Sumner Academy of Arts and Science
Spanish and Spanish Heritage Language Teacher

 Born and raised in Puerto Rico

BA Modern Languages - Cum Laude (Italian and
French)

MA in Arts, Spanish /Latin America Literature

PhD in - Grand Canyon University, in progress
 Member: MLA, KSWLA, KSDE World
Languages Advisory Committee, Phi Lambda-
Theta

Sumner Academy First Spanish Native Speaker
Program Teacher

Instructor: 11 yrs. Teaching K-14 and 4 yrs.
Teaching Spanish for HL Level I - III




Second Language Learner (L2)

Exposed to formal second language instruction at an older age

Already have an understanding of the meanings, uses, and purposes of (first) language; they now must… go on to learn how the second language--oral and in print--expresses those purposes, uses, and meanings (Lindfors, 1987).

 1970’s Canada
 Since the 1990’s in USA

Exposure to non-English language outside the formal educational system

Anyone who has had in-depth exposure to another language
Hornberger &Wang (2008)


Native speaker

Bilingual

Home background
*Different names, different interpretations
(Valdés, 1996)

Language Native Foreign Heritage
L1 or L2 (age) L1 (child) L2 (after the first language has been acquired)
L1/L2?
Exposure to target
Language
Full language
Community
Outside of community Limited community


Students language proficiency (myth vs reality)

Students knowledge about grammar forms

Students skills: performing their knowledge of
Spanish grammar

Students learning style preferences (yes, you have them!)

The number of languages they have studied

Students continuous exposure to the target language
(http://www.carla.umn.edu/strategies/sp_grammar/variety.html)


To learn Spanish for academic purpose
 understanding language for specific learning goals

Clear future goals
 content relevant to learners short and long term goals

Effective language teaching
 organizing learning around subject specifics
 purposeful activities
Sloan & Porter (2008)

 to learn students culture and learner’s characteristics
 to get prepared with unit, lessons and activities with this audience in mind
 to ensure a bias free and good quality of learning environment
 to revisit and adapt classroom behavior rule

 to discuss and recognize the relevance of achievement/success in class
 to relate transferability of knowledge to other courses
 to focus on reading for comprehension and understanding (making inferences, critical thinking and critical analisis…)
 to write on target language (creative, summarizing and translations)

We are called to:

Blend native and second language methods, not students

Impact the formal studies of the HL

Impart will and motivation toward reading in target language

Improve their reading skills, their development and knowledge to read in another L2
(Berstain, Bruke, Fafre & Delcourt)

Instructional Strategies

Differentiated
 Student-center

Collaborative
 Memorization

Higher level thinking skills
Skills

Reading
 Writing

Translation
 Listening

Speaking
How will/do you teach your HL students?
How proficient are your HL students?


How do we evaluate HL ability to read?

What are the underlying components of motivation to read?

Are the HL reading motivation equal for the
L2 group? Do they have similar or different reading motivation profiles?

To what degree is motivation related to HL reading ability?

Have students self rate their ability to read.

Provide six reading tasks from basic to more complex.

Provide a reading motivation questionnaire that includes items to measure some theoretical motivation components


Set-up clear knowledge-based reading goals

Use stimulating activities that connect reading to the students’ lives outside of the classroom or school

Support students autonomy by providing a variety of texts to choose from, based on their capacity and topic of interest
 Provide strategy instruction that may help students improve bottom-up and top-down processing

Encourage collaborative learning by allowing students share their opinions on what they read

Create assessment tools easy to students systematically self-monitor what they read and how they read it

Let them know you care about their progress

Explore/focus on production skills: I.e., writing and speaking effectively

Kagan, O., & Dillon, K. (2003). A new perspective on teaching Russian Focus on the heritage learner. Heritage Language Journal, Available: http://www.carla.umn.edu/strategies/sp_grammar/variety.html
http://www.ksde.org
http://www.international.ucla.edu/languages/heritagelanguages/journal/article.
asp?parentid=3693
Polinsky, M. & Kagan, O. (2007). Heritage Languages: In the ‘Wild’ and in the Classroom. Language and Linguistics Compass, 1/5: 368–395,
10.1111/j.1749-818x.2007.00022.x
Sloan, Diane, and Porter, Elizabeth (2008). The management of English
Language support in postgraduate business education: the CEM
Model (contextualisation, embedding and mapping), Northumbria
University DOI:10.3794/ijme.72.188, International Journal of
Management Education 7(2)
Valdés, G. (2000). The teaching of heritage languages: an introduction for
Slavic-teaching professionals. The learning and teaching of Slavic languages and cultures, Olga Kagan and Benjamin Rifkin (eds.),
375–403.