Journal of Linguistics and Language Teaching (JLLT)

Journal of Linguistics and Language Teaching

Volume 1 (2010) Issue 2

pp. 221 - 240

Heritage Language Learner Programs and Life after the Classroom – 

A Not So Critical Approach

Maite Correa (Fort Collins (Colorado), USA)

Abstract

In this paper, I suggest an approach to Heritage Language teaching that is critical and comprehensive in nature because (1) it puts into question the social and economic power relationships that have been created surrounding the status of standard and local varieties; (2) it empowers students to reflect critically on the intrinsic value of the variety they bring with them into the classroom; and, more in line with comprehensive approaches to HL teaching, (3) it considers that preventing our students from exposure to academic or standard language would be negligent on the part of teachers and takes into consideration the different realities and attitudes that HL learners might face after they leave the classroom. This approach fills the gap in the Critical Pedagogy literature on why, how and when local and standard varieties should be incorporated into the HL curriculum in order to improve the learning experience for students both in the HL classroom and beyond.

Abstracto

En este artículo propongo un enfoque a la enseñanza de Lenguas de Herencia (LH) que es crítico y exhaustivo porque: (1) pone en duda las relaciones de poder socio-económicas que se han creado en torno al estatus de las variedades locales y estándares; (2) capacita (empodera) a los estudiantes para que reflexionen críticamente sobre el valor intrínseco de la variedad que ya traen consigo al aula; y más en línea con los enfoques exhaustivos a la enseñanza de Lengua de Herencia (3) considera que negarles a nuestros estudiantes la exposición a variedades estándares o académicas sería un acto de negligencia por parte de los instructores y toma en consideración las diferentes realidades y actitudes que los hablantes de herencia podrían afrontar después de abandonar el aula. Este enfoque complementa lo ya publicado sobre Pedagogía Crítica, específicamente por qué, cómo y cuándo deberían incorporarse las variedades locales y estándares en el curriculum de Lengua Heredada con el objetivo de mejorar la experiencia de aprendizaje para los estudiantes en el aula y cuando salen de ella.

1   The Need of a Course Especially Designed for Receptive Bilinguals

Receptive bilinguals have been defined as heritage language learners who, due to infrequent/reduced use of and lack of formal schooling in the heritage language, fall on the lower end of the bilingual range. In fact, they usually possess a fairly developed receptive ability that allows them to understand the language but not to produce it comfortably (Valdés 2005; Potowski 2005; Leeman 2005; Myers-Scotton 2006; Reynolds et al. 2009).

Although many receptive bilinguals appear to have difficulties similar to those experienced by FL learners in many grammatical areas, their placement in traditional FL classrooms has widely been discouraged for both linguistic and cultural reasons. For example, FL learners usually acquire the L2 in a classroom setting with consistent exposure to written Spanish and emphasis on metalinguistic knowledge. HL learners in the U.S., on the other hand, acquire Spanish in aural form and, thus, they typically lack experience with metalinguistic knowledge or literacy skills in Spanish (Potowski et al. 2009). It is often the case that, when HL are placed in FL classrooms, they realize that they are able to speak the language with a certain degree of fluency much superior to that of their FL peers, but at the same time, they find that they face other “insurmountable challenges” (Valdés et al. 2008: 118) and a sense of helplessness or inadequacy arises that may hinder successful language acquisition, as will be explained later.

Indeed, language is much more than a tool for communication for HL learners; it is part of their heritage and their identity (Anderson 2008), and it is precisely when they feel that their Spanish is negated or looked down upon that their confidence is destroyed:

In a bilingual or ESL classroom, HLLs are often referred to as Limited English Proficient (LEP) students, although the current effort has re-labeled them as English Language Learners (ELLs). […] In a foreign language classroom, HLLs are sometimes called ‘false beginners’ as if they enter the classroom with the intention of cheating the system. Or, as a French teacher vividly puts it, they are “Swiss cheese”, whose language performance is full of unpredictable holes […]. The goal of instruction has been to convert the Swiss cheese into American cheese, standardized in form and without holes (Hornberger & Wang 2008: 22).

Placing HL learners in the FL track poses serious challenges to both the teachers and the learners because it does not only negate their HL identity (Carreira 2004), but also

prevents them from maximizing the linguistic and cultural potential that they already bring with them exacerbating, instead, feelings of insecurity and outsider status in them (Beaudrie 2009: 19).

It is the duty of the critical teacher to prevent this feeling of not belonging from happening and create a safe environment where all learners feel (be it in separate or mixed classrooms) that they belong and that they are respected and challenged for their current level and desires to improve.

In spite of the different pedagogical necessities demonstrated by HL and FL learners, previous research has found that

1) few universities and colleges that provide HL courses also provide courses for receptive bilinguals (Beaudrie 2009); and that

2) many receptive bilinguals pass undetected as FL learners and are mistakenly placed in beginning or intermediate level FL classes (Reynolds et al. 2009).

This means that, even at universities and colleges where there is a separate track especially designed for HL learners, many receptive bilinguals are still placed in classrooms where their cultural and linguistic pedagogical needs are not addressed.

For this reason, it has been recommended that HL programs include courses not only for intermediate and advanced HL learners who can already communicate in the HL, but also for receptive bilinguals whose receptive abilities differ considerably from FL learners at that level and who might need additional identity reinforcement that, as we will see below, is lacking in regular FL classrooms.

2   The HL Learner Profile and Self-Perception

There is no doubt that many HL learners point to discrimination, poverty, and other social injustices as defining latino/hispanic experiences (Carreira 2003: 71) and that HL learners and their particular language needs have been historically neglected in the U.S. (Sánchez 1981: 91) with serious consequences. González Pino & Pino (2000: 29-30) and Hornberger & Wang (2008: 14-5) found that many students identified by the university as HL learners:

(1) do not show much interest in registering for HL classes;

(2) do not see themselves as HLLs;

(3) show lack of confidence in their language abilities and skills;

(4) require a more in-depth analysis of their linguistic skills and curricular

     needs;

(5) have internalized societal negative attitudes toward their language; and

(6) resist being separated/segregated into the heritage tracks.

These attitudes toward the heritage and majority languages are part of Tse’s (1998) four-stage model of ethnic development. The first stage, Unawareness, is a short period before attending school or leaving their ethnic surrounding in which ethnic minorities (EM) are not aware of their status as a minority. The second stage, Ethnic Ambivalence/Evasion, is characterized by ambivalent or negative feelings toward the ethnic identity and preference to identify with the dominant culture instead. The third stage, Ethnic Emergence, is the time in which EMs begin exploring their ethnic identity and sometimes embrace their own heritage. In the fourth stage, Ethnic Identity Incorporation, EMs resolve many of their ethnic identity conflicts and accept themselves as an ethnic minority.

Although Tse notes that not all racial minorities go through all four stages, she predicts that HL acquisition will not occur satisfactorily as long as the learner is in the second stage (Ethnic Ambivalence/Evasion) (Tse 1998; 19). All those students who do not identify themselves as HL learners and resist being separated into the heritage tracks are obviously not ready for HL acquisition, and placement in the FL track will not eliminate but exacerbate that feeling of not belonging. However, being placed in a classroom in which most students have been through the same identity issues and have the same linguistic background and proficiency might help them move from one stage to another. It is for this reason that HL classes especially designed for receptive bilinguals need to focus on identity and cultural formation/embracement as much as on language acquisition or maintenance.

One of the major risks that HL learners face (especially receptive bilinguals) is poor understanding on the part of their teachers of what it means to be an HL learner and what the learning objectives should be for this population. Actually, it is not uncommon for teachers to think of HL courses as remedial courses under one of these two theories: the verbal deficiency theory, or the cultural deficiency theory:

[T]he first theory believe[s] that [HL learners] are verbally deficient […] Some instructors who agree with the deficiency theory consider their task demanding and hopeless. On the other hand are instructors filled with missionary zeal whose prime objective is to introduce their [HL] students to the grammar of the Real Academia, tovosotros and escribiese and retrete to rescue them from a sure linguistic death. The approach here is prescriptivist and often racist or classist. (Sánchez 1981: 92)

Of course, and as Sánchez herself points out, both these approaches are insulting to HL learners. While the first theory assumes that they are ignorant and unable to learn, the second theory is, according to her, paternalistic and condescending. As a consequence, we encounter students in our classrooms who “have been taught, and in many cases have internalized, a feeling of inferiority about their heritage language” (Martínez 2003: [np]) that should be critically reflected upon. In fact, the main problem that both HL and FL learners face in the classroom is that native-like proficiency is an unattainable but widespread objective and what most teachers aspire their students to reach:

Asserting that "adults usually fail to become native speakers" (Felix 1987: 140) is like saying that ducks fail to become swans: Adults could never become native speakers without being reborn. (Cook 1999: 187)

In the specific case of HL learners, the expectations are even higher given that their pronunciation is usually near-native from the beginning. However, after some experience teaching HL learners, untrained teachers tend to abandon this ideal and make reference to their students’ “seriously flawed” language in disapproving and offensive terms. Some of the barriers identified by teachers and fellow classmates are the following (as identified by Valdés et al. 2008: 120):

(1) lack of access to models of academic (correct) language,

(2) negative attitudes toward Latinos by Spanish-teaching faculty,

(3) frustration with the seemingly impossible task of ‘fixing’ their Spanish,

(4) embarrassment,

(5) low self-esteem,

(6) lack of desire to learn, and

(7) lack of academic preparation.

It is our duty as critical pedagogues not only to tear down these barriers, but also to make sure that we give our students the necessary tools to fight against them on their own.

3   The Critical Pedagogical Approach to “Bad Spanish”

Descriptive linguists commonly agree that all varieties of a language are equally valid. However, and even in classes with trained HL teachers, there is still not a consensus on how to approach the individual varieties that students bring with them to the classroom. Although it seems that researchers generally acknowledge that the variety a student speaks is as legitimate as any other that can be taught or spoken in the class. What remains unclear is the importance that we should give to these varieties as compared to the prestige, academic or standard varieties that are traditionally expected from “learners of Spanish”.

Before deciding on the weight that we should give the so-called prestige varieties, we, as critical pedagogues, should reflect and ask ourselves why some varieties and not others enjoy this status among all varieties spoken in the world. As Villa (2002: pp. 222) notes, the core of this controversy lies much more in educational, ethnic, and racial issues made more on ‘personal observation and hearsay’ than in a reasoned linguistic debate made by trained language scholars over the salient features of these dialects.

In fact, college is still a very white experience (Monchinski 2008), and as such, we need to critically analyze how this fact shapes our approach to the different language varieties represented in the classroom. Until not so long ago, non-Spaniard varieties of Spanish were considered to be an inferior, less pure and less authentic form of the language by those in and outside of the teaching profession (Villa 2002; Valdés et al. 2008). More recently, there has been a shift on this Euro-centric view and the variety spoken in a nation’s capital, in particular by the educated or economic elite of that city, has come to enjoy “standard” status in that country (Villa 2002: 226). The United States constitutes an autonomous social, cultural, political, and linguistic context for Spanish language usage in the Hispanic world (Lynch 2003: 43), and as such, the varieties spoken there should enjoy a status that makes learning them a desirable goal. Nevertheless, the relegation of Spanish to a subordinate status in the U.S. has inevitably contributed to the consideration of non-U.S. varieties as superior in certain circles (Villa 2002: 225), a position that is clearly based on economical and social factors. Is this power relationship justified? Obviously not, and “if it cannot be justified it has no reason to exist and should be dismantled” (Monchinski 2008: 25). It is our duty as critical pedagogues to show our students that

(1) everyone speaks a dialect, even those who use the “educated standard

      variety of a language” and that

(2) which dialect becomes standard is not more than an accident of history

     (Gutiérrez 1997).

As noted by Valdés et al., it is not unusual that Spanish/Foreign Language departments echo “the existing nation-imagining beliefs of U.S. society within which bilingualism – especially when developed in homes and communities by immigrant populations – is profoundly suspect” and “support the idealization of the monolingual native” (Valdés et al. 2008: 125). Until all language educators take the same stand on issues related to prescriptivism and standardness, students need to be aware that it is not uncommon to find educators whose focus is “transforming native speakers of U.S. Spanish into better imitators of other varieties of the language” (Villa 2002: 224). In fact, students need to realize that the students who speak stigmatized varieties of a language are not disadvantaged by inadequate language, but simply disadvantaged by the negative attitudes toward their speech derived from their educational and social status(Gutiérrez 1997: np).

HL learners are often considered undesirable in many foreign language departments because they speak the “wrong” variety of language. It will not be until teachers and educational systems begin to change from the inside that we will be able to question the validity of such arguments and transform teaching practices and philosophies. As critical pedagogues, we have to seriously reflect on the following questions:

1)    What dialect does the teacher use in the classroom?

2)    What dialect does the teacher promote?

3)    What does the teacher think about the dialect that students already speak?

4)    How does the teacher express his/her linguistic prejudices in the classroom?

5)    How are these attitudes and expressions damaging students’ self-confidence?

6)    How does the choice of dialect among teachers convey social asymmetries to students?

7)    Is the use and promotion of a standard dialect an instance of educational malpractice? (Martínez 2003: [np])

4   The Role of the Reflective Teacher: A Not so Critical Approach

Critical pedagogy is a promising teaching approach that, while not easy to carry out to the fullest, is highly beneficial for HL learners. Even if we effusively endorse the idea that HL learners should be able to feel comfortable and proud of their heritage using their own varieties in any context, it is our responsibility as educators to prepare them to face the realities outside of the classroom. The fact that this paper is written in standard or academic English and not in another so-called non- or sub-standard variety goes against what is being proposed here. I cannot go further with the idea that all varieties should enjoy equal status if I admit that this paper would never be accepted for publication was it not written in the expected “academic variety”. We need to understand that, even when our ideal is to fight hegemony and dismantle power relations that are not justified (such as variety status), we still find ourselves in situations in which there is no other way out but to conform to the already established norms we have been trying to fight against:

[T]he instructor’s task is not to change students’ grammar; it is not to facilitate the loss of specific grammar rules or to substitute rules from one variety to another. Rather the instructor’s task is simply to facilitate the acquisition of a second or third grammar of Spanish that students must acquire for practical reasons such as writing term papers and compositions, teaching in bilingual education programs, reading literature in Spanish, working with translations, or improving skills for a future job. It is for concrete material reasons, not idealistic reasons, that one must acquire a standard variety of language. (Sánchez 1981: pp. 93)

This apparent contradiction is not so when seen from a different perspective; for example, there is nothing about a tuxedo that makes it intrinsically better than flip-flops and shorts. However, society has placed a value on the pieces of clothing that make a tuxedo “appropriate” for some contexts and flip-flops and shorts for others (Samaniego & Pino 2000; Potowski 2005). We must be aware that the reason why a tuxedo is considered formal is not intrinsically tied to that piece of clothing, and that we should not be embarrassed to wear flip-flops and shorts to a wedding if it is hot outside. Yet, reality is different and, in most cases, we tend to go with the norm and wear the tuxedo, even if it is 100 degrees and it feels really uncomfortable. I believe that choosing one language variety over another in a specific situation is very similar to choosing what to wear to a specific event: we should be able to choose whatever feels comfortable, but after weighting the pros and cons of our decisions, we might have to compromise and go with the “uncomfortable one” in order to meet other standards, or gain other social capital.

In the same manner as wearing flip-flops and shorts to a wedding can be seen as “ordinary”, “out of place” or just “inappropriate” by those who wear the tuxedos, the variety that HL learners use might be seen as “bad Spanish” by those who speak standard Spanish in certain contexts, such as a job interview or academia. If we perpetuate this paternalistic and condescending attitude in the classroom, it will have devastating consequences on the linguistic self-perception of students and that is why we have to avoid them at all costs. Moreover, it has been noted that many of our students end up acquiring a job within their own community (Potowski 2005). If this is so, why are we asking them to use a variety different from that which they will have to use in their workplace? Would speaking a different variety not make them feel awkward and out of place?

In spite of this, we should think of standard varieties not as “the enemy we all have to fight against”, but as the type of variety that students can use with a large number of speakers/readers outside their community. There will be times in heterogeneous classrooms in which there are so many varieties of Spanish that an effort has to be made in order to communicate efficiently with each other (especially with vocabulary). This does not necessarily mean that the koiné variety has to be standard Spanish. Moreover, the fact that students from different backgrounds are able to communicate efficiently with each other gives validity to any variety that might have been created out of this situation.

5   Dialect Awareness and Sociolinguistic Components in the HL Classroom

HL learners already possess some linguistic and cultural knowledge that FL learners lack at beginning levels of Spanish and, as a consequence, the fundamental objective for receptive bilinguals is to be able to externalize what they already know in a comfortable manner. The various researchers dealing with receptive bilinguals agree that the basic needs of this group are to acquire literacy skills in Spanish as well as to expand vocabulary and, above all, to gain confidence (Valdés 2000; Lynch 2008; Reynolds et al. 2009; Beaudrie 2009).

The four central goals identified by Valdés (1995, 1997) for HL teaching are the following:

1)  promotion of language maintenance,

2) acquisition of a prestige dialect of Spanish by speakers of other varieties,

3) expansion of bilingual range to include academic and formal registers, and

4) transference of literacy skills from English to Spanish.

This approach to teaching, called the “comprehensive approach”, in contrast to the traditional “limited normative approach” already described, does not consider the local dialect as a contaminated variety that needs to be eradicated. However, both of these approaches see the standard varieties as the main and ultimate objective of instruction.

A (not so) critical approach to language teaching like the one I am proposing here does not and cannot place standard varieties on top of local varieties. However, expanding the biloquial range and giving students the necessary tools to be able to critically reflect and decide which varieties they should learn or use is imperative in a classroom that intends to be “critical”. In order for students to understand all the values that are assigned to standard and non-standard varieties of the language, researchers have proposed to add a (socio)linguistic component into HL classes (Sánchez 1981, Gutiérrez 1997; Martínez 2003; Train 2003) in which the following topics are addressed:

-          History of the language process of standardization

-          Dominant vs. subordinate societies

-          Limited normative, comprehensive, and critical approaches to language teaching and learning

-          Communicative competence

-          Bilingualism vs. monolingualism

-          Prescriptivism vs. descriptivism

-          Sociolinguistic issues in English

Dialect awareness has recently become an increasingly vital topic in heritage language pedagogy. Martínez notes that

in teaching the standard dialect we tend to skew our explanations towards purely linguistic issues when, in fact, the entire notion of standard and vernacular dialects is really much more of a social issue. (Martínez 2003: [np])

It is for this reason that he argues for a critical approach to dialect awareness in the HL curriculum that “directly confronts and contests the power issues that abound in language education” (ibid.). In order to create sociolinguistically inclusive classrooms, HL-critical instructors must challenge the ideologies, biases, and assumptions that surround the so-called prestige varieties (Train 2003: 21).  

Additionally, and given that the linguistic context in which HL live is bilingual, we should critically reflect on the use and avoidance of English in the classroom. As Lynch notes:

[W]e must also pro-actively guard against the referential use of idealized, grammar-book norms in our curricula. These norms are usually taken out of their proper sociolinguistic context of monolingual regions of the Spanish-speaking world and brought into a classroom of learners whose social reality is entirely bilingual. It is imperative that Spanish language teachers in the U.S. put aside any prejudicial notions that they may have about what constitutes ‘good’ or ‘pure’ Spanish and what they consider ‘Spanglish’ or ‘español malhablado’. (Lynch 2003: pp. 42)

While students need to be aware that many speakers of Spanish throughout the world do not speak or understand English, the reality is that they live in a community in which most Spanish speakers are proficient in English to some degree and code-switching and/or calques are expected.

6   What happens after/outside the classroom?

Finally, we should not forget that what we teach in the classroom needs to have applications for real life. One of the tenets of critical pedagogy is to empower students and create a safe environment in which they feel comfortable to speak their minds and in which they are able to critically reflect on issues that matter to them. Nevertheless, we also need to prepare them for what comes along after they leave our classroom, both inside and outside the educational environment.

Even though we, as critical pedagogues, should not promote standard varieties at the expense of local varieties, we need to recognize that preventing our students from exposure to academic language would be an act of negligence on our part. HL learners, as a heterogeneous group, might have very different learning goals, and eliminating standard Spanish from the linguistic repertoire to which we expose our students could be as harmful as choosing it as the only variety to be taught. In fact, and although some HL learners have the fortune to enroll in Spanish classes especially designed for them at various levels, the general expectation is that, at a particular point, the HL and the FL tracks will merge together. At this point, HLL are expected to “pass undetected among ‘real’ Spanish majors” (Valdés 1997: 12), which poses serious problems to the pedagogy that I endorse in this paper. How can we reconcile the idea that the Spanish which students use is valid if they are expected to use academic Spanish in these classes?

Upper level classes are generally comprised of content courses (Linguistics, Literature or Culture) required mainly for majors and minors in Spanish in which both FL and HL learners are expected to perform uniformly. The objectives of these courses shift considerably from the objectives outlined for introductory Spanish for HL and FL learners. In this case, language is not the objective, but the tool in which lessons are carried out. Linguistic expectations on the part of the teacher, who more than likely will not have any training in HL pedagogy (or any kind of language pedagogy for that matter), will be the same kind that FL teachers have for FL learners.

As mentioned before, writing in academic varieties becomes necessary in order to be published, a situation that is also unavoidable in upper division classes at the undergraduate level. Moreover, when the students’ objectives are to pursue a career in Spanish, they might feel a void in their linguistic repertoire that has to be filled with the standard varieties in which their FL classmates are already proficient. In order for standard varieties not to cause eradication of the local varieties, it is imperative that the local variety is learned first and in detail (in beginning courses) and that HL learners feel comfortable using it before adding academic varieties to their repertoire:

Writing at upper-division levels continues [to be] the focus on language skill development […] requiring greater sophistication of linguistic mastery. Moreover, in upper-division writing particularly, students must begin to master the set of genre conventions appropriate to academic assignments. (Schultz 2001: 94)

Indeed, Carreira (2003) notes that learners’ objectives and motivations shift as their proficiency in Spanish develops. According to her study, students at the lowest levels of competence are moved by personal reasons, “such as connecting with family members” (Carreira 2003: 52), whereas students with high proficiency want to learn academic or professional uses of Spanish. It is for this reason that we have to reconsider the kind of student we are teaching: the one who needs to be able to communicate with their family and be part of their community, the one who needs to compete with FL learners who have only had access to academic/prestige varieties, or a mixture of both.

On the other hand, and as Carreira notes, identity negation is

not confined to the school environment, but is frequently found in their community of residence, place of work, and even in their home environment. (Carreira 2004: [np])

HL speakers who leave a safe environment such as the critical HL classroom are going to find themselves before a community which, in many cases, believes that the local variety is not “good Spanish”. In many occasions, they are going to find that native speakers of Spanish who emigrated recently or at an older age (including their own parents) still retain their native varieties and consider U.S. Spanish a linguistic aberration. It is for this reason that our students should be able to use their sociolinguistic knowledge on dialect variation to be able to critically defend their variety and avoid what Krashen (1998) calls “language shyness” (avoidance of interaction with native speakers as a result of the embarrassment of being corrected or ridiculed):

If our students walk into the class saying haiga and walk out saying haya, there has been, in my estimation, no value added. However, if they walk in saying haiga and walk out saying either haya or haiga and having the ability to defend their use of haiga if and when they see fit, then there has been value added. It is critical that we strive to allow students to develop this type of sociolinguistic sophistication in our endeavors as SHL educators (Martínez 2003: [np])

7   Conclusion

Although Spanish courses for HL learners have been in existence since the 1970s, in the last few years much attention has been especially devoted to beginning levels of Spanish as a Heritage Language (Leeman 2005; Beaudrie & Ducar 2005; Potowski 2005) and the question of how critical pedagogical approaches benefit these students more adequately than traditional approaches.

However, and even if we effusively endorse the idea that HL learners should be able to feel comfortable and proud of their heritage using their own varieties in any context, it is our responsibility as educators to prepare them to face the realities outside of the classroom. Until all language educators take the same stand on issues related to prescriptivism and standardness, our students need to be aware that it is not uncommon to find educators whose focus is “transforming native speakers of U.S. Spanish into better imitators of other varieties of the language” (Villa 2002: 224).

In this paper I propose a (not so) critical approach to HL teaching in which the main objective is to reverse the trend toward loss and empower the student to critically reflect on the social and economic issues behind linguistic choices and attitudes in the Spanish-speaking world. Although this approach does not and cannot place standard varieties on top of local varieties, it considers that preventing our students from exposure to academic or standard language would be an act of negligence on our part. In fact, expanding the biloquial range and giving students the necessary tools to be able to critically reflect and decide which varieties they should learn or use is imperative in a classroom that calls itself  “critical”. In order for standard varieties not to cause eradication of the local varieties, it is crucial that the local variety is learned first and in detail (in beginning courses) and that HL learners feel comfortable using it before adding academic varieties to their repertoire.

Additionally, I propose that HL classes include a (socio)linguistic component that allows students to understand all the values that are assigned to standard and non-standard varieties of the language as well as the different realities and attitudes that HL learners might face in and outside the school environment after they leave the classroom.

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Author:

Maite Correa, PhD

Assistant Professor of Spanish Applied Linguistics

Colorado State University

Foreign Languages and Literatures

Clark C113

Fort Collins, 80523-1774

E-mail: maite.correa@colostate.edu

.