Advanced Heritage Learners of Spanish: A Sociolinguistic Profile for Pedagogical Purposes

Abstract: This article reports on an extensive survey administered to advanced heritage language (HL) learners to examine their language behaviors, attitudes, and backgrounds. To date, there have been no detailed categorizations of advanced HL learners to guide classroom instruction and curriculum design. Thus the present study is a first attempt to fill this gap by providing a sociolinguistic profile of these speakers, including their identifying characteristics, linguistic needs, and similarities and differences with lower-proficiency speakers. Survey responses indicate that advanced HL learners possess both productive and receptive skills in the HL, always use Spanish at home, are fluent speakers of a standard variety, already have basic academic skills in Spanish, and are therefore primarily interested in perfecting their academic writing skills. Key words: Spanish, attitudes, heritage language, language behavior, sociolinguistic profile Introduction According to a May 1, 2008, report by the U.S. Census Bureau, the estimated Hispanic population in the United States has surpassed 45 million. At roughly 15% of the total U.S. population, Hispanics comprise the largest minority group and their presence continues to grow. Consequently, heritage language (HL) speakers of Spanish have also become a rapidly growing presence at all levels of education, from elementary school through college (Lynch, 2003). According to Valdes (1997, 2003), most of these bilingual speakers have been enrolled either in traditional foreign language classrooms or in remedial courses intended to re-teach the basics of the heritage language they supposedly have not learned well at home. Though there has been substantial interest among researchers in this minority language population, most existing goals and pedagogical practices have been inappropriate, and few Spanish departments have offered special courses to target their real needs. As Draper and Hicks (2000) indicated, this situation has led to frustration for both language instructors and advanced HL speakers: Foreign language instructors have not been trained to deal with these bilingual learners, and HL speakers have not had their particular needs addressed. For example, although some HL speakers of stigmatized varieties of Spanish1 might need to resolve identity issues before concentrating on improving communicative proficiency, more advanced speakers might want to improve their textual competence rather than developing the communicative proficiency they already possess. Despite significant progress in curriculum development for teaching heritage speakers, a recent survey conducted by the National Foreign Language Center (NFLC) and the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese (AATSP) reported that only 18% of the colleges and universities sampled (146 campuses) have classes for HL learners (Ingold, Rivers, Tesser, & Ashby, 2002, pp. 324-329). Moreover, most Spanish departments currently offering courses tailored for HL learners offer only a 2-semester sequence that parallels the 4-semester language courses required for traditional foreign language learners (Valdes, 1997). Consequently, HL speakers wanting to pursue a Spanish major or minor often have no upper-level courses to help them continue developing their linguistic competencies or maintain their HL. But who are these advanced HL speakers? What are their identifying characteristics and concrete linguistic needs? How different are they from their lowerproficiency counterparts? This article considers these questions by examining the sociolinguistic profile of advanced HL speakers of Spanish who responded to an extensive survey. In the present context, "sociolinguistic profile" means a descriptive summary of a specific group of speakers that highlights their language usage as well as the social and cultural factors influencing their linguistic choices, attitudes, and motivations, such as age, education, and ethnic identity. …