Spanish as a Heritage Language

“We Balance Each Other Out”

Jacqueline Shea — 2025-01-31

Previous studies have analyzed student perceptions in mixed contexts (Burgo, 2016; Campanaro, 2013; Dones-Herrera, 2015; Edstrom, 2007; Leeman & Serafini, 2020) and attempted to craft best instructional practices (Bowles, 2011; Carreira, 2016; Carreira & Chik, 2018) for mixed courses that include both L2 and HL learners (L2Ls and HLLs). However, few studies explicitly consider a wide variety of previously designed pedagogical frameworks as a reference point for connecting student perceptions with future pedagogical recommendations. This study, therefore, draws upon both current student perceptions and previously proposed instructional frameworks to suggest pedagogical approaches for mixed courses moving forward. To attain student perceptions regarding their advanced mixed Spanish course, 26 L2Ls and 9 HLLs were given a survey with Likert-scale and free response questions. Findings suggest generally positive perceptions from both L2Ls and HLLs on the state of their mixed course, and themes from students’ critiques suggest the adoption of a socioculturally based, critical language awareness (CLA)-informed pedagogy to engage students in both historic and modern linguistic and cultural
interpretations. Additionally, findings support the use of a collaborative, mutual partnership approach, encouraging students to learn from one another and connect across identities.

Agree to Disagree

Andie Faber — 2025-01-31

Heritage speakers’ deviations from monolingual gender agreement patterns have been interpreted as evidence of incomplete acquisition or language attrition among heritage speakers (Anderson, 1999; Montrul et al., 2008; Polinsky, 2008), yet research from the last decade points to lexical assignment as the primary culprit of nontarget gender production, rather than problems with the linguistic system itself. For that reason, this study uses elicited production to examine how heritage speakers assign grammatical gender to nonce (i.e., invented) nouns, manipulating syntactic and morphological gender cues in the input. Results suggest that heritage speakers rely heavily on noun morphology with canonical gender endings (-o/-
a); in neutral morphological conditions (-e) they show a tendency to overgeneralize the unmarked (i.e., masculine) forms. Additionally, age of English acquisition is found to influence the gender assignment strategies employed. The implications
for these findings on modeling heritage speaker grammars are considered.

Lateralization in US Caribbean Spanish

Megan Solon — 2025-01-31

This exploratory study examines rhotic production by Caribbean Spanish speakers in the US to empirically investigate (1) claims of categorical employment of the typically variable lateralization rule and (2) whether lateralized rhotics maintain acoustic features that distinguish underlying liquid phonemes. Thirty college-aged Spanish-English bilinguals of Caribbean
descent living in the US completed a guided picture description task that elicited specific tokens (n = 48) containing coda /ɾ/ and /l/ in identical phonetic contexts. Coda /ɾ/ productions were coded categorically (in terms of the allophone produced) and acoustically (with measures of duration, formant values at static time points, and formant trajectories). Rates of lateralization were examined, and acoustic characteristics of lateralized rhotics were compared statistically to those of underlying laterals. Results suggest high rates of lateralization of coda /ɾ/ across several speakers, though little evidence
of categorical lateralization (i.e., one speaker). Additionally, at the group level, /ɾ/ and /l/ were found to maintain some significant acoustic differences in formant structure at static time points. However, at the individual level, fewer than half of speakers exhibited differences between /ɾ/ and /l/ across 10 acoustic measures. Findings are discussed in light of previous claims of potential phonological and lexical change.

Review of: Indigenous America in the Spanish Language Classroom

Rachel Showstack — 2025-01-31

Book review of Fountain, A. (2023). Indigenous America in the Spanish Language Classroom.
Georgetown University Press.