A Post–Study Abroad Perspective of Spanish Heritage Speakers’ Identity and Academic Development

Abstract

The study abroad experience may be a turning point in the personal and academic lives of college students, but little is known about how some groups of students, such as heritage language speakers, profit from the learning opportunities that this shift of context may open. Using a pragmatic identity profile approach (Levitan et al., 2018), we investigate the self-ascribed, as well as other-ascribed, identities of three US Spanish heritage speaker students who spent at least a semester in Alicante, Spain. We purposely address issues of language use, language attitudes and affective dimensions regarding the Spanish language to investigate the impact that studying in a foreign country and, crucially, one that is not their respective ancestral country, exerted on their personal and academic paths. An analysis of the interview transcripts shows that one college student could not explicitly articulate any modification in her sense of being Latinx after a semester in Spain but reported feeling more comfortable and at ease when using Spanish. The second student expressed great changes in her self-ascribed identity towards a more encompassing and rounded notion of her Latinxness  The third participant, deeply rooted in her Mexican-American identity, did not manifest any changes in her self-perception before and after study abroad. Nevertheless, the semester in a Spanish speaking academic environment allowed her to cement her literacy skills in Spanish at various registers.  The three cases emphasize the heterogeneity of experiences abroad and the meaning assigned to them in the trajectory toward successful heritage language education.