Response to inquiry: Definition of "heritage learner"

[Scott McGinnis]

Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2001 20:22:13 -0600 (CST)
From: Marta.Fairclough at mail.uh.edu

This is in reply to Hi-Sun's inquiry.

The only empirical studies in Spanish that I can think of where the two
groups
are compared are the following:

Faingold, E. D. (1996). Advanced grammar and composition: A study of
Anglo vs. Hispanic students. In D. Villa (Ed.) First annual conference on
Spani
sh for native speakers: Working papers, (pp. 2-24). New Mexico: NMSU.

Lipski, J. (1993). Creoloid phenomena in the Spanish of transitional        
bilinguals. In A. Roca & J. Lipski (Eds.), Spanish in the United States:
Lingui
stic contact and diversity, (pp.155-182). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Lipski's study is based on oral interviews and compares heritage
(transitional
bilinguals) and non-heritage learners but it is a qualitative analysis.


For my Ph.D. dissertation (I just defended it this summer) I researched the
eff
ects of formal instruction on the learning process of the standard variety
of S
panish by Hispanic heritage learners attending intermediate and advanced
course
s at the university level (sorry, long sentence!). It was basically a
descripti
ve study using mostly cross-sectional data in which I analyzed the
expression o
f hypotheticality (+/- PAST hypothetical discourse).

I examined the data from different angles (comparison of different tasks:
cloze
, written paragraphs, interviews; variation in the oral data; qualitative
analy
sis of some longitudinal data, etc.). I also compared some of the results to
th
ose of traditional learners of Spanish as a foreign language since both
heritag
e and non-heritage tracks merge at the advanced level.

In this comparison study between the two tracks, I found a significant
differen
ce in the means of accuracy between the two groups. While the heritage group
pr
oduced a higher percentage of target-like forms in the written and oral data
be
fore and after instruction, the non-heritage group seemed more homogeneous
and
the improvement was more dramatic (I have lots of tables and numbers for
these
results).

The outcomes were explained by the concept of 'language (or dialect)
distance',
 which causes both positive transfer and interference in the learning
process o
f the HL group. The distribution of non-target-like forms was also different
in
 the two groups.

As for pedagogical implications of the findings to the teaching of Spanish
to s
tudents of Hispanic heritage, it seems that the best approach should include
an
 awareness component. A contrastive approach between the standard and the
home/
contact variety would contribute to the separation of the variaties by
noticing
, comparing and then incorporating the new elements into the developing
linguis
tic system.

I apologize for the lenght of this email but it is very difficult for me to
try
 to summarize my research in a few lines after working on it for such a long
ti
me. If anybody is interested or has any questions, my email is:

MFairclough at uh.edu     

For my study I adapted SLA methodologies and used a variationist framework.
It
would have been nice if there had been more empirical studies to guide my
resea
rch and help me avoid the MANY (I am sure!) shortcomings of this
investigacion.

Marta Fairclough
University of Houston






>Hello,
>
>I'm interested in looking into cognitive/ lingusitic differences of       
>heritage learners in comparison to non-heritage learners and other
learners.
>
>I was wondering if there are any (empirical) studies done in the literature
>on linguistic characteristics, cognitive styles (psycholinguistic), and/or
>aptitude of heritage learners?
>
>I would appreciate any suggestions for direction.
>
>Thank you.
>
>Hi-Sun Helen Kim
>University of Hawaii at Manoa
>Dept. of East Asian Languages and Literature
>Korean Linguistics (Ph.D.)
>