Linguistic diversity and student voice: the case of Spanish as a heritage language

Autor: Vergara Wilson, Damián, Pascual y Cabo, Diego
Zdroj: Journal of Spanish Language Teaching; July 2019, Vol. 6 Issue: 2 p170-181, 12p
Abstrakt: ABSTRACTThis article examines the issue of teaching Spanish as a heritage language (SHL) focusing primarily on the issues of linguistic diversity and the socio-affective 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.
Databáze: Supplemental Index