Spanish as a Heritage Language (SHL) is an international peer-reviewed journal dedicated to highlighting the emerging body of scholarship surrounding the field of Spanish as a Heritage Language. SHL is a forum for sharing innovative ideas, research, and practical experiences from diverse areas of research, all pertaining to the overarching theme of heritage speaker bilingualism. SHL is copublished by the University of Florida Press and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies at the University of Florida. We are currently accepting submissions for our forthcoming issues.
Copyright (c) 2026 University of Florida Press
Pragmatic Markers in L2 and Heritage Learners
The use of pragmatic markers (e.g., bueno, pues, o sea) are essential to shape the discourse, manage the conversation and contribute to increased perceived fluency. However, research on the effects of study abroad on the use of Pragmatic Markers (PMs hence force) has been scarce. This study investigates PM usage by heritage and second language learners of Spanish before and after a study abroad experience. In particular, it examines whether initial proficiency level, use of Spanish in the homestay and learner type influence the use of PMs in terms of frequency and variety. Oral data were collected from 32 participants in a Spanish study abroad program through semi-structured interviews before and after their sojourn. These interviews were transcribed and coded for a quantitative analysis of PM frequency, variety, linguistic type (lexical vs. non lexical) and function (self-regulatory filler, interpersonal and textual). Results indicate that a study abroad experience significantly influences the use of PMs among L2 and HL learners in terms of lexical variety but not overall frequency. However, when considering other factors, such as type of learner, languages spoken at their homestay, initial proficiency and the linguistic type of PMs, frequencies varied significantly while lexical variety did not. Overall, our results confirm previous studies (Rieger, 2003) and indicate a developmental trajectory from silences, to filled pauses with non-lexical markers (eh, uhm, ah . . . ), and to lexical markers (bueno, pues, entonces), with some small differences between the two learner types.
Language Use and Social Networks of Spanish Heritage Speakers Abroad
This study examines how Spanish heritage language learners (HLLs) use language and form social networks during study abroad (SA) in Mexico. Drawing on questionnaires and semi-s tructured interviews with four U.S. college students enrolled in a seven- week- faculty- led program, the study explores how network composition, peer dynamics, and identity shape opportunities for local community engagement and Spanish use. Social network analysis focused on participants’ regular contacts, frequency of interaction, and language practices across different domains (i.e., academic, social, and transnational contexts). Furthermore, thematic analysis identified factors that facilitated or inhibited engagement with locals. Findings show that participants used Spanish frequently in daily transactions, academic settings, and structured program activities; the depth of their social networks varied. Heritage speakers who formed stronger ties with host families and service- learning contacts reported greater opportunities for meaningful Spanish use and cultural integration. However, time spent within SA peer groups sometimes limited local engagement. Individual factors such as confidence, perceived proficiency, personality, and personal circumstances also influenced social network development and language use. While participants generally demonstrated high motivation to connect with their heritage language, identity- related perceptions and linguistic insecurity occasionally constrained interaction with local speakers. Overall, the study highlights the central role of social networks in shaping HLLs’ linguistic engagement abroad and emphasizes the importance of structured opportunities for interaction with local communities. Findings contribute to research on heritage learners in study abroad contexts by illustrating how interpersonal dynamics and program design jointly influence language use, network development, and cultural integration.
Study abroad (SA) programs have traditionally focused on cultural and linguistic immersion for students from dominant cultural groups, but recent demographic shifts highlight the increasing participation of Spanish Heritage Speakers (SHSs) in SA programs. SHSs, characterized by their bilingual and bicultural identities, bring distinct perspectives and challenges to the SA experience, including linguistic insecurities, the need for identity negotiation, and the navigation of host community biases. This article explores the evolving landscape of SA programs, emphasizing the need for inclusive, research-informed practices responsive to SHSs. Drawing on recent studies by the author, the article examines three SA programmatic interventions: (1) pre-departure SHS-led conversation exchanges to build confidence and foster community within SA cohorts, (2) virtual exchanges with host university students to facilitate networking and reduce linguistic anxiety in the heritage language, and (3) semi-structured conversation exchanges during immersion centered on critical culture issues to deepen intercultural understanding and encourage critical reflection. These SA programmatic interventions aim to support SHSs in leveraging their bi-/multi-lingual and bi-/multi-cultural upbringing as assets while addressing challenges tied to intersectional identities and systemic biases. By conceptualizing SA as a multiphase experience—encompassing pre-departure, immersion, and post-immersion phases—the article advocates for holistic program designs that prioritize peer interaction, intercultural dialogue, and self-reflection. Ultimately, this critical overview calls for reimagined SA models that reflect the diversity of current student cohorts, promote mutual learning among peers of the same age, and create spaces for meaningful discussion and identity (re)affirmation, with the goal of enriching the SA experience for all participants.
Communicative Competence and the Acquisition of Variation by Heritage Speakers Abroad
The acquisition of variation abroad has informed learner development of communicative competence, composed of grammatical, sociolinguistic, and strategic competences (Canale & Swain, 1980; Kanwit & Solon, 2023). Of these sub-competences, sociolinguistic competence, a learner’s sensitivity to contextual factors, has received increasing emphasis. Early research on acquisition abroad often reported inconsistent gains following a sojourn, perhaps because learners were assessed using global metrics (see Collentine, 2004). More recent work has targeted sociolinguistic competence via structures differentially present in regional input by creating fine-grained tasks eliciting such structures (Geeslin, 2022). Despite recent attention to the second language acquisition (SLA) of variation abroad (Zahler et al., 2023), comparable analyses of heritage speakers have lagged (though see Pozzi et al., 2021). Accordingly, this chapter outlines communicative competence, notes principal methods implemented in analyzing acquisition of variation abroad, describes recent developments and key findings, and offers future directions for research on heritage language acquisition abroad.
Spanish as a Heritage Language in Wallonia
Among the various factors that influence the maintenance and use of Spanish as a heritage language, family language policies play a crucial role due to their impact on early socialization and the shaping of speaker identities. However, other factors, such as perceptions toward the inherited language, cultural ties and awareness, and identity processes also contribute to Spanish as a heritage language maintenance, sometimes independently of, or even despite, family’s language decisions. This study focuses on the case of Belgium, a sociolinguistic space characterized by multilingualism and with a growing population of Spanish speakers with migrant trajectories. Drawing on a corpus of 11 semi-directed interviews with first-, second-and third-generation Spanish speakers in the province of Liège, this study examines: 1) the types of family language policies implemented in participant’s families; 2) the link between family language policies, language ideologies, and individual perceptions regarding Spanish as a heritage language and the language(s) of the host society, linguistic identities and linguistic practices. In the discussion, particular emphasis is placed on intergenerational dynamics and participants’ accounts on maintenance, loss, and reengagement in Spanish as a heritage language (SHL), as well as on the shaping of their multilingual identities.
La relación entre competencia comunicativa intercultural e identidad en hablantes de español como lengua de herencia en edad adolescente
El objetivo de este estudio exploratorio es indagar en la relación entre la competencia comunicativa intercultural de adolescentes hablantes de español como lengua de herencia, alumnos de la Escuela Europea de Frankfurt, y la construcción de su identidad. De ahí se derivan las siguientes preguntas de investigación: i) ¿Cómo perciben y conceptualizan estos alumnos la competencia comunicativa intercultural?; ii) ¿Qué valores relacionan los alumnos con dicha competencia, su bilingüismo/plurilingüismo y su actitud hacia otras culturas?; y iii) ¿Cómo se articula la relación entre esa competencia y la construcción de su identidad? Los datos se recabaron mediante dos actividades de aula: en un autorretrato, los alumnos situaron en las diferentes partes del cuerpo las lenguas que manejan y, además, escribieron un texto de unas 300 palabras en el que debían incluir los siguientes aspectos: percepción de encuentros interculturales, descripción y percepción de un encuentro intercultural concreto, interculturalidad en la familia y definición propia de competencia intercultural. En el estudio participaron 14 alumnos. Para la codificación de los datos escritos se utilizó el programa Atlas.ti. Los resultados revelan una actitud positiva de los alumnos ante la competencia comunicativa intercultural, que basan sobre todo en su conocimiento de lenguas. Sin embargo, no se detectan aspectos críticos ni de descentramiento. La investigación aporta información relevante para poder seguir profundizando en el estudio de la competencia comunicativa intercultural en hablantes de herencia y en el papel de los centros educativos para formar a futuros ciudadanos responsables y reflexivos.
Esta edición especial de la revista Spanish as a Heritage Language es una muestra de la ponencias, diálogos y reconocimiento del impacto de la investigación, pedagogía y las posibilidades de crear colaboraciones justas, éticas y culturalmente relevantes con las comunidades con las que trabajamos, incluyendo a nuestres estudiantes, colegues y el contexto local de donde provienen.
Copyright (c) 2025 University of Florida Press
Exploring the Identity of Spanish Heritage Students in Germany and Austria through Stereotypes and their Linguistic Performances and Proficiency
This study examines how German-speaking university students (n = 10) at German‑speaking universities in Austria and Germany with Spanish as a heritage language negotiate identity and belonging through stereotypes, linguistic performances, and perceived proficiency. Grounded in a discourse‑constructivist view of identity, we collected individualized, semi‑structured interviews and conducted qualitative content analysis. Two issues guide the inquiry: how students understand their dual identity, and how they conceptualize their belonging to the Spanish‑speaking community. Participants often portray themselves as a “perfect mix,” yet monolingual benchmarks and ideals of “native” competence frame self‑assessment. Stereotypes circulating in both national contexts—and within Spanish‑speaking families—intersect with these benchmarks to undermine confidence, perceived legitimacy, and a sense of full membership. In interaction, code‑switching is common and translanguaging rare; both are used to sustain fluency and convey affect and can index bilingual identity in practice, even when negatively evaluated. Overall, the findings highlight the tension between affirmative self‑descriptions and the constraining effects of stereotypes and native‑speaker ideologies, showing that belonging is negotiated rather than given. The study contributes empirical evidence on Spanish heritage identities in Austria and Germany and clarifies how stereotypes, performance, and proficiency jointly shape bilingual selfhood.
Spanish heritage speakers in Austria and Germany
Review of: Panorama of Linguistic Landscape Studies. Durk Gorter & Jasone Cenoz. 2024. UK & USA, Multilingual Matters, 452pp, ISBN 978-1-80041-713-7 (pbk).
Gorter, Durk, & Cenoz, Jasone. (2024). A Panorama of Linguistic Landscape Studies. Multilingual Matters, 452pp, ISBN 978-1-80041-713-7 (pbk).
Beyond Personal Transformation as a Spanish as a Heritage Language Educator
This paper critically examines the evolving role of educators in Spanish as a heritage language (SHL) education, moving beyond personal pedagogical transformations to advocate for systemic changes in SHL teacher training that is comprehensive and inclusive. It challenges the traditional queries about “who” is best suited to teach SHL, shifting the focus instead to “how” educators from various linguistic and cultural backgrounds can be effectively supported in their training. This narrative highlights the broader need for comprehensive SHL teacher training that considers diverse educator profiles and linguistic backgrounds and emphasizes the integration of culturally and linguistically inclusive methodologies. By emphasizing the value of reflective practices that allow teachers to leverage their unique identities, the paper proposes enhancing SHL teacher training that acknowledges the diverse backgrounds of both students and educators. The aim is to foster educational environments that enhance linguistic diversity, boost student confidence, and promote equity, thereby ensuring that all heritage learners receive the support they deserve to succeed. This call to action seeks to inspire a shift towards more empathetic and culturally responsive practices in SHL teacher education, providing a roadmap for future initiatives to support all educators in the field.
Review of: Pascual y Cabo, Diego, & Torres, Julio (Eds.) (2022). Aproximaciones al estudio del español como lengua de herencia. Routledge
This article reviews the book Aproximaciones al estudio del español como lengua de herencia. The review summarizes each chapter and highlights the book’s key contributions and implications for the field of Spanish as a Heritage Language (SHL).
The Study Abroad Experiences of Heritage Spanish Speakers
This qualitative study investigated the study abroad experiences of U.S.-based undergraduate heritage speakers of Spanish who studied abroad in Spanish-speaking countries. Data were collected via online surveys and semi- structured follow-up interviews. Themes discussed include comfort in the study abroad context due to heritage speaker background, peer cohort dynamics and relationships, perception and treatment by the local community, and long-term impacts on family relationships. The study offers recommendations for structuring and implementing study abroad programs that effectively address the unique needs of heritage speakers and support greater study abroad participation.
Testimoniando the Graduate Student Perspective
At the University of New Mexico (UNM), about 19.2% of undergraduate courses are taught by graduate teaching assistants (UGW 2021). Within UNM’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese, the majority of enrolled Spanish graduate students are instructors of Spanish as a Heritage Language (SHL) undergraduate courses—a language retrieval course designed for students with cultural connections to the Spanish language. Oftentimes these graduate students may step into these roles with minimal teaching experience, and specifically, a lack of training in Culturally Responsive Teaching (CRT) methodologies. While there is extant literature on the CRT within classrooms, little research reflects on the unique experiences of graduate students who teach (Haynie & Spong, 2022). As instructors in introductory courses that can significantly influence undergraduate students’ lives and academic trajectories, learning to incorporate culturally responsive practices within their teaching is critical. We reflect on our time as UNM graduate students as we entered the roles of SHL instructors and the lack of pedagogical and methodological preparation that would have better equipped us for teaching in SHL classrooms. This work centers our own testimonios, having gone through the process of self-learning, as a means of grounding our enseñanzas, or teaching moments, and consejos, or pieces of advice, so that we may provide a) a point of reference for graduate students in need of clarity surrounding how to incorporate CRT in their classrooms, and b) a call to action towards the incorporation of CRT methods in the initial and continuous training and development of SHL instructors.
Drawing on what Roche (2022) refers as the necropolitics of language oppression, this article explains how the ideologies of language (Faltis, 2022b) come into play to delegitimize the bilingual languaging practices of Spanish speakers in Laredo, a city of 250,000 residents, most of whom are bilingual, and who use local Spanish along with English throughout their days. I write this article for global Spanish teachers, heritage Spanish teachers, and bilingual teachers, all of whom hold views about the value and intellectual worth of local Spanish used in bilingual communities. In this article, I use the terms necropolitics (Roche, 2022), soft linguistic terrorism (Mena, 2023), global and local languages (García, 2014) and introduce the term Espancano to describe local bilingual practices. The goal of the article is to provide readers with ideas and actions that can be used to identify and counter necropolitical language oppression especially along the borderlands, but also in Spanish and bilingual programs situated in other areas of the country, where Spanish and bilingual teachers may also unknowingly incentivize necropolitical language oppression by positioning global Spanish above local Spanish.
La multiliteracidad crítica en el aula de español como lengua de herencia
Este artículo aborda las ventajas derivadas de la implementación del modelo de la multialfabetización o multiliteracidad crítica en el desarrollo curricular de la enseñanza del español como lengua de herencia. A partir de un repaso breve a la trayectoria de la pedagogía crítica en la educación superior y su influencia en la enseñanza del español como lengua de herencia en Estados Unidos, este artículo explica cómo los modelos de la conciencia lingüística crítica (Critical Language Awareness), el aprendizaje por diseño (Learning by Design) y la pedagogía para las multiliteracidades (Multiliteracies Pedagogy) se integran en la multiliteracidad crítica. Lo anterior se ejemplificará mediante el estudio de caso de un curso avanzado de español, diseñado e impartido en una universidad del sur de Texas. Este ejemplo evidencia no solo cómo la multiliteracidad crítica contribuye al logro de objetivos pedagógicos, tales como el desarrollo de habilidades lingüísticas, la promoción del pensamiento crítico, y el fomento de la responsabilidad personal y social en los estudiantes, sino que además, permite que los estudiantes de español como lengua de herencia se conviertan en productores de conocimiento sobre sus comunidades, capaces de crear y difundir sus propias narrativas corrigiendo y enriqueciendo bibliotecas y archivos sobre sus comunidades.
En este artículo se habla sobre cómo el Centro de Enseñanza Para Extranjeros (CEPE) de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) desarrolló un curso de español para un programa de inmersión enfocado a hablantes de herencia y/o hispanohablantes, quienes tienen la particularidad de contar con el programa de Acción Diferida para los llegados en la infancia (DACA)1. Para su elaboración, se consideraron las metas de mantener el español, adquirir una variante prestigiosa, fomentar actitudes positivas hacia la lengua y cultura de herencia, y desarrollar la conciencia cultural. El objetivo principal de este curso es apoyar al hablante de herencia con DACA a su encuentro o reencuentro con el español y cultura de México, lengua y cultura heredada de sus padres. Se presenta el tipo de curso seleccionado, la metodología pedagógica elegida, una secuencia didáctica y el tipo de evaluación adecuada para llegar a las metas mencionadas. This article talks about how the Teaching Center for Foreigners (CEPE) of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) developed a Spanish course for an immersion program focused on heritage speakers and/or Spanish speakers, who have the particularity to have the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. In its preparation, the goals of maintaining Spanish, acquiring a prestigious variant, fostering positive attitudes toward the heritage language and culture, and developing cultural awareness were considered. The main objective of this course is to support the heritage speaker with DACA in their encounter or reunion with the Spanish and culture of Mexico, a language and culture inherited from their parents. The type of course selected, the chosen pedagogical methodology, a didactic sequence and the type of evaluation appropriate to reach the aforementioned goals are presented. [1] DACA es una política migratoria. El 15 de junio de 2012, la secretaria de Seguridad Nacional de Estados Unidos anunció que ciertas personas que llegaron al país cuando eran niños y que cumplen con una serie de criterios podrían pedir la consideración de acción diferida durante un período de dos años, sujeto a renovación. Estas personas también tienen derecho a solicitar la autorización de empleo. La acción diferida es un uso de la discreción procesal para postergar la acción de remoción contra un individuo por un determinado periodo de tiempo.
Interdisciplinary Approaches to Reconceptualizing an SHL Program in South Texas
The field of Spanish as a Heritage Language (SHL) has grown significantly in the past two decades. However, SHL programs continue to face several challenges, such as low enrollment, limited resources and support, a shortage of formally trained instructors, and both curricular and programmatic obstacles. At a mid-sized institution in the US Southwest, a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) and one of the few HSIs to achieve R1 status, a growing SHL Program is housed within the Modern Languages and Literatures (MLL) Department’s Spanish Program. THIS INSTITUTION has intermittently offered SHL courses since 1973, with some gaps between course offerings extending over a decade (Pino & Pino, 2000). Within the last five years, the Spanish Program has offered a few SHL sections of the first two courses in the sequence. An evaluation of these courses revealed that their methods and materials were more reflective of Second Language (L2) instruction rather than SHL approaches. Therefore, this article first discusses the initiatives taken over the past two years to reimagine the SHL Program, aligning it with both innovative and critical advancements in the SHL field and THIS INSTITUTION’s Strategic Plan, Seal of Excelencia, and status as a Hispanic Serving Research University. Second, we detail the development of a place-based Open Educational Resource (OER) that reflects the program’s recent changes. Finally, we highlight the successes and challenges encountered during the redesign of the SHL Program.
The Future of Heritage Spanish Education: Enacting Open Pedagogy Principles for Social Justice
In the past decades, Spanish Heritage Language (SHL) instruction has become an important component of language education in the US, as shown in the expansion of the field (increasing number of conferences, publications, research projects, professional development opportunities, and engagement with the community). In addition, the field has integrated broader principles and goals for Heritage Language Education (Loza & Beaudrie, 2022; Valdés & Parra, 2018), and advanced novel articulations of learning goals, curriculum implementations, assessments, and materials. The present article proposes the implementation of Open Pedagogies (OP) principles for SHL instruction, a framework that integrates inclusive collaboration with all stakeholders who engage as equal partners in a participatory culture. OP also offers students full ownership of their capabilities as they become empowered to become knowledge analysts, producers, and/or curators (DeRosa & Robinson, 2017; Vañó García, 2023). In this article we showcase how the Texas Coalition for Heritage Spanish (TeCHS) at the Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning (COERLL) implements and promotes Open Pedagogies principles to support Heritage Spanish education in the state. This initiative is a tangible enactment of the OP framework, which can inform the next chapter of SHL education in the US.
This study examines the effects of seemingly contradictory evaluations resulting from standard language ideologies among 19 Mexican-origin university students in Illinois. The participants are later-generation heritage speakers of Spanish who were interviewed about their experiences with language use. This paper qualitatively examines three interrelated themes that emerged from the interviews: (a) self-perceptions of proficiency, (b) affective evaluations toward bilingualism and Spanish, and (c) experiences of language subordination. The findings suggest that heritage speakers show positive attitudes toward idealized bilingualism and “standard Spanish”—they speak of tradition, sense of belonging, and the instrumental value of being bilingual. Further, they show more negative evaluations toward non-standardized varieties like Spanglish, while admitting to using these varieties. They differentiate between “proper” and “improper” Spanish and describe their own proficiency in Spanish as “incorrect.” These findings point to the profound tension between conceptualizations of the standard and the non-standard among later-generation heritage speakers of Spanish. This study contributes to the understanding of standard language ideologies on the lived experiences of Spanish speakers in contemporary Illinois, where Spanish has had a long-standing presence yet mixed language varieties continue to be subordinated vis-à-vis “standard” English and Spanish across academic, professional, and social contexts.
A Post–Study Abroad Perspective of Spanish Heritage Speakers’ Identity and Academic Development
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.
Foregrounding the Social Meanings Derived From Lived Experience
In this paper, I investigate the qualitative evaluations of both Spanish-dominant Mexican and U.S.-born bilingual participants toward Mexican and U.S. Spanish, assessing the influence of lived experiences on how they perceive both varieties. More specifically, I employ the theoretical framework of biographical indexicality (Sharma, 2021) to explain how personal biography influences the way we hear the world. I conclude that the groups use Spanish for distinct contextual and stylistic purposes, and given these biographical differences, the varieties of Spanish come to adopt different social meanings for each group. For Mexicans who speak almost exclusively in Spanish, and for whom Spanish is the language of power, prestige, and social advancement, the language is more likely to be associated with status and institutional hierarchies, while, for U.S.-born speakers who use Spanish at home and English in most other contexts, Spanish is considered a language of interpersonal relationships with high value placed on communicative competence rather than academic perfection. I conclude that the participants’ contextualized use of Spanish (and their exposure to the ideologies embedded in those contexts) conditions the indexical social meanings linked to Spanish varieties. As they perceive and produce different types of Spanish, they recursively reflect and constitute the social world around them, relying on a lifetime of experiences to navigate existing and to create new social meanings specific to their sociolinguistic environments.
Review of: Heritage Language Program Direction: Research into Practice by Sara M. Beaudrie and Sergio Loza
Beaudrie, Sara M. & Loza, Sergio. (2023) Heritage language program direction: Research into practice. Routledge. 260 pp.
Copyright (c) 2024 University of Florida Press
High School Spanish Heritage Language Learners’ Perceptions of their Writing Abilities
The state of Illinois is home to the fifth largest Spanish-speaking population in the United States. The state’s board of education includes Spanish heritage language (SHL) classes among its high school elective options, and 158 out of roughly 800 total public high schools in Illinois offer SHL classes (Potowski, 2020). These programs serve SHL learners from a variety of ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic backgrounds and proficiency levels (Montrul, 2015). While research has explored English language and world language learner language ideologies and beliefs about their proficiency in the target language (Garrett, 2010), fewer studies have explored this topic among adolescent heritage language (HL) learners, particularly with regard to writing (Del Carpio & Ochoa, 2022; Magaña, 2021; Martínez, 2005). This article analyzes qualitative data from an open-ended questionnaire administered to a group of SHL students attending a suburban public high school in Illinois (N = 29) focusing on their language ideologies and beliefs about their speaking, reading, and writing abilities. With particular attention to SHL literacy, we analyze how students express uncertainty, or hedge, about their writing abilities according to their perceived audience and genre of use. We conclude this article by offering implications for HL curricular design and teacher training.
“Me parece muy importante que este tipo de lecturas sean asignadas”
This study examines an upper-level Spanish course at a university where domestic Latino students and international Latin American students are in the same class. The latter group is often unfamiliar with US Latino experiences, highlighting the need to bridge gaps between these student populations. The curriculum integrates a narrative pedagogy in which contemporary Latino narratives—films, documentaries, novels, and short stories—facilitate reflection on Latino identities, interlatino dynamics, and the complexities faced by biracial and bi-ethnic individuals from a critical decolonial perspective. To assess the impact of this curriculum on students’ cross-cultural awareness, we analyze their reflections throughout the course. We employ a case-study methodology to focus on three students: (1) Ana, an international Latin American student who initially holds an essentialist perspective on Latinidad; (2) Gabriel, a Afro-Puerto Rican American student grappling with the legitimacy of his Latinidad; and (3) Rodrigo, a socially conservative international student with a US and Colombian background who initially views the class as positioning him within the “oppressor” group. Over the semester, reflections reveal significant developments: Ana gains an intersectional understanding of Latino struggles; Gabriel embraces his hybrid identity; and Rodrigo develops empathy for US Latino communities and their activism. This study underscores the critical role of a narrative curriculum in courses in which international Latin American students and domestic Latino heritage speakers take Spanish classes together.
This paper explores the potential of Flip, a dynamic video-based platform, in empowering Spanish heritage speakers to enhance their vocabulary acquisition and fluency. Thirteen heritage Spanish learners taking advanced Spanish at a university in the Midwest participated in this study. They created reflective video clips demonstrating Flip’s interactive language learning approach. It also features the use of technology in heritage language education. The students showcased tangible progress in their linguistic skills through presentations and self-evaluations. The findings highlight Flip’s efficacy in the Spanish heritage classroom, fostering community while celebrating linguistic heritage.
Sociolinguistics and Heritage Language Knowledge in High School Classrooms
Understanding the sociolinguistic dimensions of heritage and minority languages has been shown to have positive effects on students’ ethnolinguistic identity, academic confidence, and development of social consciousness (Dee & Penner, 2017; Holguín Mendoza, 2022; Vásquez, 2006). However, most students do not encounter the sociocultural aspects of language until they attend university, and even then, only a small number are exposed to them (Carter & Sánchez-Muñoz, 2023). This En Acción piece argues that students can and should be exposed to sociolinguistic issues, particularly those issues concerning minority and heritage languages (HL), earlier in their education and describes a pedagogical model for doing so with high school students.
Review of: Indigenous America in the Spanish Language Classroom
Book review of Fountain, A. (2023). Indigenous America in the Spanish Language Classroom. Georgetown University Press.
Selected Papers from the 9th National Symposium on Spanish as a Heritage Language
The National Symposium on Spanish as a Heritage Language (NSSHL) is a platform driving progress in the field of Spanish as a Heritage Language (SHL). We are excited to contribute to this advancement by presenting a special issue featuring selected papers from the 9th annual NSSHL meeting, hosted by Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida, from February 24 to 26, 2022. This marks the third collection of papers published from NSSHL, with the first special issue drawing from the 3rd annual meeting (see Holguín Mendoza, Wilson & Rajan, 2017) and the second special issue from the 7th NSSHL (Wilson & Hudgens Henderson, 2021).
Copyright (c) 2023 University of Florida Press
Review of: Communicative Spaces in Bilingual Contexts: Discourses, Synergies and Counterflows in Spanish and English, edited by A. Sánchez-Muñoz and J. Retis
Sánchez-Muñoz, A., & Retis, J. (Eds.). (2022). Communicative Spaces in Bilingual Contexts: Discourses, Synergies and Counterflows in Spanish and English (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003227304