Spanish Heritage Learners' Emerging Literacy Empirical Research and Classroom Practice Routledge Advances in Spanish Language Teaching Series

Spanish Heritage Learners' Emerging Literacy: Empirical Research and Classroom Practice introduces a comprehensive, multi-level empirical study on the writing abilities of Spanish Heritage Learners at the beginner level; the findings guide a broad selection of instructional activities and pedagogical resources to support writing development in the heritage language classroom.

This is the first book dealing exclusively with writing competence among Spanish Heritage Language Learners through the integration of empirical evidence and instructional perspectives to address core questions on heritage language literacy. In addition to the in-depth analysis of Spanish production?spelling, verb usage, grammatical features, vocabulary, and discourse organization?the volume revises the latest perspectives within the Heritage Language Education field, and provides effective teaching approaches, innovative classroom implementations, and up-to-date resources.

This versatile volume, designed for researchers and practitioners in the fields of Bilingual Education, Language Teaching Methods, and Heritage Language Pedagogy, integrates empirical evidence, global perspectives on heritage language teaching, and suggestions for further research.

List of Illustrations

List of Abbreviations

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. Heritage Languages and Spanish Heritage Language Speakers in the United States

2. Spanish Orthography in Heritage Language Writing

3. Spanish Verbs in Emerging Heritage Language Writing

4. Building Sentences in Spanish: Complexity, Fluency and Accuracy

5. Spanish Vocabulary Knowledge in Action

6. Discourse Competence and Emergent Argumentative Writing

7. Towards a Signature Curriculum for Spanish as a Heritage Language

8. Teaching and Learning Heritage Languages: New Directions, Enduring Questions

Notes

References

Index

Flavia Belpoliti is Associate Professor of Spanish Linguistics and Director of the Spanish Graduate Studies Program in the Department of Literature and Languages at Texas A&M University-Commerce.

Encarna Bermejo is Associate Professor of Spanish Linguistics and Coordinator of the Spain Study Abroad Program in the College of Arts and Humanities at Houston Baptist University.