Special issue: Advances in Spanish for specific purposes in the United States: Connecting the heritage language pedagogy and the Hispanic community (original) (raw)
Related papers
2010
An important development in Spanish language pedagogy in the US during the 20th century was the realization in the profession that those students who came to the classroom already in the possession of communicative skills in the language required different instruction than those who were second language learners. In the late 1970s and early 1980s programs labeled Spanish for Native Speaker (SNS) began to emerge at the university level.
Exploring the Experiences of Hispanic ESL Students in ESL Programs
2016
Exploring the Experiences of Hispanic ESL Students in ESL Programs by Raynelda A. Calderon MA, Queens College, 2009 BA, Baruch College, 2004 Doctoral Study Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Education Walden University December 2016 Abstract Instructors of English as Second Language (ESL) at a private community college had raised concerns regarding Hispanic ESL students not developing sufficient English proficiency. The purpose of this single exploratory case study was to explore the phenomenon brought forward by ESL instructors and share the results with the ESL program and the college. The conceptual framework for this qualitative study was based onInstructors of English as Second Language (ESL) at a private community college had raised concerns regarding Hispanic ESL students not developing sufficient English proficiency. The purpose of this single exploratory case study was to explore the phenomenon brought forward by ESL instructors...
TEACHING LINGUISTICS IN HISPANIC-SERVING INSTITUTIONS
American Speech, 2023
The purpose of this article is to stage a much-needed conversation around what it means to think about the project of teaching linguistics in diverse postsecondary institutional contexts and in particular Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs). The conversation we present is based both in our scholarship as sociolinguists working with diverse language issues in U.S. Latinx speech communities and in our work as faculty at two of the largest Hispanic-serving institutions in the United States. In this paper, we discuss the possibilities, promises, and challenges of teaching (socio)linguistics at universities designated as “Hispanic-serving.” We take as a starting premise for this conversation that “courses (across the curriculum) inherited from traditionally white colleges and universities may implicitly disenfranchise ethnic- and language-minority students. These courses should be rethought and repurposed with intention, lest further generations of students learn that a prerequisite for scholastic success is divestment from their home language, culture, and identity” (Artze-Vega, Carter, and Russell 2020, 39). In other words, the project of teaching linguistics at HSIs is as much about thinking through what linguistics is or should be – and for whom – as it is about “adapting” content to new learning contexts. As such, this conversation involves raising challenging questions about the discipline, about the purpose of teaching linguistics, and about language itself.
Linguistics and Education
This paper examines the multilingual landscape of California and emphasizes the potential of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) in a university curriculum as a way of promoting students' language awareness and cultural literacy. Heritage speakers of Spanish in the U.S. constitute an important student population with unique linguistic and educational needs and challenges, in learning both English and Spanish (Carreira, 2007; Valdés, 2005). Spanish heritage speakers provide an example of a heterogeneous group of learners, both linguistically and culturally. Several studies on bilingualism (García, 2009; Grosjean, 2010; Hornberger, 2003) underline the importance of schooling to develop advanced bi-literacy in the heritage language. Heritage speakers' use of Spanish usually revolves around the home or community domains. As a result of having developed their linguistic registers in informal contexts they have not used Spanish in situations where this particular type of language is utilized to construct knowledge or negotiate membership in an academic or professional community. In light of this fact, they are subsequently less prepared to meet the linguistic and literacy demands of these settings. In order to become legitimate participants then, they not only need to expand their control over a range of oral and written academic registers but, just as importantly, need to negotiate, construct, and index new identities as members of the academic community (Achugar & Colombi, 2008). This study describes pedagogical practices in a university curriculum for Spanish heritage speakers that stress the relationship between the bilingual continuum and its connection with the social and situational context. These practices emphasize the meaning-making of language in the construal of discourse. They argue for explicit instruction of dialect, genre and register theory as a way of promoting students' language awareness and academic literacy. Furthermore, a functional approach of language highlights the dialectical relationship between language and culture. The use of pedagogical practices that focus on auto-cultural, and inter-cultural language awareness can facilitate not only the development of bi-literacy but also the acceptance of cultural diversity in the Spanish speaking world and of Latins in the United States.
This study used peer-led focus groups to investigate heritage language (HL) and second language (L2) students' language ideologies and identities in "mixed" Spanish courses. We analyzed students' perceptions of themselves and each other, their understandings of fairness in mixed classes, and the relationship of such perceptions to language ideologies and broader educational discourses of belonging in Spanish language education. Our analysis revealed that L2 participants reproduced the standard language ideology as well as an essentialist ideology that frames Spanish as being natural and easy for HL students. HL participants largely resisted these ideologies while also portraying L2 students as deficient speakers who "artificially" slow the class, thus challenging the dominant construction of L2 students as the default student type. Participants deployed competing conceptions of fairness to construct and perform identities as hard working students. Our findings highlight the need to incorporate the critical analysis of ideologies in mixed HL/L2 settings and beyond.