Working With Diversity in the Spanish Heritage Language Classroom: A Critical Perspective (original) (raw)
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El español como lengua de herencia en los Estados Unidos: retos y consideraciones pedagógicas
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Spanish language teaching in US higher education is today generally divided between 'foreign language' courses for novice learners and 'heritage language' courses for Hispanic/Latinx students with some knowledge of the language. However, 'heritage' students are a linguistically diverse group, and are also often enrolled at institutions where heritage courses are not offered. Little research to date has studied 'heritage' speakers enrolled in 'foreign' language courses. For this study I conducted semi-structured interviews to explore the affective and ideological characteristics of bilingual students enrolled in elementary Spanish courses. As the literature suggests, I find that these students have a generally low opinion of their own performance in Spanish and a strong bias in favor of the standard language. Finally, in hopes of combating these notions and bridging the divide between heritage and novice learners, I contemplate ways in which students of diverse backgrounds can be included in the same language classroom. Resumen La enseñanza del castellano en los EE. UU. se divide generalmente entre cursos de 'lengua extranjera' para aprendices sin conocimientos previos del idioma y cursos 'de herencia' para estudiantes de origen latino/hispano que ya traen algunos conocimientos del español. Hasta la fecha, pocos estudios han examinado la cuestión de los hablantes 'de herencia' inscritos en cursos de tipo 'lengua extranjera.' Para el presente estudio, llevé a cabo entrevistas semiestructuradas para explorar las características afectivas e ideológicas de cuatro estudiantes bilingües inscritos en cursos elementales de español como lengua extranjera. Conforme con lo que sugiere la literatura, encuentro que estos estudiantes tienen una opinión pobre de sus propias habilidades en castellano y una fuerte preferencia por la variedad estándar. Finalmente, con la esperanza de combatir estas ideas y tender un puente entre los hablantes bilingües y los aprendices de lengua extranjera, contemplo cómo se puedan incluir estudiantes de trayectorias diversas en la misma aula.
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This article examines the issue of teaching Spanish as a heritage language (SHL) focusing primarily on the issues of linguistic diversity and the socioaffective issues related to heritage language learners. First, we consider linguistic diversity in speech communities where students use SHL. Second, we discuss students' perceptions of the teaching of Spanish in a linguistically diverse setting and draw upon a corpus of interviews with 35 students attending an SHL program at a large southwestern university in the United States. We examine stated perspectives regarding the (mis)match between students' heritage varieties and what is promoted in the classroom. The data reveals the importance of considering the student perspective in validating heritage language varieties and indicate both challenges and insights in achieving this validation given the sociolinguistic diversity found in most SHL learning communities.
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A number of studies have focused on language learners' images of Spain and Spanish-speaking countries, however, none of these investigations was conducted in an Asian educational context. The current study has addressed this gap in research literature. It investigated not only representations but also salience and favourability of students' images of the target language countries, which has not been done in earlier studies. The respondents were 31 beginner learners of Spanish. Firstly, they were asked to write images that they have about Spain; secondly, they were asked to write the names of Spanish-speaking countries that they know and provide several images for each of these countries. In addition, the students were asked to assign a favourability rating to each of the images in their lists. The findings revealed that the language learners' images of Spain were multifarious and had a richer structure compared to the representations of Latin American countries. Despite this difference, students had predominantly positive attitudes toward Spanish-speaking countries. The article concludes by discussiong how language learners' representations of a target language country can inform language pedagogy and offers some practical suggestions. Resumen Muchos estudios anteriores se han centrado en las imágenes que tienen los estudiantes de lenguaje (español) sobre España y los países de habla hispana, pero ninguna ha sido conducida en un contexto educativo asiático. El presente estudio intenta llenar este vacío en la literatura existente. Se investigó no solo las representaciones, sino también la relevancia y las preferencias de las imágenes de los estudiantes acerca de los países de la lengua meta, lo que no ha sido abordado en los estudios anteriores. Los encuestados eran 31 alumnos aprendices de español. En primer lugar, se les pidió que escribieran las imágenes que tenían acerca de España; en segundo lugar, se les solicitó que escribieran los nombres de los países de habla hispana que conocieran y que dieran varias imágenes sobre cada uno de estos países. Además, se les solicitó asignar una calificación de favoritismo o preferencia a cada una de las imágenes en sus listas. Los hallazgos revelaron que las imágenes de los estudiantes de lengua sobre España eran múltiples y tenían una estructura más rica en comparación con las representaciones que ellos tenían sobre los países latinoamericanos. A pesar de esta diferencia, los estudiantes manifestaron actitudes predominantemente positivas hacia los países de habla hispana. El artículo concluye con una discusión sobre cómo las representaciones que tienen los estudiantes del idioma sobre el país del idioma de destino pueden informar sobre una pedagogía de la lengua y ofrecer sugerencias prácticas.