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Heritage Language Programs:
Spanish for Native Speakers in NC
by Rachel Smith de Escobar

I. Heritage Language Programs: Spanish for Native Speakers in NC

Ernesto moved to the United States from Mexico before the formation of his conscious memory. He speaks colloquial Spanish, but is illiterate in the language of his ancestors; he sleeps his way through Spanish I, a class he’s taking because he has no other choices as a fifth-year senior. His Spanish teacher is at her wits’ end over what to “do with him.” Marina is an honor student who takes only honors and advanced placement classes and who takes great pride in the label of her heritage: Mexicana. She speaks colloquial Spanish with her friends and knows how to change register with the school’s ESL teacher, using ultra-formal speech. She can read and write in Spanish, but not at an advanced level, and she’s bored silly in Spanish II with her US-born classmates; she’s only taking the class to fulfill her college/university track requirement. Finally, Mariana is a newcomer who has ESL class twice a day. She is exceptionally bright, self-motivated, and very hard-working, but outside of the English proficiency question, she is unchallenged by the curricula being taught. All three of these students have shown signs of boredom, frustration, and giving up, yet their diverse needs could be met with the creation of a Heritage Language program, in this case, Spanish for Native Speakers.

Heritage Language classes are designed for students whose first language is one other than English, but who lack the reading, writing, and presentational speaking skills to be truly bilingual by graduation. These classes are taught in the L1 of the minority students who form the class, and the specific topics covered as well as the beginning level of instruction are determined by the majority of the students’ needs (NCDPI, 2004). For example, a class of mostly illiterate heritage Spanish speakers would begin with basic reading and writing in the Spanish, while students with some literacy in Spanish might begin with more complex texts that also cover Hispanic history and culture.

The importance of Heritage Language programs may only be outdone by high quality bilingual programs, though one may also argue that cultural instruction in the L1 in question is important no matter what program a school uses. Heritage Language programs provide minority language students with a forum in which to express themselves without fear of rejection or isolation. They begin to see their language and culture valued in a society which may not always have been friendly. These and other results of heritage language program implementation make heritage language programs absolutely necessary.

II. Research Findings

According to Brecht and Ingold (2002), the United States is home to speakers of more than 175 different languages. However, these multilingual residents of the US remain a resource of which the US government and other organizations do not take advantage. With global competitiveness at fever pitch and the United States education ranking falling each year, producing high-functioning multilingual individuals who are able to move in the international business and diplomatic worlds becomes ever more important. If the main concern of educators is global competitiveness, without taking into account students’ well-being, this reason alone should be sufficient to produce enthusiasm over heritage language courses. Outweighing the good-for-business argument, though, is overwhelming evidence that heritage language courses greatly benefit speakers of these languages in several areas.

For many years, heritage language speakers of commonly-taught languages, such as Spanish, have been placed in regular foreign language classes to remedy the “problem” of where to put them to earn foreign language credits. The problem is created by the fact that native Spanish speakers have language instruction needs that are very different from those of US-born students learning Spanish for the first time. According to the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI, 2004), “they (Hispanic students) have already attained some oral proficiency and internalized basic grammatical structures.” The Department of Public Instruction (2004) also recognizes that while native Spanish-speakers may be orally proficient, many have difficulties when reading and writing in Spanish, and their “language needs differ vastly from those of their peers learning Spanish for the first time” (NCDPI, 2004). Returning to the opening illustration, Marina and Ernesto are the students described by this quote, and their Spanish teacher is being asked to disservice not only herself, but her students, when she has to teach what amounts to two different curricula for two different classifications of students. As Robin (2002) notes, heritage language speakers in foreign language classes usually “end as the hare, watching tortoise-like North Americans crawl past them in proficiency levels in all four skills, while their own language stagnates.”

One superficial benefit of Spanish for Native Speakers courses is that successful completion of SNS I and II fulfills the same graduation requirement of two credits of foreign language instruction as do Spanish I and II (NCDPI, 2004). When one considers the difficulties that Hispanics face in trying to graduate from high school in today’s United States, it is easy to see how offering a class that these students can relate to might improve these odds.

One of the most important factors in the success of Hispanic students is the fact that heritage language courses for Spanish speakers validate and preserve the home culture of students. Students who feel that their culture and language—to both of which they must return everyday after classes—are not valued by the larger mainstream school and community societies do not experience the same levels of success as their US-born classmates. In fact, students whose culture is held in high esteem by the school community have an easier time of adjusting to US culture and ways of life (Ovando, et al, 2006, p. 191 ). Preservation of Spanish speakers’ heritage only helps them to better settle into their communities and create a school with fewer divisions in the student body. When no certain language group is denigrated as abnormal or undesirable in a school, solidarity among students and staff is more easily attained. This preservation of a heritage language and culture also drives acceptance and education in the larger community and readily makes US neighborhoods more globally kind.

Perhaps the most valuable benefit of heritage language programs is the cultivation of literacy skills that can be transferred from language to language. As NCDPI (2004, Second Languages) states, “The native language serves as the foundation for English language acquisition. When students develop their oral and literacy skills in Spanish, they enhance their literacy development in English.” The importance of L1 literacy to L2 acquisition cannot be overstated. Observations from my own ESL classroom have proven that L1 literacy is essential to faster and easier acquisition of English. Hispanic students who are illiterate in Spanish and who have been in the US for several years (one student was even born here and has always lived here) are still receiving LEP direct service due to their painfully slow acquisition of English and a failure on behalf of the school to support their English instruction with Spanish content instruction. Current newcomers, some of whom are highly literate and others who are not, have also made it clear just how important L1 literacy is in the early days of second language learning. Critical thinking skills, in any language, are indispensable in the education of multilingual professionals, and these skills easily transfer from one language to another (NCDPI, 2004).

All available research on heritage language programs supports their implementation without noting any disadvantages to offering the courses. It would greatly behoove schools with large populations of Spanish speakers, then, to offer Spanish for Native Speakers classes in order to better support all their students and to take full advantage of the resources (bilingual, bicultural students) available to them.

III. Implications for ESL teachers and students

The implications of the research on the benefits of heritage language programs (specifically Spanish for Native Speakers in North Carolina) for ESL students and teachers are striking. If establishing and maintaining primary language literacy greatly improves second language acquisition efforts by students, it would logically follow that a great many ESL students would benefit from Spanish language instruction in reading and writing. Establishing L1 literacy for students who are often already labeled “at risk” deals a better hand to a disadvantaged subgroup of students. It helps to make up for the inherent biases that exist in many curricula regarding prior knowledge requirements, and improves these students’ ability to perform well on standardized tests. This means that the very students who must bear the burden of an ill-formed testing system can gain some ground in the race to proficiency without sacrificing their identity, and subsequently their chance at real success, in the process.

Furthermore, since critical thinking skills transfer across languages, ESL students are afforded a head start on their course toward passing the scads of standardized tests that determine how, when, and if they move forward in their educational careers. From my own experiences with giving newcomers assignments in Spanish to establish and encourage the use of certain skills, I know that it is better to ask a new ESL student to do one thing at a time. That is, establishing the thinking skills needed before asking a newcomer to start thinking in his new language is easier on the student than saying, “Okay, Francisco, please think critically about a passage you don’t fully understand and produce enough language to explain your reasoning” (something which is often asked of ESL students at the high school level).

At the other end of the spectrum, if a new high school ESL student is given plenty of beginner level language instruction without challenging concept instruction, his L1 knowledge stagnates, and he begins to feel like “a kindergartner” (Cabrera, personal communication, Spring 2006). Based on my own classroom observations, this feeling like a child does nothing for the already precarious state of the student’s self esteem, and can, in fact, impede second language acquisition in the ESL classroom.

Finally, and most importantly, ESL teachers must recognize the safe haven that heritage language classes provide for their students. Any ESL teacher worth her salt will recognize and appreciate the hardships that moving to a new world places on her students. She will see the culture shock and know what to do; she will learn how to validate her students’ cultures while still giving them the tools to rise above their disadvantages through imbedded language instruction. Offering heritage language courses makes this job that much easier by honoring and preserving students’ home lives and cultures. It makes use of a host of untapped resources available to the school community while helping students to succeed through the development and support of their L1. Studies show that students who can effectively communicate with their grandparents and other relatives who share and value their heritage have a better sense of overall well-being and are less likely to drop out of high school (NCDPI, 2004).

Given these findings, it becomes clear that Spanish for Native Speakers classes would be a great asset to ESL students at all levels. Heritage language programs promote faster and less-problematic L2 acquisition, fulfill graduation requirements, validate minority students’ cultures and home lives, and leads to a reduction in drop-out rates for Hispanics. For ESL students in particular, these classes facilitate adjustment to their new culture, help to ease their discomfort in a hostile environment, and help them to reach higher proficiency levels, both in English and on standardized tests, faster.

For North Carolina, with its rapidly growing Hispanic population and increasing need to recognize and put to use our linguistic resources, it is time that high schools meet Spanish-speakers where they are instead of asking them to achieve the near-impossible, unnecessary, and unfair feat of complete assimilation. Instead of having students who say they are ni de aquí, ni de allá (from neither here nor there), we can educate world citizens who are not only English speakers, but happy, healthy, validated, bilingual, bicultural English speakers.

IV. Resources

Brecht, Richard D. & Ingold, Catherine W. (May 2002). Tapping a national resource:Heritage languages in the United States. CAL Digest.
Available: http://www.cal.org/resources/Digest/0202brecht.html

Cabrera, Saúl. (Spring 2006). Personal communication.

North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI). (2004). Spanish for native speakers.
Available: http://www.dpi.state.nc.us/curriculum/secondlanguages/resources/spanish

North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI). (2004). Second languages, 2004, Spanish for native speakers: Purpose.
Available: http://dpi.state.nc.us/curriculum/secondlanguages/scos/2004/39snspurpose

Ovando, C., Combs, M., & Collier, V. (2006). Bilingual & ESL Classrooms. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Robin, Richard (March 2002). Helping heritage hares win the race. NCLRC Readings: Hot Topics.
Available: http://www.nclrc.org/readings/hottopics/helpingheritage.html