1. Focus on Form for HLs in a Mixed Class: A Classroom-Based Research Study

• Julianne Bryant, Ph.D., Biola University

Since its inception, the field of heritage language acquisition has argued for separate classes due to the distinct learning needs of heritage learners (Beaudrie et al., 2014). Yet, as a result of the demographic and enrollment realities of most institutions of higher education (Johnson, 2019; Schwalenberg, 2019), many language programs are pressured into reducing their offerings and teaching both heritage and second language learners in the same classes (Beaudrie, 2012). Still the literature has demonstrated that heritage learners continue to have separate learning needs (Bayram et al., 2016; Beaudrie et al., 2014). Due to the challenges this presents, experts in the field have advocated for instruction using macro-based approaches like project-based learning and task-based approaches that can meet the needs of both types of learners (Carreira, 2016). These approaches focus on language use by incorporating tasks and projects and building on the strengths that each learner brings into the classroom. However, many times heritage learners avoid the forms that they do not know and, thus, do not demonstrate language learning gains or acquire new forms, preventing them from developing advanced levels of proficiency (Torres, 2018; Kisselev et al., 2020). In fact, in a recent meta-analysis on heritage language research completed in the field thus far, heritage language instruction has only demonstrated a moderate, positive effect on heritage language development (Bowles & Torres, 2021). This suggests that without a more intentional focus on forms in the HL classroom, heritage learners will not advance toward higher levels of linguistic proficiency (Bayram et al., 2016; Kisselev et al., 2020). Thus, the field has made a call to 1) more focus on form in the HL classroom, and 2) more classroom-based research on the effectiveness of these pedagogies (Bowles & Torres, 2021; Kisselev et al., 2020). This proposal seeks to respond to these two calls.

This paper presents the findings of a study conducted to investigate the linguistic gains of heritage learners in a mixed/hybrid class. Students met in a combined setting one day a week and in separate settings for another in order to capitalize on the advantages of having both HLs and L2s together while still meeting the needs of each type of learner. The heritage learners completed a semester long inter-generational research project that incorporated form-focused strategies as a means of developing linguistic skills beyond the intermediate level. Students completed language tasks during the first week of the class to document their ability to both recognize and produce forms in aspect and mood. A post-test was then given during the last week of the semester to determine if this approach resulted in increased accuracy. Classroom data demonstrated that this approach resulted in increased accuracy in both aspect and mood for both language recognition and production of the identified forms.

References

2. Sustaining Kazakh Language Abroad: Community-based Kazakh Language Learning in Los Angeles

• Munira Hailati, University of California, Santa Barbara
• Gulnara Boribayeva, Ph.D., Visiting Scholar at University of California, Santa Barbara

Community language schools, serving as providers of language and cultural education, play a crucial role in promoting cultural-linguistic rights and social justice initiatives among linguistic minority communities (Fishman, 2014).This paper utilizes the Language Socialization framework (Duff, 2010; Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986) to investigate language and interactional practices among adults and minors at a community-based Kazakh cultural center in Southern California. Participants in this study are ethnic Kazakhs with diverse residency lengths and various heritage language proficiencies, all working towards learning Kazakh as the heritage language. Through the analysis of natural interactions captured in videos of children's language learning, boxing, and poem recitation performances, the study aims to address how the interactional processes between teachers and students contribute to the maintenance and reproduction of Kazakh identity, as well as the preservation of the Kazakh language among younger generations.The findings reveal that younger children born or raised in the United States require more support from teachers to become familiar with communicating in Kazakh. Teachers employ various pedagogical strategies to socialize children in speaking the heritage language. These include providing positive assessments and directives to encourage children while they are speaking the language, as well as organizing dancing classes to socialize children perform cultural elements. For teenagers who prefer bilingual communication and resume learning the heritage language, teachers provide them with weekly traditional Kazakh music instruments class to immerse teenagers in Kazakh music culture. Through the lens of the Language Socialization framework, the findings underscore the importance of teacher-student interactional processes in maintaining Kazakh identity and language, particularly for younger generations born or raised in the United States. The strategies employed, ranging from positive reinforcement for children to engaging teenagers in Kazakh music class and community-building activities, contribute significantly to the ongoing efforts of language preservation and cultural enrichment within the Kazakh diaspora in Los Angeles.

3. Using the DELE proficiency test with heritage Spanish speakers

• Gregory D. Keating, Ph.D., San Diego State University
• Lisa Marie Arzaga Hart, San Diego State University

Heritage speakers who achieve higher levels of proficiency in their heritage language are more likely than those of lower proficiency to attain monolingual-like knowledge of the heritage language and to process heritage language input similarly to monolinguals (e.g., Montrul, 2016, chapter 7). Thus, assessment of proficiency in heritage languages is an issue of great importance.The bulk of (psycho)linguistically-oriented studies with heritage Spanish speakers assesses Spanish proficiency using a 50-item test (Montrul, 2012, 2015) comprised of a 30-item vocabulary section from the Modern Language Association test and a 20-item cloze passage from the Diploma de Español como Lengua Extranjera (DELE, Instituto Cervantes, 2007). The composite nature of this test—also called the DELE—raises several critical questions that have not been thoroughly addressed in previous research:1. Is the DELE internally reliable when used with heritage speakers (HSs)?2. Does the DELE identify a wide range of ability levels?3. What background variables predict HSs’ performance on the DELE?In answer to these questions, total and component DELE scores (vocabulary, cloze) provided by 132 heritage Spanish speakers who were recruited into two recent online reading experiments were submitted to three sets of analyses: Analysis 1: reliability testing using Cronbach’s alpha and, owing to limitations of alpha (Flora, 2020; Trizano-Hermosilla & Alvarado, 2016), McDonald’s omega; Analysis 2: a two-parameter (item difficulty and item discriminability) logistic Item Response Theory model to determine the levels of latent ability needed to score well on the DELE; and Analysis 3: multiple regression models with exposure to Spanish and English via family, friends, TV, music, and reading as predictor variables. The results of the reliability testing showed that internal reliability for the DELE was high in both tests (alpha =.83; omega = .81), but lower for each component part in isolation: MLA vocabulary (alpha =.76; omega = .06); DELE cloze (alpha =.67; omega = .03). Regarding the logistic Item Response Theory model, item information curves for the DELE and its subcomponents suggest the test provides the most information for lower-than-average ability levels. Finally, the multiple regression analyses with background variables found that higher performance on the DELE and its subcomponents was predicted both by increased use of Spanish and decreased use of English with family. Curiously, higher scores on the cloze passage were associated with lower reported exposure to Spanish via reading. The results suggest that proficiency assessment with this test should include both parts but that the test may not provide adequate information for higher-than-average ability levels.

References

4. Exploring the Lived Experiences of Heritage Language Learners as Dual Language Immersion Teachers: Implications for Multilingual Teacher Education

• Kevin Perez, New York University

In response to the increased demand for Dual Language Immersion (DLI) Programs in the United States (Cervantes-Soon, 2017; Ee, 2017), this research delves into the lived experiences of five DLI Teachers who self-identify as Heritage Language Learners (HLLs) (Carreira, 2004). As the need for highly qualified bilingual educators intensifies (Howard & López-Velásquez, 2019; Lachance, 2017; Oberg De La Garza, 2015), this study aims to provide valuable insights into the complexities faced by HLLs in becoming DLI teachers. Conducted through online, in-depth, semi-structured qualitative interviews, the study uncovers three salient themes: the complexity of navigating language and social structures, the lack of pertinent coursework in teacher credential programs, and the importance of embracing co-learning among students. Participants reflected on childhood language practices, negotiated identity expectations, and grappled with the challenges of adhering to strict language separation policies at their school sites. Additionally, they highlighted the deficiencies in bilingual teacher credential programs, revealing minimal coursework that inadequately prepares HLLs for the demands of DLI teaching. The findings highlight the significance of recognizing the nuanced intersection of language teaching and identity, challenging prevailing language ideologies, and creating an inclusive space for multilingual development in educational settings. Finally, this paper calls for a reconceptualization of the strengths HLLs bring to the profession and advocates for critical partnerships with universities to develop targeted bilingual credential programs. This study contributes to the ongoing discourse on bilingual teacher recruitment and retention, offering practical implications for multilingual teacher education.

References

5. Politeness and Addressee Pronouns in Heritage Language Spanish

• Patricia Schneider-Zioga, Ph.D, California State University, Fullerton
• Brenda Garcia Ortega, California State University, Fullerton
• Viviana Camacho-Aceves, California State University, Fullerton
• Tarek Issa, California State University, Fullerton
• Betsy Navarrete, California State University, Fullerton
• Nico Romero, California State University, Fullerton
• Giovanni Rubio, California State University, Fullerton
• Jonathan Young, California State University, Fullerton
• Elizabeth Romero, California State University, Fullerton
• Paeng Martinez, California State University, Fullerton

Heritage language speakers of Spanish (HLS) are generally aware that their use of addressee pronouns differs from that of native speakers (NS). Spanish addressee pronouns encode politeness through a formally third-person polite form (usted) and a formally second-person familiar form (tú). Heritage speakers report uncertainty about the use of the polite usted form. Our study uses corpus and survey data to investigate this issue. Our corpus data (from Corpus del Español en el Sur de Arizona), consisting of sociolinguistic interviews of speakers of different ages and social distance/familiarity relationships, reveal that heritage speakers extensively engage in politeness marking. Independently of using usted or tú, this is evident through appropriately shortened words exclusively employed in situations of high solidarity and familiarity such as para “for” being shortened to pa. We also observed avoidance of pronoun use in situations of social distance. ✦One factor contributing to uncertainty in using usted is that for many heritage speakers, primary exposure to usted is within the family, with usted only being used toward older family members. They seldom experience its use in situations where social distance (Brown and Levinson 1987) might play a role, as their exposure to Spanish is strongly connected to use within the family. For these speakers, most frequently age alone, rather than age and social distance, tends to determine the choice of addressee pronouns. When the decisive factor is social distance, uncertainty arises about using usted to express politeness. ✦Corpus data show high variability in use of addressee expressions: i) in lower proficiency HLS, usted triggers second-person subject/verb agreement; ii) with higher proficiency speakers, formally third-person usted(polite) is appropriately employed, but, as the interviews progress, tú/second-person(familiar) pronouns are increasingly chosen to refer to the same addressee, rather than formally third-person anaphoric pronouns being used. However, there is evidence that at least some of the variability is only apparent—and arises, we argue, due to the features that are tracked in pronominal anaphora, rather than inconsistent use of addressee pronouns or lack of knowledge about honorific addressee features with respect to agreement processes. The variability sharply contrasts with NS Spanish where pronominal anaphoric reference to usted is consistently third-person singular. ✦In higher proficiency HLS, usted is treated as a formally third-person expression for subject/verb agreement but can be antecedent for a null pronoun that is subject of a verb inflected for second-person agreement (1) or for a second-person possessor tú, rather than formal su (possessive data not included):(1) ¿... cuando usted-3s vin.o-3s a los Estados_Unidos ya pro-2s supi.ste-2s como hablar inglés? (‘when you.POLITE came-3s to the United_States, did you.FAMILIAR already know-2s how to speak English?’)We will present a paradigm establishing the morphological and semantic pronominal agreement possibilities we found, including anaphoric pronouns local to and distant from semantically second-person antecedents and reflexive anaphora. ✦ proposal: pronominal anaphora for NS Spanish targets usted’s morphological third-person feature but HLS can also optionally target usted’s semantic addressee feature accounting for much of the apparent variability in anaphoric pronoun choice.

6. Vocabulary and Short-term Memory Skills in Adult Heritage Speakers

• Gabriela Simon-Cereijido, Ph.D., California State University, Los Angeles
• Lucía I. Méndez, Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Greensboro
• Beatriz Barragan, Ph.D., A.T. Still University

The cognitive advantage (Bialystok, 2001, 2015, 2017; Costa & Sebastián-Gallés, 2014) has not been consistently examined during language processing tasks with bilinguals with varying levels of language proficiency. Heritage language speakers are characterized by proficiency variability within and across their languages. Performance in short-term memory (STM) tasks may be impacted by the degree of language proficiency in each of their two languages rather than bilingualism per se (Rosselli et al. 2016, Luk et al., 2011). Studying heritage speakers as an aggregate group may obscure important within-population variability (Kim et al., 2018; Winsleret al., 2014). This presentation reports findings from a study exploring the relation between breadth and depth of vocabulary and STM in neurotypical heritage bilingual Latinx college students (Spanish and English) with varying levels of proficiency in their two languages. The study was guided by the following research questions: (1) what is the relation between Vocabulary Breadth and STM measures in English and Spanish by level of bilingual proficiency? and (2) what is the relation between Vocabulary Breath in English and Spanish and English Vocabulary Depth by level of bilingual proficiency?Forty-three heritage Spanish/English bilingual adults completed a linguistic questionnaire and participated in oral vocabulary breadth assessments (i.e., receptive vocabulary tests in each language). English vocabulary depth was measured by a word association task. Short-term memory (STM) assessments included digit span and phonological working memory (nonword repetition) in both languages. Participants were grouped into three bilingual proficiency levels based on combined vocabulary scores. To analyze the data, bivariate correlations and ANOVAS were performed between vocabulary breadth and depth and STM measures.Our results suggest that in our sample, a cognitive STM advantage, as measured by digit span, may be more associated with the degree of bilingual linguistic proficiency rather than with bilingualism per se. No significant differences in NWR between the different groups of bilingual heritage participants was observed. Additionally, results also suggest that a Vocabulary Depth advantage may be more associated with the degree of linguistic proficiency than with bilingualism per se.Our findings suggest that supporting breadth and depth of vocabulary in each language through explicit instruction may have a positive effect on cognitive skills such as STM in heritage Span/English speakers. These findings can guide educational approaches to meet the educational needs of heritage bilinguals.Regarding study limitations, our sample was small and predominantly female of specific age groups and limited geographical regions, and the NWR reliability requires improvements for this population.

7. Partially Overlapping Scripts in Heritage and Second Language Processing: The Case of Russian and English

• Mila Tasseva-Kurktchieva, Ph.D., University of South Carolina
• Angelina Rubina, University of South Carolina
• Danielle Fahey, Ph.D., University of Montana

Studies examining bilingual processing of orthography-phonology interaction largely overlook both pre-lexical (sound-letter) processing and heritage (HL) versus second language (L2) distinction. In monolingual research on pre-lexical processing, orthography-to-phonology activation is expected, e.g., lexically-mediated orthography affects phoneme monitoring (Dijkstra et al., 1995); auditory rhyme processing (i.e., tie and rye, Ziegler & Ferrand, 1998); processing of novel words with (in)congruent grapheme-to-phoneme-correspondence (GPC) (Rastle et al., 2011). In bilingual research, orthography-to-phonology activation has also been found, e.g., L2 pronunciation depends on the orthographic forms of homophones (Bassetti et al., 2018); L2 processing of auditorily confusing words depends on orthography (Escudero et al.,2008).HL status can affect psycholinguistic processing. Minority mother-tongue status distinguishes HLs from L2ers, who acquire minority languages sequentially, often formally. Bilingual status has shown correlation with GPC (early bilinguals’ word perception; production; language exposure in sound discrimination of HL speakers versus L2ers). However, previous research has not accounted for partially overlapping orthographies or GPC (mis)matches at pre-lexical level for L2 versus HL speakers. Therefore, we considered how orthography and phonology interact in partially overlapping English and Russian orthographies in L2 versus HL auditory pre-lexical processing.We presented a Qualtrics experiment with 2 randomized blocks (i.e., ‘print,’ ‘cursive’) each with 3 conditions: (1) ‘matching’ (i.e., phonologically, not orthographically, matching graphemes); (2) ‘mismatching’ (i.e., orthographically, not phonologically, matching graphemes); (3) ‘foils’ (no grapheme or phoneme correspondence). For the print block, matching pairs included Russian п (/p/) and English p. Mismatching pairs included Russian letter п (/p/) and English letter n. For cursive, matching items included Russian м /m/ and English m while mismatching included Russian m /t/ and English m. 31 items were presented per condition per block (i.e., all Russian letters excluding ъ and ь). Each trial simultaneously presented the question “Do these letters sound the same?”, a pair of Russian and English graphemes, and a Likert scale from 1 (“very different”) to 6 (“very similar”). Participants previously completed proficiency tests in Russian and in English (with at least B1 CEFR) and background surveys. Background questions included place of birth (‘birth’), mother tongue (‘L1’) and how long they studied Russian (‘Russian study length’). Responses (N=51) indicated 23 USA born Russian HLs, 14 USA-born Russian L2ers, 6 Russia-born English HLs, 6 Russia- or Ukraine-born English L2ers, and 2 other English L2ers.We performed a forward stepwise logistic regression to compare bilingual background factors, adding significant predictors that decreased the AIC value more than 10 points. Within-subject factors started the model (step0: ‘condition’, AIC=24624; step1: ‘letter’ , AIC=22568; step2: ‘block’, AIC=22553). ‘Russian study length’ (step3: AIC=19862) and ‘birth’ (step4: AIC=19758) significantly improved the model, but Russian (AIC=19758) or English (AIC=19755) proficiency scores or ‘L1’ (AIC=19758, both L1 Russian and L1 English) did not. Preliminary results suggest no effect of L1 or proficiency level but a positive effect of the Russian study length and the place of birth. Results imply that pre-lexical activation (i.e., grapheme-to-phoneme correspondence) is affected by speaker external factors (e.g., total exposure; national language) rather than speaker-internal factors (e.g., mother tongue; proficiency).