of models whose purpose is to describe pedagogical advances in the HL education field. All the chapters present many advantages that support the proposed models, but they also list some specific challenges

 Marta Fairclough

encountered when implementing these approaches. Most of the challenges presented throughout the chapters can be summarized and grouped into two categories: (a) lack of resources (for both students and instructors), and (b) need for specialized teacher training.

5.1  Lack of resources Without administrative support, which often translates into funding (Beaudrie, 2016), the creation of courses for SHL students can be a very challenging endeavor. Once the first obstacle of obtaining support is overcome, a number of resources are needed to implement a successful course or program. To begin, teaching materials that support the different pedagogical approaches and techniques presented in this section (e.g., sociolinguistic knowledge, contrastive techniques to differentiate among varieties of the HL, translation activities designed for different levels of HL students, guides to create flipped classroom assignments) are essential but usually not available (e.g., Ducar, 2009; Guzmán, 2013; Leeman & Martínez, 2007; Leeman & Serafini, forthcoming). With the growing interest in computerized teaching and technological advances, key resources for the HL classroom should include web-based teaching materials and activities. What we normally find is a lack of online materials specifically designed for SHL learners (e.g., Henshaw forthcoming). Finally, putting into practice cultural and service learning projects requires that time and energy be devoted to establishing a broad range of contacts with the community (e.g., Fairclough & Belpoliti, 2016).

5.2  Specialized teacher training In the United States, the professionalization of SHL instruction is a top priority for the field. Presently there is a lack of comprehensive programs devoted to the training of professionals in SHL education. Generally, such training consists of workshops offered over a few days during the summer, methodology courses usually taught at the graduate level at a small number of universities nationwide, or presentations delivered by a guest speaker during professional development in-services at the beginning of the academic year. Ideally, a comprehensive program would include several courses that could be offered at the undergraduate, post-baccalaureate, or graduate levels. A semester-long course in HL pedagogy would familiarize current and future instructors with key concepts and advances in HL teaching, such as differentiated instruction, micro-approaches to teaching, and critical language pedagogy (e.g., Carreira, 2012, forthcoming; Lacorte, forthcoming; Leeman & Serafini, forthcoming). In addition, the program should include a course that would address sociolinguistic issues related to U.S. Spanish as well as the main characteristics of U.S. Spanish varieties. In order to



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become true professionals in the field of SHL in the United States, instructors would need to learn not only about the language of U.S. Hispanics and how to teach it, but also about U.S. Hispanic literature and culture. The lack of instructor training may be even more evident in study abroad programs. Usually language instructors teaching abroad have training and experience in Spanish-as-a-second-language pedagogy but possess little or no background in HL education. They may lack sociolinguistic knowledge, awareness of the socioaffective needs of HL learners, or training in techniques that advance students’ proficiency in the HL. In many Spanish study abroad programs, instructors are likely to encounter mixed HL-L2 classes and follow models of second language teaching in the classroom (e.g., Prof. Lucía Alvarado Cantero, Universidad de Costa Rica, personal communication). Finally, technology training to develop and implement online or hybrid courses is becoming essential in the language teaching profession. Instructors should be current in the latest developments. Ongoing professional development is also a must. The HL education field is moving forward rapidly, and instructors need to keep up with pedagogical as well as technological advances.

6.  Concluding remarks It is common knowledge that students of any type and at any level can only master a certain amount of information during a given time period. Therefore, HL instructors have the responsibility to decide what is essential for students to learn in the classroom so that when they complete their studies, they can continue learning and expanding their linguistic repertoire on their own. SHL instruction has to give learners the necessary sociolinguistic tools to guide them in making critical decisions regarding language and in understanding language policies and ideologies. Students need to be taught translation strategies, which could prove very helpful in the real world, and be instructed on how to take advantage of technological advances so that they can continue capitalizing on the latest innovations. And finally, they should learn how to make connections with the community and the world, because school is only one stage in their lives. When they complete their courses, it would be useful for them to have had some real-world experiences of talking to real people in everyday scenarios and of choosing the language variety that they consider would work best in these instances. Such experiences could take the form of community projects, service-learning, internships, or study abroad. It is imperative to point out that although a few instructors, programs, and institutions are beginning to implement the models, strategies, and practices described in this volume, many continue to follow old traditions, often out of habit or lack of

 Marta Fairclough

knowledge of the pedagogical trends described in current publications. Some instructors even persist in using materials that follow a second language approach to teaching HL learners. In order to continue the development of the HL education field, we need to face and overcome the main challenges presented in this chapter, in particular procuring the necessary resources to advance the field and to ­professionalize instruction.

Acknowledgments I am grateful to Diego Pascual y Cabo for all his work on putting together this volume and to the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and insightful suggestions.

References Beaudrie, S. M. (2011). Spanish heritage language programs: A snapshot of current programs in the southwestern United States. Foreign Language Annals, 44(2), 321–337. doi: 10.1111/j.1944-9720.2011.01137.x Beaudrie, S. M. (2012a). A corpus-based study on the misspellings of Spanish heritage speakers and their implications for teaching. Linguistics and Education, 23, 135–144. doi: 10.1016/j.linged.2011.09.001 Beaudrie, S. M. (2012b). Research on university-based Spanish heritage language programs in the United States: The current state of affairs. In S. M. Beaudrie & M. Fairclough (Eds.), Spanish as a heritage language in the United States: The state of the field (pp. 203–222). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Beaudrie, S. (2015). Approaches to language variation: Goals and objectives of the Spanish heritage language syllabus. Heritage Language Journal, 12(1), 1–19. Beaudrie, S. (2016). Building a heritage language program guidelines for a collaborative approach. In M. Fairclough & S. M. Beaudrie (Eds.), Innovative strategies for heritage language teaching: A practical guide for the classroom (pp. 123–153). Washington, DC: ­Georgetown University Press. Beaudrie, S., Ducar, C., & Potowski, K. (2014). Heritage language teaching: Research and practice. Dubuque, IA: McGraw-Hill Education. Carreira, M. M. (2012). Meeting the needs of heritage language learners. In S. M. Beaudrie & M. Fairclough (Eds.), Spanish as a heritage language in the United States: The state of the field (pp. 223–240). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Carreira, M. M. (Forthcoming). Pedagogical approaches and classroom applications for teaching heritage language learners. In M. Fairclough & S. M. Beaudrie (Eds.), Innovative approaches in heritage language teaching: From research to practice. Washington, DC: Georgetown ­University Press. Colombi, M. C., & Harrington, J. (2012). Advanced biliteracy development in Spanish as a heritage language. In S. M. Beaudrie & M. Fairclough (Eds.), Spanish as a heritage language in the United States: The state of the field (pp. 241–258). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.



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Cook. V. (1997). The consequences of bilingualism and cognitive processing. In A. M. B. de Groot  & J. F. Kroll (Eds.), Tutorials in bilingualism: Psycholinguistic perspectives (pp. 279–299). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Cook, G. (2010). Translation in language teaching: An argument for reassessment. Oxford: OUP. Ducar, C. (2009). The sound of silence: Spanish heritage textbooks’ treatment of language variation. In J. Leeman & M. Lacorte (Eds.), Español en los Estados Unidos y en otros contextos: Cuestiones sociolingüísticas (pp. 347–368). Madrid & Frankfurt: Iberoamericana-Vervuert. Fairclough, M. (2005). Spanish and heritage language education in the United States: Struggling with hypotheticals. Madrid & Frankfurt: Iberoamericana–Vervuert. Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical discourse analysis. Boston, MA: Addison Wesley. Fairclough, M. (2016). Incorporating additional varieties to the linguistic repertoire of heritage language learners: A multidialectal model. In M. Fairclough & S. M. Beaudrie (Eds.), Innovative strategies for heritage language teaching: A practical guide for the classroom (pp. 215–250). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Fairclough, M., & Belpoliti, F. (2016). Emerging literacy in Spanish among hispanic heritage language university students in the united states: A pilot study. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 19(2), 185–201.  doi: 10.1080/13670050.2015.1037718 Gasca Jiménez, L. (2015). La traducción como estrategia de aprendizaje en la enseñanza del español como lengua de herencia. II Symposium on Spanish as a Heritage Language, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX. Grosjean, F. (1985). The bilingual as a competent but specific speaker-hearer. Journal of Multilingual Multicultural Development, 6, 467–477.  doi: 10.1080/01434632.1985.9994221 Gutiérrez, M., & Fairclough, M. (2006). Incorporating linguistic variation into the classroom. In M. R. Salaberry & B. Lafford (Eds.), The art of teaching Spanish: Second language acquisition, from research to praxis (pp. 173–192). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Guzmán, Sergio. (2013). Textbooks in SHS programs: What has been adopted and why. Paper presented at the ACTFL Annual Convention, Orlando, FL. Henshaw, F. (Forthcoming). Technology-enhanced heritage language instruction: Best tools and best practices. In M. Fairclough & S. M. Beaudrie (Eds.), Innovative approaches in ­heritage language teaching: From research to practice. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. James, C. (1996). Mother tongue use in bilingual/bidialectal education: Implications for ­Bruneian Dwibahasa. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 17, 248–257. doi: 10.1080/01434639608666277 Jo, H.-Y. (2001). “Heritage” language learning and ethnic identity: Korean Americans’ struggle with language authorities. Language, Culture, and Curriculum, 14, 26–41. doi: 10.1080/07908310108666610 Kondo-Brown, K. (2010). Curriculum development for advancing heritage language competence: Recent research, current practices, and a future agenda. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 30, 24–41.  doi: 10.1017/S0267190510000012 Lacorte, M. (Forthcoming). Teacher development in heritage language education. In M. ­Fairclough & S. M. Beaudrie (Eds.), Innovative approaches in heritage language teaching: From research to practice. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Leeman, J. (2005). Engaging critical pedagogy: Spanish for native speakers. Foreign Language Annals, 38, 35–45.  doi: 10.1111/j.1944-9720.2005.tb02451.x

 Marta Fairclough Leeman, L. (2012). Investigating language ideologies in Spanish as a heritage language. In S. M. Beaudrie & M. Fairclough (Eds.), Spanish as a heritage language in the United States: The state of the field (pp. 43–60). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Leeman, J., & Martínez, G. (2007). From identity to commodity: Ideologies of Spanish in ­heritage languages textbooks. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies 4(1), 35–65. doi: 10.1080/15427580701340741 Leeman, J., & Serafini, E. J. (Forthcoming). Sociolinguistics for heritage language educators and students: A model for critical translingual competence. In M. Fairclough & S. M. ­Beaudrie (Eds.), Innovative approaches in heritage language teaching: From research to practice. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Machón, R. M. (Ed.). (2012). L2 writing development: Multiple perspectives. Boston, MA: De Gruyer Mouton.  doi: 10.1515/9781934078303 Martínez, G. (2003). Classroom-based dialect awareness in heritage language instruction: A critical applied linguistic approach. Heritage Language Journal 1(1), 1–14. Martínez, G. (2010). Medical Spanish for heritage learners: A prescription to improve the health of Spanish-speaking communities. In S. Rivera-Mills & J. Trujillo (Eds.), Building communities and making connections (pp. 2–15). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars. doi: 10.5848/CSP.2022.00001 Martínez, G. (2012). Policy and planning research for Spanish as a heritage language: From language rights to linguistic resource. In S. M. Beaudrie & M. Fairclough (Eds.), Spanish as a heritage language in the United States: The state of the field (pp. 61–78). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Martínez, G. (Forthcoming). Goals and beyond in HL education. In M. Fairclough & S. M. Beaudrie (Eds.), Innovative approaches in heritage language teaching: From research to practice. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Martínez, G., & Schwartz, A. (2012). Elevating “low” language for high stakes: A case for critical, community-based learning in a Medical Spanish for Heritage Learners Program. Heritage Language Journal, 9(2), 37–49. NLG, New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. ­Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 60–92.  doi: 10.17763/haer.66.1.17370n67v22j160u Parodi, C. 2008. Stigmatized Spanish inside the classroom and out: A model of language teaching to heritage speakers. In D. M. Brinton, O. Kagan, & S. Bauckus (eds.), Heritage language education: A new field emerging (pp. 199–214). New York, NY: Routledge. Parra, M. L. (2013). Expanding language and cultural competence in advanced heritage- and foreign-language learners through community engagement and work with the arts. ­Heritage Language Journal 10(2), 115–142. Roca, A. (2010). Interview class project and pedagogical strategies for developing cultural literacy and academic discourse of heritage Spanish college students. Paper presented at the First International Conference on Heritage/Community Languages, UCLA, Feb. 19–21. Rouchdy, A. (2002). Language conflict and identity: Arabic in the American diaspora. In A. Rouchdy (Ed.), Language contact and language conflict in Arabic: Variations on a sociolinguistic theme (pp. 133–148). London: Routledge/Curzon. Samaniego, M. & Warner, Ch. (2016). Designing meaning in inherited languages: A multiliteracies approach to heritage language instruction. In M. Fairclough & S. M. Beaudrie (Eds.), Innovative strategies for heritage language teaching: A practical guide for the classroom (pp. 290–325). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

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Schechtman, R. R., & Koser, J. (2008). Foreign languages and higher education: A pragmatic approach to change. Modern Language Journal, 92(2), 309–312. doi: 10.1111/j.1540-4781.2007.00719_9.x Schleppegrell, M. J., & Colombi. M. C. (1997). Text organization by bilingual writers. Written Communication, 14(4): 481–503.  doi: 10.1177/0741088397014004003 Schmidt, R. (1993). Awareness and second language acquisition. Annual Review of Applied ­Linguistics, 13, 206–226.  doi: 10.1017/S0267190500002476 Schmidt, R. (2001). Attention. In P. Robinson (Ed.), Cognition and second language instruction (pp. 3–32). Cambridge: CUP.  doi: 10.1017/CBO9781139524780.003 Schmidt, R. (2010). Attention, awareness, and individual differences in language learning. In W. M. Chan, S. Chi, K. N. Cin, J. Istanto, M. Nagami, J. W. Sew, T. Suthiwan, & I. Walker (Eds.), Proceedings of CLaSIC 2010, Singapore, December 2–4 (pp. 721–737). Singapore: National University of Singapore, Centre for Language Studies. Schwartz, A. M. (2003). ¡No me suena! Heritage Spanish speakers’ writing strategies. In A. Roca & M. C. Colombi (Eds.), Mi lengua: Spanish as a Heritage Language in the United States (pp. 235–256). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Schwartz, A. M. (2005). Exploring differences and similarities in the writing strategies used by students in SNS courses. In L. A. Ortiz López & M. Lacorte (Eds.), Contactos y contextos lingüísticos: El español en los Estados Unidos y en contacto con otras lenguas (pp. 323–333). Madrid: Lingüística Iberoamericana. Silva-Corvalán, C. (2001). Sociolingüística y pragmática del español. Washington, DC: Georgetown UP. Valdés, G. (2005). Bilingualism, heritage language learners, and SLA research: Opportunities lost or seized? Modern Language Journal, 89(3), 410–426.  doi: 10.1111/j.1540-4781.2005.00314.x Valdés, G. (2006). Making connections: Second language acquisition research and heritage language teaching. In M. R. Salaberry & B. Lafford (Eds.), The art of teaching spanish: Second language acquisition: From research to praxis (pp. 193–212). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Wellmon, C. (2008). Languages, cultural studies, and the futures of foreign language education. Modern Language Journal, 92(2), 292–295.  doi: 10.1111/j.1540-4781.2007.00719_3.x

New directions in heritage language pedagogy Community service-learning for Spanish heritage speakers Kelly Lowther Pereira

The University of North Carolina at Greensboro This chapter discusses how community service-learning (CSL) meets specific pedagogical challenges in Spanish heritage language (SHL) education. The integration of community service with academic instruction enhances student academic and civic learning and simultaneously strengthens communities. This chapter presents the multiple ways student CSL experiences can contribute to heritage language (HL) and cultural development, such as fostering positive identities and relationships with local communities, raising awareness of sociolinguistic and sociopolitical issues, developing language skills, career and professional goals, among others. The chapter provides a how-to guide for instructors to successfully design a course that takes advantage of all CSL has to offer to both HL learners and communities.

1.  Introduction Research to date in Spanish heritage language (SHL) education has exposed the multitude of complex linguistic and extralinguistic factors that influence heritage language (HL) learning and maintenance. Increasingly, SHL researchers are ­adopting an interdisciplinary approach to their study, drawing on diverse research traditions such as sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, ethnography and discourse analysis to inform their understanding of the factors involved in HL development. These multidimensional perspectives have contributed key insights into HL learning, such as the dynamic, complex roles that identity and ideology play in HL attitudes and maintenance. Multiple researchers have addressed the issue of standard language ideologies in the HL classroom and stressed the negative impacts of linguistic hierarchies on students’ identities and linguistic confidence (Carreira, 2000; Leeman, 2005; Lowther Pereira, 2010; Martínez, 2003; Villa, 2002). Enlightened by the sociopolitical context of language, SHL researchers like Leeman (2005) and Leeman, Rabin and Román Mendoza (2011) have urged fellow ­educators to

doi 10.1075/sibil.49.13low © 2016 John Benjamins Publishing Company

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adopt more critical pedagogies in the SHL classroom, to promote student agency and to engage in classroom practices that value students’ linguistic knowledge and experiences. Other scholars have discussed the growing shift in higher education in general toward globalization and intercultural competence and have called for a greater focus on developing language and communication skills, intercultural competency, and awareness of social justice issues among our students so they are prepared to engage in global economic growth and progress (Rivera-Mills, 2010). As we look to the future and develop new models of bilingual and HL education, we must look to our local communities as allies in creating a more socially and linguistically competent society. Thus, it is in response to the specific sociolinguistic and pedagogical challenges in SHL education as well as the recent trend toward community engagement and the creation of global citizens that the current chapter proposes community service-learning (CSL) as a critical pedagogical model for HL teaching. The CSL model goes beyond the classroom and looks to surrounding communities as cultural, social and linguistic resources for academic and civic learning. Importantly, the CSL model has the potential to provide students with much-needed opportunities to challenge dominant linguistic and social hierarches and promote student agency by valuing the unique knowledge and skillset that SHL learners bring to the classroom. Ultimately, the CSL model aims to empower students, teachers, and communities. To follow, I will first define CSL as its meaning is intended in the current chapter, and I will discuss its key components. Then I will discuss in detail how and why CSL can be a solution to some of the central issues acknowledged by SHL education research. Finally, I will provide guidelines on how to design a CSL course as well as give useful tips on how to integrate CSL successfully into the curriculum for the benefit of HL students and communities alike.

2.  What is community service-learning? Community service-learning (CSL) is precisely what the name suggests. It is c­ ommunity service combined with learning. The report from the National Commission on ServiceLearning explains what kind of service and what kind of learning are involved in the following definition: “a teaching and learning approach that integrates community service with academic study to enrich learning, teach civic responsibility, and strengthen communities” (Fiske, 2002, p. 6). Thus, CSL involves community service while enhancing students’ academic learning and civic responsibility. For the current chapter’s discussion of CSL, however, I find the following definition, provided by the Office of Leadership and Service-Learning at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, useful: “a credit-bearing, educational experience that



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integrates meaningful community service with academic instruction and reflection to enrich the learning experience, teach civic responsibility, and strengthen ­communities” (OLSL, n.d.). Two elements of this more nuanced definition are essential to any CSL course or program in my view. The first is community service must be meaningful. In other words, the service should fulfill a real purpose; it should genuinely, and ­voluntarily, serve the community in an ethical and useful way. Going one step further, I ­suggest that meaningful service should also be relevant and beneficial to all stakeholder parties; in this case, service should be mutually beneficial both to students and to community members, rather than just one or the other. A second critical aspect of this definition is that CSL be integrated with instruction and reflection. That is, to take full advantage of all that CSL has to offer to both students and the community, service should not be an isolated, external activity. Instead, CSL should be integrated as wholly as possible with the course’s objectives, content, classroom activities, discussions, projects and assignments, and allow ample opportunity for student reflection. Reflection, as will be discussed in more detail shortly, plays a key role in deepening students’ learning experiences and teaching civic responsibility over the duration of the service and even beyond. Additionally, course instructors should integrate community partners with class activities whenever possible. Community partners, too, can take part in teaching and learning if it is not too burdensome. Welcoming community partners into the classroom can provide opportunities for useful feedback and promote a dialogue in which all parties share the experience from their unique perspectives. Some tips on how to integrate CSL in the classroom, including how community partners can participate in classroom activities are provided in the upcoming section on CSL course design. A final important point that contributes to the present conceptualization of CSL comes from Wade’s (1997) lengthy discussion of the meaning of service-learning, in which she makes the noteworthy distinction that service-learning is working with others rather than for others. At first glance, this may seem contradictory. After all, CSL projects involve direct service to individual community members. However, as Wade  (2000, p. 106) critically explains, service extends beyond meeting individual needs to empowering others to work on their own behalf: “We cannot create ­significant, long-term change just through working one-on-one with individuals in the community. It is important that we educate and involve others in learning about the issue and how they can become involved.” Therefore, since enacting real change may take longer than the duration of the CSL project, it becomes essential to teach others about the issue(s) and to promote advocacy. In terms of a CSL course, this can be accomplished, for example, by designing course projects and activities in which students become educators to their classmates and peers on important community issues that they experience in their service activities. In this manner, students can

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e­ ncourage ­others to serve the community and, thus, play a vital role in initiating real social change. Now that what is meant by the term community service-learning (CSL) is clear, I turn the discussion to how CSL can benefit language students and meet the needs of HL learners specifically.

3.  How can community service-learning help HL learners? By affording HL learners opportunities for social and linguistic interaction with local community members who speak the HL, CSL can meet many of the pedagogical, ­linguistic and socio-affective needs of this diverse group of learners. For example, CSL can address complexities related to student agency, language attitudes, linguistic confidence, ideologies and identities. CSL often provides students with opportunities to use the HL in new social contexts and can help students expand their linguistic repertoires and exercise agency in their linguistic choices. Moreover, experiencing language variation firsthand through interaction with linguistically diverse community speakers can increase students’ dialectal awareness and flexibility. Importantly, by using the HL in the community, students can realize the cultural and linguistic capital of community and contact varieties of the HL. Finally, CSL offers valuable opportunities to challenge dominant language ideologies and linguistic hierarchies. As mentioned, a growing body of SHL research has pointed toward the negative impacts of a standard language ideology, or the imposition of an idealized prestige or academic variety of Spanish onto students in the classroom, on students’ ­linguistic confidence and HL maintenance (see Leeman, 2005; Lowther-Pereira, 2010; ­Martínez,  2003; Villa, 1996, among others). The reproduction of linguistic hierarchies in educational settings can take place even amidst well-meaning programs and instructors whose focus on achieving a “standard” language variety can disregard and, subsequently, devalue students’ own local language varieties. Recent studies on bilingual students by Urciouli (2008), Achugar and Pessoa (2009) and Lowther Pereira (2010), for example, have revealed precisely how the preference for prestige varieties can reproduce negative attitudes toward local Spanish varieties among students, therein ascribing symbolic power to prestige varieties and reinforcing social ­inequities. Thoughtful integration of CSL into the SHL curriculum, however, can aid students in detaching from negative associations attached to their language varieties that a curriculum solely focused on the acquisition of a “standard” variety may reinforce. Critical SHL pedagogues have expressed the need to instead value and use the skills bilingual learners bring to the classroom. Ruiz (1984, 2010), for example, has long pushed for a shift toward a “language-as-resource” approach rather than “languageas-deficit” among bilingual learners and Villa (2003, 2004) has repeatedly argued for the validity of U.S. Spanish in educational contexts. Here, I make the case that CSL can



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help accomplish this shift by assigning value and putting to use the language varieties students speak within the academic context. Providing students with opportunities to conduct linguistic exchanges in the community can help students develop critical language awareness, help them see the value of their language varieties and construct positive linguistic identities, as shown by Lowther Pereira (2015). In this critical way, CSL can respond to students’ affective needs and address issues of power, ideology and identity. Furthermore, CSL can aid in the pedagogical issues surrounding attitude and motivation in the HL context. Researchers like Ducar (2012) have encouraged other SHL scholars and educators to adopt a more socioculturally informed framework that acknowledges that learners shape and are shaped by the larger social context. Specifically, Ducar (2012) emphasizes the importance of identifying the main motivators for HL learners to study the HL, and whether motivators are intrinsic, extrinsic, integrative, instrumental or other motivational constructs, in developing HL pedagogies. I argue that CSL is a pedagogy that is both socioculturally informed and can benefit students with multiple motivational factors. For one, CSL satisfies integrative motivations by creating and/or strengthening connections to the HL community through social interaction with community members and contributing to the development of positive identities. In addition, service activities may also fulfill instrumental motivations if they are coordinated with students’ academic and/or professional goals in mind. For example, in Lowther Pereira’s (2015) study, various students enrolled in the SHL CSL course were completing the major in Spanish with teaching licensure and aiming to become future teachers of their HL. Some CSL activities, including tutoring and mentoring immigrant youth were a good match with students’ future professional plans, helping students develop teaching skills and gain experience with learners of diverse backgrounds. The majority of students in the study reported that the CSL experience helped prepare them for their future careers, and in some cases helped them feel more confident in their study/career choices. Likewise, Thompson’s (2012) CSL study, although primarily focused on the L2 classroom, did also analyze HL learner responses to survey questions pertaining to professional and educational goals. Overall, students in this study felt that CSL helped them gain a clearer idea of their professional goals, and even provided some students with knowledge of careers they had not previously considered but felt they could pursue upon graduation. A handful of other CSL projects have worked toward preparing Spanish-speaking students for the healthcare professions. Martínez, (2010)’s Medical Spanish for ­Heritage Learners project developed at The University of Texas Pan American (UTPA), for example, equipped future health care professionals with advanced language skills and helped them develop awareness of language-related issues in the healthcare field. Similarly, Morin (2010) developed a CSL component for a Spanish for Medical Purposes

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course that allowed students to discover personally the challenges faced by Spanishspeaking community members while increasing their linguistic competence in medical Spanish. Such programs are excellent examples of how CSL can fulfill instrumental motivations for HL learning. Experiencing first-hand the value of local and contact language varieties while forming connections with the local Latino community can also contribute to increasing HL learners’ linguistic confidence and the development of positive linguistic and cultural identities, aspects that have been shown to be critical in HL learning and maintenance. CSL can also lead to greater awareness of the social, economic and political issues that affect the local community and promote civic responsibility. As students develop membership and ties to the local community, they may feel empowered by helping fellow Spanish-speaking community members with whom they may share similar social and linguistic challenges. Villa (2010)’s CSL project with Las Esperanzas, a local non-profit organization focused on community revitalization, is a fine example of both of these objectives. The project, which had students interacting with community members as they collected oral histories in Southwest Spanish, emphasized the importance of local language varieties and bilingual phenomena, like code-switching and use of contact forms. This critical language awareness occurred simultaneously as students developed awareness of the importance of preserving the local language and history via the community revitalization effort of the Mesquite barrio. Finally, besides having the potential to respond to SHL students’ socio-affective needs, generate linguistic and social awareness, foster positive attitudes and identities and teach civic responsibility, the integration of CSL in the HL curriculum is in accordance with ACTFL’s National Standards for Foreign Language Teaching. As Valdés  (2001) has argued, a standards-based framework for SHL instruction can specifically contribute to expansion of the bilingual range, helping HL students to develop interpersonal skills for face-to-face interactions with diverse speakers as well as to develop interpretive and presentational modes. The standards, which promote “participation in multilingual communities at home and around the world” in their framework of the 5 C’s: communication, cultures, connections, comparisons, and communities, represent a recognizable shift toward language use, creating a distinctive space for the skills HL learners possess upon entering the classroom. Specifically, it is a framework in which HL speakers’ own linguistic and cultural skills can be valued and put into action to benefit communities. Several scholars have pointed out the suitability of CSL for language education frameworks based on ACTFL’s standards. Tesser (1999, p. ix), for example, cites the standards when highlighting the connection between CSL and language education goals: “The ultimate goal of language teaching and learning, as reflected in the ­standards document, is to provide the learner with the ability to continue developing language and cultural knowledge through lifelong experiences within the context of,



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in this case, Spanish speaking communities.” Plann (2002, p. 332) also asserts that “­service-learning can advance the objectives of the Standards of Foreign Language Learning.” However, most of the literature in this area has been anecdotal and few studies have truly addressed how service-learning helps to achieve the standards. ­Weldon & Trautmann’s (2003) study of L2 learners enrolled in a Spanish Medical Interpretation course is one of the few studies that analyzes student gains from CSL according to the 5 C’s framework. The authors found that learning in the 5 C’s occurred for all students and, thus, conclude that CSL is an effective method for achievement of the standards. Other scholars in the field have emphasized the need for the development of assessment instruments to test whether language standards are being met by CSL courses (Varona & Bauluz, 2003). In their article on CSL and the standards, Varona & Bauluz (2003, p. 77) conclude that we currently need “the kind of test that will help us study the relationship between community-based learning and the foreign language standards.” Further contributing to this line of research, Lear and Abbott (2008)’s qualitative case study delineates how the 5 C’s are achieved by an L2 learner in a Spanish Business course with CSL. Based on their findings, Lear and Abbot (2008, p. 79) argue that “even students who do not always achieve each standard still can make significant progress toward reaching those standards in a course with CSL.” In a subsequent study, Abbott and Lear (2010) focus solely on achievement of the Connections standard among L2 learners, evaluating the extent to which connections students make across disciplines and new knowledge gained via CSL result in social action. Their findings critically point to the need to emphasize civic engagement by incorporating activist projects and other forms of assessment in CSL courses in order for students to move beyond the classroom to self-directed social action. Until recently, the vast majority of the literature on Spanish and CSL has focused on the acquisition of Spanish language and/or Hispanic culture skills by L2 ­learners (­Darias, Gómez, Hellebrandt, Loomis, Orendain, & Quezada, 1999; Hale, 1999; Jorge,  2003; Mullaney, 1999; Varas, 1999; Zapata, 2011; Zapata & Tokarz, 2008) as well as published accounts aimed at helping faculty to design CSL courses for ­Spanish language programs (Díaz-Barriga, 2003; Jorge, 2003; Julseth, 2003; Olazagasti-­ Segovia, 2003; Plann, 2002). Further research on service-learning for HL learners specifically is needed. The studies reviewed in this chapter, particularly, those with a focus on CSL and the achievement of the ACTFL standards (see Abbott & Lear, 2010; Lear & Abbott, 2008; Varona & Bauluz, 2003; Weldon & Trautmann, 2003), on CSL and the professions (see Lafford, Abbott, & Lear, 2014; Martínez, 2010; Morin, 2010), as well as emerging research on CSL, identity and critical language awareness among SHL learners (see Lowther-Pereira, 2015) can greatly inform CSL endeavors in HL educational contexts. If you are onboard with CSL, whether you are looking to create an entirely new CSL course or simply integrate CSL into an existing HL course, it is essential to

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r­ ecognize a few main tenets in CSL design. A well thought-out course design, carefully coordinated in collaboration with community partners, will result in more effective student learning as well as strengthened community ties. The following section provides the ins and outs of designing your CSL course, as well as some helpful tips that may help make the experience go more smoothly, particularly for those doing it for the first time, but even for CSL veterans.

4.  Developing a community service-learning course for HL learners When it comes to designing a CSL course there are multiple factors to consider. These are some initial questions that will come to mind as you begin to plan your course: What are my course objectives/goals? Who are my students? Is there any overarching social issue I would like to emphasize or any great community need I wish to tie together with CSL? Who are my potential community partners? How do I want to structure my course to include CSL? Are there any department/college/university requirements and/ or resources to create a CSL course? As is often the case the first time you are teaching a particular course or material, you may feel overwhelmed, anxious, or unsure about certain aspects and the outcomes. However, do not let that deter you, for the rewards can be great− for you, your students and your community. With a little time and advance planning you will be well on your way to making a difference in your students’ and your community’s lives! Below I discuss developing a CSL course, divided into the following main topics: objectives, community partners, CSL course design, and additional CSL tips. The ideas presented here will be most effective if they are tailored to the needs and preferences of those involved: your students, your community, your school/program, and you, the instructor.

4.1  Objectives One of the very first steps in conceptualizing and planning a CSL course is identifying objectives for both learning and service. For this, specific, measureable and demonstrable outcomes for both must be established. For example, for a medical Spanish course for HL learners that is part of a healthcare professions study track, a student objective might be to be able to define medical terms related to chronic illness in ­Spanish. A service objective might be for students to develop diabetes awareness pamphlets in Spanish for the local community. An important question is this: How can CSL enhance my course objectives? As you consider this, think about what you want your students to gain from the CSL ­experience, as well as what you want the community to gain. Remember, the goal is for CSL to be mutually beneficial to both students and community members, thus, service



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should meet a genuine community need while enhancing student learning. A good place to start answering this question is to reflect on the course’s main themes and content and see if a central social, political or economic issue emphasized in the course that is also compatible with community needs and if resources can be identified. If you are unsure of what the community needs and resources may be, you may decide to try first contacting your university or school’s community outreach department or CSL office if one is available to help faculty identify possibilities within your community. Some of the legwork may also be done on your own, speaking with community contacts and reviewing community assessments and studies conducted by federal agencies (U.S. Census, National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, and the Department of Health and Human Services, for example), state and local government agencies, Chambers of Commerce, religious organizations, charitable organizations, and/or local university researchers. In addition, there are multiple national organizations and agencies serving Hispanic communities, specifically, such as the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the United States ­Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (USHCC), the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), the National Alliance for Hispanic Health (NAHH), and the National Latino ­Children’s Institute (NLCI), to name a few. Such entities can often provide a wealth of demographic, economic and social data to help identify your community’s needs and resources, and help lead you to prospective local community partners. Once you have outlined the specific student learning and service objectives for your course, you will be ready to identify and reach out to community partners.

4.2  C  ommunity partners In identifying potential community partners for your CSL course, consider community partners who not only are a suitable match for your service and learning objectives but who are also available and willing to work with you and your students. Establishing good relationships with community partners from the start is essential, as hopefully you will not only work together over the next few months but the next few years, or even longer. University outreach and service-learning offices may also maintain a database of community partners who have participated in academic CSL courses previously with other faculty. The very first time you teach a CSL course you may find it simplest to start out with just one or two community partners as well as work only with those who have experience doing this before. To maintain an effective partnership, clear, honest communication is key. Once you have a specific community partner in mind, you can contact him/her directly to set up a face-to-face conversation about the CSL project. Remember, together you must negotiate a CSL project that meets both the needs of the agency/partner as well as those of your students and your established course objectives.

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With your community partner, you will want to discuss the following topics as far in advance as possible1: 1. Length and scope of service project 2. Number of students required for the service-learning project 3. Method and frequency of communication between you and your community partner 4. Contact information 5. Expected time commitments from all parties (students, community partners, faculty) 6. Timeline with important dates 7. Student orientation plan 8. Course objectives (You may wish to share your course syllabus) 9. Evaluation process 10. Costs related to service-learning project In all discussions, it is important to avoid an “ivory tower” approach and instead work on nurturing a relationship based on equal footing and mutual respect. Keep in mind that it may take years of building trust to develop an effective relationship with a community partner but only one bad project to ruin a relationship. For this reason, it is essential to set clear expectations for roles, activities and accountability for all parties from the outset and stick to them.

4.3  Community service-learning course design As already discussed, service should be meaningful. It should be mutually beneficial and meet actual community needs while simultaneously extending student academic and civic learning beyond the classroom. In addition, students should participate in service activities that they themselves find meaningful, and that are commensurate with students’ learning interests and skills (Howard, 2001). A very important component of CSL design is student reflection. It is important that the course be structured in a way that allows time for students to think, talk and/or write about their service activities, individually, collectively, or both. More details on reflection will be provided below. Finally, in an ideal CSL course design, service-learning should be fully integrated with all other academic content, planned learning strategies and course resources. CSL should never be a marginal part of a course. The model in Figure 1 below, adapted from the UNCG Office of Leadership and Service-Learning, captures these essential design elements.

.  Adapted from Faculty Service-Learning Handbook, CELTS, Berea College.



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Academic Content

SVL Meaningful Service

Reflection

Figure 1.  Model for service-learning design

4.4  S yllabus The course syllabus will not only provide expectations for the course but will also clarify the essential role of CSL in the course and in student learning. Utilize the ­syllabus to communicate how CSL ties in with your course objectives (remember, you now have both learning and service objectives) as well as the goals and/or mission statement of your program, department or institution. In preparing a syllabus for a CSL course, there are several other items that are useful to include. These items are described below:2 1. Definition of service-learning 2. Learning and service objectives for the course –– How will service-learning effectively help students attain the course objectives/student learning outcomes? 3. Specific service-learning requirements of the course –– Is service-learning optional or required? –– What is the time-line for the service-learning project? How many service hours are to be completed and by what date? –– Is there any orientation/training for the service-learning activities?

.  Adapted from Faculty Service-Learning Handbook, CELTS, Berea College.

 Kelly Lowther Pereira

4. Community partner information –– Descriptions of community partner organization activities and goals –– Contact information for the community partner(s) –– Orientation/training information –– Specific requirements of the community partner(s) –– Student responsibilities when interacting with the community partner(s) (e.g., dress code, confidentiality, etc.) 5. Assessment and grading of service-learning –– How will students be assessed on achieving the service and learning objectives of the course? –– What portion of the grade will be based on the service-learning project? –– How will reflection activities and other service-learning-related assignments (e.g., final product, research paper, community presentation, portfolio) be assessed and graded? –– What rubrics will be used in grading? –– Will evaluations by the community partner be considered in grading? 6. Reflection activities –– What is the purpose of reflection activities? –– What are the specific requirements of reflection activities? –– Will reflection activities be conducted individually or in groups? –– How do reflection activities enhance student learning/help students achieve the course objectives?

4.5  R  eflection Reflection is a key component of CSL design that can enrich student’s academic and civic learning and encourage critical thinking. Essentially, reflection allows students to recapture the CSL experience in order to learn from it and to develop new, deeper understandings. Reflection can take on many forms; it can be individual or collective, oral or written, public or private. For example, reflection may be accomplished by any of the following sample of activities: journals, blogs, discussion groups, papers, oral histories, presentations, portfolios, artistic forms, reflective interviews and policy action. Regardless of the form it takes, Wade (1997) suggests that reflection encompass the following four elements: (1) a deliberate thinking process applied to an experience; (2) a significant amount of time for thinking; (3) cognitive growth; and (4) new understandings and appreciations for reflection participants. Incorporating all of these elements, Wade argues, will contribute to more effective reflection and greater learning. In a similar vein, Eyler, Giles, and Schmiede (1996), in their Practitioner’s Guide to Reflection in Service-Learning: Student Voices and Reflections, recommend that ­reflection be fulfilled within the following 4 C’s framework:



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1. Continuous: reflection activities are conducted throughout the service-learning course, rather than intermittently, episodically, or irregularly. 2. Connected: reflection activities are structured and directly related to the learning objectives. 3. Challenging: reflection efforts set high expectations, demand high quality student effort, and facilitate instructor feedback that stimulates further student learning. 4. Contextualized: reflection activities are appropriate to the particular course, and commensurate with and complementary to the level and type of other course learning activities. In my own CSL courses over the years, I have found each of these reflection frameworks to be very useful. In my experience it is best to offer opportunities for both individual and group student reflection, and to maintain a variety of reflection activity types (e.g., structured written journals, debates, oral presentations, portfolios, etc.) since student characteristics and learning styles vary. Bear in mind, reflection activities tend to be course-specific, and what works in some contexts and for some instructors may not work for others. Two additional tips I can provide with specific regard to student reflection are: 1. Structure some individual and group reflection activities around issues of language, identity, and ideology. As I have previously argued for the inclusion of topics of sociolinguistics, identity and ideology in the SHL curriculum (Lowther Pereira, 2010), I find reflection activities in a SHL course with CSL to be the perfect opportunity to incorporate these themes. Not only are these themes relevant and adaptable to a variety of course levels and topics, but they can truly deepen students’ understanding of themselves, each other, and their communities, as I have witnessed repeatedly in my own SHL course. For example, consider including mini-linguistic projects in your course in which students investigate sociolinguistic topics in the community via fieldwork (observations and/or interviews). Students can then individually and/or collectively reflect on their findings and discuss how they relate to topics of language variation, the relationship between identity and language, and language and power. In my own experience, these themes have often seamlessly complemented SHL textbook readings and activities.3 2 For group reflection activities, also be sure to match up students working with different community partners. I found students learned a lot from their peer’s experiences and shared reflections, and more so when students were working with different community partners for their .  For reference, the textbook used was: ¡Sí se puede!: Un curso transicional para ­hispanohablantes (2008) by Carreira & Geoffrion-Vinci, Cengage Learning

 Kelly Lowther Pereira

s­ervice. This is another chance for students to become teachers and advocates for social change, as they educate their peers about social issues pertaining to their unique service experiences. While it is beyond the scope of the current chapter to elaborate further on the plethora of effective reflection activities you can include in your courses, there are a couple of very informative guides available on this topic that I fully recommend. They are included in the list of resources at the end of this chapter.

4.6  A  ssessment If you find yourself speculating how you will assess students’ service activities in the community and how this assessment should be factored into students’ grades in the course, it is helpful to highlight what Howard (2001, p. 16) reminds us of in the first principle of his set of Principles of Good Practice for Service-Learning: “Academic credit is for learning, not for service.” While in traditional (non-service-learning courses), students are assessed and course grades are assigned based on students’ measurable demonstration of academic learning, Howard (2001) urges us that it is no different in service-learning courses. In traditional courses, we evaluate student learning based on traditional course resources, such as textbooks, class discussions, library research, etc. In service-learning courses, we evaluate student learning based on traditional resources, community service resources, and a combination of the two. As H ­ oward (2001) further explains, academic credit is not given merely for completing service, or for the quality of service, rather for students’ demonstration of the e­ stablished student learning outcomes, which, as discussed in the section on objectives, should be based on academic and civic learning. As you structure your course, you will need to decide what other graded assignments will be used to assess student achievement of the learning outcomes. As is the case with reflection activities, assignment types that can provide evidence of student learning vary widely. In my own CSL courses, for example, I have used a combination of class discussions, presentations, journals, reports and portfolios. Whatever assignment types you choose, remember to provide students with clear grading criteria, rubrics and feedback in a timely manner. Also, remember that the goal is to integrate CSL as fully as possible into the course content and strategies. You will want to tie your course objectives, CSL activities, and forms of assessment together in as seamless a way as possible. Many assignments in traditional courses can easily be modified to take into account students’ CSL experiences. For example, if in a traditional course you would normally have students write an essay about a social, political or economic issue, why not have students write about an issue they saw first-hand affecting the community they are serving? If you want your students conduct deeper research for the essay or if you would like to convert it into



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a larger project, why not have students conduct fieldwork and interview community members and partners about their perspectives on the issue in addition to traditional library research? This could turn into a fantastic opportunity to involve community members and/or partners in classroom activities. You may wish to invite community partners to view student presentations and to initiate a dialogue between students and community partners in the classroom about the issues students investigated. As a final note on assessment of students’ civic learning, you may wish to include feedback and/or evaluations from community partners in your assessment of student learning outcomes. Community partners may provide different perspectives of your students’ learning, based on their evaluations of your students’ service activities.

4.7  Additional community service-learning tips 4.7.1  Involve community partners when possible Do not think that community partners need to remain at their site during the whole CSL experience. Invite your community partners to campus and the classroom. ­Community partners have a great deal of knowledge and expertise to share and, if willing, they, too, can participate in teaching and learning. As mentioned, you may wish for community partners to participate in the assessment of student learning. Their feedback and input can be very helpful in this process. Also, be sure to ask community partners for their evaluation of the CSL project to know how the process could be changed and improved. While evaluations at the end of a CSL project are useful for future work together, evaluations collected during the course of a project can allow you to fine-tune and make improvements before the project ends. Involving community partners in the classroom can prove beneficial and satisfying for all parties; however, please keep in mind that your community partners’ time is valuable and some partners may be too under-resourced or strapped for time to ­participate in this regard. The best thing to do is communicate with community ­partners about their desired level of involvement and welcome their participation without pressuring them. 4.7.2  Encourage direct, face-to-face community contact As language educators, we all know the importance of face-to-face interaction for language development. Encouraging your students to participate in service projects that involve direct contact with community members will not only aid in the development of their linguistic skills but also the development of their relationship with community members. Some service projects may serve the community indirectly, for example, growing vegetables in a community garden. Projects of this type may offer little to no direct interaction with community members and, hence, may not be as effective in helping students further develop communication skills in the HL.

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Furthermore, s­ tudents without direct contact would not have the same exposure to language variation in the community and perhaps miss out on the benefits this brings. Remember, some of the key benefits of CSL interaction for HL learners are chances to use and experience language in the community, develop critical language awareness, build linguistic confidence and develop positive linguistic identities. These benefits are enhanced by direct interaction with community members.

4.7.3  I nclude choices of community service-learning activities aligned with career/study interests If possible, try to offer students opportunities to work with community partners whose service activities are aligned with their career and/or study interests. Some students may be more interested in service projects related to their study discipline or professional goals, which may make their service more meaningful. On the same token, you should not exclude service projects solely based on this aspect since many may offer students critical opportunities to use the HL in new contexts and serve genuine community needs. 4.7.4  H  ave students prepare a final product based on their service-learning experience While the choices for forms of assessment, reflection activities and other CSL assignments abound, it can be very fulfilling for students to prepare a final product based on their CSL experience. This can also be very gratifying for community members if they are invited to share in a presentation of the final product, for example, be it a research paper, portfolio, video project, etc. In doing so, students will have the opportunity to reflect on their learning over the course of the CSL project as well as their contributions to the community, which can be rewarding for all involved. Importantly, this also creates a chance for students to teach their peers about their experiences and advocate for change on issues in the community they have been serving all semester. 4.7.5  Allow time for logistical hiccups and room for future improvement First, allow time for logistical hiccups. Students, instructors and community partners all have busy schedules. Students may face scheduling and/or transportation issues as they try to complete their service. Be sure to explain clearly to students in class and in the course syllabus what is required and expected of them in terms of behavior and responsibilities throughout the duration of the CSL project and their interaction with community members and partners. Whether it is the first time you are teaching a CSL course or the first time you are working with a community partner, expect that you may encounter some issues along the way. To try to avoid miscommunications and other relationship problems, set clear expectations for all parties involved in terms of roles, activities and accountability. Direct, honest communication is key.



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Moreover, expect that in modifying your course from one without community engagement to one with CSL, some aspects of your course might not work out as well as you had hoped and some intended outcomes might not be achieved. It is best to leave room for improvement. While thoughtful course design can indeed ameliorate some challenges, other challenges are simply less predictable or are inevitable. You may wonder if the benefits are truly worth the risks. Do not despair! It may take you a few semesters to feel you truly have a handle on things and are maximizing the benefits of CSL while maintaining your instructional goals. The important thing is to learn from your mistakes. Throughout the semester, it would be prudent to take note of what went wrong and how it might be improved. It could mean that a particular assignment or activity needs to be modified or abandoned, or that a particular student learning outcome needs to be revised, or a timeline reworked because it is no longer compatible with the new community-engaged course design. Incorporate what you learn from teaching the course with any constructive feedback provided from your students and community partners into the design the next time you teach the course. Acknowledge that part of the process is learning as you are doing. Not only will you revise the course based on previous mistakes, but you will also gain new ideas as you teach the course in this manner as well!

5.  C  onclusion CSL is one of the most promising new directions for SHL teaching and has the potential to address multiple challenges present in SHL classrooms. Among its many benefits, CSL can afford students opportunities to use the HL in new social contexts, generate a critical language awareness, challenge dominant social hierarchies and construct positive linguistic and cultural identities. At the same time, CSL contributes to the strengthening of HL communities by engaging students in service that meets genuine community needs. By adopting CSL, a pedagogy that validates students’ language varieties and treats language as a resource rather than problem, language educators can be advocates for SHL students. In turn, CSL can help SHL students develop civic responsibility and help students themselves become advocates for their communities.

Resources on Community Service-Learning: Hispania special focus issue: The scholarship of community engagement, 96(2). (Hellebrandt, J. & Jorge, E. (Eds.), 2013). Intersection of service and learning: Research and practice in the second language classroom. ­Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. (Thompson, G. L., 2012).

 Kelly Lowther Pereira Learning the language of global citizenship: Service-learning in applied linguistics.  Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing Co. (Wurr, A. J.. & Hellebrandt, J. (Eds.), 2007). Juntos community partnerships in Spanish and Portuguese (AATSP Professional Development Series Handbook, Vol. V). Boston: Heinle. (Hellebrant, J., Arries & Varona, L. T. (Eds.), 2004). Fundamentals of service-learning course construction. (Heffernan, K., 2001). Construyendo puentes (Building bridges): Concepts and models for service-learning in ­Spanish (American Association for Higher Education series on service-learning in the disciplines). Washington, DC: American Association for Higher Education. (Hellebrandt, J. & Varona, L. T. (Eds.), 1999). A Practitioner’s guide to reflection in service-learning. Nashville, TN: U.S. Corporation for National Service. (Eyler, J., Giles, D. E. Jr., & Schmiede, A., 1996). Michigan Journal of Community Service-Learning. Ann Arbor, MI: OCSL Press. 〈www.umich. edu/~mjcsl〉 National Service Learning Clearinghouse. 〈https://gsn.nylc.org/clearinghouse〉 Partnerships: A Journal of Service-Learning and Civic Engagement. 〈https://libjournal.uncg.edu/ index.php/prt/index〉

References Abbott, A., & Lear, D. (2010). The connections goal area in Spanish community service-­learning: Possibilities and limitations. Foreign Language Annals, 43, 231–45. doi: 10.1111/j.1944-9720.2010.01076.x Achugar, M., & Pessoa, S. (2009). Power, history and place: language attitudes towards Spanish in a bilingual academic community in Southwest Texas. Spanish in Context, 6(2), 199–223. doi: 10.1075/sic.6.2.03ach Carreira, M. (2000). Validating and promoting Spanish in the United States: Lessons from ­Linguistic Science. Bilingual Research Journal, 24(4), 423–442. doi: 10.1080/15235882.2000.10162776 Center for Learning through service (CELTS) at Berea College (n.d.) 2019. Faculty Service-­ Learning Handbook. Retrieved from: 〈http://www.berea.edu/celts/servicelearning/ resources.asp〉 Darias, T., Gómez, A., Hellebrandt, J., Loomis, A., Orendain, M., & Quezada, S. (1999). Community video: Empowerment through university and community interaction. In J. ­­Hellebrandt & L. T. Varona (Eds.), Construyendo puentes (Building bridges): Concepts and models for service-learning in Spanish (pp.149–169). Washington, DC: American Association for Higher Education. Díaz-Barriga, M. (2003). Spanish in the social sciences: Notes on the challenges of service-­ learning among Mexican migrants in Pennsylvania. In J. Hellebrandt, J. Arries, & L. Varona (Vol. Eds.), Juntos: Community partnerships in Spanish and Portuguese (­American ­Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese Professional Development Series Handbook Vol. 5) (pp. 154–161). Boston, MA: Thompson Heinle. Ducar, C. (2012). SHL learner’s attitudes and motivations. In S. Beaudrie & M. Fairclough (Eds.), Spanish as a heritage language in the United States: The state of the field (pp. 161–178). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.



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Eyler, J., Giles, D. E. Jr., & Schmiede, A. (1996). A practitioner’s guide to reflection in servicelearning: Student voices and reflections. San Diego CA: Learn & Serve America National Service-Learning Clearinghouse. Fiske, E. B. (2002). Learning in deed: The power of service-learning for American schools (A  Report for the National Commission on Service-Learning). Battle Creek, MI: W. K. Kellogg Foundation. Hale, A. (1999). Service-learning and Spanish: A missing link. In J. Hellebrandt & L.  T.  Varona (Vol. Eds.), Construyendo puentes (Building bridges): Concepts and models for s­ervice-learning in Spanish (American Association for Higher Education Series on Service-­Learning in the Disciplines) (pp. 9–31). Washington, DC: American Association for Higher Education. Howard, J. (Ed.) (2001). Service-learning course design workbook (Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, Companion Volume). University of Michigan: OCSL Press. Jorge, E. (2003). Dialogue and power: Collaborative language curriculum development. In J. Hellebrandt, J. Arries, & L. Varona (Vol. Eds.), Juntos: Community partnerships in Spanish and Portuguese (American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese Professional Development Series Handbook Vol. 5) (pp. 17–28). Boston, MA: Thompson Heinle. Julseth, D. C. (2003). The Hispanic achievers program: An interdisciplinary model for service learning. In J. Hellebrandt, J. Arries, & L. Varona (Vol. Eds.), Juntos: Community partnerships in Spanish and Portuguese (American Association of Teachers of Spanish and ­Portuguese Professional Development Series Handbook Vol. 5) (pp. 140–153). Boston, MA: Thompson Heinle. Lafford, B., Abbott, A., & Lear, D. (2014). Spanish in the professions and in the community in the US. Journal of Spanish Language Teaching, 1(2), 171–186. doi: 10.1080/23247797.2014.970361 Lear, D., & Abbott, A. (2008). Foreign language professional standards and CSL: Achieving the 5 C’s. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 14(2), 76–86. Leeman, J. (2005). Engaging critical pedagogy: Spanish for native speakers. Foreign Language Annals, 38(1), 35–45.  doi: 10.1111/j.1944-9720.2005.tb02451.x Leeman, J., Rabin, L., & Román-Mendoza, E. (2011). Identity and activism in heritage language education. The Modern Language Journal, 95(4), 481–495. doi: 10.1111/j.1540-4781.2011.01237.x Lowther Pereira, K. (2010). Identity and language ideology in the intermediate Spanish heritage language classroom. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. (Accession Order No. AAT 3402888). Lowther Pereira, K. (2015). Developing critical language awareness via service-learning for Spanish heritage speakers. Heritage Language Journal 12(2), 159–185. Martínez, G. (2003). Classroom based dialect awareness in heritage language instruction: A critical applied linguistic approach. Heritage Language Journal, 1(1), 1–14. Martínez, G. (2010). Medical Spanish for heritage learning learners: A prescription to improve the health of Spanish–speaking communities. In S. Rivera-Mills & J. A. Trujillo (Eds.), Building communities and making connections (pp. 3–15). Newcastle upon Tyne: ­Cambridge Scholars.  doi: 10.5848/CSP.2022.00002 Morin, R. (2010). Making connections: Spanish for medical purposes and service learning. In S. Rivera-Mills & J. A. Trujillo (Eds.), Building communities and making connections (pp.16–39). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.

 Kelly Lowther Pereira Mullaney, J. (1999). Service-learning and language- acquisition theory and practice. In J. ­Hellebrandt & L. T. Varona (Eds.), Construyendo puentes (Building bridges): Concepts and models for service-learning in Spanish (pp. 49–60). Washington, DC: American Association for Higher Education. Office of Leadership and Service Learning at the University of North Carolina. (n.d.). 〈http://olsl.uncg.edu/service-learning/〉 Olazagasti-Segovia, E. (2003). Second language acquisition, academic service learning, and learners’ transformation. In J. Hellebrandt, J. Arries, & L. Varona (Vol. Eds.), Juntos: Community partnerships in Spanish and Portuguese (American Association of Teachers of ­Spanish and Portuguese Professional Development Series Handbook Vol. 5) (pp. 5–16). Boston, MA: Thompson Heinle. Plann, S. J. (2002). Latinos and literacy: An upper-division Spanish course with service learning. Hispania, 85(2), 330–338.  doi: 10.2307/4141094 Rivera Mills, S. R. (2010). Building communities and making connections in the 21st century: A new role for higher education. In S. Rivera-Mills & J. A. Trujillo (Eds.), Building communities and making connections (pp. i–xv). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars. Ruiz, R. (1984). Orientations in language planning. National Association for Bilingual Education Journal, 8, 15–34. Ruiz, R. 2010. Reorienting language-as-resource. In J. E. Petrovic (Ed.), International perspectives on bilingual education: Policy, practice, and controversy (pp. 155–172). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. Tesser, C. (1999). Foreword. In J. Hellebrandt & L. T. Varona (Vol. Eds.), Construyendo puentes (Building bridges): Concepts and models for service-learning in Spanish (American ­Association for Higher Education series on service-learning in the disciplines) (pp. 9–31). Washington, DC: American Association for Higher Education. Thompson, G. (2012). Intersection of service and learning: Research and practice in the second language classroom. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. Urciouli, B. (2008). Whose Spanish? The tension between linguistic correctness and cultural identity. In M. Niño-Murcia & J. Rothman (Eds.), Bilingualism and identity: Spanish at the crossroads with other languages (Studies in Bilingualism 37) (pp. 257–277). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.  doi: 10.1075/sibil.37.16urc Valdés, G. (2001). Heritage language students: Profiles and possibilities. In J. K. Peyton  & S.  McGinnis (Eds.), Heritage languages in America: Preserving a national resource (pp. 37–77). McHenry, Illinois and Washington, DC: Delta. Varas, P. (1999). Raising cultural awareness through service-learning in Spanish culture and conversation: Tutoring in the migrant education program in Salem. In J. Hellebrandt & L.  T. Varona (Eds.), Construyendo puentes (Building bridges): Concepts and models for ­service-learning in Spanish (American Association for Higher Education series on service-­ learning in the disciplines) (pp. 123–135). Washington, DC: American Association for Higher Education. Varona, L. T., & Bauluz, M. V. (2003). When everyday life becomes the focus of attention in intermediate Spanish courses. In J. Hellebrandt, J. Arries, & L. Varona (Vol. Eds.), Juntos: Community partnerships in Spanish and Portuguese (American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese Professional Development Series Handbook Vol. 5) (pp. 69–82). Boston: Thompson Heinle. Villa, D. (1996). Choosing a ‘standard’ variety of Spanish for the instruction of native Spanish speakers in the U.S. Foreign Language Annals, 29, 191- 200. doi: 10.1111/j.1944-9720.1996.tb02326.x



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Villa, D. (2002). The sanitizing of US Spanish in academia. Foreign Language Annals, 35, 221–230.  doi: 10.1111/j.1944-9720.2002.tb03156.x Villa, D. (2003). Heritage language speakers and upper-division language instruction: Findings from a Spanish linguistics program. In H. Byrnes & H. Maxim (Eds.), AAUSC Issues in Language Program Direction (pp. 88–98). Boston, MA: Heinle and Heinle. Villa, D. (2004). No nos dejaremos: Writing in Spanish as an act of resistance. In M. Hall Kells, V. Balester, & V. Villanueva (Eds.), Latino/a discourses on language, identity & literacy education (pp. 85–95). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Villa, D. (2010). ¿¡Cómo que Spanglish!? Creating a service learning component for a Spanish heritage language program. In S. V. Rivera-Mills & J. A. Trujillo (Eds.), Building communities and making connections (pp.120–135). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars. doi: 10.5848/CSP.2022.00007 Wade, R. C. (1997). Community service-learning: A guide to including service in the public school curriculum. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Wade, R. C. (2000). From a distance: Service-learning and social justice. In C. O’Grady (Ed.), Integrating service learning and multicultural education in colleges and universities (pp. 93–111). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Weldon, A., & Trautmann, G. (2003). Spanish and service-learning: Pedagogy and praxis. ­Hispania, 86(3), 574–585.  doi: 10.2307/20062910 Zapata, G. (2011). The effects of community service-learning on L2 learners’ cultural understanding. Hispania, 94(1), 86–102. Zapata, G., & Tokarz, W. (2008). Community service learning and L2 students’ intercultural communicative competence. In M. Mantero, P. Chamness, & J. Watzke (Eds.), Readings in language studies, Vol. 1: Language across disciplinary boundaries (pp. 281–297). ­Wilmington, DE: International Society for Language Studies.

Heritage language learning in study abroad Motivations, identity work, and language development Rachel L. Shively

Illinois State University Heritage language (HL) learners who study abroad in a HL-speaking country have the opportunity to engage in social interactions in the HL in a variety of contexts. The handful of existing studies on this topic have examined HL learners’ motivations for studying abroad, as well as their identity construction and HL development during study abroad. While second language (L2) and HL study abroad students share some common experiences, there are also important differences. HL learners may be held to higher standards of cultural and linguistic competency and face negative attitudes toward their HL variety or proficiency level. This chapter reviews the literature on HL learners in study abroad and offers suggestions for future research directions.

1.  Introduction Spending a semester or academic year abroad in a location in which the target language (TL) is widely spoken provides study abroad (SA) students with the opportunity to use the TL in authentic interactions in a variety of social contexts (e.g., home, community, university, internship), with people in different roles (e.g., host family, shopkeeper, professor, supervisor), and for a range of functions (e.g., building and maintaining relationships, interacting in service encounters, performing academic and professional duties). Through the linguistic and cultural immersion afforded by a sojourn abroad, students have the opportunity to make considerable developments in their communicative and intercultural competence. Although research on language and culture learning in SA has primarily focused on second language (L2) learners, a small but growing number of studies have also examined the experiences of heritage language (HL) learners who choose to study in their ancestral country of origin or another HL-speaking region. These studies indicate that while L2 and HL learners share some common experiences as SA students (e.g., Moreno, 2009; Van Der Meid, 2003), there are also important differences that can be traced to HL learners’ bilingual and bicultural background.

doi 10.1075/sibil.49.14shi © 2016 John Benjamins Publishing Company

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For L2 learners, SA represents immersion in a language and culture different from their own. It is also the first chance that many L2 learners have to acquire the L2 in a naturalistic rather than an instructed setting and use the L2 outside of the foreign language classroom. In contrast, HL learners who study in their ancestral country of origin may already have some degree of familiarly with the language and culture of the host country due to their family background. HL learners may perceive that, rather than an “immersion in difference” (Szekely, 1998, p. 107), studying abroad represents a “return home” (e.g., Petrucci, 2007, p. 276), particularly if they made regular trips to the homeland during their childhood (e.g., Carreira, 2012; Potowski, 2013). Unlike L2 learners, HL learners have a personal connection to the host country and may choose that location in order to learn more about their roots, explore their own cultural identities, reconnect with family members, as well as improve their HL skills (e.g., Moreno  2009; Rubin 2004; Van Der Meid 2003). Further, if HL learners were raised speaking the HL at home and in their communities, they are not only more likely to begin their SA experience with stronger linguistic and cultural knowledge than L2 learners, but also to be more familiar with learning and using their HL outside of the formal classroom setting (Davidson & Lekic, 2013; Petrucci, 2007; see also e.g., Potowski, 2002; 2013). Despite the wealth of knowledge and skills that HL learners bring to SA in the ancestral homeland, their strengths are not always recognized or validated by members of the host country. Research indicates that HL learners may be positioned differently from L2 learners and held to different standards of cultural and linguistic competency. While L2 learners are generally not mistaken for cultural insiders, HLs’ cultural identities are less unambiguous (e.g., Moreno, 2009; Van Der Meid, 2003). When HL learners study in their family’s country of origin, they may be perceived as and expected to act like ingroup members of the host country, a situation that can have both positive and negative consequences (e.g., Petrucci, 2007; Riegelhaupt & Carrasco, 2000). On the positive side, their status as ingroup members may provide HL learners with greater access to social interaction and allow them to more easily develop social networks with members of that society (Van Der Meid, 2003). On the negative side, however, HL learners may be subject to criticism when they, intentionally or unintentionally, do not abide by the linguistic or cultural norms expected of ingroup members. Whereas L2 learners, as outgroup members, are not expected to speak natively or act like members of the host culture, HL learners may be held to monolingual norms and, subsequently, face linguistic discrimination because of a perceived inadequacy in their HL proficiency or because they speak a non-standard or contact variety of the HL (e.g., Petrucci, 2007; Riegelhaupt & Carrasco, 2000). Finally, in the case of a pluricentric language such as Spanish, if HL learners choose to study in a non-ancestral Spanish-speaking country, they may be confronted not only with a different culture and variety of Spanish, but also with language ideologies related to



Heritage language learning in study abroad 

race, class, and national origin that denigrate their own heritage variety of Spanish (see e.g., Leeman, 2012; Mar-Molinero & Paffey, 2011). These and other aspects of HL learners’ experiences during SA have received relatively little attention in the literature. Further, the handful of existing studies involve learners of a variety of heritage languages, with relatively few including HL learners of Spanish: Chinese (Le, 2004; Moreno, 2009; Van Der Meid, 2003), Hebrew (­ Donitsa-Schmidt & Vadish, 2005; Parry, 2014), Japanese (Petrucci, 2007), Korean (Beausoleil, 2008), Russian (Davidson & Lekic, 2013), Spanish (McLaughlin, 2001; Moreno, 2009; Riegelhaupt & Carrasco, 2000). Hence, given the relative dearth of research specific to Spanish HL learners in SA, this chapter will draw on the aforementioned studies, but will emphasize findings concerning Spanish. The discussion will begin with an overview of the history and demographics of heritage seeking in SA, followed by an examination of HL learners’ motivations to go abroad, identity negotiation and construction during SA, and, finally, HL learning outcomes. The chapter will conclude with recommendations for future research.

2.  Heritage seeking in SA: Overview of history and demographics In the United States, heritage seeking in SA – that is, choosing a SA site based on family background – can be traced back as early as the 17th century to American students of European heritage and elite status traveling to Western Europe to pursue university studies (Szekely, 1998). According to the Institute of International Education (IIE), which annually administers the Open Doors survey of American SA programs, European countries still host a little over half of all American SA students (Institute of International Education [IIE] 2012). Van Der Meid (2003) suggests that this situation reflects Europe’s historical position as a heritage destination for European-descended students. For a variety of reasons, including the growth of SA sites outside of Europe and an increase in the ethnic and racial diversity of the American SA population (­ Landau & Moore 2001; Rubin, 2004; Van Der Meid, 2003), however, recent years have seen a decrease in the proportion of students going to Europe (IIE 2012). Whereas the European share of American SA students has declined from 63.1% in 2000–1 to 54.6% in 2010–11, the proportion of students choosing to study in Latin American countries, for example, has remained fairly stable over time: 14.5% in 2000–1 to 14.6% in 2010–11 (IIE 2012). With regard to Spanish-speaking countries, Spain continues to be a leading destination country – third most popular overall after the United Kingdom and Italy – hosting 25,965 American SA students in the 2010–11 academic year (9.5% of total) (IIE 2012). Five Latin American countries were also among the top 25 destinations for American students in the same period, with Argentina and Costa Rica leading in number of students: Argentina (N = 4,589; 1.7% of total), Chile (N = 3,280; 1.2%),

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Costa Rica (N = 7,230; 2.6%), Ecuador (N = 3,107; 1.1%), and Mexico (N = 4,167; 1.5%) (IIE 2012). The number of American students who studied in Mexico in 2010–11 dropped a considerable 41.8% from the previous year due to safety concerns (IIE 2012). The increase in diversity of SA destinations has been paralleled by a gradual increase in diversity of the American SA student population. For example, participation in SA by Latino/a students increased from 5.4% in 2001–2 to 6.9% in 2010–11 (IIE 2012). Sweeney (2013) points out, however, that minority students are still underrepresented in SA; in the case of Latinos/as, this group makes up 13% of American college students, but only about half of that percentage participates in SA (6.9%). White students, conversely, are overrepresented in SA: in 2010, they constituted 60.5% of all American university students, but made up 77.8% of the American SA population (Sweeney, 2013). Commonly cited barriers to participation for minority students are lack of funding, lack of family support, historical exclusion from SA, and fear of discrimination overseas (e.g., Comp, 2007; Jackson, 2005; see also, Talburt & S­ tewart,  1999). Sweeney (2013) also points to lack of institutional efforts to recruit minority students to SA as a reason for the relative lack of diversity. While Rubin (2004, p. 3) affirms that “heritage students are primarily driving SA programs in Africa, Asia, and Latin America,” the actual number of SA students who choose a heritage destination and study their HL while abroad is unknown because SA programs do not systematically ask students why they choose a particular location (Rubin, 2004). Further, the IIE does not provide data on heritage destinations or HL studies. Thus, for example, although the Open Doors report indicates that the proportion of Latino/a SA students has increased in recent years, it is unclear how many of those students selected a program in a Spanish-speaking country and studied ­Spanish as a HL in that country or, alternatively, chose to study a different language in a non-heritage location abroad. While the IIE data do not offer a general picture of the numbers of heritage seekers, some data are available from individual programs. In one Russian SA program, Davidson and Lekic (2013) noted that participation of Russian HL students has increased in the past decade. Van Der Meid (2003) also reported that Asian Americans studied in Asian countries more often than the general SA population. It remains to be seen, however, how many Latino/a students choose to study in their heritage country and pursue HL learning abroad. Those students who are heritage seekers may be drawn to a SA program due to one or more of their religious, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, or national affiliations, such as Jewish Americans studying in Israel (e.g., Donitsa-Schmidt & Vadish, 2005; Parry,  2014), African Americans studying in Ghana (e.g., Landau & Moore, 2001; Morgan, Mwegelo & Turner, 2002), Korean Americans studying in South Korea (Beausoleil, 2008), Mexican Americans studying in Spain (Moreno, 2009), and, outside of the United States, Japanese-descended Brazilians and Peruvians studying in Japan (Petrucci, 2007). A language connection characterizes some, but not all, heritage



Heritage language learning in study abroad 

seekers’ choices to study at a heritage site. For the African Americans in Landau and Moore’s (2001) study, for example, the link to Ghana as a heritage destination was primarily based on ancestry and culture, not on language. In contrast, a MexicanAmerican student in Moreno’s (2009) study elected to study in Spain, in part, as a means to improve her proficiency in Spanish, which she had grown up speaking with her family in the United States. The motivations, identity negotiation, and learning of HL students who go abroad are the topic of the following section.

3.  Research on HL learners in SA Given the small number of existing studies on HL learners in SA, it is not surprising to find that researchers, thus far, have employed a somewhat limited range of data collection methods to investigate this topic. What is currently known about HL learners’ experiences in SA is largely based on student self-report surveys, journals, and interviews. Further, with the exception of Davidson and Lekic’s (2013) study, which employed several standardized tests to measure HL proficiency, existing studies rely exclusively on students’ self-assessments of their own HL ability, rather than collecting actual language data, whether elicited or naturalistic. While more research is clearly needed on this topic and broad conclusions cannot yet be drawn, the qualitative studies cited in this section provide rich narrative data that reveal HL learners’ perceptions about their sojourn abroad.

3.1  Motivations to study in a heritage destination Since not all HL speakers choose to study in their ancestral homeland or in another HL-speaking country (e.g., Van Der Meid, 2003), it is of interest to understand the motivations of those who do choose this option. Research with a variety of HL backgrounds indicates some of the reasons (Beausoleil, 2008; Moreno, 2009; Rubin, 2004): to learn more about their family’s cultural roots; to learn more about themselves and explore their own bicultural identities; to have a deeper cultural experience than being a tourist; to improve their HL proficiency; to be immersed in their HL; to be able to speak to family members in the HL; and to become more fluent in the HL in order to improve job opportunities in the United States. Although integrative motivation (i.e., an interest in learning the heritage language and culture in order to associate with people who speak that language) predominates in the preceding list, instrumental motivation (i.e., an interest in learning the HL for practical reasons) is also evident (Gardner & Lambert, 1972). Of all of the aforementioned motivations provided by HL SA students, exploring one’s cultural identity was particularly frequent in the research literature. For example,

 Rachel L. Shively

all of the Korean HL learners in Beausoleil’s (2008) study mentioned ethnic identity in their application as a reason why they desired to study in South Korea. Similarly, a Spanish HL participant in Rubin’s (2004, p. 26) study, whose ancestry is Cuban, explained her desire to study in Cuba: I saw it as an opportunity of a lifetime to go – not as a tourist – but to learn about Cuba more in depth. A lot of young Cuban Americans don’t know what Cuba today is like. Without going, we only know what others have told us, which is often biased. I always wondered what it meant to be Cuban and to learn about the land that had such an impact on my family.

This quote suggests that the student desired a deeper cultural learning experience than might be had through SA in a non-heritage destination since her personal connection to Cuba would make the sojourn more meaningful. For those HL learners who choose a non-ancestral HL-speaking country, their motivation may be to experience an “immersion in difference” while, at the same time, to have the opportunity to improve their HL proficiency. A Mexican-American student in Moreno’s (2009, p. 107) study, for example, explained her choice to study in the Dominican Republic rather than in Mexico, her family’s country of origin: Since I was born, I think the first trip I made to Mexico I was not even a year old. That’s probably the only place I’ve really traveled a lot to … I don’t consider going to Mexico a big deal or abroad just because I’ve been raised with it from the very beginning and it’s so close to me….I chose [SA in] the Dominican Republic because it’s different and because I really really really want to take myself out of my element and out of my comfort zone and I really love Mexico … [but] there’s no point in me spending money on something I already know.

Given that this student had regularly visited Mexico during her childhood, she was interested in living in a country with which she was less familiar. Thus, previous travel to and familiarity with the ancestral homeland may lead HL learners to seek out a different destination for SA. On the other hand, the desire to experience a different culture may not preclude choosing to study in the homeland country. Despite HL learners’ personal connection with the heritage language and culture, Moreno (2009) found that not all HL learners perceived the culture of their family’s origins to be their own culture. Moreno (105) observed that a Guatemalan-American participant who grew up in the United States “studied [abroad] in Guatemala, a place where he still has many extended relatives. He considers himself to be Hispanic and of Guatemalan heritage, yet he said that ­Guatemalan culture is different from his own [culture]” (emphasis mine). From this student’s perspective, going to the homeland country represented an opportunity to live in a different culture, despite his familial ties to Guatemala. This example serves as a reminder not to essentialize HL learners, as Potowski (2012, p. 193) argued: ­“assuming



Heritage language learning in study abroad 

an intimate link between the development and maintenance of an HL and a core sense of identity is a kind of essentialization that runs the risk of homogenizing heritage speakers, who vary on this and a number of other primary identity constructs.” Several studies (Davidson & Lekic, 2013; Moreno, 2009; Rubin, 2004) have observed that parental influence may also play a role in where HL learners ultimately decide to study. Immigrant parents who left their country of origin in order to improve their economic, social, or security situation may not understand or support their child’s desire to return to that country. One Mexican-American student described his parents’ reaction to his decision to study in Mexico: “The reason why we came to the U.S. is so we can like get away from Mexico … [my parents] were just like, how come you didn’t go to Spain? Or France or England?” (Moreno, 2009, p. 108). Similarly, another Mexican-American student in the same study chose to go to Spain rather than Mexico, in part, because her parents perceived Mexico to be too dangerous. Whether the HL learner ultimately decides to study in the ancestral homeland or in another HL-speaking country, for some, improving their HL skills and being immersed in the HL are motivations for going abroad (e.g., Beausoleil, 2008; Moreno, 2009). As Moreno points out, some HL learners may have opportunities to be immersed in their HL with their families and communities in the United States, while others may use the HL infrequently in their home country. One third-generation Mexican-American HL learner belonging to the latter group identified HL immersion as a motivation for studying abroad: My parents are really guarded about speaking their Spanish with me, it’s a little strange. And my friends who speak Spanish fluently too, they’ll speak to me in Spanish but they’re a little less patient sometimes. They’d rather just speak in English because they speak English better than I speak Spanish. But it’s definitely, it’s a completely different experience being completely immersed in a culture [in SA] … you have to speak Spanish or you’re not going to get anything done. (Moreno, 2009, p. 80)

A Korean-American student likewise chose SA in South Korea in order to be reimmersed in the HL: My main goal [in studying abroad] was to improve my Korean ‘cause when I was younger I was really fluent ‘cause I lived with my grandparents and my parents and stuff… So, I was, kind of, raised in the Korean environment but once I left for college I completely forgot everything. And, to me that’s important ‘cause that’s something that’s different about me, you know? I’m not just a regular old American who can only speak English, you know? (Beausoleil, 2008, p. 76)

In this case, the student had reported experiencing HL immersion as a child, but was no longer immersed in Korean as a college student, hence, one motivation to participate in SA. Taken as a whole, these findings suggest that the decision to study in a

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heritage destination may entail a complex decision-making process involving both the student and his or her family.

3.2  Identity negotiation and construction in SA Identity negotiation and construction during SA has been examined by researchers of both L2 learners (e.g., Block, 2007; Kinginger, 2004; Pellegrino, 2005) and HL learners (e.g., Beausoleil, 2008; Moreno, 2009; Petrucci, 2007; Riegelhaupt & Carrasco, 2000). Summarizing a poststructuralist view on identity, Block (2007, p. 27) describes identities “as socially constructed, self-conscious, ongoing narratives that individuals perform, interpret and project in dress, bodily movements, actions and language … identities are about negotiating new subject positions at the crossroads of the past, present and future.” Among the variety of identities that individuals can claim are national, ethnolinguistic, gender, and social class identities. Identities are not fixed, however, and may change over time as individuals negotiate and construct their identities in conjunction with others, developing a “combination of the identities that we claim for ourselves and the identities that are ascribed to us by others” (Leeman, 2012, p. 47). Much of the existing literature on HL learners’ identities in SA has focused on how members of the host culture position HL learners. As mentioned in the previous section, students themselves may vary in whether they position themselves as belonging or not to the culture of the ancestral homeland. Likewise, members of the host culture may or may not position students as part of the ingroup, congruent or incongruent with students’ own subject position. Being positioned by hosts as an ingroup member can have positive outcomes for the HL learner. For example, if the HL learner shares physical traits with members of the host culture, he or she may be able to “pass unobtrusively” through daily activities in the host culture without drawing attention to his or her foreignness (Petrucci, 2007, p.  288). A student’s ingroup or outgroup membership may also determine the language to which he or she is exposed and the expectations for language learning and use during SA. Iino (2006) described how L2 learners in Japan were positioned as foreigners by their host families and, consequently, were spoken to with foreigner talk and were not expected to acquire native-like competence in Japanese. HL learners, in contrast, may have greater access to native-like input and social interaction, as well as assumed to be able to use the language competently. A student in Moreno’s (2009, p. 139) study, for example, reported that her ability to pass as a local gave her more access to Spanish: “Leigh used her physical appearance to her advantage by faking a South American identity so that she could get more access to the Spanish language while in A ­ rgentina. This is something that would probably be more difficult for most non-HL learners to accomplish.” HL learners who have extended family in the host country may also have access to opportunities for interaction not easily obtainable for



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L2 learners (Moreno,  2009). Even when hosts are not extended family, HL learners may be welcomed and supported by hosts due to their ties of shared ancestry, as was the case for Japanese ­Brazilian HL learners studying in Japan (Petrucci, 2007). However, being viewed as an ingroup member does not always result in a positive experience for HL SA students. In some cases, HL learners may actually have fewer opportunities for interaction with hosts because, as ingroup members, they are not perceived as exotic or interesting as L2 learners. Petrucci (2007) related the experience of a Brazilian HL learner of Japanese who, while studying abroad in Japan, observed that Japanese people seemed more interested in engaging in conversation with L2 learners due to their foreignness. One HL learner of Chinese who studied in Taiwan felt that locals were less interested in helping him with the language compared to non-HL peers: “Because he is of Chinese heritage and looks like he belongs in Taiwan, the locals were not as quick to give him extra help with the language when he needed it like they were with his Caucasian friends who were in Taiwan” (Moreno, 2009, p. 138). HL learners may also face various types of discrimination based on identities ascribed to them by members of the host culture. Moreno (2009) reports that one Mexican-American student, Pablo Diego, who studied abroad at an elite university in Mexico faced racial and class discrimination. Because Pablo Diego had relatively darker skin than his wealthy Mexican peers and because of their expectations regarding race and class, the Mexican students perceived as incongruent that Pablo Diego could speak English better than they could: Pablo Diego “looked like he should not know how to speak English” (Moreno, 2009, p. 136). Similarly, one Mexican host family in Riegelhaupt and Carrasco’s (2000) study requested of program administrators that, in the future, they be assigned a blond, blue-eyed student rather than the ­Mexican-American student whom they were hosting. Further, if HL learners speak a contact or non-standard variety of the HL, they may be confronted with linguistic discrimination. Riegelhaupt and Carrasco (2000) reported on Lidia, a Mexican-American participant who studied for a term in ­Guanajuato, Mexico, as part of her graduate studies as a professional teacher. Lidia grew up in Arizona and spoke a variety of Spanish found in the Southwestern United States. The authors reported that her speech included a handful of expressions that are stigmatized in standard Mexican Spanish: venir pa’ tras (‘return’), mirar used for ver (‘to see’), and haiga (‘have’, ‘there is’) and muncho (‘many’, ‘a lot’, ‘much’) instead of standard forms haya and mucho, respectively. On the basis of Lidia’s use of a few nonstandard forms, her middle-class Mexican host family perceived her as an “uneducated” and “lower class” person (Riegelhaupt & Carrasco, 2000, p. 407), and repeatedly corrected the student’s use of these forms in conversation, causing Lidia to feel uncomfortable and lose confidence in her Spanish abilities. Other Mexican-American teachers in Lidia’s program had similar experiences with their host families, perceiving the

 Rachel L. Shively

f­ amilies to be “highly critical of them and their dialect” (Riegelhaupt & Carrasco, 2000, p. 417) – so critical, that Lidia’s host family indicated that a “‘Mexican’ person (whether from Mexico or from the United States) who spoke Spanish in such a manner was not really welcome in their home” (408). After the host families participated in a session conducted by the program coordinators to raise awareness about sociolinguistic and HL issues, the families’ attitudes toward the students became less negative. The possibility of facing linguistic discrimination may produce anxiety in HL learners, whether they study in the ancestral homeland or in another HL-speaking country. Moreno (2009, p. 99) observed that HL learners felt anxious about how their use of HL Spanish would be perceived by members of the host culture: Leigh felt a tension between wanting to focus on learning Spanish and not wanting to sound uneducated while doing so …. Pablo Diego also talked about being embarrassed to speak his HL to native speakers and not wanting to be judged. Jaime was worried that the Spaniards would look down on his border Spanish and think he was butchering the language. Similarly, April feared that people in the Dominican Republic would make fun of her pronunciation.

These observations indicate that some HL learners are aware of language ideologies that denigrate their variety of Spanish (e.g., “border Spanish”) vis-à-vis standard or prestigious varieties (e.g., Peninsular Spanish) and feel a lack of confidence in their HL abilities as they embark on a sojourn abroad. HL proficiency is also something that learners were anxious about: the Korean HL learners in Beausoleil’s (2008, p. 106) study rated language skills in Korean as “the most influential characteristic in the way they were perceived by locals in South Korea.” Criticisms of their HL use may result in HL learners avoiding interactions in the HL during SA (Riegelhaupt & Carrasco, 2000). Being positioned as members of the host culture, HL learners may be held to monolingual norms, assumed to have insider cultural knowledge, and expected to behave according to the cultural expectations of the host country. In contrast, L2 learners, as outgroup members, are often not held to the same standards. Returning to the case of Lidia, cited above, her Mexican host family had been more accepting and welcoming of the other American student in the household, who was of European ancestry, even though she made more errors in Spanish than Lidia. Being positioned as Mexican, the host family perceived Lidia’s use of stigmatized forms the way they perceived other Mexicans who used such forms: being of lower socioeconomic status (Riegelhaupt & Carrasco, 2000). The European-American L2 learner, however, was not positioned by the family as Mexican and, consequently, her linguistic errors were not indexed to an ingroup identity nor was she subject to the same expectations for language use. A HL learner of Japanese who studied abroad in Japan made a similar observation: “If you don’t look Japanese and speak just a little of the language, you



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are praised. But if your ancestry is 100% Japanese and you speak Japanese rather well and commit a social error, you are misunderstood … as if you had done it on purpose” (Petrucci, 2007, p. 289). Several of the HL learners in Moreno’s (2009) study also reported that, because they looked like locals, they felt pressure to speak the HL like a native, because if they did not, they were perceived of as unintelligent. Looking like someone from the host country also means that the bilingual and bicultural identities the HL learners claim for themselves may not be visible or legitimized by hosts. Petrucci (2007) describes that when HL learners of Japanese studying in Japan positioned themselves as gaijin (‘foreigners’), they were met with disbelief by native Japanese, since their identity as locals had been ascribed to them based on their physical appearance. Use of their non-HL (e.g., English) in the host country may even be interpreted by members of the host culture as a rejection of ingroup status or an insult to locals. One Korean HL learner explained: But, for you it might be like wow this is Korea. But for us, it’s like whoa, they [local Koreans] look at us like there she goes, you know like she’s speaking in English as if I’m doing it to snub them or something. But it’s just like I can’t speak the [Korean] language and I need to express myself somehow … so that is hard to deal with.” (Beausoleil, 2008, p. 73)

In this account, even though this student lacked proficiency in HL Korean, her use of English was not interpreted by locals as a language difficulty, but rather, as an intentional means to symbolically distance herself from the host culture. In contrast to the preceding examples of ascribed ingroup membership, when HL learners study in a non-ancestral HL-speaking country they may be positioned differently. A Mexican-American student in Moreno’s (2009) research who studied abroad in the Dominican Republic was positioned as neither Dominican nor Mexican, but as American. This positioning may be liberating for some students, as one Mexican American studying in Spain suggested: One thing I noticed was a lot of the burden of having to be able to speak Spanish because I’m Mexican American when I’m here [in the United States] was actually taken off of me when I was over there [in Spain]. Because people in Spain didn’t really see me as being Hispanic, they saw me as being American. So they didn’t really have any high expectations of me so I could just kind of do it at my own pace. Which is a lot harder to do here [in the United States].”  (Moreno, 2009, p. 116)

Because this student was not positioned as Hispanic, but rather, as an American, she felt less pressure to live up to the high linguistic expectations of being a HL learner that she experienced in the United States. Not facing an ascribed identity as an ingroup member and its corresponding assumption of native-like proficiency allowed this student to determine her own HL learning goals and pace of learning. However, being perceived as American abroad may not be a positive experience for all students, as

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Gorman (2011, cited in Potowski, 2013) highlighted. Indeed, Rubin (2004) described the challenge for heritage speakers of being perceived as “foreign” at home in the U.S., but positioned as “American” abroad. In yet another case, one Mexican-American student who went to Spain, but who was positioned as Mexican, was surprised to find that Spaniards were often interested in learning about his Mexican identity and did not discriminate against his HL Spanish (Moreno, 2009). Whether HL learners study in the ancestral country or in another HL-speaking country, previous research suggests that many go through a process of identity negotiation and construction. In the first case, as a result of their bilingual and bicultural identities, HL learners may find that they do not fit into the ancestral culture as much as they anticipated (e.g., Moreno, 2009; Rubin, 2004). Consequently, HL learners may experience tensions and doubts regarding their cultural identities. The outcome of this identity construction is different for each individual. For some HL learners, a SA experience in the ancestral homeland helps them to resolve tensions among their cultural identities, such as in the case of the Mexican-American students in McLaughlin’s (2001) study who, after a stay in Mexico, were able to more harmoniously integrate their identities as American, Mexican, and Mexican American. In the case of one ­Guatemalan-American student in Moreno’s (2009, p. 127) study, the student also experienced an integration of his two cultural identities after SA, commenting: There were times when I was sort of wanting to feel like I’m so Hispanic I’m not even American. That’s obviously not me. And nor would I ever want to be that. I was born here and raised here [in the United States] in two different cultures. And I definitely have to recognize both of them where I came from.

A Korean-American student who studied in South Korea found the experience liberating in terms of identity: “My own identity is a lot more fluid and more apparent to me as a socially defined concept. It was liberating to be among new people where we could reconstruct ourselves or maybe more accurately be ourselves.” (Beausoleil, 2008, p. 83). HL learners construct their identities during SA based on learning more about their heritage, but also by developing greater awareness about their American identity (e.g., Beausoleil, 2008; Moreno, 2009). In terms of the former, one Korean-American student talked about the importance of reconnecting with Korean culture: Identifying the culture and the background of my ethnicity was the most rewarding part of studying abroad. Born and raised in the States, I honestly did not know how to identify myself as a Korean American. After coming to Korea I began to soak up knowledge like a sponge, and I greatly admired every moment. (Beausoleil, 2008, p. 82)

Similarly, the Guatemalan-American student cited above both reconnected with his family’s culture of origin, as well as realized the American aspects of his identity. While



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this student learned more about his “‘latinicity,’ meaning that he reconnected with his sentimentality, romanticism, and religion,” he also explained that, “I have gained a renewed appreciation for my American heritage while at the same time a fuller realization of my American roots. I do consider myself Hispanic, but I’m first and foremost an American” (Moreno, 2009, p. 118–119). In sum, the research cited in this section indicates that identity is an important facet of many HL learners’ SA experience, both in terms of the identities that HL learners claim for themselves as well as how learners are positioned by members of the host country. Identity may also play a role in the extent to which HL learners engage or disengage from interactions in the HL, which, in turn, can affect HL acquisition during SA – the topic of the next section.

3.3  HL development in SA A robust number of studies on L2 learning in SA indicate that, in many cases, L2 learners can make gains in all skill areas (reading, writing, speaking, listening), on standardized proficiency tests such as the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI), as well as in grammatical, pragmatic, and sociolinguistic competence (e.g., DuFon & Churchill, 2006; Freed, 1995; Kinginger, 2009). However, language learning outcomes of SA have been shown to vary considerably by individual and such differences have been linked to a variety of factors including L2 learner characteristics (e.g., motivation, gender, age, proficiency, dispositions, intercultural competence), living situation, program type, length of stay, and quantity and quality of social interaction (e.g., Coleman, 1996; Félix-Brasdefer, 2004; Hernández, 2010; Isabelli-García, 2006; Llanes & Muñoz, 2013; Kinginger, 2008; Martinsen, 2010; Martinsen, Baker, Dewey, Brown, & Johnson, 2010; Shively & Cohen, 2008; Vande Berg, Connor-Linton, & Paige, 2009; Wilkinson, 2002). However, very few studies that examine language learning during SA focus on the development of HL learners. The existing literature suggests that if HL learners were raised speaking the HL at home and in their communities, they are more likely than L2 learners to embark on their SA experience with stronger linguistic and cultural knowledge ­(Davidson & Lekic, 2013; see also e.g., Potowski, 2002; 2013) and, consequently, may find it easier to engage in social interactions in the TL from the beginning of their stay (Petrucci, 2007). HL learners may also be more familiar with learning and using their HL in a naturalistic rather than formal instructed setting. While there are likely to be similarities between HL and L2 acquisition in SA, considering HL learners’ different language and cultural background, there are also likely to be differences. The only existing study to compare language-learning gains made by L2 and HL learners during SA is Davidson and Lekic’s (2013) research on the Russian ­Flagship

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SA program. To be admitted to that program, both L2 and HL participants were required to achieve a minimum score of 2 in L2/HL Russian on the Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) scale, which corresponds to the “Advanced” level on the ACTFL proficiency scale. In comparing the initial proficiency levels and linguistic gains over time during an academic year in Russia, the authors found that not only did HL learners, on average, begin with a slightly higher proficiency than L2 learners, HL learners as a group also made more gains in speaking, listening, writing, and reading than L2 learners. By the end of their academic year abroad, HL learners made impressive gains: the majority increased their proficiency in all four modalities to achieve an ILR level 4 competence (ACTFL’s “Distinguished”), while the remaining HL learners finished the sojourn at ILR level 3 (ACTFL’s “Superior”). L2 learners also improved throughout their academic year abroad, but as a group, averaged one IRL level lower than HL learners at the end of the year. There was individual variation in gains on the OPI within both the L2 and HL groups, some of which was attributed to contact with the TL outside of class. Out-of-class contact was measured quantitatively by means of a self-report survey. For both learner groups, students that made the most gains tended to spend more time outside of class studying Russian, engaging in social interaction in Russian, and viewing, listening to, or reading news reports in the TL. This study suggests that SA provides the opportunity for HL learners make considerable gains in their HL proficiency, but that exposure to the TL is crucial for HL development. As is the case with L2 learners (e.g., Collentine & Freed, 2004), however, some American HL learners in SA may find themselves speaking English more often than they expected and, consequently, receiving less exposure to the TL. Moreno (2009, p. 87) observed that her HL participants were “just as prone to speaking English as most foreign language learners are in their SA programs.” While a variety of factors may contribute to the amount of English (or other non-HL) spoken during SA (e.g., program policies, presence of peers from the home country), as suggested above, quantity of TL use may also be related to HL learners’ identities and their experiences with members of the host culture. Pablo Diego, one of the Mexican-American participants cited above, had difficulty making friends with Mexican students during his sojourn in Mexico and, as a result, he spent more time with other American SA students speaking in English (Moreno, 2009). Apart from Davidson and Lekic’s (2013) finding that HL learners can make important gains in proficiency, other studies have observed that HL learners may acquire awareness about linguistic features of different dialects and registers, as well as adopt some of those forms into their own ways of speaking. A finding that has been attested in the L2 literature on SA is that students are often exposed to and acquire f­eatures of informal registers and language variation during SA (e.g.,  Fernández,  2014; Knouse, 2013; Marriott, 1995; Regan,



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­Howard, & Lemée, 2009; Salgado‑Robles, 2012). ­Similarly, several HL learners in Moreno’s (2009) study reported that they acquired new colloquial expressions and slang during SA due to interactions with host country age peers and exposure to popular culture. Moreno (2009, p.  97) concluded that, “Those participants were excited to become more familiar with the youth and pop culture of the country in which they studied and they felt that gaining more colloquial proficiency in their HL was a significant accomplishment.” Acquisition of features from and awareness about a different variety of the HL has been described in studies by Moreno (2009) and Riegelhaupt and Carrasco (2000). One Mexican-American student in Moreno’s (2009, p. 96) study who was exposed to Peninsular Spanish during SA in Spain, gained appreciation for and ultimately adopted features of that variety, as she described: I actually picked up a pretty decent [Peninsular] Spanish accent. You know, I don’t hate it anymore like I used to. It’s kind of fun. My friends now they scoff at me. And every now and then I’ll slip a vosotros (‘you guys’) into my speech. Like, I have a lot of Latin American friends who are like oh my gosh.

Lidia, the Mexican-American graduate student in Riegelhaupt and Carrasco’s study, also acquired features of standard Mexican Spanish as a result of her stay in Guanajuato, Mexico. Lidia eliminated from her Spanish some of the stigmatized linguistic forms about which her host mother had corrected her, as described above: Lidia began to replace haiga with haya, muncho with mucho, pa’ with para, and mirar with ver. Riegelhaupt and Carrasco also observed that Lidia developed a greater metalinguistic awareness of her own speech and of different varieties of Spanish. Finally, the development of HL skills during SA may have a positive impact on HL learners’ relationships with their own family and with HL community members once students return home. Students may be better able to communicate in the HL with family members, such as this Mexican-American student who improved communication with her grandmother in Spanish after studying abroad in Spain: My grandmother was actually really excited when I got back [from Spain]. She was like “You can speak Spanish now! Talk to me in Spanish.” I didn’t talk that much in Spanish but I could tell she was definitely a lot more comfortable speaking to me in Spanish. I would speak a little bit back in Spanish, and she was really excited. (Moreno, 2009, p. 113)

Outside of the family, Riegelhaupt and Carrasco’s (2000) participant Lidia reported that the standard Mexican Spanish forms that she learned during her stay in ­Guanajuato helped her in her job as an English-Spanish bilingual teacher when she returned to the United States. The authors explained that in Mexico, teachers are expected to speak not only the local dialect of parents and students, but also to use the ­standard variety in formal and professional settings. Riegelhaupt and Carrasco (2000, pp. 419–420) described

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the positive outcomes of Lidia’s HL learning in Guanajuato for communication with parents in her role as teacher: [Lidia] has informed us that the variety of Spanish she became aware of in Guanajuato is of particular significance in her interactions with her pupils’ parents, many of whom speak dialects of Spanish similar to her own, but who expect their children’s teacher to speak a “better” Spanish than they do.

While the authors emphasize that HL learners should be made aware that “their dialect is a perfectly viable one with a history of its own,” HL learners can benefit from becoming aware of different varieties of their HL and, if they so desire, expand their own repertoire to include forms that are used in various registers and social settings (Riegelhaupt & Carrasco, 2000, p. 419). To conclude, the research presented in this section suggests that HL learners can gain proficiency in speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills, as well as increase their awareness of sociolinguistic variation and expand their use of linguistic features from different dialects, settings, and registers as result of participation in SA. More research is needed, however, to do justice to the complex relationships between HL speakers’ identities, language learning and use, and engagement in social interactions in the SA context. Furthermore, as this examination of the literature indicates, HL learners are not a homogenous group in terms of their specific HL (i.e., Chinese, Hebrew, Spanish), their cultural and familial backgrounds, linguistic proficiency, or identity constructs. Beaudrie and Fairclough (2012) point to five dimensions of the diversity of heritage speakers: historical (e.g., generation of immigration), linguistic (e.g., order of bilingual acquisition), educational (e.g., language of schooling), affective (e.g., motivations, attitudes), and cultural (e.g., ethnolinguistic identity, family practices). These and other factors shape both the learning and personal outcomes of HL learning in SA.

4.  C  onclusions Despite the current paucity of studies on HL learners in SA, the handful of existing studies provide a glimpse into the rich possibilities of research on this topic. An examination of the sociolinguistic and intercultural complexities of (re)connecting with the heritage culture and (re)learning the HL in SA can offer important insights into the development of identities, HL ability, and intercultural competence. The studies cited in this chapter have indicated that, as with all SA students, HL learners express a variety of motivations for choosing to go abroad in the first place, some of which coincide with those of non-HL students (e.g., desire to improve TL proficiency, desire to travel internationally) and some that are uniquely related to the bilingual



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and ­bicultural ­profile of HL speakers (e.g., desire to improve HL communication with family ­members, deepening understanding of the heritage culture). Likewise, while individuals’ identities, histories, and goals, as well as treatment by members of the host culture play an important role in both L2 and HL learners’ lived experiences and exposure to the TL during SA, the nature of the identities being negotiated is qualitatively different for both groups. While L2 learners are predictably not perceived as members of the host culture, HL learners’ membership in the society of their ancestral homeland is more variable and subject to how they are positioned by their hosts (Petrucci, 2007). Further, while ingroup status can confer HL learners with greater access to the language and culture of their heritage country compared to L2 learners, it can also lead to negative treatment. When HL students’ language or behavior does not conform to local expectations, their deviations may be interpreted as an intentional insult or indexed as unintelligent, uneducated, or lower class (Petrucci, 2007; ­Riegelhaupt & Carrasco, 2000). Although the literature points to ways that HL learners face difficulties during SA, including racial and linguistic discrimination, there are also indications that many HL learners have positive and beneficial learning experiences, both in terms of identity development and HL acquisition. With regard to the latter, existing research points to the potential that SA has for improving proficiency, developing metalinguistic awareness, and expanding the HL repertoire. The directions that future research on HL learning in SA can take are numerous and, hence, only a sampling of possibilities are presented here. One potential starting point, following Lynch (2003), is to examine the research questions, methods, and theoretical frameworks that have been applied in both general second language acquisition research as well as research focused on L2 learning in SA. These areas can inform research on HL learners in the SA context and serve as a springboard for taking the field in new directions. In the case of research questions, among the many addressed by L2 research on SA, some examples include: Do students improve their linguistic abilities/communicative competence during SA? What factors influence language learning during SA? Does SA have an advantage over language study at home? Do students shift over time in their use of a given linguistic feature or how they perform a specific function involving the TL and, if so, how do students learn to use that feature or perform that function? To what extent do SA students engage in social interaction and build social networks with members of the host culture and what factors facilitate or disfavor social interaction? What types of social interactions do students engage in during SA? What are the linguistic and interactional characteristics of SA students’ social interactions in the TL? What aspects of sociolinguistic and pragmatic competence do students acquire during SA? Further, previous researchers have targeted a number of different areas of L2 learning in SA: global proficiency; reading, writing, speaking, and listening; fluency; vocabulary; grammar; and sociolinguistic and pragmatic competence. Factors that influence L2 learning in SA that have been investigated

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include motivation, gender, age, initial proficiency level, learner dispositions, intercultural competence, living situation, program type, length of stay, and quantity and quality of social interaction (e.g., Kinginger, 2009). Some of these research questions and topics may be fruitful as a springboard for future HL research. Second, looking at research methodology, there is much to be learned by examining the many instruments and data collection methods employed in descriptive and developmental L2 studies. To give an example, while the OPI has been widely employed as a measure of gains in global L2 proficiency during SA (e.g., Brecht, Davidson, & Ginsberg, 1995; Vande Berg et al., 2009), SA researchers have pointed out that, as a holistic instrument, the OPI is not designed to pinpoint specific ways in which SA students develop their TL skills (e.g., Freed, 1990). An OPI score only distinguishes between broadly defined proficiency levels such as “Intermediate High” and “Advanced Low.” Particularly in short-term programs (e.g., 4–8 weeks), students may not show any progress on their OPI scores, but may demonstrate growth in areas such as conversational management, control of stylistic devices, lexical richness, and syntactic complexity. Thus, research that goes beyond global proficiency scores can provide important insights into the learning outcomes of SA. In the area of L2 pragmatic development in SA, for example, a growing number of studies have collected naturalistic data in situ, making audio- or videorecordings of the social interactions that students participate in while abroad (e.g., DuFon, 1999; Shively, 2011, 2013). Data collected in natural settings allow researchers to observe actual language use in its social context. Finally, theoretical frameworks that have been employed productively in L2 SA research include language socialization (e.g., Duff, 2012), Vygotskian sociocultural theory (e.g., Lantolf & Thorne, 2006), intercultural communicative competence (e.g., Byram 1997), variationist paradigm (e.g., Regan et al., 2009), and communities of practice (e.g., Wenger, 1998). In conclusion, the existing body of research on L2 learning in SA is a potential catalyst for further research on HL learning in this context. This is not to say that L2 research should be the point of reference or standard-bearer: as Petrucci (2007) argues, following Valdés (2005), research on language learning in the SA context will not be complete until it is reconceptualized to take into account and include both L2 and HL issues.

References Beaudrie, S., & Fairclough, M. (Eds). (2012). Spanish as a heritage language in the United States: The state of the field. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Beausoleil, A. (2008). Understanding heritage and ethnic identity development through study ­ alifornia abroad: The case of South Korea. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of C at Santa Barbara.



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Block, D. (2007). Second language identities. London: Continuum. Brecht, R. D., Davidson, D., & Ginsberg, R. (1995). Predictors of foreign language gain during study abroad. In B. F. Freed (Ed.), Second language acquisition in a study abroad context (Studies in Bilingualism 9) (pp. 37–66). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/sibil.9.05bre Byram, M. (1997). Teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Carreira, M. M. (2012). Meeting the needs of heritage language learners: Approaches, strategies, and research. In S. M. Beaudrie & M. Fairclough (Eds.), Spanish as a heritage language in the United States (pp. 223–240). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Coleman, J. (1996). Studying languages: A survey of British and European students: The proficiency, background, attitudes and motivations of students of foreign languages in the United Kingdom and Europe. London: Centre for Information on Language Teaching and Research. Collentine, J., & Freed, B. F. (2004). Learning context and its effect on second language acquisition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 26, 153–171. Comp, D. (2007). What we know about diversity in education abroad: State of the research. In C. A. Herrin, S. Dadzie, & S. A. MacDonald (Eds.), Proceedings for the colloquium on diversity in education abroad: How to change the picture (pp. 48–52). Washington, DC: Academy for Educational Development. Davidson, D. E., & Lekic, M. D. (2013). The heritage and non-heritage learner in the overseas immersion context: Comparing learning outcomes and target-language utilization in the Russian Flagship. Heritage Language Journal, 10, 88–114. Donitsa-Schmidt, S., & Vadish, M. (2005). North American students in Israel: An evaluation of a study abroad experience. Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, 11, 33–56. Duff, P. A. (2012). Second language socialization. In A. Duranti, E. Ochs, & B. B. Schieffelin (Eds.), The handbook of language socialization (pp. 564–586). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. DuFon, M. A. (1999). The acquisition of linguistic politeness in Indonesian by sojourners in naturalistic interactions. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. University of Hawai’i at Manoa, Honolulu. DuFon, M. A., & Churchill, E. (Eds.). (2006). Language learners in study abroad contexts. ­Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Félix-Brasdefer, C. (2004). Interlanguage refusals: Linguistic politeness and length of residence in the target community. Language Learning, 54, 587–653. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9922.2004.00281.x Fernández, J. (2014). Youngspeak and study abroad: Exposure, dispositions and language use. Paper presented at the 19th International Conference on Pragmatics and Language Learning, Bloomington, IN, April 24–26. Freed, B. F. (1990). Language learning in a study abroad context: The effects of interactive and noninteractive out-of-class contact on grammatical achievement and oral proficiency. In J. Alatis (Ed.), Linguistics, language teaching, and language acquisition: The interdependence of theory, practice, and research (pp. 459–477). Washington DC: Georgetown University Press. Freed, B. F. (1995). What makes us think that students who study abroad become fluent? In B. F. Freed (Ed.), Second language acquisition in a study abroad context (Studies in Bilingualism 9) (pp. 123–148). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.  doi: 10.1075/sibil.9.09fre Freed, B. F. (Ed.). (1995). Second language acquisition in a study abroad context (Studies in Bilingualism 9). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.  doi: 10.1075/sibil.9

 Rachel L. Shively Gardner, R. C., & Lambert, W. E. (1972). Attitudes and motivation in second language learning. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Hernández, T. A. (2010). The relationship among motivation, interaction, and the development of second language oral proficiency in a study-abroad context. The Modern Language Journal, 94, 600–617.  doi: 10.1111/j.1540-4781.2010.01053.x Iino, M. 2006. Norms of interaction in a Japanese homestay setting: Toward two-way flow of linguistic and cultural resources. In M. A. DuFon & E. Churchill (Eds.), Language Learners in Study Abroad Contexts (pp. 151–173). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Institute of International Education. (2012). Open doors report on international educational exchange. New York, NY: Institute of International Education. Isabelli-García, C. L. (2006). Study abroad social networks, motivation, and attitudes: Implications for SLA. In M. A. DuFon & E. Churchill (Eds.), Language Learners in Study Abroad Contexts (pp. 231–258). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Jackson, M. J. (2005). Breaking the barriers to overseas study for students of color and minorities. IIE Networker, Fall, 16–18. Kinginger, C. (2004). Alice doesn’t live here anymore: Foreign language learning and identity construction. In A. Pavlenko & A. Blackledge (Eds.), Negotiation of identities in multilingual contexts (pp. 219–242). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Kinginger, C. (2008). Language learning in study abroad: Case studies of Americans in France (Modern Language Journal Monograph, Vol. 1). Oxford: Blackwell. Kinginger, C. (2009). Language learning and study abroad: A critical reading of research. ­Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.  doi: 10.1057/9780230240766 Knouse, S. M. (2013). Phonemes in a study abroad context: The case of the Castilian theta. Foreign Language Annals, 45, 512–542.  doi: 10.1111/j.1944-9720.2013.12003.x Landau, J. & Moore, D. C. (2001). Towards reconciliation in the motherland: Race, class, nationality, gender, and the complexities of American student presence at the University of Ghana, Legon. Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, 7, 25–59. Lantolf, J. P., & Thorne, S. L. (2006). Sociocultural theory and the genesis of second language development. Oxford: OUP. Le, J. (2004). Affective characteristics of American students studying Chinese in China: A study of heritage and non-heritage learners’ beliefs and foreign language anxiety. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. University of Texas, Austin. Leeman, J. (2012). Investigating language ideologies in Spanish as a heritage language. In S. M. Beaudrie & M. Fairclough (Eds.), Spanish as a heritage language in the United States (pp. 43–59). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Llanes, A., & Muñoz, C. (2013). Age effects in a study abroad context: Children and adults studying abroad and at home. Language Learning, 63, 63–90.  doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9922.2012.00731.x Lynch, A. (2003). The relationship between second and heritage language acquisition: Notes on research and theory building. Heritage Language Journal, 1, 1–18. Mar-Molinero, C., & Paffey, D. (2011). Linguistic imperialism: Who owns global Spanish? In M. Díaz-Campos (Ed.), The handbook of Hispanic sociolinguistics (pp. 747–764). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.  doi: 10.1002/9781444393446.ch35 Marriott, H. (1995). The acquisition of politeness patterns by exchange students in Japan. In B. F. Freed (Ed.), Second language acquisition in a study abroad context (Studies in Bilingualism 9) (pp. 197–224). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.  doi: 10.1075/sibil.9.13mar Martinsen, R. A. (2010). Short-term study abroad: Predicting changes in oral skills. Foreign Language Annals, 43, 504–530.  doi: 10.1111/j.1944-9720.2010.01095.x



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Martinsen, R. A., Baker, W., Dewey, D., Bown, J., & Johnson, C. (2010). Exploring diverse settings for language acquisition and use: Comparing study abroad, service learning abroad, and foreign language housing. Applied Language Learning, 20, 45–69. McLaughlin, T. R. (2001). Perspectives on learning Spanish as a heritage language in Mexico: Four Chicana case studies. Unpublished MA thesis. Universidad de las Américas, Puebla, Puebla, Mexico. Moreno, K. H. (2009). The study abroad experiences of heritage language learners: Discourses of identity. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. University of Texas, Austin, TX. Morgan, R. M., Mwegelo, D. T., & Turner, L. N. (2002). Black women in the African diaspora seeking their cultural heritage through studying abroad. NASPA Journal, 39, 333–353. doi: 10.2202/0027-6014.1175 Parry, J. (2014). Experiences with study abroad in Israel: Heritage status and Hebrew. Hebrew Higher Education, 16, 37–64. Pellegrino, V. (2005). Study abroad and second language use: Constructing the self. Cambridge: CUP.  doi: 10.1017/CBO9780511620584 Petrucci, P. R. (2007). Heritage scholars in the ancestral homeland: An overlooked identity in study abroad research. Sociolinguistic Studies, 1, 275–296.  doi: 10.1558/sols.v1i2.275 Potowski, K. (2002). Experiences of Spanish heritage speakers in university foreign language courses and implications for teacher training. ADFL Bulletin, 33, 35–42. doi: 10.1632/adfl.33.3.35 Potowski, K. (2012). Identity and heritage learners: Moving beyond essentializations. In S. M. Beaudrie & M. Fairclough (Eds.), Spanish as a heritage language in the United States (pp. 179–199). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Potowski, K. (2013). Heritage learners of Spanish. In K. L. Geeslin (Ed.), The handbook of ­Spanish second language acquisition (pp. 404–422). New York, NY: Wiley. doi: 10.1002/9781118584347.ch23 Regan, V., Howard, M., & Lemée, I. (2009). The acquisition of sociolinguistic competence in a study abroad context. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Riegelhaupt, F., & Carrasco, R. L. (2000). Mexico host family reactions to a bilingual Chicana teacher in Mexico: A case study of language and culture clash. Bilingual Research Journal, 24, 405–421.  doi: 10.1080/15235882.2000.10162775 Rubin, K. (2004). Going home to study. International Educator, 13, 26–33. Salgado-Robles, F. (2012). The acquisition of sociolinguistic variation by learners of Spanish in a study abroad context. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. University of Florida, Gainesville. Shively, R. L. (2011). L2 pragmatic development in study abroad: A longitudinal study of Spanish service encounters. Journal of Pragmatics, 43, 1818–1835.  doi: 10.1016/j.pragma.2010.10.030 Shively, R. L. (2013). Learning to be funny in Spanish during study abroad: L2 humor development. The Modern Language Journal, 97, 930–946.  doi: 10.1111/j.1540-4781.2013.12043.x Shively, R. L., & Cohen, A. D. (2008). Development of Spanish requests and apologies during study abroad. Íkala, Revista de Lenguaje y Cultura, 13, 57–118. Sweeney, K. (2013). Inclusive excellence and underrepresentation of students of color in study abroad. Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, 23, 1–21. Szekely, B. B. (1998). Seeking heritage in study abroad. In T. M. Davis (Ed.), Open doors 1997/98: Report on international educational exchange. New York, NY: Institute of International Education. Talburt, S., & Stewart, M. A. (1999). What’s the subject of study abroad? Race, gender, and ­“living culture.” The Modern Language Journal, 83, 163–175.  doi: 10.1111/0026-7902.00013

 Rachel L. Shively Valdés, G. (2005). Bilingualism, heritage language learners, and SLA research: opportunities lost or seized? The Modern Language Journal, 89, 410–426.  doi: 10.1111/j.1540-4781.2005.00314.x Vande Berg, M., Connor-Linton, J., & Paige, R. M. (2009). The Georgetown Consortium Project: Intervening in student learning abroad. Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, 18, 1–75. Van Der Meid, J. S. (2003). Asian Americans: Factors influencing the decision to study abroad. Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, 9, 71–110. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge: CUP. doi: 10.1017/CBO9780511803932 Wilkinson, S. (2002). The omnipresent classroom during summer study abroad: American students in conversation with their French hosts. The Modern Language Journal, 86, 157–173. doi: 10.1111/1540-4781.00142

Online courses for heritage learners Best practices and lessons learned Florencia Giglio Henshaw University of Illinois

Online and hybrid courses for second language (L2) learners have become increasingly popular among higher-education institutions. However, technologyenhanced heritage language (HL) courses remain the exception, likely due to the scarcity of computer-delivered materials that meet the needs of HL learners. This chapter describes a fully-online Spanish composition course for HL learners developed and implemented at the University of Illinois, UrbanaChampaign, during Spring Semester of 2014. In addition to describing the course components and student performance, the chapter also examines the advantages and challenges of online courses for HL learners in terms of meeting practical, pedagogical, and affective needs. Suggestions are made for curricular design of online courses or sections for HL learners, especially at institutions that do not have a large enough population of HL learners to offer separate L2/HL tracks.

1.  Introduction Over the last two decades, foreign language educators have been faced with the challenge of meeting the needs of heritage language (HL) learners.1 This is especially the case in Spanish language courses, where increasingly more HL learners are enrolling in the same classes as second language (L2) learners. Numerous research studies have shown that HL learners are linguistically different from L2 learners. Perhaps the most cited difference between them is that HL learners acquire the language aurally through the interaction with their caretakers and possibly other members of the family, in a naturalistic setting, whereas instructed L2 learners acquire the language primarily in the classroom and have considerable experience reading and writing in the target language. As a result, HL learners do not exhibit as strong a command of orthographic conventions and academic registers (Colombi, 1997; Teschner, 1981), as L2 .  A heritage language learner is broadly defined as a student “raised in a home where a nonEnglish language is spoken, who speaks or at least understands the language, and who is to some degree bilingual in that language and in English” (Valdés, 2001, p. 38). doi 10.1075/sibil.49.15gig © 2016 John Benjamins Publishing Company

 Florencia Giglio Henshaw

learners do (Bowles, 2011). On the other hand, HL learners tend to perform better on listening and speaking tasks than their L2 counterparts (Bowles, 2011; Montrul & P ­ erpiñán, 2011). In light of this, scholars insist that HL learners would benefit more from enrolling in specially designated classes (Correa, 2011; Potowski, 2002, 2005; Roca, 1997; Valdés, 1981, 1997). Despite the clear need to provide HL learners with instruction tailored to their pedagogical needs, many institutions are unable to offer separate courses. Beaudrie (2012a) found that approximately 60% of universities in the United States do not offer programs for Spanish HL learners, citing the lack of resources and insufficient student demand as the main obstacles. In addition to logistical and budgetary constraints, it may be challenging for educators to meet all of their students’ pedagogical needs in a traditional classroom setting, given that HL learners constitute a heterogeneous group not only with respect to their degree of bilingualism but also in terms of attitudes, goals and preferences. As Beaudrie (2012a) points out, a successful HL program “requires innovative and flexible curricula that are adaptable to diverse needs” (215). Considering that one of the main advantages of computer-assisted language learning (CALL) is that it allows for more individualized instruction, the use of technology in the HL classroom could serve to enhance and to reinforce the skills students already possess and to help develop their weaker abilities. Furthermore, online instruction allows administrators to offer special courses targeting the needs and goals of HL learners when face-to-face courses are not a viable option. This chapter describes a fully-online Spanish composition course for HL learners developed and implemented at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). The goal of this descriptive study is not to compare the effectiveness of in-class and online courses, but rather to further our understanding of the advantages and challenges of web-based courses for HL learners in terms of meeting their linguistic and affective needs. It is also hoped that the initiative described here will serve as a prototype for curricular design of online courses or sections for HL learners, especially at institutions that do not have a large enough population of HL learners to offer separate L2/HL tracks.

2.  Hybrid and online language learning The role of technology in language courses ranges from being a supplemental component, as in the case of assignments completed with the help of web-based resources, to serving as either a partial replacement of instructional time, as in the case of hybrid courses, or the primary means of instruction, as in distance learning (DL). Even though the notion of “online language learning” has been associated with hybrid or blended courses, it is important to differentiate them from DL or fully-online courses.



Online courses for heritage learners 

Blended courses, as the term implies, combine online tutorials and activities with some face-to-face instruction in a brick-and-mortar classroom, whereas DL or online courses takes place entirely online, with class meetings -if any- conducted through web conferencing, virtual collaboration, and instant messaging. The benefits of CALL have been documented in the literature for over three decades (see for instance, Chapelle, 2009; Golonka, Bowles & Frank, 2014). Perhaps its most outstanding advantages over traditional instruction are: ––

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Increased exposure to oral and written input through, for instance, computergraded activities, links to external sites, audiovisual materials, and multi-media applications. Immediate, individualized feedback, specific to each student’s answers. In a faceto-face class, the instructor can provide feedback only to the students who answer the question. Seamless integration of authentic, up-to-date resources, as well as utilization of Web 2.0 tools, which allow instructors to use a variety of techniques and materials that can make it possible for students with different learning styles to be successful in the course. More participation on the part of each student. Unlike in a face-to-face setting, everyone’s responses and viewpoints are considered and graded. Every student is expected to answer every question. More autonomy and more accountability on the part of the students. The ubiquitous nature of web-based learning makes it possible for them to manage their own coursework (i.e., decide when and where to work, complete as much as they want per session). At the same time, online assignments require that they pay attention to each question and each assignment, whereas in class they could get distracted and fly under the radar without the instructor ever knowing whether the student was paying attention or not.

The National Center for Education Statistics reported that during the 2007–2008 academic year, 20% percent of undergraduate students had taken at least one fully-online course, and the most recent report in fall 2012 shows that number has increased to a little over 25%. Although foreign language programs are showing increased interest in offering web-based courses, “there are only a handful of DL language courses being offered for credit in our universities and even fewer evaluation studies available” (Blake, 2013, p. 128). The relative reluctance to embrace online foreign language instruction is mostly due to faculty concerns. In particular, instructors fear that decreasing or eliminating the number of face-to-face contact hours might stagnate oral proficiency development. However, a growing body of research has indicated that technology-enhanced language classes, including those delivered completely online, may be as effective as traditional courses.

 Florencia Giglio Henshaw

The majority of research has focused on comparing traditional and blended sections, particularly with respect to their impact on student performance. Overall, findings have consistently yielded no significant differences in performance or affective factors between those two delivery modes (Chenoweth, Ushida & Murday, 2006; Echavez-Solano, 2003; Murday, Ushida & Chenoweth, 2008; Rubio, 2012; Scida & Saury, 2006; Thoms, 2012; Young, 2008), suggesting that adequate use of technology to replace face-to-face instruction may result in comparable learning outcomes. With respect to the effectiveness of fully-online courses, Blake, Wilson, Cetto, and Pardo Ballester (2008) found that that there were no significant differences in oral proficiency development between students in online sections of an introductory Spanish course and their traditional counterparts, leading the researchers to conclude that web-based courses may be a feasible alternative for foreign language instruction, “especially when local classroom options are lacking or do not fit into personal schedules” (Blake et al. 2008, p. 123). Another strand of research has investigated student perceptions and attitudes towards online delivery of language courses. Several studies reported that students were highly satisfied with hybrid and DL foreign language courses, and in some cases preferred them over traditional instruction (Bañados, 2006; Murday et al., 2008; Strambi & Bouvet, 2003). Blake and Shiri (2012), for example, investigated students’ satisfaction with their first-year online Arabic course and reported overwhelmingly positive responses towards the online format. One of the main advantages that students pointed out, perhaps not surprisingly, was the convenience factor, especially with respect to not having to be “present in any given classroom at any given time” (239). Blake and Shiri (2012) also reported that students perceived instruction to be more personalized in the online course than in a traditional classroom. These results, coupled with the fact that learners in technology-enhanced courses are not disadvantaged in terms of language development, suggest that fully online language instruction can be successful, provided it is implemented properly.

3.  Technology-enhanced heritage language instruction Even though the vast majority of research on CALL, and especially on online courses, has focused on foreign language teaching and learning, many of its advantages could also apply for HL instruction. In addition, there are other benefits of online instruction, specific to HL learners. Under the assumption that there is a close relationship between reading and writing (Beaudrie 2012b; Templeton & Morris, 2001), the predominance of written input and output in online courses, as opposed to the tendency for oral communication in face-to-face classes, might facilitate the development of spelling skills, which tend to



Online courses for heritage learners 

be one of the weaker abilities of HL learners. Meskill and Anthony (2008), for instance, evaluated the benefits of asynchronous text-based discussions among four Russian HL learners and a visiting international student from Russia. Students were required to post between three and five postings per week on topics designed to emphasize academic discourse, especially cross-cultural comparisons. Researchers analyzed the data from both the online postings as well as the interviews conducted by the instructor of the course at the end of the semester. Students reported that participation in the online discussions strengthened their lexical repertoire, their spelling skills, and their composing and editing abilities. Moreover, the exchange of ideas with other HL learners gave them the opportunity to reflect on their identities and share perspectives and experiences unique to their linguistic and cultural backgrounds. The researchers concluded that asynchronous CMC may be “a viable tool to help heritage learners increase their lexical range and command of written registers in the home language” (Meskill & Anthony, 2008, p. 16). Another advantage of the online modality for HL learners is that it may be less anxiety-producing. Coryell, Clark and Pomerantz (2010) interviewed 7 HL learners enrolled in a fully online Spanish as a foreign language course and examined their experiences learning Spanish, particularly in a self-paced online format that did not include any type of meaningful interaction with other students or the instructor. The researchers found that, on the one hand, the inherent rigidity of computer-graded activities reinforced the notion that “there is only one true and proper Spanish” (464); on the other hand, the online environment was “a safer space for them to wrestle with feelings of linguistic and cultural incompetence” (465). The negative aspects of online courses that Coryell, Clark and Pomerantz (2010) uncovered are due to the fact that this was not a course designed for HL learners, combined with a rather poor course design. Putting that aside, the advantages of the online format in terms of the privacy it offered to the HL learners cannot be overlooked. The flexible and individualized nature of web-based courses allows learners to review the material as much as needed, without feeling inadequate in front of their peers or their instructor, and to complete assignments at their own pace without feeling that their Spanish is either “too good” or “not good enough.” For language program administrators, an advantage of online courses is that they offer consistency of instructional quality. As Carreira (2012) points out, when it comes to HL instruction, “teacher training is a long-standing concern” (232). Online modules informed by recent proposals on the best approaches for teaching HL learners (AATSP, 2000; Correa, 2011; Potowski, 2005; Webb & Miller, 2000) can be developed by a qualified professional and made available to students via a learning platform or course management system. Of course, teaching assistants or instructors would still need to be trained on grading procedures and strategies for giving feedback, but they would not be responsible for material selection nor for the bulk of the instruction.

 Florencia Giglio Henshaw

Despite these clear benefits, technology-enhanced HL courses remain the exception, likely due to the scarcity of publisher-provided online materials that meet the needs of HL learners. There is a staggering difference between textbooks for L2 learners of Spanish and those for Spanish HL (SHL) learners in terms of availability of online ancillary materials. One would be hard-pressed to find a foreign language textbook that did not include any digital content. On the other hand, out of 13 SHL textbooks of various levels, only two offer a substantial number of online activities: Mundo 21 (Samaniego & Rodríguez, 2012) and Español Escrito: Curso Para Hispanohablantes Bilingües (Valdés, Teschner & Enríquez, 2008). The rest include companion websites with supplementary materials (e.g., files with activities for instructors to print out) or external links and topics for Internet research projects. In some instances, grammar tutorials originally developed for L2 learners are available as additional practice. A recent survey of 13 universities in the Southwest revealed that the lack of online materials suited to meet the needs of HL learners is one of the main areas of dissatisfaction with SHL textbooks (Guzmán, 2013). The abundance of online materials developed by publishers for L2 learners, as opposed to those for HL learners, makes it more feasible for institutions to develop and offer more hybrid and online foreign language courses than HL courses. As a result, course offerings for L2 learners end up being more appealing to HL learners simply because they meet fewer times per week than the traditional four-day-a-week courses for HL learners. This disparity in contact hours is perhaps the most important factor that explains the discontinuation of SHL courses, as was the case at UIUC.

4.  Context UIUC is a public university located in the twin cities of Urbana and Champaign, with a total population of 125,176, out of which 12% are Hispanic or Latino, according to the 2010 Census. In fall 2014, UIUC enrolled a little over 32,000 undergraduate students, and 10.4% of the entering freshman class self-identified as Hispanic. Concomitant with the doubling of this percentage over the last decade (cf. Potowski 2002) is the significant increase in the proportion of self-identified Hispanic undergraduate students majoring in Spanish from 26% in 2002 to almost 34% in 2014.2 Of course, it is difficult to assert whether the overall number of SHL taking Spanish courses at UIUC has changed or remained the same, given that this number represents only those students who have declared Spanish as their major. Despite the upward trend in enrollments of Hispanic students at UIUC, course offerings for SHL learners, namely SPAN 125 (“Spanish for Heritage Speakers I”) and

.  Data obtained from the Division of Management Information at UIUC.



Online courses for heritage learners 

SPAN 143 (“Spanish for Heritage Speakers II”), were discontinued in 2007. In a survey of HL learners at UIUC conducted in fall 2008, Bowles and Montrul (2014) found that one of the main reasons why HL learners were choosing not to enroll in SPAN 125 and SPAN 143 was the fact that they had double the number of face-to-face contact hours per week than other L2 courses of equivalent course credit. With the implementation of a hybrid model between 1998 and 2003, the number of weekly contact hours for all 100-level Spanish courses designed for foreign language learners was cut in half, from four to two, with class meetings being held on Mondays and Wednesdays or Tuesdays and Thursdays. The SHL courses, on the other hand, met four hours per week, Tuesday through Friday, rendering them less appealing to HL learners who could get the same number of credits by enrolling in the courses for foreign language learners: SPAN 103 in lieu of SPAN 125, and SPAN 141 or 142 in lieu of SPAN 143. A possible solution would be to redesign those courses, replicating the hybrid model of L2 courses. However, since the population of HL learners is significantly smaller than L2 learners, fewer sections would be offered, thus limiting the scheduling options for HL courses. It is inevitable that some HL learners would be unable to enroll in the specially designated courses, even if they only met twice a week. As Bowles and Montrul (2014) point out, “scheduling constraints are a real logistical problem for ­heritage-language courses, and many times conflicting schedules preclude students from taking a heritage-speaker course who would otherwise do so” (119). Therefore, offering hybrid courses for HL learners would not solve the problem; fully-online courses would be the only feasible way to offer classes for HL learners that would not create any conflicts with their existing schedules. As a first step forward in that direction, in fall 2013, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (LAS) approved an initiative to develop a special online section of SPAN 228 (“Spanish Composition”) for HL learners to be launched in spring 2014. A composition course was deemed to be best suited to be taught completely online from a pedagogical standpoint, given that individualized feedback and attention are key for students to improve their writing skills, and that the composing process tends to be a solitary and personal activity: everyone has different habits and preferences. Therefore, the traditional one-size-fits-all approach with which face-to-face courses are taught is less than ideal for a composition course. Furthermore, having separate sections for HL learners was pedagogically more beneficial not only for the HL learners but also for the L2 learners as well as the instructors. Mixed L2-HL composition classes may be especially problematic, as they tend to involve peer review sessions. Some HL learners may feel at a disadvantage when paired with L2 learners (Bowles, Toth, & Adams, 2014), and at the same time, some L2 learners might feel intimidated having to offer corrections or suggestions to a more proficient peer. Lastly, since HL learners tend to be less confident and more self-conscious about their writing skills (Bowles & Montrul, 2014; Mikulski, 2006; Xiao & Wong, 2014), the online environment would presumably be less anxiety-producing than class meetings in person (Coryell et al., 2010).

 Florencia Giglio Henshaw

5.  Course description SPAN 228 is a basic composition course that forms a part of the three language skills courses required for all Spanish majors and minors at UIUC, along with SPAN 200 (“Readings in Hispanic Texts”) and SPAN 204 (“Practical Review of Spanish”). The overarching goal of the course is to prepare students for the academic writing required in upper-level Spanish courses. Rather than proposing an entirely new composition course for HL learners, which would have taken a considerable amount of time in terms of being approved as an alternative to the required course for the Spanish major, a specially-designated section of SPAN 228 to be delivered fully online was created and developed. The section description in the class schedule was as follows: “On-line course only designed for Spanish/English bilingual students who grew up speaking/ hearing Spanish at home and wish to develop their academic skills in Spanish.” In all sections of SPAN 228, including the online section for HL learners, students are required to complete three compositions: a narrative essay, an argumentative essay, and an analytical essay. For each type of composition, students submit a total of 3 drafts prior to submitting the final version. After the first draft, students receive comments from their classmates through an online discussion forum; after the second draft, they receive written feedback from their instructor; and lastly, after the third draft, students have one-on-one consultations with their instructor in lieu of class that week. The drafts and the final versions account for 60% of the course grade: 20% and 40% respectively. Another course component common to all sections consists of Table 1.  Differences between the traditional and the online sections of SPAN 228 Traditional sections for L2

Online section for HL

Class meetings

3 hours a week, plus individual consultations in person

No class meetings; only individual consultations in person

Required textbook

Henshaw, F (2013). Comunicación escrita. Potowski, K. (2011). Conversaciones Pearson. escritas. Wiley.

Online activities

Computer-graded grammar exercises in MySpanishKit, due prior to submitting the final version of each composition.

Computer-graded and instructorgraded exercises and tutorials in Moodle, due on a bi-weekly basis.

SelfOnly 3 in the semester, after submitting reflections the final version of each composition.

9 entries throughout the semester in an online journal after receiving feedback on each draft.

Grading rubrics

Part of the grade is based on orthographic accuracy, particularly with respect to spelling errors covered in the textbook (e.g., “a” vs “ha”, “tenia” vs. “tenía”, etc.).

Part of the grade is based on grammatical accuracy, particularly with respect to common grammar errors among L2 learners (e.g., pronouns, gender agreement, verb conjugation).



Online courses for heritage learners 

­ i-weekly free writing exercises about a given topic with the goal of allowing students b to become more comfortable expressing themselves in written Spanish, rather than striving for grammatical or organizational perfection. The fully-online section for HL learners and the traditional sections for L2 learners differed in several different aspects. Table 1 summarizes the main differences between the two types of sections of SPAN 228.

5.1  C  ourse materials The required textbook for the online section was Kim Potowski’s Conversaciones escritas, which was selected for two main reasons. First, the thought-provoking reading selections touch on subjects of interest to SHL learners, such as immigration and bilingualism. Second, it includes accessible explanations on certain aspects of orthography and grammar that are most challenging for SHL learners (e.g., homophones, accent placement, past subjunctive, etc.). Given that the book does not include an online component, numerous computergraded and instructor-graded activities were created in house and made available to the students in Moodle, a learning platform and course management system maintained by the information technology division of the College of LAS. The online component included questions about the readings in the textbook, activities on spelling and grammar aspects relevant to each of the three compositions, and interactive tutorials on various writing strategies (e.g., making sentences concise and precise, capturing the reader’s interest in the introduction, citing outside sources, etc.). In many instances, students were directed to specific activities or questions in the textbook and were asked to submit their answers online via Moodle, as shown in Figure 1. In an attempt to minimize frustration and maximize learning opportunities, an effort was made to include detailed feedback that would help students understand why their answers were incorrect and guide them towards the correct answer, as if they were in class interacting with an instructor (Figure 2).

Figure 1.  Screenshot of a quiz question in Moodle

 Florencia Giglio Henshaw

Figure 2.  Screenshot of a quiz question in Moodle with feedback

All the new online activities were carefully designed to integrate with the content of the assigned textbook chapters. For instance, grammar exercises were related to the readings: students were asked to complete sentences with the correct form, and then indicate if those statements were true or false based on the content of the reading. Similarly, some of the activities that focused on spelling required students to transcribe audio-recorded examples of thesis statements, which students then had to evaluate in light of the explanations presented in the book. The prompts for the compositions and the free writing exercises were also connected to the topics discussed in the textbook; for example, for the narrative essay, students could choose to write about their own experiences learning Spanish and English, inspired by the story of Richard Rodríguez in Chapter 3 of the textbook, or to write about a friend or family member who immigrated to the United States, using as a model the story of Guillermo Vega in the same chapter.

5.2  C  ourse format The fully-online section for HL learners did not have an arranged meeting time, which allowed students to enroll regardless of their schedules. Online activities (e.g., quizzes, forum posts) were due on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and essay submissions were due on Sundays. For each of the quizzes, students had a maximum of two attempts, and the highest score was the one recorded. The number of quizzes or assignments due varied from week to week, although the typical workload involved 6 quizzes and 2 free-writing exercises per week. During the first week of classes, an informal orientation session was arranged in the evening, at a time convenient to all of the students enrolled. The main goal of this initial meeting was for the instructor to explain to students how the course was organized, to make students aware of certain idiosyncrasies of the online platform, such as specific quiz settings, and to demonstrate how to use different tools and ­features, (e.g., how to post in a forum, how to submit their essays, how to contact the



Online courses for heritage learners 

instructor directly through the course management system, etc.). Furthermore, it was an opportunity for the learners to get to know their classmates and the instructor, to feel reassured that they would be receiving support throughout the semester, and to address any concerns or questions they had, especially those who had never taken a fully-online course. After that initial meeting, the interaction between the students and the instructor took place in a variety of ways: through emails, through replies to their discussion forum posts, during office hours as requested, and during the mandatory one-on-one consultations after submitting the third draft of each composition. Since all registered students were on campus, face-to-face meetings were possible; in the event of having off-campus students, meetings could still be arranged through Blackboard Collaborate (formerly Elluminate Live), a web conferencing application embedded within the Moodle course site. Student-student interaction, on the other hand, was entirely asynchronous and limited to written comments as part of the peer feedback assignments, as well as sporadic replies to forum posts.

6.  Student performance and satisfaction Even though the goal of this chapter is not to compare online and traditional delivery modes in terms of students’ performance or perceptions, it is worthwhile to explore some similarities and differences in attrition rates, average course grades, and end-ofsemester survey results between the online section for HL learners and a traditional section of the same course for L2 students taught by the same instructor the previous semester (i.e., fall 2013). In spring 2014, a total of 16 students enrolled in the fully online section, but only 12 of them completed the course in its entirety, resulting in an attrition rate of 25%, whereas only 3 L2 learners out of 18 (17%) dropped from the traditional section in fall 2013. While far from ideal, a relatively high attrition rate is not uncommon in fully online courses (DiRamio & Wolverton, 2006). With respect to student performance, the average course grades at the end of the semester earned by HL learners in the online section were comparable to those earned by L2 students in a traditional section taught by the same instructor in fall 2013, as shown in Table 2 below. Table 2.  Enrollments and course grades in the online and traditional sections of SPAN 228 n

Mean (SD)

Traditional section for L2 learners (Fall 2013)

15

88.5 (5.9)

Online section for HL learners (Spring 2014)

12

86.7 (5.9)

 Florencia Giglio Henshaw

Additionally, end-of-semester surveys yielded similar ratings in both sections for the item in which students rate the overall quality of the course, with 1 being “exceptionally low” and 5 being “exceptionally high”. The average rating was 4.0 in the online section for HL learners, and 4.1 in the traditional section for L2 learners taught by the same instructor. The highest rated items in the survey were related to the timeliness and thoughtfulness of feedback as well as instructor willingness to spend extra time assisting students, underscoring the importance of “instructor presence” in online courses (Sheridan & Kelly, 2010). While comparable student performance and satisfaction with the course suggest that the online format did not have a negative impact on learning outcomes, it is important to interpret these similarities with caution, given that a systematic comparative analysis was not carried out.

7.  Discussion Overall, the initiative of offering a fully online section of “Spanish Composition” for HL learners was deemed a success. Students appeared to be satisfied with the course format and content, especially with respect to the abundant personalized feedback both online and in person, as well as the extensive practice aimed at improving their writing and spelling skills, which SHL learners tend to identify as one of their main learning goals (Bowles & Montrul, 2014; Mikulski, 2006). From a practical standpoint, the scheduling flexibility afforded by the online format proved to be a solution to the logistical constraints that had resulted in HL courses being consistently cancelled in previous years. As successful as this initiative was, it was not without its challenges. The lack of commercially-available online materials for HL learners required the development of a significant number of activities, including audio-recorded items and video tutorials. The entire course had to be created from scratch in Moodle prior to the beginning of the spring semester.3 What made the task of creating materials even more challenging was the fact that the author of tutorials and activities needed a high level of familiarity with HL pedagogy, in addition to expertise with technology-enhanced language teaching, which considerably limited the pool of faculty members or graduate students qualified to contribute to the project. Likewise, selecting an instructor who would possess certain competencies for teaching HL learners (Webb & Miller, 2000), and who would have the technological acumen and resourcefulness to teach in a fully online format, is a challenge that language program administrators should consider before embarking

.  Even though monetary compensation is offered for faculty to develop online courses, additional time in the form of course releases is not an incentive offered.



Online courses for heritage learners 

in a project like this one. That being said, several teaching assistants expressed interest in teaching the online section of SPAN 228 in the future, not only for the convenience of having a flexible schedule but also because it is a valuable opportunity to expand their teaching experience. With respect to recruiting, it became apparent that the description in the class schedule was not enough to educate the student population on the nature of this ­section. Some students assumed the course was for “native speakers,” and several HL learners did not identified themselves as such. Other students were skeptical about the effectiveness of online courses: some were under the wrong impression that online meant they would only do computer-graded activities, without the assistance of an instructor at all; others doubted their own abilities to complete assignments diligently and on time without regularly scheduled class meetings, particularly if they had never taken an online course before. This challenge was even more apparent in fall 2014, as many of our students are freshmen: taking a fully online course during their very first semester in college was quite intimidating for them. Furthermore, as Bowles and Montrul (2014) indicated, academic advisors might not be familiar with the characteristics of HL learners and might not be able to advise them properly on the pedagogical reasons why they should enroll in the section specially designed to meet their needs. Although technology-related issues was one of the anticipated challenges, we did not encounter many, perhaps due to the fact that the course designer had already developed another online course (“Readings in Hispanic Texts”), which was launched the previous summer. A few minor errors in the answer key that went undetected during the creation of the materials caused some confusion for the students, but actually this dissonance between what they thought the answer was and what the computer stated prompted them to seek help from the instructor and helped them to solidify their knowledge. The answer key and their scores were promptly corrected thanks to the automatic re-grading feature in Moodle. Based on the lessons learned from these challenges, the students’ comments in the end-of-semester surveys, and what the literature on online teaching has suggested, the following best practices are suggested for teaching online HL courses: 1. Educate students, academic advisors, and instructors on the benefits that a specialized section has for HL learners, but more importantly on the pedagogical and practical advantages of it being delivered entirely online. It is not enough to advertise that a section for HL learners is being offered. It is also necessary debunk myths related to SHL courses, such as the misperception that they are more difficult than courses for foreign language learners, as well as common misconceptions about online courses, namely that they consist mostly of computer-graded activities and are devoid of interaction with others. While that may be the case with poorly designed online courses, such as the one described in Coryell and Clark (2011), in

 Florencia Giglio Henshaw

the online section of SPAN 228 at UIUC, the instructor communicated with the students on a regular basis, both asynchronously (via email and forum posts) and synchronously (during the orientation session and the one-on-one ­consultations), throughout the semester. In order for an online HL course to be successful, students and educators alike need to be informed of the distinct advantages of web-based instruction over traditional face-to-face classes for HL teaching and learning. 2. Focus on pedagogy rather than technology. The content and the format of a course should always be developed and designed to meet the needs of the students, first and foremost. A common pitfall of online courses is the extensive use of videos and voice boards4 merely to try to replicate a face-to-face course as much as possible. As mentioned before, there are advantages to the text-based nature of the online format, especially for HL courses, particularly if one of the instructional goals of intermediate and advanced HL courses is to help learners strengthen their reading and writing skills. While it is good practice to incorporate a variety of activity types to suit different learning styles, online instructors should resist the temptation of getting caught up in technological trends. As Blake (2013) states, “technology is theoretically and methodologically neutral” (12); it is the instructors’ responsibility to and ensure it is being used in a pedagogically sound way, according to the learners’ needs and goals. In the case of SHL courses, online instructional designers and educators should adapt the pedagogical practices proposed in the literature (e.g., AATSP, 2000; Carreira, 2012; Correa,  2011; Potowski,  2005) to the online environment. For instance, voice boards could be used for students to interview each other asynchronously, with one student recording answers to another student’s questions about their language learning experiences and perceptions. The audio-recorded answers would then be transcribed to produce a written interview, which would not only help HL learners notice differences between oral and written language (e.g., register, orthographic conventions, etc.), but also foment a sense of community in the virtual classroom. 3. Favor instructor-student interaction over computer-student interaction. As ­Sheridan and Kelly (2010) point out, and as the end-of-semester surveys in the online section for HL learners showed, timely feedback and consistent support from the instructor are key factors in the success of online courses. It is important for students to feel that although the computer may at times act as an instructor, their instructor is not a computer. In the case of HL learners, it is even more important not to send the message that we are segregating them from mainstream instruction nor that we are leaving them to fend for themselves in cyberspace.

.  Voice boards work exactly like threaded text-based discussion forums, except that the messages are audio-recorded rather than written.



Online courses for heritage learners 

One way to accomplish that is by arranging meetings with the students, either virtually or in person, throughout the semester. At the very least, there should be a meeting at the beginning of the course not only to give students an overview of the course format, content and materials, but mainly for the instructor to become acquainted with the students’ background, motivation and goals. 4. Foster student-student interaction and collaboration. Previous research has shown one of the main reasons why SHL learners study Spanish is to form part of a linguistic and cultural community (Alarcón, 2010; Bowles & Montrul, 2014; Carreira & Kagan, 2011; Coryell & Clark, 2011); therefore, it is imperative the online courses for HL learners include tasks that require them to communicate and collaborate with their classmates. While asynchronous forum exchanges like the ones suggested by Meskill and Anthony (2008) are a step in that direction, they should not be the only form of communication among students. Another way of integrating meaningful communication in an online HL course is to have students provide feedback and comments on their peers’ work using screen casting software. As opposed to written comments that may be difficult for the reviewer to express, a digital video recording of both spoken comments and on-screen actions (e.g., editing, highlighting, etc.) might result in more specific and clear feedback. Emerging research has shown that feedback provided through screencast recordings is actually preferred by students and may have a positive impact on learning outcomes (Ducate & Arnold, 2012; Mitchell, 2012). 5. When training teaching assistants on how to meet the needs of HL learners, discuss the affordances and limitations of a variety of course delivery formats. ­Currently, methods courses or programs on HL pedagogy tend to focus on in-class strategies and approaches rather than on technology integration in the HL curriculum. It seems ironic that even though there are a few entirely online courses for HL instructors, training on effective use of technology in HL courses has been for the most part neglected.

8.  C  onclusions Despite the fact that the National Heritage Language Resource Center (NHLRC) recognizes that “computerized materials will help educators to accommodate the diversity within a classroom and the conditions under which HL study may be pursued,” the integration of technology in the HL curriculum remains in its infancy. The fully online section for HL learners described in this chapter constitutes one possible solution to overcoming the logistical obstacles associated with offering separate courses for L2 and HL learners. One important caveat is that this study is only descriptive, as it did not set out to empirically test the effects of online versus

 Florencia Giglio Henshaw

face-to-face ­instruction. More data are obviously needed on both the pedagogical and affective dimensions of fully online HL courses. In particular, future work should focus on identifying the most useful technological tools for the HL classroom as well as best practices for implementing meaningful synchronous and asynchronous online communication. It would also be insightful to explore the use of web-based materials to facilitate differentiated teaching in language courses where both L2 and HL learners enroll. As our understanding of the advantages and challenges of technology-enhanced HL instruction expands, so will the array of course options for HL learners.

References AATSP. (2000). Professional development series handbook for teachers K–16: Spanish for native speakers. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt College. Alarcón I. (2010). Advanced heritage learners of Spanish: A sociolinguistic profile for pedagogical purposes. Foreign Language Annals, 43(2), 269–288.  doi: 10.1111/j.1944-9720.2010.01078.x Bañados, E. (2006). A blended-learning pedagogical model for teaching and learning EFL successfully through on online interactive multimedia environment. CALICO Journal, 23(3), 533–550. Beaudrie, S. (2012a). Research on university-based Spanish heritage language programs in the United States: The current state of affairs. In S. Beaudrie & M. Fairclough (Eds.), Spanish as a heritage language in the United States: State of the field (pp. 203–221). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Beaudrie, S. (2012b). A corpus-based study on the misspellings of Spanish heritage learners andtheir implications for teaching. Linguistics and Education, 23, 135–144. doi: 10.1016/j.linged.2011.09.001 Blake, R. (2013). Brave new digital classroom: Technology and foreign-language learning. ­Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Blake, R., Wilson, N. L., Cetto, M., & Pardo Ballester, C. (2008). Measuring oral proficiency in distance, face-to-face, and blended classrooms. Language Learning & Technology, 12(3), 114–127. Blake, R., & Shiri, S. (2012). Online Arabic language learning: What happens after? L2 Journal, 4(2), 230–246. Bowles, M. (2011). Exploring the role of modality: L2-Heritage learner interactions in the ­Spanish language classroom. Heritage Language Journal, 8(1), 30–65. Bowles, M. A., & Montrul, S. (2014). Heritage Spanish speakers in university language courses: A decade of difference. ADFL Bulletin, 43(1), 112–122.  doi: 10.1632/adfl.43.1.112 Bowles, M. A., Toth, P., & Adams, R. (2014). A comparison of L2–L2 and L2–heritage learner interactions in Spanish language classrooms. Modern Language Journal, 98(2), 497–517. doi: 10.1111/modl.12086 Carreira, M. (2012). Meeting the needs of heritage language learners. In S. Beaudrie & M. Fairclough (Eds.), Spanish as a heritage language in the United States: State of the field (pp. 223–240). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Carreira, M., & Kagan, O. (2011). The results of the national heritage language survey: Implications for teaching, curriculum design, and professional development. Foreign Language Annals, 44(1), 40–64.  doi: 10.1111/j.1944-9720.2010.01118.x



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Chapelle, C. (2009). Computer-assisted teaching and testing. In M. Long & K. Doughty (Eds.), The handbook of language teaching (pp. 628–644). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. doi: 10.1002/9781444315783.ch33 Chenoweth, N. A., Ushida, E., & Murday, K. (2006). Students learning in hybrid French and Spanish courses: An overview of language online. CALICO Journal, 24(1), 115–145. Colombi, M. C. (1997). Perfil del discurso escrito en textos de hispanohablantes: Teoría y práctica. In M. C. Colombi & F. Alarcón (Eds.), La enseñanza del español a hispanohablantes: praxis y teoría (pp. 175–189). Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Correa, M. (2011). Advocating for critical pedagogical approaches to teaching Spanish as a heritage language: Some considerations. Foreign Language Annals, 44(2), 308–320. doi: 10.1111/j.1944-9720.2011.01132.x Coryell, J., & Clark, M. (2011). One right way, intercultural participation, and language learning anxiety: A qualitative analysis of adult online heritage and nonheritage language learners. Foreign Language Annals, 42(3), 483–504.  doi: 10.1111/j.1944-9720.2009.01037.x Coryell, J., Clark, M., & Pomerantz, A. (2010). Cultural fantasy narratives and heritage language learning: A case study of adult heritage learners of Spanish. Modern Language Journal, 94(3), 453–469.  doi: 10.1111/j.1540-4781.2010.01055.x DiRamio, D., & Wolverton, M. (2006). Integrating learning communities and distance education: Possibility or pipedream? Innovative Higher Education,31(2), 99–113. doi: 10.1007/s10755-006-9011-y Ducate, L., & Arnold, N. (2012). Computer-mediated feedback: Effectiveness and student perceptions of screen-casting software versus the comment function. In G. Kessler, A. Oskoz, & I. Elola (Eds.), Technology across writing contexts and tasks (pp. 31–56). San Marcos, TX: CALICO Publications. Echavez-Solano, N. (2003). A comparison of student outcomes and attitudes in technologyenhanced vs. traditional second semester Spanish language courses. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. University of Minnesota. Golonka, E., Bowles, A., & Frank, V. (2014). Technologies for foreign language learning: A review of technology types and their effectiveness. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 27(1), 70–105.  doi: 10.1080/09588221.2012.700315 Guzmán, S. (2013). Textbooks in SHS programs: What has been adopted and why. Paper presented at the ACTFL Annual Convention, Orlando, FL. Meskill, C., & Anthony, N. (2008). Computer mediated communication: Tools for instructing Russian heritage language learners. Heritage Language Journal, 6(1), 1–22. Mikulski, A. M. (2006). Accent-uating rules and relationships: Motivations, attitudes, and goals in a Spanish for Native Speakers class. Foreign Language Annals, 39(4), 660–682. doi: 10.1111/j.1944-9720.2006.tb02282.x Mitchell, K. 2012. Screencast feedback on writing: Comments students can see and hear. Paper presented at the CALICO Conference, Notre Dame, IN. Montrul, S., & Perpiñán, S. (2011). Assessing differences and similarities between instructed L2 learners and heritage language learners in their knowledge of Spanish Tense-Aspect and Mood (TAM) Morphology. Heritage Language Journal, 8(1), 90–133. Murday, K., Ushida, E., & Chenoweth, N. A. (2008). Learners and teachers perspectives on language online. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 21(2), 125–142. doi: 10.1080/09588220801943718 NHLRC. (2013). Instructional materials. Curriculum guidelines for heritage language classrooms at the University of California. 〈http://web.international.ucla.edu/nhlrc/page/ curriculumguidelines/materials〉.

 Florencia Giglio Henshaw Potowski, K. (2002). Experiences of Spanish heritage speakers in university foreign language courses and implications for teacher training. ADFL Bulletin, 33(3), 35–42. doi: 10.1632/adfl.33.3.35 Potowski, K. (2005). Fundamentos de la enseñanza del español a los hablantes nativos en los Estados Unidos. Madrid, Spain: Arco Libros. Roca, A. (1997). La realidad en el aula: Logros y expectativas en la enseñanza del español para estudiantes bilingües. In M. C. Colombi & F. X. Alarcón (Eds.), La enseñanza del español a hispanohablantes: Praxis y teoría (pp. 55–64). Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Rubio, F. (2012). The effects of blended learning on second language fluency and proficiency. In F. Rubio & J. Thoms (Eds.), Hybrid language teaching and learning: Exploring theoretical, pedagogical and curricular issues (pp. 137–159). Boston, MA: Cengage. Samaniego, F. A., & Rodriguez Nogales, F. (2012). Mundo 21. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning. Scida, E. E., & Saury, E. R. (2006). Hybrid courses and their impact on student and classroom performance: A case study at the University of Virginia. CALICO Journal, 23(3), 517–531. Sheridan, K., & Kelly, M. (2010). The indicators of instructor presence that are important to students in online courses. Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 6(4), 767–779. Strambi, A., & Bouvet, E. (2003). Flexibility and interaction at a distance: A mixed-mode environment for language learning. Language Learning & Technology, 7(3), 81–102. Templeton, S., & Morris, D. (2001). Reconceptualizing spelling development and instruction. Reading Online, 5(3). 〈http://www.readingonline.org/aRTIcles/handbook/templeton/ 〉. Teschner, R. V. (1981). Spanish for native speakers: Evaluating twenty five Chicano compositions in a first-year course. In G. Valdés, A. G. Lozano, & R. García-Moya (Eds.), Teaching Spanish to the Hispanic bilingual: Issues, aims, and methods (pp. 115–139). New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Thoms, J. J. (2012). Analyzing linguistic outcomes of L2 learners: Hybrid vs. traditional course contexts. In F. Rubio & J. Thoms (Eds.), Hybrid language teaching and learning: Exploring theoretical, pedagogical and curricular issues (pp. 177–195). Boston, MA: Cengage. Valdés, G. (1981). Pedagogical implications of teaching Spanish to the Spanish-speaking in the United States. In G. Valdés, A. G. Lozano, & R. García-Moya (Eds.), Teaching Spanish to the Hispanic bilingual: Issues, aims, and methods (pp. 3–20). New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Valdés, G. (1997). The teaching of Spanish to bilingual Spanish-speaking students: Outstanding issues and unanswered questions. In M. C. Colombi & F. Alarcón (Eds.), La enseñanza del español a hispanohablantes (pp. 8–44). Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Valdés, G. (2001). Heritage language students: Profiles and possibilities. In J. K. Peyton, D. Ranard, & S. McGinnis (Eds.), Heritage languages in America: Preserving a national resource (pp. 37–80). McHenry, IL: Delta Systems. Valdés, G., Teschner, R. V., & Enríquez, H. M. (2008). Español escrito. Curso para hispanohablantes bilingües. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall. Webb, J., & Miller, B. (2000). Teaching heritage language learners: Voices from the classroom. Yonkers, NY: ACTFL. Xiao, Y., & Wong, K. (2014). Exploring heritage language anxiety: A study of Chinese heritage language learners. Modern Language Journal, 98(2): 589–611.  doi: 10.1111/modl.12085 Young, D. J. (2008). An empirical investigation of the effects of blended learning on student outcomes in a redesigned intensive Spanish course. CALICO Journal, 26, 160–181.

Flipping the classroom A pedagogical model for promoting heritage language writing skills Julio Torres

University of California at Irvine Researchers and educators of heritage language (HL) students have highlighted the need that HL learners have in developing their writing skills in the HL (e.g., Colombi, 2000; Colombi & Roca, 2003; Parodi, 2008). In this chapter, I summarize a number of HL writing studies as well as some considerations for future studies from a second language writing perspective. Furthermore, I describe briefly a pedagogical approach known as the flipped classroom (Bergmann & Sams, 2012, 2014) and its implementation in fostering learningto-write skills. Specifically, I provide an example of the flipped classroom model adapted in a HL class in which students reviewed or gained knowledge on writing conventions and strategies through mini-lectures delivered through a video format for homework. Through a questionnaire at the end of the course, students reported their perceptions on the use of the flipped classroom model as it applied to improving their writing convention skills. Overall, students responded favorably to the flipped classroom model and pointed out the benefit of reviewing the mini-lecture as often as needed, and being more aware of writing conventions while composing argumentative essays.

1.  Introduction The goals of this chapter are to provide readers with a brief sample of representative studies on HL writing as well as suggestions for future research, and the use of an increasingly trendy pedagogical approach, the flipped classroom model, to promote writing skills. Both researchers and pedagogues of HL learners are well aware that most HL learners benefit drastically from a focus on developing formal literacy skills (reading and writing) in the HL due to little or no access to early formal education in the HL in primary schools. This lack of opportunity to be formally educated in ways that promote maintenance and development of HL learners’ Spanish literacy appears to be a contributor to the deviation of HL grammars from native speakers of the same

doi 10.1075/sibil.49.16tor © 2016 John Benjamins Publishing Company

 Julio Torres

language (Rothman, 2007), particularly when considering that modality (i.e., spoken versus written language) plays a role in HL speakers’ performance on experimental tasks (Montrul, Davidson, de la Fuente, & Foote, 2014), showing their superior performance on oral production tasks. This leaves many HL learners with proficiency outcomes to function at what Cummins (2008) has referred to as basic interpersonal communicative skills or BICS. That is, they can carry out everyday informal oral conversations in Spanish to different degrees. Therefore, many Spanish courses for HL learners focus on the development of CALP (cognitive academic language proficiency) in Spanish with the goal of promoting literacy in the HL. For years now, one of the main goals of heritage bilingual programs has been to help learners become aware of differences between spoken and written language (e.g., Valdés, 1978). Recently, Colombi and Harrington (2012) pointed out that developing literacy skills in the HL is paramount in the United States to meet some of the professional demands for a biliterate (Spanish and English) workforce. Moreover, studies suggest that bilingual children who reach higher thresholds of proficiency in both languages (e.g., biliteracy) enjoy greater cognitive benefits (see Bialystok, 2013) and biliterate young adults seem better equipped to learn an additional language (Sanz, 2007). However, despite the clear benefits of biliteracy, HL children have few opportunities to develop literacy skills in the HL, and little research exists as to how adult HL learners acquire reading and writing skills in their less dominant language. This chapter will focus on the development of writing skills among adult HL learners from a second language (L2, henceforth) writing perspective. As far as L2 writing research, Norris and Manchón (2012, p. 223) claimed that writing development appears to “…range from observing and making sense of immediate and short-term changes in language or writing capacities, to tracing global and longer-term changes in written output or in the antecedents and motives of behaviour.” This definition implies that writing development is conceived as a construct that goes beyond linguistic development, and that researchers tracking changes in development ought to consider writing processes, the role of text genre and learners’ goals to name a few. Scholars of L2 writing have not been the only ones advocating for a more comprehensive look at writing development (for recent L2 proposals, see contributions in Manchón, 2011), but also, HL researchers (e.g., Martinez, 2005). Along these lines, then, L2 writing has been categorized into two major dimensions: learning-to-write and writing-to-learn (language and content). Learning-to-write refers to the actual processes and strategies writers undergo to compose a written text; that is, the focus is on the act of writing itself. For example, Hyland (2011) considered learners’ cognitive processes related to writing (e.g.,  ­planning, drafting, revising), analysis of text as objects and discourse as well as attention to the reader as necessary contributors to the dimension of learning-towrite. On the other hand, writing-to-learn approaches regard writing as an attempt to



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­ romote L2 development and/or knowledge of areas of specialization. In addressing p writing-to-learn language, Cumming (1990) proposed that composing in the L2 could prompt learners to engage in metalinguistic processes that can lead to restructuring and consolidation of L2 structures. This proposal is supported by Manchón’s (2011) review of studies that found some positive effects of L2 writing on L2 processing of linguistic features. However, Ferris (2010), who focused on the role of corrective feedback on writing, argued that L2 acquisition and writing posit different questions as well as methodologies, and that their synergy warrants further research. Overall, as Ortega (2011) suggested, this categorization of writing-to-learn and learning-to-write facilitates the dissection of the multifaceted components of L2 writing development to understand how learners develop their writing competence, acquire features of the language and learn content in a second language. Nevertheless, Ortega also cautioned readers against overemphasizing one component over the other in research and practice, as all of them are integral to developing bilingual writers. Along the dimensions of writing-to-learn language and learning-to-write, the following section provides an overview of sample studies addressing different components of writing among HL bilinguals. Due to the limited number of studies, it is difficult to organize the studies into well-defined categories; therefore, the categories of writing-to-learn language and learning-to-write are used to organize the studies. The writing-to-learn language classification encompasses studies related to written production of Spanish (e.g., Beaudrie, 2012; Bowles, 2011; Colombi, 2000), whereas studies under learning-to-write deal with the conventions and processes of composing texts (e.g., Schwartz, 2003; Martinez, 2005). The studies described below represent different perspectives on writing, because as stated by Ferris (2010, p. 182), writing research is “informed by language and composition studies as well as other disciplines, including rhetoric, communication, and cultural studies, among others.” In addition, due to the infancy of the field of HL education, the studies below contribute mostly to lines of inquiry that need further exploration to disentangle the complexities of HL bilinguals’ writing development in Spanish. The section concludes with some recommendations for future research inspired primarily by scholarship in the field of L2 acquisition.

2.  Studies on Spanish HL writing 2.1  Writing-to-learn language dimension Given HL learners’ experience of the HL in more informal conversational contexts, it is no surprise that they make use of their oral register to compose written texts in Spanish (Colombi, 1997), and this is evident, for instance, in non-targetlike orthography that emerges from their writings. Beaudrie (2012) classified orthography ­mistakes

 Julio Torres

from a corpus of written texts by Spanish HL learners, and found that many mistakes were attributed to cases in which more than one graphemic representation corresponded to a single phoneme. For example, in Spanish, the phoneme /s/ has three possible graphemic symbols – s, z, c as in the words casa, taza and cereal. Moreover, Beaudrie also found in the corpus that the use of orthographic accent was more problematic than spelling errors. Schwartz (2005), in a study focused on fluency, grammatical complexity and accuracy of written Spanish, reported data on five Spanish-English heritage bilinguals’ Spanish. According to their Spanish proficiency, Schwartz classified the five students into two groups: fluent functional speakers (Type A) or fluent but limited speakers of contact variety of Spanish (Type B). While Schwartz found no differences on writing measures between both groups, they did differ on type of errors. Type B participants had more errors with verb tense and Type A participants exhibited problems with lexical selection. Martinez (2007) investigated HL learners’ pragmatic use of full subjects, overt and null Spanish subject pronouns in one free-writing and two assigned descriptive narrative writing tasks across degrees of discourse connectivity. Martinez’s descriptive data reveal the following pattern: HL learners produced a higher number of full subjects and overt subject pronouns in the assigned descriptive narrative writing tasks, and conversely, a lower number in the free-writing assignment. For Martinez, these results imply that for more formal writing tasks, HL learners tap into English processes and resources associated with writing formal academic texts, which is a reflection of their (almost) exclusively English academic experience. Moving to a couple of studies investigating written production at the sentence level, first, Spicer-Escalante (2007) computed the total number of T-units;1 sentences (simple, coordinated and subordinate) and clauses (nominal, adjectival and adverbial) produced in an argumentative-persuasive essay written by a group of Spanish HL speakers, L2 speakers and native speakers of Spanish. Not surprisingly, the author found that native speakers significantly produced more and longer T-units and sentences than the HL and L2 speakers. However, the data trend suggests that HL learners and native speakers produced similar proportions of subordinate sentences while L2 learners wrote more coordinated sentences. Finally, HL and L2 learners produced a higher percentage of nominal clauses unlike their native speaker peers. These data revealed that HL learners’ written discourse appears to share similar characteristics with both native and L2 speakers. In Colombi (2000), she reported on a case study (Rosa), and her academic language development in Spanish after being enrolled in a Spanish for heritage speakers’ course. Colombi measured Rosa’s academic language development through the analysis of lexical density and nominal structures as well

.  T-unit is a main clause with subordinate clauses that have a subject and finite verb (Hunt, 1965).



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as clause linking strategies through connectors (e.g., because, but), which characterize oral discourse. Her results of Rosa’s writing development revealed an overall modest percentage of increase in the use of academic language, while simultaneously demonstrating a reduction in the overreliance of oral discourse connectors to combine clauses. In a classroom-based study examining interactions between HL and L2 learners in completing a number of tasks, Bowles (2011) examined LRE (or Language Related Episodes)2 that emerged from interactions between both groups of learners. One of the tasks was a collaborative writing task in which the learners had to complete two love stories with an original ending in the past tense. The findings indicated that no differences existed in the number of initiations of LREs between both groups of learners; however, they were qualitatively different in that the HL learners appeared to rely on their L2 partner for issues of orthography and accent placement whereas the L2 learners benefitted from HL learners’ lexical knowledge. An ongoing classroom study by Zach and Maimone (2014) investigated the effects of explicit instruction through metalinguistic information delivered in a course for HL learners on orthography, verbal morphology (number of correct verbs/total number of verbs) and syntactic complexity as measured by global complexity (number of words/t-unit) and amount of subordination (number of subordinate clauses/t-unit). Their preliminary results revealed improvements only in the area of orthography. Additionally, a couple of studies have tapped into gauging HL learners’ views for improving their Spanish writing skills. For example, Callahan (2010) investigated HL bilinguals’ views on written Spanish through semi-structured interviews. Callahan’s informants associated writing with the maintenance of the HL, their academic experience with written Spanish was mostly based on acquiring a standard register of the HL, they experienced difficulties in addressing the gap between their speaking and writing skills, and their main goal for improving their writing skills was to translate at work and for family members. In a similar vein, Hedgcock and Lefkowitz (2011) researched instructors’ and HL students’ views and practices on writing skills through questionnaires, interviews and course syllabi. The researchers found that HL learners significantly reported wanting to improve their Spanish writing skills in the HL to serve mainly as translators for family members as in Callahan (2010). Also, instructors and students recognized differences between HL and L2 students; however, teachers still utilized the same L2 methodologies to teach HL learners with an overemphasis on explicit instruction (metalinguistic information in this case) and feedback to correct lexical and grammatical errors. Finally, while HL learners reported embracing

.  LREs are learners’ comments, which are metalinguistic in nature about language, that emerge from interactions.

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the need to develop more standard use of the HL in a written mode, they did not feel challenged by the content of the writing assignments.

2.2  L  earning-to-write dimension Now, the following studies address issues related to students’ processes in composing Spanish texts and the role of text genre. In a case study exploring text organization and linking clauses, Schleppegrell and Colombi (1997) compared two Spanish HL learners’ (Tina and Isabel) essays in English and Spanish and report on the differences of their organizational structure and their use of combining sentences to achieve organization. They found differences between both writers as Tina employed more explicit writing strategies and produced simpler and more integrated clauses whereas Isabel’s organization was not as planned, but had elaborate and linking clauses. Despite these differences between both participants, what is more interesting regarding their writing skills, is that both participants exhibited similar writing strategies (e.g., the use of clause combining strategies) in both English and Spanish to compose and organize their texts. For example, in comparison to Isabel, Tina used a higher percentage of main clauses in both her English and Spanish essays. This finding implies that they transferred their writing skills from their dominant language (English) to their HL (Spanish). Another case study comprised of three HL learners, Schwartz (2003) reported on the subjects’ writing strategies through questionnaires, think-aloud protocols (i.e., participants’ verbalization of their thoughts while writing) and interviews. Specifically, Schwartz examined their use of strategies in prewriting, composing, editing-surface level (e.g., orthography, accents) and editing-deep level (e.g., revising words and sentences). Overall, while clear differences existed among the three participants as far as their strategies, the think-aloud data showed that they all relied on their implicit knowledge (i.e., what intuitively sounded right to them) to compose their written texts through rehearsing, repeating and rescanning. Lastly, the participants thought in English and many times used translation as a strategy to write and even think aloud in Spanish. In regards to text genre, Martinez (2005) argued for a reconceptualization of genre by situating it in a more dynamic and complex context considering social practices related to writing. Martinez proposed the adaptation of genre chains, which refers to the exploration of a particular theme through different text genres, and thereby, promoting the use of various communicative discourses, as a technique for promoting HL writing development. Furthermore, in an effort to help learners transfer useful text features and strategies from English to Spanish, learners alternated between writing in English and Spanish. Data from a corpus of five students’ writings in English and Spanish included a literacy autobiography, an essay, an interview and a letter on their personal experience and views on language and literacy. He examined participants’ lexico-grammatical features to construct cohesion between sentences



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in the text as evidenced through their use of repetition, synonymy and superordination in both their English and Spanish writings. The findings showed evidence of higher frequency of synonymy and superordination features for the Spanish texts with the exception of the first assignment (the Spanish essay). Martinez claimed that the gradual increase of synonymy and superordination items, which are characteristics of more formal writing, in the Spanish assignments are a result of both the impact of their engagement with different writing genres as well as the English texts they wrote before Spanish ones. Finally, in a study addressing the use of think-alouds as a research tool to tap into writing processes and strategies, Yanguas and Lado (2012) investigated whether utilizing think-alouds enhances or hinders HL learners’ writing performance – also referred to as reactivity. The researchers found that thinking aloud significantly enhanced HL learners’ accuracy scores (as measured by error free T-units), and that it facilitated learners to notice mistakes in their writing. As a result, Yanguas and Lado cautioned researchers in using think-aloud protocols when investigating HL learners’ thinking processes during writing tasks, and suggest adding a silent group to ensure that thinking aloud does not induce any reactivity. The sample studies described and summarized in Table 1 paved the way for a number of different research strands that can be investigated within HL writing (e.g., processing, use of genre, the role of instruction, research methodology) because, as Martinez (2005) has pointed out, HL writing development should not be exclusively limited to the investigation of linguistic development. Writing is a complex process and research needs to assess its different components to gain a comprehensive view on how HL students approach writing tasks given their prior language learning experience. The dimensions of writing-to-learn and learning-to-write are useful ways to organize our emerging knowledge of HL writing so that researchers and practitioners can make relevant use of these findings, as they apply to their research and teaching. What these preliminary results imply so far is that some of the issues related to the learning-to-write dimension (e.g., the role of text genre and type of writing task, transfer from English) are similar to the ones learners face in composing in their L2. However, HL learners may differ more from their L2 peers along the writing-to-learn language dimension, especially considering how Bowles’ data illustrate the qualitative differences in the LREs that surfaced between both groups of learners during task-based performance. This is not surprising because while HL learners have had little to no exposure of written input in Spanish, they develop more advanced oral conversational skills in the HL; and thus, they rely more on their conversational skills to produce written text, which can lead to non-targetlike conventions. More research is needed to investigate how the nature of HL learners’ prior knowledge, that is, a knowledge that is characterized as more oral and implicit (i.e., lacking of verbalizable metalinguistic information) contribute to the task of writing, and learning to produce written text in the HL.

 Julio Torres

Table 1.  Summary of published studies on HL writing #1

Measures

Findings

Schleppegrell & Text Colombi (1997) organization & strategies

2

Percentage of different clause types in essays

Differences in the use of explicit strategies to organize text as well as linking clauses; no differences between English and Spanish texts.

Schwartz (2003) Writing strategies

3

Think-aloud protocols & Questionnaires on their thought processes

Relied on implicit knowledge and translation from English to Spanish to compose texts.

Schwartz (2005) Writing competence in Spanish & individual differences

5

Think-aloud data, Interviews & Selfperception questionnaires; measures of fluency, grammatical complexity and accuracy between Type A participants (“fluent speakers”) and Type B participants (“fluent but limited speakers of contact variety of Spanish”)

Type A: produced more lexical errors; employed more writing strategies than except in the area of surface editing; Type B: produced more verb tense errors; only used more strategies in the area of surface editing.

Martinez (2005) Text genre

5

Percentage of frequency of lexical cohesion features (repetition, synonymy & superordination) across text genre

Higher frequency use of synonymy and superordination due to transfer from English writings and different genre.

Martinez (2007) Spanish overt 13 subjects & subject pronouns

Total number of overt subjects and pronouns by text type and discourse connectivity

A high production of overt subjects and subject pronouns in assigned formal written tasks, but not in free, informal tasks.

Spicer-Escalante Production of 10 (2007) clauses

Average of total number of T-units, Type of sentences (simple, coordinated, subordinate) & Clauses (nominal, adjectival, adverbial)

HL learners produced fewer T-units compared to native speakers; and produced higher number of subordinate sentences than L2 peers.

Callahan (2010) Views on written Spanish

Analysis of semistructured interviews

Views on written Spanish were related to language maintenance, learning a standard register, their difficulties bridging speaking and writing skills and to use their writing skills to translate.

Study

Area

22

(Continued)

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Table 1.  (Continued) Study

Area

Bowles (2011)

#1

Measures

Findings

HL-L2 learner 18 collaborative interaction

Language Related Episodes

The interactions led L2 learners to benefit from lexical knowledge of the HL learners while HL learners enjoyed learning opportunities in orthography and accent placement.

Hedgcock & Lefkowitz (2011)

Beliefs & practices on HL writing

45

Analysis of questionnaire results through Chi-square & interviews.

HL learners reported writing as the skill they mostly wanted to improve. Also, while they acknowledged the need to improve their writing language skills, they did not feel challenged by the content.

Mikulski & Elola (2011)

12 Writing processes through as measured through time spent on planning, executing and monitoring

Planning time (measured by pauses in between sentences and within the same sentence); Executing time (time spent on composing text); Monitoring time (time spent on revising the text)

Learners’ spent significantly more time on planning between sentences in Spanish.

Beaudrie (2012) Orthography & written accents

100 Percentage of orthography A high number of orthography mistakes & accent mistakes from were related to multiple corpus graphemic representations to a single phoneme; more problems with written accents than orthography.

Yanguas & Lado Use of (2012) think-aloud protocols on HL writing

37

1

Effects of think-alouds on number of words, lexical variety, number of words per T-unit, error-free T-units.

Thinking aloud led to more error-free T-units and helped participants to monitor their mistakes more carefully.

Total number of HL participants

2. 3  Methodological considerations for future research In general, though, due to the qualitative nature and low participant pool of most of the studies addressed above, they propose new lines of inquiry and hypotheses rather than any substantial conclusions regarding HL learners’ writing skills. That is, at this point in the field, it is very premature to draw any generalizable pedagogical

 Julio Torres

i­mplications for teaching HL writing. As a field, we should be able to make predictions of what we will find when testing different variables and this only occurs through robust quantitative studies. However, as we see from the studies above, qualitative data and small-scale studies can certainly guide us to the variables that are worthwhile investigating, and qualitative studies also provide a deeper understanding and insights to quantitative analyses, especially when both types of data come from the same group of participants. Case studies can also be used to replicate findings from other quantitative and qualitative analyses (e.g., Silva-Corvalán, 2014). Ideally, researchers should adapt a mixed-methods approach to conduct empirical studies on HL writing or build upon each other’s data (both quantitative and qualitative) to advance our understanding of writing processes and outcomes in adult HL learners. Also of importance is to conduct replication studies to provide reliability for findings. For example, Zach and Maimone (2014), who found that their HL learners improved in the area of orthography, can conduct a classification of orthography errors following Beaudrie’s (2012) suggestions in her corpus-based study. And, more importantly, the researchers can conduct a fine-grained analysis by reporting the improvements of each classification to see if explicit instruction can lead to improvements in all spelling areas or only for the least problematic ones (e.g., single correspondence between phoneme and grapheme). Additionally, from a L2 acquisition/writing perspective, three key areas are discussed below as areas that HL writing researchers should consider for future studies. While plenty of empirical evidence suggests that HL acquisition differs from L2 acquisition, given the limited number of studies on HL writing, adopting some research tools from the L2 acquisition field may be useful as a starting point. Some of the key areas that need to be addressed include measuring and reporting proficiency, validating measurements of written production and reporting demographic information and descriptive statistics. One area that needs attention is measuring and reporting proficiency. It is accepted that HL bilinguals’ proficiency levels can range from receptive to nativelike knowledge (Polinsky & Kagan, 2007). Because of the linguistic heterogeneity among HL bilinguals, researchers should measure and report proficiency, particularly regarding levels of literacy, and how different levels of proficiency play a role in written production and development. While Schwartz (2003, 2005) reported her participants’ language use, the method for the classification of her participants into two bilingual groups (as recommended by Valdés, 1997) was not reported. Other authors just reported that students were enrolled in a course for Spanish for heritage bilinguals (e.g., M ­ artinez, 2005, 2007; Spicer-Escalante, 2007). With the exception of Bowles (2011) who used a proficiency test to match HL and L2 participants, the other assessments in the studies above are insufficient, and researchers should measure proficiency with at least two independent instruments. Researchers have used some sort of questionnaire in which participants self-rate their level of proficiency in different skills in a given language. For instance, in an ongoing study by Estremera and Torres (2014), the researchers found a large



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effect size (R2 = .26) positive correlation between participants’ self-ratings and their performance on an untimed grammaticality judgment test measuring more explicit and written knowledge of a number of linguistic structures vulnerable in HL bilingual acquisition. Contrarily, no correlation was found between self-ratings and an oral imitation task tapping less explicit and aural knowledge of Spanish. This preliminary finding suggests that self-ratings only correlate with certain types of experimental tasks, and in this case, one that is more explicit and written. Therefore, self-ratings can be a useful proficiency measure for studies addressing HL writing. As another measurement of proficiency, some HL researchers have used a modified version of the DELE3 test (e.g., Bowles, 2011; Montrul, in press) as a measure of proficiency. While HL researchers have raised concerns on whether the use of the DELE is appropriate for HL learners (Carreira & Potowski, 2011), Montrul (in press) offers some arguments in favor of the validity of this DELE version as it has been used in other studies by different researchers. Additionally, this test may be an appropriate assessment for writing studies, as the test requires literacy skills from the participant because it measures vocabulary production and more explicit (metalinguistic) knowledge of Spanish grammatical structures. Combining two measurements may be a good attempt to triangulate proficiency measures. For example, in Torres (2013), HL participants in the study were more proficient than their L2 peers based on the scores of the DELE test and their proficiency self-ratings. This practice of measuring and reporting proficiency will enable researchers to make some comparisons between studies. A second area to consider is the measurements employed to analyze HL learners’ written production such as the use of error free T-units and other measures of syntactic complexity (Spicer-Escalante, 2007; Yanguas & Lado, 2012; Zach & ­Maimone, 2014). Studies have followed the advice of Wolfe-Quintero, Ingaki & Kim’s (1998) published monograph that examined the validity of measures (accuracy, fluency and complexity) for L2 writing development. While this monograph is a valuable source for gaining insight into measures of L2 writing, to echo Polio and Park’s (in press) argument, the monograph has not been updated since its publication, and a need exists to validate these measures based on recent L2 writing studies. And, more importantly, no study up-to-date has validated these measures with HL learners’ written production. Therefore, researchers should validate these measures as part of their study designs. Also, following the advice of Norris and Ortega (2009) and implemented in Zach and Maimone’s ongoing study, a suggestion is for researchers to use more than one measure in analyzing written text. For instance, Zach and Maimone (2014) utilized global complexity and complexity through subordination measures to offer a multifaceted

.  The DELE (Diploma de Español como Lengua Extranjera) is administered by the Instituto Cervantes to certify speakers’ level of linguistic competence in Spanish. Readers can access this version of the DELE at: 〈http://nhlrc.ucla.edu/nhlrc/category/data〉

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view of syntactic complexity. This is good research practice because these measures are also multidimensional (see Housen, Folkert, & Vedder, 2012). A third observation from most of the studies above is the lack of reporting on participants’ demographics and language learning background information as well as descriptive statistics (e.g., mean, standard deviations). First, demographic information can complement proficiency measures in gaining more insight of the HL participants being tested. Demographic information from participants can include daily language use, age of onset of English and Spanish, generation (e.g., 1.5 or 2.0), whether the participant had some sort of early bilingual education, years of formal Spanish study as these factors may play a role in their writing skills. Readers can refer to the following link: 〈http://nhlrc.ucla.edu/nhlrc/category/data〉 for access to sample language background questionnaires used by other researchers. Second, when conducting quantitative research, studies should include as much information as possible on statistical procedures and provide descriptive statistics as part of results. Also of relevance, particularly when conducting studies examining pedagogical interventions, reporting effect sizes and observed power is good practice as well. This practice is crucial when it is time to conduct meta-analyses4 from which we can draw some sound conclusions and make recommendations for HL writing instruction (Plonsky, 2013; Norris & Ortega, 2006). In sum, while the methodological considerations above come from scholars in the field of L2 acquisition, these are good research practices for any field of scientific study, and given the growing prominence of HL learners in both research and teaching, the robustness of research practices is essential to address responsibly those questions that concern us as a field.

3.  The flipped classroom model The previous section suggests that a limited of number of studies exists as to the ways in which adult HL learners develop their writing skills in the HL. However, classroom instructors cannot pause their teaching to wait for research findings because they have to address their HL students’ needs in the immediate present while also implementing new technologies and methodologies that emerge from the education field. One obvious way that teachers can test the effectiveness of these models is conducting action research (see Chamot, Barnhardt & Dirstine, 1998; Donato, 2003) with the caveat that the findings are not generalizable and only can be applied to the local context of the

.  A meta-analysis is a statistical method that takes into account the mean and variances of results from a number of studies that are testing the same variable(s) to evaluate theoretical models (Oswald & Plonsky, 2010).



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instructor. Assessing the effectiveness of new pedagogical models is paramount given that educators are held accountable for students’ learning outcomes and budget constraints can put at risk certain school programs as second/foreign language classes (for issues on accountability and evaluation of L2 education programs, see Weir & R ­ oberts,  1994). With this in mind, in this section, I describe briefly the principles of the flipped classroom model, a rather new pedagogical approach to deliver content through video, as well as the concept of micro-evaluations from Ellis’ (2011) that address how teachers can evaluate their classroom tasks or activities. First, teachers of any subject hope that their learners are able to synthesize and apply new knowledge to different scenarios rather than merely regurgitate information on an exam. In education, the synthesis and application of knowledge are viewed as a sign of higher order thinking skills (e.g., Bloom, 1956; for revisions on Bloom’s taxonomy, see Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001; Fink, 2003), a goal that we strive for our students to achieve in our courses. Yet, according to proponents of a flipped classroom model (e.g, Bergmann & Sams, 2012), most classroom instruction is devoted to the delivery of content while students are passive recipients of information. Then, in many cases, students are expected to apply this new information to solve application exercises that are assigned as homework. Many educators, however, are challenging this traditional pattern of instruction, and propose that technology can deliver content in order to free classroom time to facilitate higher-order thinking skills (e.g., synthesizing, applying) when instructors can provide immediate feedback. As Bowen (2012, p. 103) states, “The simplest way to use technology is as an out-of-class content delivery system that frees up class time for higher-order processing of foundational knowledge – applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating.” Therefore, along the lines of this idea, the flipped classroom model essentially propagates taking out the lecture component of the course, and instead, encourages student actions during classroom time. That is, students view videos with content material for homework, and then in class, they complete application exercises with their peers and receive feedback from the instructor to guide them through their thinking processes. However, the definition above is rather simplistic, and it is only a subcomponent of what is known as flipped learning. Bergmann and Sams (2014, p. 6) cite the definition of Ramsey Musallam: Flipped learning is a pedagogical approach in which direct instruction moves from the individual learning space, and the resulting group space is transformed into a dynamic, interactive learning environment where the educator guides students as they apply concepts and engage creatively in the subject matter.

According to Bergmann and Sams, the use of video as a medium to deliver content is only one alternative to adapting a flipped learning framework, and is the example that I report below. Nevertheless, the underlying philosophy is to promote student actions

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in the classroom instead of for homework. By student actions, instructors want to encourage the following during classroom time: predict, rank, choose (select), sort, estimate, recommend, assess (evaluate), produce, construct, conclude, argue, devise, draw, graph among others. For example, during class time, instructors can provide learners with a number of sample introduction paragraphs. Then, in teams, students can evaluate each introduction paragraph and choose the best one according to their criteria before receiving instruction (at home) on writing introduction paragraphs. Therefore, by promoting students’ action in class instead of for homework, instructors must think differently when designing their lessons. First, instructors need to identify what students will do with the information that they view on the video for homework. Second, the targeted content of the video should follow the format and be presented in the context of what they will do with the information. Third, students need to be held accountable for viewing the content of the video. Finally, student actions are done in class so that the instructor can observe students’ thinking and provide ­appropriate feedback. However, the use of the flipped classroom model does not exist without its potential limitations such as students’ access to technology, instructors’ ability or training to create videos, and perhaps instructors’ biggest concern – making students accountable for watching the videos. Bergmann and Sams (2012) pointed out that instructors need to train students on watching the videos at home. For example, one drawback of the flipped classroom approach is that students are unable to ask the instructor immediate questions about the content they are viewing. Bergmann and Sams suggest training students to take notes and jot down questions of what they have not understood after watching the video a number of times. The content of the videos should not exceed 10 minutes, and should teach one or two concepts, to enable students to rewind and review the content, if necessary. Then, the teacher begins the next class with answering questions and addressing any misconceptions on the content of the video. This allows the instructor to spend less classroom time on the content and to devote more time to application and synthesizing exercises. Another frequent concern with the flipped classroom model is how to make students accountable for watching the videos. One option is the inclusion of soft assessments like short pop quizzes on the content of the videos throughout the course. Bergmann and Sams also recommended having students post notes and questions from the video content on a blog or similar platform. The reader should refer to Bergmann and Sams (2012) for more tips and answers to frequently asked questions regarding the flipped classroom model. To best of my knowledge, no research exists investigating the impact of flipped classroom models in the foreign language classroom. In fact, very little research is available in other subject areas as well, and this is most likely due to how recent this model is. However, Strayer (2012) reported on a study comparing a flipped Introduction to Statistics course to a traditional one (i.e., lecture-homework). Strayer collected data from 53 students (23 of whom were enrolled in the flipped class) through a classroom



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environment inventory, field notes, interviews and focus group discussions to gauge students’ views on the learning environment in both courses. Strayer found that students in the flipped class significantly reported more on the value of working with partners (more than the traditional students), and they enjoyed the innovative aspect of the course. However, a significant finding was that the students in the flipped classroom had difficulties as far as task orientation; that is, they were unable many times to make appropriate connections between the video content at home and the classroom activities. Therefore, Strayer recommends that students in flipped classes “need to have more space to reflect on their learning activities so that they can make necessary connections to course content” (p. 192). Due to the current non-existent literature on the effects of the flipped classroom model in the foreign (or HL) classroom, instructors should have some sort of assessment plan to make sure that this approach is indeed effective in promoting students’ motivations and learning in their classrooms. Moreover, a first step can be to flip only a few lessons during the course, and with a class that the instructor has taught often to get a sense of the impact of the model in the class. One alternative to test the effectiveness of the flipped classroom model can be adapting Ellis’ (2011) recommendations on conducting micro-evaluations. Ellis proposed these micro-evaluations for assessing pedagogical communicative tasks used in the classroom. The components of the mini-evaluation include the following: students’ motivation, performance and language development. To test motivation (i.e., how motivated were students in completing the classroom activities that promote student actions), instructors can administer questionnaires, rating slips, interviews and post-activity written commentaries to gain insight into students’ perceptions and motivations during the completion of the activity. Instructors need to take into account the anonymity of the questionnaires so that students do not feel that their grade can be at stake. A third party can carry out the interviews, and the instructor should not listen to them until grades have been submitted at the end of the course, and it is crucial to make students aware of this process. Finally, instructors should collect both quantitative and qualitative data; for example, have a Likert-scale questionnaire along with open-ended questions to get a better perspective of students’ motivations. Another area is “performance” for which we may ask: did students’ completion of the classroom activity match the goals that the instructor intended for that activity?; and, were the students successful at completing the activity? To gather information on performance, instructors can record (audio or video) students’ interactions in their pairs or groups to analyze. Also, preparing a checklist with expected behaviors can be useful as instructors walk in the classroom observing group work, and checking off the behaviors that emerge as a result of the activity. Ellis recommends collecting students’ products that will enable instructors to document different groups’ performances and to examine patterns among the groups. This can help instructors identify specific areas of the activity that were problematic for the class as well.

 Julio Torres

Finally, the third area, “language development” is the most crucial for us as language instructors – what evidence is there of change in our students’ writing skills after viewing content video and doing flipped classroom activities? One obvious way to measure language development is through formative and summative assessments that are components of the course syllabus. Formative assessments (e.g., small quizzes) entail ongoing evaluations throughout a course whereas summative assessments (e.g., final research paper) is evaluating students’ learning at the end of a given course. But, of course, we need to administer some sort of diagnostic assessment prior to the delivery of lessons to properly document any change in writing. For writing development, the use of portfolios in which students can demonstrate the progression in their writing can be a useful assessment tool. Similar to assessing performance, we can have a checklist of the target items we expect to find in their writings as a result of some sort of pedagogical intervention. The endeavor to assess these areas (motivation, performance and language development) is quite time-consuming and requires careful planning in addition to the already very demanding job requirements instructors face at their institutions. Thus, instructors should not try to tackle all areas in one semester or academic year, and just select one area to address. It may be wise to start with students’ motivation to the different activities. If students are unmotivated to complete an activity, it decreases the chances that the students will meet the goals of the activities or even that any learning will take place. In sum, instructors can use Ellis’ (2011) guidelines to evaluate whether their flipped lessons are effective. These three areas of micro-evaluation can assess learners’ responses to the content of the video, and perhaps, most importantly, the tasks or activities in which they apply the information. Instructors can avail themselves of a micro-evaluation plan to conduct action research with the goal to guide their course design procedures until research is available on the effects of flipped instruction on HL/L2 learning outcomes.

4.  Spanish for heritage speakers: Exploring U.S. Latino issues In this section, I provide an example of how I implemented the flipped classroom model in a course designed exclusively for HL learners, Spanish for Heritage Speakers: Exploring U.S. Latino Issues, in which the focus was fostering writing skills. In addition, I report on comments from students on their perception on the usefulness of the flipped model. This is by no means a formal study of the effects of the flipped model in HL writing, but it may be worthwhile to report on some of the students’ perceptions of their engagement in a flipped class model. As previously mentioned, given that no study exists on the effects of flipped classroom approach on L2 learning, classroom-based research is warranted to address the effects of this pedagogical technique on learning, and ­perhaps



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Strayer’s (2012) research design can serve as a model. “Furthermore, instructors can conduct action research following Ellis’ (2011) recommendations on micro-evaluations. The flipped classroom model was adopted in this HL course because of an internal grant awarded to the author at a previous institution where he taught the course. The students in the course were all 1.5 or 2.0 generation, and most of them lived in New York City and were of Dominican descent with a strong command of informal and spoken Spanish. They all took a placement test and had to score within a certain range to enroll in the course. Based on the placement test results, the majority of the students were intermediate or advanced HL speakers of Spanish. In the course, students were required to write argumentative essays on a number of issues that affect the Latino community in the United States – e.g., heritage bilingualism, bilingual education, Spanglish, identity, race, gender issues and immigration. We used Kim Potowski’s (2010) textbook, Conversaciones escritas: Lectura y redacción en contexto, because the textbook was suitable to meet most of the goals of the course, especially in linking issues related to Latinidad and writing. I adopted the flipped classroom model to address writing issues concerning the learning-to-write dimension. That is, the lessons that I flipped were related to writing conventions (i.e., introduction paragraph, thesis statement, conclusion paragraph) in composing an argumentative essay. The students wrote a total of four essays in the course, and for each essay, there was a special focus on a writing convention. Therefore, for lessons on writing conventions, the students were required to watch videos for homework with a review of writing conventions as well as strategies to use the conventions effectively. The content of the videos came from information in the textbook (Potowski, 2010) and from other sources. Essentially, I followed four steps to create the lessons adapting the flipping approach to practice and/or review writing conventions. First, during the end of the class before they watched the videos for homework, students worked in groups on a classroom activity that promoted student actions (as described above) with the goal of activating their prior knowledge, especially given that all students are exposed to these conventions at some point in their academic career. Therefore, my goal was to review the writing conventions and to help the students transfer the skills to their Spanish writing. During the first activity, students made predictions, evaluated content, and they were required to commit to their answers. For example, for the lesson on thesis statements, I gave students four sentences that were potential thesis statements, and they had to evaluate each thesis statement, and then, choose the best one and justify their selection (see Figure 1). They needed to write this on paper to make them accountable for their response. Then, the second step was watching the video for homework. The videos lasted approximately five minutes, and I created them on an Apple computer using the following programs: (1) QuickTime Player – showed my face on my computer desktop so that it would appear as I was recording the video; (2)

 Julio Torres

iShowU – recorded ­everything I was doing (i.e., using a Prezi presentation to go over the writing convention, strategies and tips) on my computer desktop; and (3) iMovie to the class website – enabled me to edit the videos and save them in a .m4v format for easier upload. Figure 2 shows a snapshot of one slide of the thesis statement video. An alternative to making the videos is to search in YouTube for videos on the same topic with the risk that the videos can be deleted from YouTube, of course.

Figure 1.  Activity before watching video content

Figure 2.  Snapshot of one slide of thesis statement video



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The next day in class, I asked students to revisit their thesis statement selections from the day before, and they had to determine whether they wanted to revise their selection based on the content of the video, and discussions with their peers. While students were discussing their justifications for their thesis statement evaluation, I would walk around the class providing feedback about their selections and helping them make the connections between the content of the video and their justifications. Once students had no questions pertaining to the best thesis statement, I invited students to take out their last argumentative essays. In teams, students had to examine each other’s thesis statements, and provide each other with feedback on improving the thesis statement. They repeated this exercise with a rough draft of their following writing assignment. In sum, the four steps were the following: (1) Before watching the content of the video, have students predict and/or evaluate content on a certain topic (keep in mind the verbs associated with students’ actions); (2) Students watch a 5–8 minute video on the topic that you want to cover in class with the goal of revising or strengthening their initial hypotheses about the topic; (3) With the help of peers, have students revisit their initial hypotheses based on the content of the video; and, (4) Have students apply the new information they have acquired to their own writing. The above discussion is just a first step to implementing the flipped classroom model into a HL course with a focus on writing. Hopefully, it gives instructors some ideas of using this approach to foster writing skills. Because this pilot was part of a grant, I did not devise an elaborate assessment plan to measure the effects of the model on my students’ writing as the grant had other requirements; however, at the end of the course, I asked students to answer anonymously two questions regarding the use of the videos: (1) Did you find watching the videos (ex: on thesis statement, introduction paragraph…) beneficial? Please explain briefly how they were or were not beneficial; and (2) Did they help improve your writing skills? If so, how? I have included the responses to both answers in Table 2 and 3, respectively. To reiterate, these questions were not meant to be part of a formal research study, but rather, just to get a sense of my students’ perceptions on their experience with this pedagogical model. Broadly speaking, students’ views on the use of the videos at home (a critical component of the flipped model) were quite positive. A recurring theme that emerged from the comments was students’ ability to review the information on the video a number of times, if they did not understand a concept, and this was reasonable dueto the short length of the videos. This ties in with the goals of the flipped model as this frees up classroom time to apply the information of the video to their writing, instead of reviewing content (Bergmann & Sams, 2014; Bowen, 2012). Additionally, students appear to have gained or at least been aware of writing strategies while composing their essays. What remains unclear is whether simply watching the videos was enough

 Julio Torres

Table 2.  Questionnaire. Responses to Question #1 1. Did you find watching the videos (ex: on thesis statement, introduction paragraphs…) beneficial? Please explain briefly how they were or were not beneficial.  #1. Yes, I found them beneficial. If I needed to be reminded of something I may have forgotten the first [time] watched it, I could go back anytime to revisit what I missed.  #2. Yes, I found that watching the videos on thesis statement and strategies for writing an introduction beneficial because he gave examples and explained it more thoroughly than just giving us the definition.  #3. The videos on the thesis statement and strategies were somewhat beneficial. Most of the information said towards the strategies and thesis statement, I already knew. The information I did not know or learned prior to this class did prove to be beneficial.  #4. Yes I did because it was like a miny lecture. I wasn’t simply reading because the prof. was talking and explaining it at the same time. It was like a 5 minute class which helped me understand the topic a bit more.  #5. I found the videos really helpful especially because they were filmed by the instructor and it helped with familiarizing myself not only with the concepts but also the activities done in class.  #6. They helped a lot because although you know how to write in English it could be a little challenging and you help clarify those issues in which make me write in Spanish with more fluency. Those are great techniques I’m carrying on throughout my career.  #7. They were extremely helpful and beneficial because it felt like we were taking the class and learning the topic right from our homes.  #8. Yes, I found them very beneficial. Knowing that I am not a good writer, the videos showed me and guided me with templates on how to write effectively.  #9. Yes, I found them all beneficial. They were not very long and were not boring. Straight to the point and gave helpful notes. #10.  They were beneficial for the fact that I didn’t even know how to write a proper essay in English and that you laid everything out and explained everything clearly. It was much easier to see and hear rather than to just read. #11.  They were the most beneficial part of the course because they go straight to the point and can be accessed everywhere. #12.  They were beneficial to me. They made me understand the topic better and like the fact that if I needed to review I could go back and watch the video. It was detailed but it wasn’t super long to bore me and for me not to fully watch it, it benefitted me in this class. #13.  Yes, because for me I learn better visually than learning just with slides. #14.  Watching the videos was very beneficial to me because I could pause or rewind if I didn’t understand something the first time around. And I liked now it showed slides because it was easier to follow along and I could take better notes. #15.  I thought that watching the videos was very beneficial. The most beneficial for me was the video on how to write an introduction. It helped me to explore and use different strategies for my introductions, which was something that I had struggled with before in Spanish classes in high school.



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Table 3.  Questionnaire. Responses to Question #2 2.  Did they help improve your writing skills? If so, how?  #1. They improved my Spanish writing skills because they showed different techniques and broke down everything meticulously.  #2. The videos did improve my writing skills because I learned that there are different types of titles, intros, and conclusion strategies that I now keep in mind every time I write an essay.  #3. Yes, I was aware of the strategies and requirements for the thesis and body paragraphs prior to this class. However, now that we’ve used these strategies many times, I can properly use them much more often than I used to because I am better with it.  #4. Yes, because it was learning the material which improved my skills. I would watch the video at home with an explanation from the teacher, and then he would go into even more detail in class.  #5. They did improve my writing skills simply because they gave me some background into writing in Spanish. I personally write whatever I am thinking and having the videos to keep on the right train of thought was helpful.  #6. It really really really! Help a lot as I used to get writer’s block when I used to write and with the techniques learned I could write with no problem. Overall, this was one of my favorite classes, and the tools learned here are more valuable than most Spanish classes I have taken.  #7. Yes, I learned new techniques that I can now use when writing a paper.  #8. Yes, I now know how to lure people in with my introduction, get them thinking with my thesis and keep them reading to the end.  #9. Yes, these videos showed me the notes I needed to memorize and examples to help me make sense of my own essays.  #10. It helped me get my thoughts together in a way that made sense instead of learning mumbo jumbo.  #11. These videos help me write better because I had to learn more from videos than any other sources, so I am able to remember the knowledge from these better.  #12. Yes, they helped me improve my writing skills because it was straight to the point and was what I needed.  #13. Yes, it gave me a structured way to write all my ideas more effectively.  #14. I think any new information improves writing skills. The video helped because it broke it down for me but I think writing the writing assignments helped me the most.  #15. They helped me improve my writing skills because I wouldn’t think about any specific strategies to use. Now with knowing all the strategies to choose from writing is much easier because of knowing the strategies. I know what is I’m going to write and it helps me structure my essays better.

or if the practice in class was an integral component to helping these students become aware of their writing, especially given how Strayer’s (2012) findings showed that his students had trouble connecting the video content with classroom activities. A difference can be due to the fact that Strayer’s students were learning statistics while my students were learning or in some cases reviewing writing conventions that they had previously learned (Table 2, Student #3). Another difference between this

 Julio Torres

class and Strayer’s study was that I helped activate students’ prior knowledge before they viewed the video for homework. That is, students in my course were required to engage with the material before they viewed the video for homework by performing actions (e.g., evaluating, choosing, ranking) in class as described above. Strayer does not report whether he followed this same format. The link between video content and classroom application did not really emerge in students’ responses, but this can be due to the manner in which I framed the questions. But, in Table 3, ­student #3 writes, “However, now that we’ve used these strategies many times, I can properly use them much more often than I used to because I am better with it.” and student #4 reports, “I would watch the video at home with an explanation from the teacher, and then he would go into even more detail in class.” These comments suggest that they benefited from additional practice in class to consolidate the information presented in the videos. However, this is speculative at this point, and based on Strayer’s findings, instructors should investigate the ways in which students make the connections between video content and classroom activities. Overall, based on the comments above, the flipped classroom model is promising in addressing at least writing conventions and strategies in HL learners’ production of written text. Thus, it is worthwhile for future research to address the potential benefits of this model in student learning.

5.  C  onclusion The first goal of the chapter was to provide a brief overview of HL writing studies. A  dire need exists for more HL writing research, but meanwhile, the studies above point to a number of different research areas that can lead to a comprehensive portrayal of the complexities that learners face when composing texts in their HL. Thinking of and organizing writing studies along the dimensions of learning-to-write and writing-to-learn (Manchón, 2011) can be a useful way to interpret future research on the dynamics of HL writing; moreover, as suggested by Ortega (2011), to examine the potential synergy between both dimensions to inform research and teaching practices. In addition, other areas of future research should be considered; for instance, the impact of instructor training and beliefs on HL writing, as writing scholars have argued that oftentimes instructors lack the necessary writing skills or training to teach writing (e.g., Colby & Stapleton, 2006). Another area to consider is examining closely how HL learners’ writing goals play a role in promoting their writing development. While Callahan (2010) and Hedgcock and Lefkowitz (2011) gathered data on HL learners’ writing goals, no connections were made with writing outcomes. Lastly, given the preliminary results of Zach and Maimone (2014) that show that their HL learners only improved in the area of orthography after a semester course, a longitudinal study of HL writing development is warranted. As in L2 writing research, s­ hort-term interven-



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tions may be insufficient for learners to exhibit any significant changes in their writing (for further discussion, see Polio & Park, in press). The second goal of the chapter was to describe the implementation of the flipped classroom model in a HL writing course. Students’ responses suggest that the use of this pedagogical model is promising in helping HL learners develop or refine (at least) their writing conventions and strategies (i.e., learning-to-write dimension). It is also worthwhile to explore the flipped classroom model in promoting writing-to-learn ­language skills to help HL learners develop linguistic resources to express and make sense of meaningful content through writing. Future research studies should test the effects of the flipped classroom model in learners’ writing. Until then, HL instructors can design their own micro-evaluation plans (Ellis, 2011) as tools to measure the effectiveness of flipped classroom lessons. Potentially, flipped classes can transform HL classroom spaces by creating profound interactions between learners and instructors in tackling writing issues during real classroom time.

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 Julio Torres Colby, S. A., & Stapleton, J. N. (2006). Preservice teachers teach writing: Implications for teacher educators. Literacy Research and Instruction, 45(4), 353–376. Colombi, M. C. (1997). Perfil del discurso escrito: Teoría y práctica. In M. C. Colombi  & F.  X.  Alarcón (Eds.), La enseñanza del español a hispanohablantes: Praxis y teoría (pp. ­175–189). Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Colombi, M. C. (2000). En vías del desarrollo del lenguaje académico en español en hablantes nativos de español en los Estados Unidos. In A. Roca (Ed.), Research on Spanish in the United States (pp. 296–309). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press. Colombi, M. C., & Roca, A. (2003). Insights from research and practice in Spanish as a heritage language. In A. Roca & M. C. Colombi (Eds.), Mi lengua: Spanish as a heritage language in the United States (pp. 1–21). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Colombi, M. C, & Harrington, J. (2012). Advanced biliteracy development in Spanish as a heritage language. In S. M. Beaudrie & M. Fairclough (Eds.), Spanish as a heritage language in the United States: The state of the field (pp. 241–258). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Cumming, A. (1990). Metalinguistic and ideational thinking in second language composing. Written Communication, 7(4), 482–511.  doi: 10.1177/0741088390007004003 Cummins, J. (2008). BICS and CALP: Empirical and theoretical status of the distinction. In N. H. Hornberger (Ed.), Encyclopedia of language and education (pp. 487–499). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.  doi: 10.1007/978-0-387-30424-3_36 Donato, R. (2003). Action research. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics. 〈http:// www.cal.org/resources/digest/0308donato.html〉 (December 2003). Ellis, R. (2011). Teachers researching tasks. Keynote address at the 2011 International Conference on Task-Based Language Teaching in Lancaster, UK. Estremera, R., & Torres, J. (2014). Psychosocial factors and types of linguistic knowledge in heritage speakers. Paper presented at the 2014 Second Language Research Forum in Columbia, SC. Ferris, D. (2010). Second language writing research and written corrective feedback in SLA. Intersections and practical applications. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 32(2), 181–201.  doi: 10.1017/S0272263109990490 Fink, D. L. (2003). Creating significant learning experiences: An integrated approach to designing college courses. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Hedgcock, J., & Lefkowitz, N. (2011). Exploring the learning potential of writing development in heritage language education. In R. M. Manchón (ed.), Learning-to-write and writing-to-learn in an additional language (Language Learning and Language Teaching 31) (pp. 209–233). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.  doi: 10.1075/lllt.31.14hed Housen, A., Folkert, K., & Vedder, I. 2012. Complexity, accuracy and fluency: Definitions, measurement and research. In A. Housen, F. Kuiken, & I. Vedder (Eds.), Dimensions of L2 performance and proficiency: Complexity, accuracy and fluency in SLA (Language Learning and Language Teaching 32) (pp. 1–20). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/lllt.32.01hou Hunt, K. W. (1965). Grammatical structures written at three grade levels. NCTE Research Report No. 3. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Hyland, K. (2011). Learning to write: Issues in theory, research and pedagogy. In R. M. M ­ anchón (Ed.), Learning-to-write and writing-to-learn in an additional language (Language Learning and Language Teaching 31) (pp. 17–35). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/lllt.31.05hyl



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Manchón, R. M. (Ed.). (2011). Learning-to-write and writing-to-learn in an additional language (Language Learning and Language Teaching 31). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/lllt.31 Martinez, G. (2005). Genres and genre chains: Post-process perspectives on heritage language writing in a south Texas setting. Southwest Journal of Linguistics, 24(1), 79–90. Martinez, G. (2007). Writing back and forth: the interplay of form and situation in heritage language composition. Language Teaching Research, 11(1), 31–41. doi: 10.1177/1362168806072454 Montrul, S. (In press). Dominance and proficiency in early and late bilingualism. In C. SilvaCorvalán & J. Treffers-Daller (Eds.), Language dominance in bilinguals: Issues of measurement and operationalization,. Cambridge: CUP. Montrul, S., Davidson, J., De La Fuente, I., & Foote, R. (2014). Early language experience facilitates the processing of gender agreement in Spanish heritage speakers. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 17(01), 118–138. doi: 10.1017/S1366728913000114 Norris, J. M., & Manchón, R. M. (2012). Investigating L2 writing development from multiple perspectives: Issues in theory and research. In R. M. Manchón (Ed.), L2 Writing development: Multiple perspectives (pp. 221–244). Boston, MA: De Gruyer Mouton. Norris, J. M., & Ortega, L. (2006). The value and practice of research synthesis for language learning and teaching. In J. Norris & L. Ortega (Eds.), Synthesizing Research on Language Learning and Teaching (Language Learning and Language Teaching 13) (pp. 3–52). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.  doi: 10.1075/lllt.13 Norris, J. M., & Ortega, L. (2009). Towards an organic approach to investigating CAF in instructed SLA: The case of complexity. Applied Linguistics, 30(4), 555–578. doi: 10.1093/applin/amp044 Ortega, L. (2011). Reflections on the learning-to-write and writing-to-learn dimensions of second language writing. In R. M. Manchón (Ed.), Learning-to-write and writing-to-learn in an additional language (Language Learning and Language Teaching 31) (pp. 237–250). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.  doi: 10.1075/lllt.31.16ort Oswald, F. L., & Plonsky, L. (2010). Meta-analysis in second language research: Choices and challenges. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 30, 85–110. doi: 10.1017/S0267190510000115 Parodi, C. (2008). Stigmatized Spanish inside the classroom and out: A model of language teaching to heritage speakers. In D. M. Brinton, O. Kagan & S. Bauckus (Eds.), Heritage language education: A new field emerging (pp. 199–214). New York, NY: Routledge. Plonsky, L. (2013). Study Quality in SLA: An assessment of designs, analyses, and reporting practices in quantitative L2 research. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 35, 655–687. doi: 10.1017/S0272263113000399 Polio, C., & Park, J. H. (In press). Language development in second language writing. In R. M. Manchón & P. Matsuda (Eds.), Handbook of L2 writing. New York, NY: Routledge. Polinsky, M., & Kagan, O. (2007). Heritage languages: In the ‘wild’ and in the classroom. Language and Linguistics Compass, 1(5), 368–395.  doi: 10.1111/j.1749-818X.2007.00022.x Potowski. K. (2010). Conversaciones escritas: Lectura y redacción en contexto. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons. Rothman, J. (2007). Heritage speaker competence differences, language change, and input type: Inflected infinitives in Heritage Brazilian Portuguese. International Journal of Bilingualism, 11(4), 359–389.  doi: 10.1177/13670069070110040201

 Julio Torres Sanz, C. (2007). The role of bilingual literacy in the acquisition of a third language. In C. PérezVidal, M. Juan- Garau & A. Bel (eds.), A portrait of the young in the new multilingual Spain (pp. 22–40). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Schleppegrell, M. J., & Colombi. M. C. (1997). Text organization by bilingual writers. Written Communication, 14(4), 481–503.  doi: 10.1177/0741088397014004003 Schwartz, A. M. (2003). ¡No me suena! Heritage Spanish speakers’ writing strategies. In A. Roca & M. C. Colombi (Eds.), Mi lengua: Spanish as a heritage language in the United States (pp. 235–256). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Schwartz, A. M. (2005). Exploring differences and similarities in the writing strategies used by students in SNS courses. In L. A. Ortiz López & M. Lacorte (Eds.), Contactos y contextos lingüísticos: El español en los Estados Unidos y en contacto con otras lenguas (pp. 323–333). Madrid: Lingüística Iberoamericana. Silva-Corvalán, C. (2014). Bilingual language acquisition: Spanish and English in the first six years. Cambridge: CUP.  doi: 10.1017/CBO9781139162531 Spicer-Escalante, M. L. (2007). Análisis lingüístico de la escritura bilingüe (español-inglés) de los hablants de español como lengua hereditaria en los Estaods Unidos. Estudios de Lingüística Aplicada, 45, 63–80. Strayer, J. F. (2012). How learning in an inverted classroom influences cooperation, innovation and task orientation. Learning Environment Research, 15, 171–193. doi: 10.1007/s10984-012-9108-4 Torres, J. (2013). Heritage and second language learners of Spanish: The roles of task complexity and inhibitory control. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. Georgetown University. Valdés, G. (1978). A comprehensive approach to the teaching of Spanish to bilingual Spanishspeaking students. Modern Language Journal, 62(3), 102–110. doi: 10.1111/j.1540-4781.1978.tb02377.x Valdés, G. (1997). The teaching of Spanish to bilingual Spanish-speaking students: Outstanding issues and unanswered questions. In M. C. Colombi & F. X. Alarcón (Eds.), La enseñanza del español a hispanohablantes: Praxis y teoría (pp. 8–44). Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Weir, C. & Roberts, J. (1994). Evaluation in ELT. Cambridge: Blackwell. Wolfe-Quintero, K., Ingaki, S., & Kim, H. (1998). Second language development in writing: Measures of fluency, accuracy and complexity. Honolulu, HI: Second Language Teaching & ­Curriculum Center, University of Hawai’i. Yanguas, I., & Lado, B. (2012). Is thinking aloud reactive when writing in the heritage language? Foreign Language Annals, 45(3), 380–399.  doi: 10.1111/j.1944-9720.2012.01198.x Zach, A., & Maimone, L. (2014). Measuring gains in accuracy and complexity in Spanish heritage writing after exposure to grammar-based instruction. Paper presented at the 2014. Second Language Research Forum in Columbia, SC.

Looking ahead Maria Polinsky

University of Maryland

1.  Introduction Concluding chapters are expected to reflect on prior content and summarize the work done. This chapter departs from that tradition; instead, I would like to direct our attention to what lies ahead, for the studies of Spanish as a heritage language in the U.S. and for understanding heritage language as a general phenomenon. The study of heritage languages is an emerging field, but heritage languages have existed throughout human history. There have been heritage speakers as long as immigration has moved families across language borders and as long as bilingual communities have been divided into dominant and minority language settings. Heritage speakers generally feel a cultural or familial connection to their heritage language, but in terms of actual linguistic competency, they are more proficient in another language – the language dominant in their (new) community. Although heritage speakers often receive extensive exposure to the heritage language during childhood, they typically do not reach their parents’ or grandparents’ level of fluency. In fact, according to some broad definitions, a heritage speaker might have no proficiency at all in the heritage language; in this case, the language is a “heritage language” primarily in a cultural, rather than linguistic, sense as argued in the work by Fishman (2001) and Van Deusen-Scholl (2003). In the language classroom, these broadly defined heritage speakers have familial or cultural motivation to master the language of their ancestry, but no particular language skills which set them apart from their peers. Linguistically speaking, they are essentially indistinguishable from other second-language learners. Most of the papers in this volume, my chapter included, concentrate on those heritage speakers who are bilingual in the home and dominant language, albeit to a different degree. My overall goal in this chapter is to present some observations on the state of knowledge amongst the special population of bilinguals and to outline possible avenues of research and teaching (thus echoing the points made in previous chapters, especially Chapter 2 by Rothman, Tsimpli, & Pascual y Cabo). This volume concentrates on Spanish as a heritage language and advances in its study. Heritage speakers of Spanish are a sizeable group, and work on Spanish sets the standard for research on other heritage languages. However, it is important to

doi 10.1075/sibil.49.17pol © 2016 John Benjamins Publishing Company

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r­emember that what unites diverse heritage languages is greater than what divides them. Heritage languages share a number of recurrent structural features – their speakers face similar challenges; the learning and re-learning of heritage languages follows similar milestones, and the attention paid to heritage languages makes linguists, sociologists, educators, and policymakers partners in an enterprise larger than the sum of its parts. If we adopt this view, the importance of heritage Spanish becomes even greater because it is a distillation of different heritage languages and heritage populations. By learning more about one of the large heritage languages, we also learn about its siblings all over the world, not just in the United States. The remainder of this chapter is structured as follows. In Section 2, I argue for a tight link between research-based and classroom-based approaches to heritage languages and outline possible areas where these approaches could achieve a stronger dialogue. I subsequently expand on some of these areas in Sections 3 through 5. In particular, I discuss the reasons for variance among heritage speakers and possible ways of modeling such variance (Section  3). In Section  4, I present some common ways of assessing heritage speakers, and in Section 5, I offer some considerations on the progress of heritage speakers in the classroom. Section 6 summarizes my general conclusions.

2.  A  much-needed dialogue about heritage languages: Educators sit down with language scientists The larger point of this paper addresses the interdependence between research on and teaching of heritage languages. The link between research on heritage languages and heritage language pedagogy is often stated but is yet to be taken beyond the level of lip service. The two sides respect each other but continue on their respective paths, in part because there are only so many hours in the day, because the vocabularies of the two fields are different, and because of inertia. Meanwhile, as the material in this volume attests, the two fields genuinely need each other (e.g., see Rothman, Tsimpli, and Pascual y Cabo, this volume). Researchers need educators to know what the baseline languages of heritage speakers are (see especially the chapters by Parra, by Fairclough, and by Potowski who recognize the heterogeneity of heritage Spanish learners) and what particular properties of the baseline present recurrent challenges to heritage speakers, often in comparison to L2 learners. Without the rich input from the classroom, researchers may fail to systematically identify vulnerable and stable domains in heritage languages. But educators need researchers too, for many reasons, especially in understanding what constitutes the knowledge of a language. This knowledge is conceived of as language competence, viz., the mental representation of language in a speaker’s mind, which allows that speaker to produce an infinite number



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of ­segments in their language, to recognize things s/he has never heard before, and to reject what is ungrammatical. Language competence is thus an idealized representation of knowledge, different from language performance – the way language is used in ­communication – which can be affected by memory limitations, shifts of attention, and many other non-linguistic factors. Linguists study both competence and performance, and only some linguistic theories draw a sharp line between the two; regardless of a particular theory, the opposition is critical for our understanding of how language works. Accessing competence is a difficult task because we can only observe it in an indirect way – by studying performance on a mass scale (corpus studies are an important tool – consider the chapter by Toribio and Bullock), by giving language speakers experimental comprehension tasks (see the chapters by Montrul; and by Jegerski, VanPatten and Keating), and by combining several methodologies in a series of studies (see the chapter by Rao). The competence/performance distinction is particularly important because heritage speakers often characterize in extremes. Some say that they understand everything, making a radical statement about their competence, while others downplay their knowledge and emphasize errors in their production, focusing entirely on performance. A cursory look at work on heritage speakers demonstrates that much attention is paid to their comprehension, in a research model intended to complement the production data assembled in corpora and in reports from the classroom.1 Once researchers know what is affected, they can incorporate this information into pedagogical theory. In teaching, it is important to know the source of an error to structure classroom activity in such a way that corrects this error. If an error is the result of a grammatical difference in the syntax of relative clauses, (see the chapter by Jegerski et al. and see also Polinsky, 2011) then structured grammatical intervention, with explicit explanation of the grammar, is necessary. This intervention is needed because heritage speakers have a different grammatical mechanism for constructing filler-gap dependencies as compared to native speakers. Unlike native speakers, they do not permit the extraction of objects with a gap, in sentences such as (1). When they encounter such sentences, they interpret them erroneously as containing the subject gap – the preferred or the only possible gap in their grammar.2

.  Another advantage of experimental studies in comprehension is that they allow us to include those heritage speakers who may stay away from language classrooms, often because their proficiency is either too low or too high. .  A real test of long-distance dependency grammar is in sentences such as (1), which are ambiguous because they denote reversible actions. When faced with two participants differing in animacy, heritage speakers may interpret the relevant segments correctly based on pragmatics, which in turn may obscure their grammatical deficits.

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(1) ¿Dónde está el caballoi que el toro está pateando ___i?  where is det horse that det bull is kicking ‘Where is the horse that the bull is kicking?’ Likewise, patterns in word order, especially the ones with verb-subject order, differ across the native and heritage varieties. Monolingual Spanish, as other Romance languages, has extensive verb-movement, which allows Spanish speakers to produce sentences such as (2) or (3) (Torrego, 1984; Suñer, 1994; Goodall, 2011). Meanwhile, heritage speakers either lack verb movement altogether, or their grammar has strong limitations on its application, consistent with increased constraints on moving constituents in heritage grammars (Benmamoun, Montrul & Polinsky 2013a). Thus, we are again facing entrenched differences in the two grammars, namely, the absence of or severe limitation on verb movement in heritage grammar. (2) Hay una niña en el jardín. there-is det girl in det garden ‘There is a girl in the garden.’ (3) ¿Que compró Ana?  what bought Ana ‘What did Ana buy?’ In the examples presented above, we have an idea of what causes divergence in heritage grammars, but such is not always the case. For example, in our ongoing study of heritage Spanish production (Parra, Gomez Gallo, & Plaster, 2012; Parra, Plaster, & Polinsky, 2015), we found that heritage speakers overuse the reflexive se, putting it in contexts where it is absolutely impossible, as in the following example, which is completely ungrammatical in baseline Spanish: (4) *El conejito se vio el lobo.    det rabbit se saw det wolf (‘The rabbit saw the wolf.’) The reasons for this overuse of the reflexive are still to be determined, but it seems that this overextension is systematic, suggesting it needs to be countered by explicit grammatical instruction in the classroom. In each of these cases, the content of the grammatical instruction must vary to reflect the nature of the phenomenon, but it is invariably important to understand that heritage speakers may have developed a different grammar, one that is divergent from the baseline, and need explicit instruction for the nature of the baseline phenomenon. On the other hand, if an error is less systematic and more production-based, for example slowing down when a speaker looks for a word or simply does not know the word, heritage speakers have an excellent opportunity to tap into their existing lexical



Looking ahead 

resources – instead of insisting they use a particular word, one could suggest they try to explain a given concept using circumlocution and deploying other lexical material. Here is where heritage speakers differ from L2 learners (up to a stage): they have a richer vocabulary and can use it to fill lexical gaps. Being able to use circumlocution empowers heritage speakers and gives them the much-needed confidence in their production ability. Likewise, errors due to the transfer from English may be remedied by different educational means than entrenched grammatical errors. For example, it is not surprising that a heritage speaker, whose dominant language is English, may use actualmente ‘today’ when meaning ‘actually’ or librería ‘bookstore’ in the meaning of ‘library’. Such misuse is inevitable to a certain point in language mastery and can be anticipated based on false parallels between English and Spanish. In sum, linguistic research on different sources of errors and special uses observed in heritage language has much to offer to language educators; the linguistic findings allow us to categorize and even to predict errors, which in turn leads to more effective teaching. Against this backdrop, it is critical that language scientists and language teaching specialists establish a steady dialogue. One of the possible ways to maintain that much-needed dialogue is through recognizing our shared challenges and goals among which are the immense variance among heritage speakers, the need for better assessment methodologies, and the desire to develop effective re-learning principles from which heritage speakers could benefit. In the following sections, I will discuss each of these three issues.

3.  Variability among heritage speakers Heritage speakers are famous (or notorious, depending on the perspective) for being a heterogeneous group, which manifests itself in a number of ways. In this section, I will focus on two aspects of this variability: individual differences and differences in the baseline. By definition, a heritage speaker’s exposure to the heritage language centers around the home and family, expanding the possibility for much variation in the language experiences of different individuals. The length and manner of home exposure determine the development of the child’s heritage language. Imagine a scenario in which five-year-old Diana moves with her family from Argentina to Los Angeles. Before moving, Diana was immersed in Argentinian culture and the Spanish language not only at home, with her parents and older siblings, but also in the wider community. In California, she continues to use Spanish with her family and also practices her language skills in an extensive, local, Spanish-speaking community. The language used in her school is English, and Diana speaks English increasingly with friends as she grows

 Maria Polinsky

older; but her parents choose to continue using Spanish at home and consider it an asset to their children’s future career prospects. Now imagine another child, Carlos, born and raised in rural Maine, exposed to English and additionally to some French in the wider community. His mother, who moved from Colombia before he was born, speaks some Spanish with him at home and on the phone with family. Carlos has no siblings and uses only English with friends. His Spanish exposure is essentially limited to one person (with occasional input from others), and the time he spends with his Spanish-speaking parent is his only chance to develop his Spanish skills. And as our last example, let us take a bilingual child, Nico, born and raised in rural Guatemala, where his parents spoke a local Mayan language and Spanish. Nico grows up bilingual and considers Spanish the language of upward mobility – which it certainly is in the Guatemalan society (French, 1999, 2008; Helmberger, 2006). The family moves to Kansas when Nico is three, and suddenly, not only does he need to acquire a third language, but he and his entire family discover, to their astonishment, that S­ panish is no longer associated with a higher socio-economic status. For Nico’s family, it is an open issue whether they should continue using Spanish or should encourage the child to abandon it completely, in favor of English (of course, the family faces the same choice with respect to their Mayan language). For these three hypothetical children, the manner and length of exposure to Spanish are clearly not equivalent, and this discrepancy will inevitably have an effect on their eventual language abilities. The Spanish language has been an active and encouraged presence in the lives of Diana and Nico, whereas Carlos has been exposed to Spanish only incidentally. Diana’s family may not experience their perception of Spanish’s social-standing change, whereas for Nico’s family, the change in perception may have been a major source of turmoil. Biographical differences, as well as differences in family attitudes toward the heritage language and culture, have been found to correlate with heritage speakers’ ultimate success in maintaining and re-learning the heritage language (Au & Oh, 2005). Regardless of such differences, the type of informal exposure typically received by heritage speakers results in their strongest language skill being aural comprehension. Stories abound about the second- or third-generation children of an immigrant family who understand their grandparents when they speak to them in Spanish but must, or choose to, respond in English. Naturally, the strength of these speakers will be in understanding others rather than in producing any language. However, even aural exposure alone has been found to confer some amount of language ability (Au & Romo, 1997). Beyond comprehension skills, the ability to reply successfully to those Spanishmonolingual grandparents will vary greatly from speaker to speaker and will largely depend on the child’s access to a larger baseline language community where s/he may find more opportunity to hear and use the heritage language. For those ­speakers whose



Looking ahead 

heritage language exposure and use are limited to the home, the opportunities to ­practice those linguistic skills are much more limited. Unfortunately, a heritage speaker’s confidence in her own heritage language skills is largely determined by the ability to speak, and less by their comprehension. A cycle may develop in which the heritage speaker will try to say something in his heritage language but fail to sound quite like a native speaker, reinforcing his already low language confidence and discouraging him from using it again in the future. The stability of the heritage speaker’s confidence and positive attitude toward the language is fundamental to buoying proficiency in the heritage language; without this stability, there is little motivation for the speaker to maintain the language, and his skills may stagnate. Whether a heritage speaker possesses any reading and writing abilities will depend on the amount of formal instruction s/he has received in the heritage language. Generally speaking, a heritage speaker’s exposure to the heritage language is unlikely to have included formal instruction. As home learners or young immigrants, formal schooling in the heritage language is rarely a component of the heritage speaker’s personal history. Very often, heritage speakers only become literate in their dominant language, and those literacy skills are not always transferable to the heritage language, especially if that language uses a different orthography or requires knowledge of a formal written register. Children who immigrated after some amount of formal schooling will have an advantage in this regard, but adult-level literacy does not follow straightforwardly from a basic understanding of the connections between sounds and symbols on the page. Exposure to literary composition comes gradually, and one’s own literary style continues to develop into adulthood. It is unreasonable to expect a speaker with elementary-level literacy to understand the literary language of her heritage culture. If a heritage speaker possesses literacy skills at all, s/he is likely to be more proficient at reading than writing. This tendency also appears for comprehension over production skills which is observed in the spoken language. Let us now turn to the other source of variation in the heritage population – the language variety to which a given heritage speaker was exposed. When researchers plan to study a heritage language, their first challenge is to identify an appropriate “baseline” language against which to compare heritage speech. The baseline language must be the precise variety of the language that the heritage speaker was exposed to during childhood, as spoken by native speakers in natural situations. Importantly, the baseline language is not necessarily the standard language variety of the native-speaking population or the variety that is taught in the language classroom. The home language of the heritage speaker is most likely a regional dialect, and exposure to other dialects or a formal standard is unusual. For example, it is only reasonable to expect that a child raised by ­Mexican Spanish-speaking parents will have been exposed p ­ rimarily to M ­ exican ­Spanish and, moreover, to a particular dialect of it (see Foote & Bock, 2012; B ­ enmamoun, ­Montrul & Polinsky, 2013b for the emphasis on such dialectal d ­ istinctions). Often the

 Maria Polinsky

only exposure the heritage speaker has to his heritage language is through the speech of the same, small group of close relatives during childhood. This home speech is surely not representative of the speech of the entire native-speaking population, nor does it cover all the possible contexts of language use. These limitations inevitably shape the form of the language produced by heritage speakers. Establishing the baseline for a given heritage language is not always obvious or easy, but identifying precisely the target language of exposure is essential for establishing how close the learner came to achieving native fluency. Using the standard of the language rather than the baseline for comparative purposes would be counterproductive. Since Spanish is spoken in a large number of countries with millions of users, the acknowledgement of the baseline is of utmost importance. Crucially, recognizing the role of the baseline will have immediate dividends not only for heritage language studies but also for our understanding of global versions of Spanish and Spanish dialectology; it is not always the case that the variety spoken by first-generation Spanish immigrants in the U.S. has been known. A related issue, one that is much in need of further investigation, pertains to understanding changes in the language of first-generation immigrants, whose speech serves as the main source of input for heritage speakers (e.g., Pascual y Cabo & R ­ othman, 2012). A large body of work on heritage languages shares the assumption that first-generation immigrants speak the same language as spoken in their homeland. However, a number of studies show that this assumption is incorrect. For example, first-generation Spanish speakers in the U.S. overextend the preterite, which leads to a less frequent use of the imperfect (Montrul, 2002; Silva-Corvalán, 1994; Zentella, 1997); first-generation Russian speakers outside Russia lose the restricted pro-drop found in the Russian spoken in their homeland – regardless of the language they speak as their L2 (Dubinina & Polinsky, 2013). Comparative studies of the homeland language and language of input are needed because they would allow us to identify those changes that are already inherent in the baseline and therefore arise independently of the universal mechanisms intrinsic to heritage grammar (Benmamoun et al., 2013a, 2013b). The variance discussed here poses a significant challenge to researchers and educators alike. We do not have appropriate tools to handle this variance in a comprehensive way, and it is therefore important to develop and test models that would allow us to recognize patterns within heterogeneous groups and account for variance in a successful way. The “continuum model,” a concept developed in the study of creole languages, is one such model that lends itself well to the description of this variation (Polinsky  & Kagan, 2007). Rather than imagining the same level of proficiency for all heritage speakers, we should expect each speaker to fall somewhere along a continuum that stretches from those who can almost pass as native speakers to those who can barely string a few words together in the heritage language. Those on the higher end of this continuum are highly proficient speakers with only slight deviations from the norms set by fully native speakers; those on the lower end of the continuum may have had only very ­limited exposure to the language during childhood and perhaps



Looking ahead 

never spoke it themselves. Heritage speakers differ as to where they fall along this continuum, and there are many factors involved in determining the ultimate abilities of a bilingual; nevertheless, there are common patterns in their language abilities that unite heritage speakers as a single category within bilinguals. Essentially, the continuum model implies that heritage speakers are divided into subgroups based on certain characteristics, and each subgroup within the larger group is expected to be homogenous in that heritage speakers within that subgroup would show similar strengths and weaknesses. While this approach is promising, it shifts the onus for establishing homogenous subgroups on the methodology of assessing proficiency and distance from the baseline. It is obvious that assessment, both for research and pedagogical purposes, is critical to heritage language study; although this is a lively area of investigation, as attested to by several chapters in this volume, we are still searching for efficient, one-size-fit-all assessment techniques. I will survey some of the existing approaches in the next section.

4.  A  ssessment Assessment is a large issue in heritage studies, and I would like to refer the reader to the chapter by Sara M. Beaudrie, who addresses it from the standpoint of languageclass placement. In continuing with the theme of this chapter, it is important, however, to consider ways in which research assessment and classroom placement are compatible with each other. In an ideal world, the two paradigms should be able to use the same methodologies, and although this has not happened yet, I would like to offer some considerations. Let us start with classroom-placement assessment. Heritage speakers’ strengths often emerge in initial assessment for classroom placement, while the gaps in their linguistic knowledge are not always obvious at the beginning of a language course. A good accent and a sprinkling of regional vocabulary, which would indicate a very proficient second-language learner are just par for the course with heritage speakers. When the appropriate classroom-placement level needs to be determined for these types of learners, a quick, reliable method is required that tests them in a different and deeper manner than traditional placement exams. Typically, a placement exam relies on textbook-based language knowledge, which is unsuitable for someone like a heritage language learner who probably has not been exposed to such textbook language. The result is a contradiction – subjecting heritage speakers to a textbook-based assessment results in an unexpectedly low placement level, but on the other hand, heritage speakers are frequently considered for placement into higher-level classrooms due to their accent and access to vocabulary. Given the heritage language learner profile, a three-component testing procedure has been suggested – (i) an oral test, (ii) a short essay, and (iii) a biographic

 Maria Polinsky

q ­ uestionnaire (Kagan, 2005). Such an examination could potentially be time consuming, however, as well as impractical for testing speakers whose abilities are on the lower end of the heritage speaker continuum. Methods for a quicker yet still reliable test of both high and low-level speakers are presently being investigated. A measure of the speech rate of a heritage speaker – i.e. words-per-minute output – has been found to correlate with the deeper grammatical abilities of the speaker, making it a good indicator of overall language level (Kagan & Friedman, 2004; Polinsky, 2006, 2008a). Of course in measuring speech rate, we also need to compare each subject’s speech rate in their dominant language (say, American English) with their speech rate in the heritage language to ensure that their heritage language speech rates are normal; if a speaker’s speech rate in the dominant language is also low, then a low speech rate in the heritage language would not necessarily reflect anything about their proficiency. Overall, speech rates are quite predictive of proficiency and, in heritage speakers, vary more than speech rates in the dominant language of the same speakers or speech rates in a monolingual population. For example, Viswanath (2013: 24–25) investigated speech rates of heritage English speakers whose dominant language is Hebrew; he found the spread in the heritage population (40 subjects) to be between 80.09 and 156.74 words per minute, whereas age-matched monolingual controls had a spread between 121.88 and 175.02 words per minute – a higher rate overall and a smaller delta. Next, a simple vocabulary test of 50 to 200 words has been found to be a similarly helpful and easily measurable test of heritage language ability (Polinsky, 1997, 2000, 2006). For the purposes of placement in a language class, these tests are extremely useful. Still, however, once placed in the appropriate classroom, heritage speakers will be best served if researchers are able to establish the nature of heritage languages more precisely. This work depends on developing further appropriate methods capable of testing the bounds of a heritage speaker’s language knowledge in a timely and accurate manner. A common testing method in linguistic research is the so-called “grammaticality judgment task” (GJT), in which the participant is asked to decide whether he finds a given bit of language grammatically acceptable. Such tasks may be fine-grained beyond a simple yes/no option; for instance, one variant of the GJT allows the participant to use a scale from one to five to rate the acceptability of the language sample (see more on this below). Heritage language speakers consistently demonstrate higher performance on GJTs than do early second-language learners, although they still provide non-native judgments. Thus, heritage speakers, like second-language learners, seem to be poorly evaluated by GJTs. Why? GJTs have also been criticized as an inappropriate evaluation method for secondlanguage learners for the same reasons they are inadvisable as an evaluation tool for heritage speakers – the anxiety caused by the testing context will prevent the production of results that are representative of the speaker’s true language knowledge (McDonald, 2006). This shortcoming follows from their reluctance to reject or rate



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forms that are ungrammatical in the baseline; they are aware of limitations in their knowledge (constantly being reminded how little they know – see Section 5 for more discussion) and are therefore unprepared to reject unfamiliar grammatical structures, assuming they are observing a grammatical form that they have simply not encountered yet. The ability to rate forms as unacceptable or ungrammatical requires greater metalinguistic awareness which heritage speakers can develop in the process of re-­ learning their home language but which is not readily available simply because of childhood heritage language exposure. In addition to the lack of metalinguistic awareness, several other factors seem to influence how heritage speakers perform on GJTs, including use of the language at home (Bylund & Diaz, 2012; Bylund, Abrahamsson & Hyltenstam, 2012; Schmid, 2007), the age of acquisition, and the age at which the heritage language was replaced by the new dominant language (Ammerlaan, 1996; Hakuta & D’Andrea, 1992; Montrul, 2008). As mentioned above, one of the typical (although not universal) characteristics exhibited by heritage speakers is low literacy; in fact, some researchers attribute most of heritage speakers’ deficits to their lack of schooling (Pascual y Cabo & Rothman, 2012; ­Rothman, 2007). As GJTs are often presented to subjects visually, one initially promising avenue to explain the comparatively higher performance of heritage speakers versus second-language learners on GJTs might be the modality of presentation. Heritage language speakers do consistently perform better on aural perception tasks than on written ones – the exact opposite of the pattern found with second-language learners (Montrul, Foote, & Perpiñán, 2008). However, despite their comparative advantage on aural tasks, heritage language speakers still provide non-native judgments on aural GJTs for a range of phenomena (e.g. Knightly, Jun, Oh, & Au, 2003; SherkinaLieber, 2011; Sherkina-Lieber, Pérez-Leroux, & Johns 2011), suggesting that while literacy may make written tasks more difficult for heritage language speakers, it does not explain all the difficulties they experience with the GJT. If we look more closely at heritage speakers’ performance on GJTs, it becomes clear that their pattern of GJT mistakes is skewed in the same principled way as the data from second-language learners, revealing what can be called the “yes-bias” (overacceptance). Both heritage and second-language learners tend to identify acceptable grammatical structures correctly but are rather reluctant to reject the ungrammatical ones. In a large survey of 70 native and 70 heritage speakers of Russian, Polinsky (2006, pp. 196–200) elicits grammaticality judgments on binding, gender agreement, gerund control, and irregular verbal morphology. In each of these areas, heritage speakers provided the same non-native pattern of responses, accepting the majority of the grammatical sentences and also many of the ungrammatical ones. For example, in response to the violation of gender agreement (masculine adjective used with a feminine noun, feminine adjective used with a masculine noun), heritage speakers rejected only 32% of the 100 ungrammatical sequences compared to 97% rejection by native speakers.

 Maria Polinsky

Common responses to ungrammatical conditions from the heritage speakers included “maybe”, “I don’t know”, etc. (Polinsky 2006, pp. 198–199). A similar finding can be seen in a series of rating tasks targeting the knowledge of the morphological marking in Labrador Inuttitut. Sherkina-Lieber (2011) found that Inuttitut heritage speakers were generally similar to native-speaker controls in accepting grammatical structures but were off-target in rejecting ungrammatical sequences. As she notes, “[t]he most common error for [higher proficiency speakers] was to accept both the grammatical and ungrammatical sentences in a pair” (Shekina-Lieber, 2011, p. 181). The lowest comprehension group of Inutittut heritage speakers were able to “detect ungrammaticality only when the most basic properties of Inuttitut grammar were violated” (Sherkina-Lieber, 2011, p. 188). Over-acceptance on part of heritage speakers is observed on both binary and scalar GJTs (cf. Laleko & Polinsky, 2013 for a scalar GJT). The tendency for heritage language speakers to rate ungrammatical utterances higher than the native controls may result from a sense of linguistic insecurity. In a GJT comparing judgments of English relative clauses with and without resumptive pronouns, Vishwanath (2013) asked native speakers of English and Hebrew-dominant heritage speakers of English (all age-matched teenagers) to rate sentences such as (5a,b) on a seven-point scale: (5) a. My uncle has a neighbor [that my cousin helps on weekends]. b. My uncle has a neighbor [that my cousin helps her on weekends]. Although heritage speakers of English generally rated sentences with resumption (5b) lower than grammatical sentences without resumption (5a), they nevertheless rated the resumptive sentences significantly higher than did the native controls. Crucially, proficiency (as measured by speech rate in words-per-minute, WPM, discussed above) predicted heritage speakers’ judgments. Subjects from the high proficiency group (>110 WPM) found sentences like (5b) to be significantly less acceptable than did subjects from the low proficiency group (