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Developing Heritage Language Learners’ Critical Language Awareness
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Developing Heritage Language Learners’ Critical Language Awareness

A special issue of Languages (ISSN 2226-471X).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2022) | Viewed by 24084

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Sara Beaudrie

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of International Letters and Cultures, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85281, USA
Interests: heritage language instruction; language program administration; heritage language literacy development

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Heritage Language (HL) education has as its main goal to help learners who seek to further explore and develop their cultural and linguistic heritage. To achieve this goal in classroom settings, HL educators are increasingly being called to adopt critical approaches to language instruction. This critical turn in HL education allows educators and researchers to move forward in their efforts to implement educational equity and justice for minority students enrolled in HL courses (Loza and Beaudrie, 2021).

One proposal that has gained growing attention in the field of HL education is critical language awareness (CLA) (Leeman, 2005; 2012; 2018). CLA is a theory and pedagogical approach that aims to dismantle power relations attached to languages and language use along with arbitrary hierarchies that are only meant to serve those in power. CLA aims to develop students’ “operational and descriptive knowledge of the linguistic practices of their world, but also a critical awareness of how these practices are shaped by, and shape, social relationships of power” (Clark et al., 1990, p. 249). In traditional approaches to HL education, HL users, as minority speakers, are chastised for their language use, which are often deemed as “non-standard”. At play are widespread language ideologies of monolingualism and the supremacy of the standard language that privilege monolingual, educated varieties of heritage languages. These ideologies, typically reinforced in educational settings, devalue bilingual speech or local varieties of the HL and can damage students’ bilingual ethnolinguistic identity. CLA proposes an approach that attempts to do away with these power hierarchies in order to unveil the intrinsic legitimacy of all varieties, thus contesting discriminatory practices against minoritized populations and embracing social justice and educational equity instead. Furthermore, current proposals suggest including CLA instruction in every HL classroom to help students to develop awareness, allowing them to value and appreciate all varieties and to defend their own uses of the HL in their communities. Recent research studies have highlighted several proposals to incorporate CLA in classroom settings (Holguín, 2017; Beaudrie, Amezcua and Loza, 2021; Leeman and Serafini, 2016, among others), but more research is needed in order to understand how to successfully implement CLA in HL classrooms.

This Special Issue of Languages aims to gather papers that examine the development of heritage language learners’ critical language awareness in diverse educational contexts. Topics of interest include but are not limited to the following: pedagogical interventions, curricular design and effectiveness, student and teacher perspectives, teacher development, and assessment. We welcome studies on CLA development in any heritage language, as well as studies that have been conducted in diverse contexts: 1) formal educational settings (elementary, middle, and high schools as well as community colleges and universities); 2) community HL schools offered outside the formal educational system; and 3) study abroad programs in which the learners’ heritage language is the majority language. Studies that measure outcomes of CLA instructional interventions are especially welcome.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors submit a proposed title and an abstract of 400–500 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the Guest Editor ([email protected]) or to the Languages Editorial Office ([email protected]). Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editor for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer-review.

The tentative completion schedule is as follows:

  • Abstract submission deadline: 1 October 2021
  • Notification of abstract acceptance: 1 November 2021
  • Full manuscript deadline: 31 March 2022

References

Loza, S. & Beaudrie, S. (2021). Heritage language teaching: Critical language awareness perspectives for research and pedagogy. London, UK: Routledge.

Beaudrie, S., Amezcua, A., Loza, S. (2021). Beaudrie, S., Amezcua, A., Loza, S. (2021). Critical language awareness in the heritage language classroom: Design, implementation, and evaluation of an instructional intervention. International Multilingual Research Journal, 15(1), 61–81.

Clark, R., Fairclough, N., Ivanič, R., & Martin-Jones, M. (1990). Critical language awareness part I: A critical review of three current approaches to language awareness. Language and Education, 4(4), 249-260.

Holguín Mendoza, C. (2018). Critical language awareness (CLA) for Spanish heritage language programs: Implementing a complete curriculum. International Multilingual Research Journal, 12(2), 65-79.

Leeman, J. (2005). Engaging critical pedagogy: Spanish for native speakers. Foreign Language Annals, 38(1), 35–45.

Leeman, J. (2012). Investigating language ideologies in Spanish as a heritage language. In S. M. Beaudrie & M. Fairclough (Eds.), Spanish as a heritage language in the United States: The state of the field (pp. 43-59). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

Leeman, J. (2018). Critical language awareness and Spanish as a heritage language: Challenging the linguistic subordination of US Latinxs. In K. Potowski (Ed.), Handbook of Spanish as a minority/heritage language (pp. 345-358). New York: Routledge.

Leeman, J., & Serafini, E. (2016). Sociolinguistics for heritage language educators and students: A model of critical translingual competence. In M. Fairclough & S. M. Beaudrie (Eds.), Innovative strategies for heritage language teaching: A practical guide for the classroom (pp. 56–79). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

Dr. Sara Beaudrie
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Languages is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • heritage languages
  • critical language awareness
  • language ideologies

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Published Papers (7 papers)

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Editorial

Jump to: Research

6 pages, 311 KiB  
Editorial
Developing Critical Language Awareness in the Heritage Language Classroom: Implementation and Assessment in Diverse Educational Contexts
by Sara Beaudrie
Languages 2023, 8(1), 81; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8010081 - 13 Mar 2023
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 3062
Abstract
The main goal of heritage language (HL) education is to empower learners to explore and develop their cultural and linguistic heritage [...] Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Developing Heritage Language Learners’ Critical Language Awareness)

Research

Jump to: Editorial

17 pages, 389 KiB  
Article
Building Connections and Critical Language Awareness between Learning Communities Collaborating across Two Distant States
by Damián Vergara Wilson and Marisol Marcin
Languages 2022, 7(4), 257; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7040257 - 2 Oct 2022
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 2918
Abstract
Can Critical Language Awareness (CLA) be increased through sociolinguistically based student projects in learning communities collaborating across distant states? If so, how can educators detect this increase in CLA? During the spring of 2020, students in mixed learning communities (SHL/L2) at the intermediate [...] Read more.
Can Critical Language Awareness (CLA) be increased through sociolinguistically based student projects in learning communities collaborating across distant states? If so, how can educators detect this increase in CLA? During the spring of 2020, students in mixed learning communities (SHL/L2) at the intermediate level at two large universities collaborated through online tools to deepen their sociolinguistic understanding of the Spanish of the United States through authentic sociolinguistic data collection. The data for the current study come from interviews with four of these students and from their final reflection papers, providing participant-based depictions of their language experience including criticality and resistance to it. We find evidence that students already expressed elements of CLA before entering the class, and that they also achieved new critical insights through participating and collaborating in class projects. To identify gains in CLA conveyed by student voices, we operationalized CLA as expressions of language experience that either challenged hegemonic paradigms (e.g., stigmatization of certain forms) or identified the role of hegemonic forces in collective or individual behavior. In order to tie CLA to widespread tools used in education, we connect it to notions of the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy. Overall, we propose observable goals that can be used to understand and assess the presence of CLA in students’ discourse. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Developing Heritage Language Learners’ Critical Language Awareness)
20 pages, 625 KiB  
Article
Teacher and SHL Student Beliefs about Oral Corrective Feedback: Unmasking Its Underlying Values and Beliefs
by Sergio Loza
Languages 2022, 7(3), 194; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7030194 - 25 Jul 2022
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2679
Abstract
This study provides a critical discussion on oral corrective feedback (CF) in the Spanish heritage language context by analyzing the language ideologies of both teachers and students relating to this everyday pedagogical practice. Despite the undeniable relevance of oral CF within the SHL [...] Read more.
This study provides a critical discussion on oral corrective feedback (CF) in the Spanish heritage language context by analyzing the language ideologies of both teachers and students relating to this everyday pedagogical practice. Despite the undeniable relevance of oral CF within the SHL language classroom, it is an area mainly studied within the field of SLA and, thus, primarily grounded in cognitive perspectives of the individual L2 learner and their subsequent language development. Drawing on scholarship that has long contested the discrimination that U.S. Latinxs face at the macro, meso, and micro-levels of society, this study interrogates and presents the core beliefs and values that legitimize the underlying asymmetrical power relationships propagated by oral CF. As critical paradigms continue to gain currency in the field of SHL education (e.g., critical language awareness), unmasking the various ways by which monolingual ideologies operate within language education is key to developing pedagogy that promotes Spanish language maintenance and, ultimately, dismantling such structures of domination. This study focuses on exploring the ideologies about oral CF by asking: (1) What language ideologies are prevalent in relation to participants’ conceptualization of oral CF? and (2) What are the instructor’s goals for oral CF? To answer these questions, this study analyzes interview data of a language instructor (n = 1) and SHL learners (n = 4) in an elementary-level, mixed Spanish course at a Hispanic-serving community college. The results show how the instructor utilized oral CF as a mechanism to enact dominant ideologies regarding SHL learners’ non-prestige varieties, while simultaneously advocating for an approach to learners’ varieties based on appropriateness. The instructor grounded her corrective practices in beliefs and values regarding the “deficiency” of SHL learners’ cultures and social categories that she considered to be the root causes of the “problem” that SHL learners spoke non-prestige varieties of Spanish. This study sheds light on the need to reexamine current L2-based oral CF taxonomies and teaching principles that do not account for the wide-ranging ways that corrective feedback becomes entrenched in educators’ culturally shared ideologies of language, learning and the learners themselves, and as normalized by the programmatic context wherein such practices are embedded. Finally, the study concludes by proposing several guiding considerations based on CLA to develop reflective practices for pedagogues to promote a consciousness of the ideologically charged nature of CF within the SHL learning context. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Developing Heritage Language Learners’ Critical Language Awareness)
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22 pages, 446 KiB  
Article
Examining the Influence of Spanish Heritage Language Learners’ Critical Language Awareness (CLA) Development on Ethnic Identity Formation
by Eva Gómez García
Languages 2022, 7(3), 190; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7030190 - 21 Jul 2022
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 3887
Abstract
As critical language pedagogies are being implemented in heritage language (HL) settings, there is an increasing need to examine the impact of critical approaches in Spanish HL speakers. The present study examines how the development of HL learners’ critical language awareness (CLA) influences [...] Read more.
As critical language pedagogies are being implemented in heritage language (HL) settings, there is an increasing need to examine the impact of critical approaches in Spanish HL speakers. The present study examines how the development of HL learners’ critical language awareness (CLA) influences ethnic identity formation in a university-level course that adopts a critical approach to HL instruction. As part of the curricular content, a CLA instructional intervention, consisting of a 4-week unit (10 h), was implemented. First, to measure ethnic identity, at the beginning (pre) and at the end of the semester (post), students completed the Ethnic Identity Scale (EIS) and provided comments with their answers. Additionally, in order to examine CLA development before and after the intervention, participants completed an existing questionnaire, which addresses topics such as language variation, language ideologies, and bilingualism. Overall, the results show that students’ CLA levels increased from “somewhat high” to “high”. Furthermore, participants reported different ethnic–racial identity statuses, which moved toward ethnic identity achievement. Higher CLA levels were associated with an achieved positive status. These findings can contribute to a better understanding of the link between students’ CLA and ethnic identity in HL educational settings, where a critical language pedagogy is applied. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Developing Heritage Language Learners’ Critical Language Awareness)
21 pages, 614 KiB  
Article
Language Ideologies in the Spanish Heritage Language Classroom: (Mis)alignment between Instructor and Students’ Beliefs
by Leslie Del Carpio and Valeria Ochoa
Languages 2022, 7(3), 187; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7030187 - 21 Jul 2022
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2876
Abstract
Research on Spanish as a heritage language (SHL) has found that language ideologies have impacted SHL learners in the U.S. There are several ways in which language ideologies have influenced the overall experiences of SHL learners by encompassing power systems that are at [...] Read more.
Research on Spanish as a heritage language (SHL) has found that language ideologies have impacted SHL learners in the U.S. There are several ways in which language ideologies have influenced the overall experiences of SHL learners by encompassing power systems that are at play within personal, societal, academic, and professional contexts. Pedagogical proposals rooted in Critical Language Awareness (CLA) have been crucial in dismantling harmful language ideologies in the classroom, though there is still a lack of research focused on both students and their instructors. To investigate this, we conducted semi-structured interviews with four advanced university-level SHL students and their instructor in a CLA-oriented SHL program. We also examined the writing assignments of each student to triangulate our data and gain a better understanding of how the students’ language ideologies were being maintained and how their instructor engaged, or not, with students’ beliefs about language. Through directed content analysis, our findings indicate that students with more experience in the program deviate from relaying harmful language ideologies. Their instructor, while aware of students’ negative beliefs about language, conveyed mixed messages about these ideologies as well. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Developing Heritage Language Learners’ Critical Language Awareness)
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23 pages, 974 KiB  
Article
SHL Teacher Development and Critical Language Awareness: From Engaño to Understanding
by Cynthia Ducar
Languages 2022, 7(3), 182; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7030182 - 14 Jul 2022
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 3611
Abstract
This paper offers insights from a study of 17 high school Spanish teachers enrolled in an online graduate course on Spanish Heritage Language (SHL) Pedagogy. The study analyzed the semester-long transformation of teacher attitudes as expressed in discussion board posts following a content [...] Read more.
This paper offers insights from a study of 17 high school Spanish teachers enrolled in an online graduate course on Spanish Heritage Language (SHL) Pedagogy. The study analyzed the semester-long transformation of teacher attitudes as expressed in discussion board posts following a content analysis approach. Findings show an initial lack of respect for student dialects and knowledge of US varieties of Spanish coupled with a desire to help students improve via the teaching of “academic Spanish”. Many participants expressed a feeling of engaño (disillusionment) toward their previous training, wondering why they had not studied the aforementioned topics sooner (Russell and Kuriscak 2015). By creating a context where teachers themselves became more critically language aware, they also became “…cognizant of the naturalness of language variation and its loading of social, political, and economic power structures…” (Beaudrie et al. 2021, p. 587). This paper underscores the transformation that can occur when teachers investigate bilingual ideologies and practices and linguistic characteristics of US varieties of Spanish. The concrete suggestions offered here aim to answer Leeman’s (2015) call for “destabilizing teachers’ ideologies” (p. 114) in the hopes of creating a more equitable learning environment for future language students. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Developing Heritage Language Learners’ Critical Language Awareness)
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15 pages, 404 KiB  
Article
Critical Language Awareness in the Spanish as a Heritage Language College Classroom
by Mary Hudgens Henderson
Languages 2022, 7(3), 157; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7030157 - 21 Jun 2022
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 2555
Abstract
This article analyzes the critical language awareness (CLA) of Spanish university-level students who were enrolled in a 16-week Spanish heritage language (SHL) course, using CLA as an instructional approach. Students’ attitudes towards bilingualism, Spanglish, language variation, and prescriptivist grammar were measured via pretest [...] Read more.
This article analyzes the critical language awareness (CLA) of Spanish university-level students who were enrolled in a 16-week Spanish heritage language (SHL) course, using CLA as an instructional approach. Students’ attitudes towards bilingualism, Spanglish, language variation, and prescriptivist grammar were measured via pretest and posttest surveys that used a four-point Likert scale of strongly agree, agree, disagree, or strongly disagree, along with a text box asking participants to explain their answers. The CLA instructional methods delivered in the course included the analysis of code-switching grammar constraints, the study of standard language ideologies and monolingual language ideologies, the analysis of stigmatized grammar features found in varieties of Spanish, and English-influenced lexicon. Ten out of fourteen items were included in a factor analysis which yielded a statistically significant change between pretest and posttest. Qualitative analysis of answer explanations showed that some students adapted their language ideologies to the new information and did not change their beliefs at a deep level. Future CLA research should identify “CLA proficiency” levels as well as how to differentiate for students who hold deeply entrenched language ideologies. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Developing Heritage Language Learners’ Critical Language Awareness)
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