Abstract
Research on Spanish heritage language pedagogy has flourished in the past few decades, revealing both challenges and successful models to address them. The discussion here will focus on some of these major challenges and models, specifically, heritage language assessment, language variety validation, biliteracy approaches, and connections beyond the classroom. Students enroll in heritage language courses to develop their language repertoires and to become better prepared for professional opportunities that require formal uses of Spanish. However, one of the problems that heritage language instructors may face is guiding learners to develop biliteracy skills while also validating students’ language varieties. Heritage language learners frequently enter the classroom with feelings of inferiority about their language use either because their variety is stigmatized (e.g., they speak a rural variety), their Spanish is limited to oral/informal registers and/or their Spanish has English language influence. For these reasons, instructors’ role in empowering students and their language use is particularly crucial. Heritage language classrooms are also ideal for establishing stronger connections with local communities and professional sectors where Spanish is in demand (e.g., health care).
Acknowledgements
For their helpful suggestions and comments on previous drafts of this paper, I would like to greatly thank Dr. Diego Pascual y Cabo and anonymous reviewers. I also sincerely thank Dr. Rajiv Rao for all his work in the publication of this Viewpoints Section. Any errors or inadequacies remain my own.
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