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11. Meeting the Needs of Heritage Language Learners: Approaches, Strategies, and Research
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C H A P T E R 11 Meeting the Needs of Heritage Language Learners APPROACHES, STRATEGIES, AND RESEARCH Maria M. Carreira, California State University, Long Beach; and National Heritage Language Resource Center, University of California, Los Angeles T HIS CHAPTER DEALS with instructional issues surrounding Spanish as a heritage language (SHL). It has three overarching goals: (1) to summarize and evaluate historical developments in SHL teaching, (2) to provide a blueprint of best practices, and (3) to identify areas in need of further development. Within this framework, I focus on learner profiles, classroom strategies that support differentiation, and professional development. Other issues of importance to practitioners are also addressed—notably, socioaffective issues, the grammatical competence of SHL learners, and curriculum and program development. However, because these issues are discussed in depth elsewhere in this book, the present discussion limits itself to instructional implications and directs readers to the corresponding chapters for more information. Placement, a critical issue in SHL teaching, is briefly discussed with reference to learner diversity. For an in-depth analysis of this issue, readers should consult chapter 13 in this book. HISTORICAL OVERVIEW The first official recognition of the field of SHL teaching dates back to 1972, when the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese (AATSP) 223 224 MARIA M. CARREIRA issued a statement in support of specialized Spanish classes for bilingual Latinos to develop literacy and reinforce other areas of the curriculum at all levels of instruction. The actual teaching of SHL, however, long predates such recognition , with instruction stretching as far back as the 1930s (Valdés-Fallis 1978). With a prescriptive orientation, early approaches to teaching SHL came under attack in the 1970s and 1980s for contributing to students’ linguistic insecurities and for failing to develop general proficiency. These approaches gave way to the Comprehensive Approach, which focused on giving students ‘‘the opportunity to grow in their mother tongue, the opportunity to use it in meaningful communication and creative expression’’ (Valdés, Lozano, and Garcı́a-Moya 1981, 14). A seminal volume in 1981 edited by Guadalupe Valdés, Anthony Lozano, and Rodolfo Garcı́a-Moya laid out research and pedagogical priorities under the Comprehensive Approach. Many of the recommendations made in this volume remain remarkably vital—for example, that the needs of SHL learners are best addressed in specialized HL courses, that instruction should be linguistically and culturally responsive to the needs and goals of US Latinos, that teachers should have solid preparation in reading and writing, and that SHL teaching should contribute to the maintenance of Spanish in the United States. Valdés (1995, 1997) also proposed three other goals for SHL teaching—the acquisition of a prestige variety of Spanish, the transfer of literacy skills from English to Spanish, and the expansion of the bilingual range. Over the years, SHL textbooks and other teaching resources have evolved according to developments in the profession and in society at large. In keeping with a normative perspective, early textbooks and other materials made widespread use of labels such as ‘‘arcaı́smos,’’ ‘‘barbarismos,’’ and ‘‘anglicismos,’’ and they focused on eradicating nonstandard linguistic features. In the wake of the civil rights movement and in keeping with the priorities of the Comprehensive Approach, textbooks in the 1970s and 1980s explored issues of access, inclusion, and social justice as they sought to help Latino students explore their identity vis-à-vis local communities of Spanish speakers. Starting in the 1990s, with the rise of globalization and the expansion of the US Latino market, textbooks tended to construct standard Spanish as a commodity for economic competitiveness in the global market (see chapter 4 in this book). SOCIOAFFECTIVE NEEDS OF SHL LEARNERS Problematizing the commodification of Spanish in the HL curriculum, Leeman and Martı́nez (2007) argue that it leads to a decoupling of Spanish from Latino identity and from local communities of Spanish speakers (see also Hidalgo 1997; Potowski 2005; Villa 1996). Villa (2002) cautions that classroom practices that single out US Spanish as inferior or less adequate than monolingual varieties are pedagogically counterproductive because they foment insecurities among learners . He observes that US Latinos face ‘‘double jeopardy’’ for their use of Spanish, [44.204.164.147] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 08:18 GMT) MEETING THE NEEDS OF HERITAGE LANGUAGE LEARNERS 225 which is criticized on the one hand by those who would eradicate Spanish from the United States, and on the other by some Spanish speakers who deem them...