[Maria] Hello everyone. This is Maria Carrera from the National Heritage Language Resource Center at UCLA. I am here with Professor Melissa Bowles from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who is an associate professor in Spanish and Portuguese, linguistics, educational psychology, and the Graduate concentration in Slate. Professor Bowles is also an international authority on research-based practices for teaching second and heritage language learners. If you teach mixed classes, her rigorous, but also highly accessible research on this topic, is a must read. We will post references to some of this work in conjunction with this podcast. Today, Professor Bowles is here to talk about instructed heritage language acquisition, which, being a relatively new field of HL studies, may not be known to all. We are very grateful to have you here Melissa, to share your research and insights on this most important topic. Welcome.
[Melissa] Thank you so much. Uh, it's really an honor to be doing this podcast or to get the opportunity to speak to everyone. Um, and I hope to have made it accessible to everyone. I think that's a really important part of the work that I do, because there are so many connections with the classroom. I hope that the classroom teachers who are listening will find it helpful. And also people who are doing research in the field.
[Maria] Absolutely, it is very accessible. I can vouch for that. So let's start with the basics, Melissa: what is instructed HL acquisition? How and when did this new area of research come about, and why should practitioners care about it?
[Melissa] Ok, I think that's, that's a great question and a great place to start. When we think about heritage language speakers. Many don't have the opportunity to take any sort of classes in their heritage language for various reasons. So they would be acquiring their heritage language purely naturalistically, right, based on the input they get in their homes, in their communities. Um, and then of course, their heritage language speakers who do have the opportunity to take classes in their heritage language. Those could be in a variety of different contexts like community schools, religious schools, the K12 education system, and I think here especially of Dual Immersion schools, or even university classes. So instructed heritage language acquisition is the study of how classroom instruction, in any of those contexts, affects heritage learners acquisition. So, that includes things like how taking classes affects their knowledge of the language itself - so, if we think about the vocabulary or the writing or grammatical features of the language, as well as how it impacts other things that are not strictly speaking a language itself, but things like motivation to maintain their heritage language, to continue using it, to continue taking classes, and even how it affects such things as high school and college graduation rates, because there is some work on that as well. Um, in terms of the origins, um [pause] it's a little hard when you asked me this question, I think, "Okay. Well, I can go back pretty far, actually." Um, it's a little hard to trace the origins. But I think for me, it goes back to some of Guadalupe Valdez's early work on heritage speakers in Spanish classrooms, and how their needs differed from those of monolingual erased English speakers, which was really the population that the courses had been designed for. I started using that term, instructed heritage language acquisition, a few years ago in my work to really delineate this as a field in its own right. The way that instructed second-language acquisition is, I think that only through systematic research will it be possible to determine what instructional methods are most effective for heritage learners. And it's really important to give a label to the work. I think that gives it, helps to give it legitimacy and to, to really get the recognition that it deserves. Um, one of the main goals of constructed heritage language acquisition research is to determine what pedagogical methods and techniques are most effective for heritage learners. So the research is directly applicable to what teachers do in the classroom. Um, I also think practitioners should care about it because it's an equity issue. I've always seen this as kind of an equity issue. And so as educators, I think we have an obligation to our students to provide them the best instruction we can.And if we just use methods that have been tested with, let's say, second-language learners. And we assume those are going to work the same way for heritage learners, were not really treating them equitably. We're not giving them all the opportunities that we could be. So I think for me it's, it's a very big issue.
[Maria] I liked the way you framed it in terms of it being an equity issue. That's important, because we want all learners, second and heritage language learners to benefit from instruction. And also, its equity also for second language learners, right? Because they can benefit a lot from the resources that the HL learners bring to the classroom. So it's really equity for all and for teachers to, who are tasked with teaching mixed glasses with out the methodology to do so.
[Melissa] Absolutely.
[Maria] So this is really, very important work. So in broad outlines, Melissa, what are some of the key findings of this research that all teachers should know about?
[Melissa] Okay, um, So I think first and foremost, teachers should know that research shows that heritage language instruction benefits heritage learners. So every heritage learner from the receptive bilingual who understands the heritage language but responds and English to the very fluent, productive bilingual who comes to the classroom with, let's say intermediate proficiency or maybe even more. Um, maybe they even come with some literacy skills - they can benefit too. So everyone along that range, and even if we look at a skill like speaking, which tends to be stronger for heritage learners than other skills like reading and writing, for instance, research tells us that heritage learners actually need instruction to progress to the higher proficiency levels on the actual scale, even in speaking. So we might think, oh, they're really good at speaking. And many heritage learners indeed are. But if we want to get them to those higher levels, they're going to benefit from instruction. And, if we think about it, it kind of makes sense, because the functions at the superior level are not really things we typically do outside academic settings. So,um, I took a look at some of the can-do statements just to be able to give you guys a good example, and I think one of those that I saw that I pulled out was, "I can skillfully relate my point of view to conversations about issues such as foreign policy, health care, or environmental or economic concerns to those made by other speakers". That's a pretty difficult challenge in any language, right?
[Maria] Exactly.
[Melissa] Even for people who are monolingual and who have been raised and educated in one language. That's pretty difficult.
[Maria] Exactly. Right? And some of the research that Olga Kagan did on this, um, showed that heritage language speakers are pretty good at relating arguments to themselves, but they're not good at using supporting evidence from the outside world, which is what you need to do to achieve a higher level proficiency, the advanced level and beyond.
[Melissa] Exactly. And I think, uh I think that's a really important point. I think it's also really important for teachers to know that all heritage learners don't have the same goals or reasons for taking classes. Um, so it's important to do a needs assessment with your particular learners and to differentiate instruction for learners who might have different skill profiles. I think to some extent, all of us work with heritage learners with differing skill profiles in differing needs, even if we're in especially probably in a community context, language school contexts. But even at the university level, which I'm most familiar with, that happens too. And I think differentiated instruction, which of course you have a lot of work on, is very important there. The last sort of broad finding I would emphasize, um, is language gains are always incremental. So sometimes I think, and I'm guilty of it, too, teachers, we sometimes unknowingly set different and maybe higher expectations for our heritage learners, because we think they're capable of so much - and they are capable of so much. But we sometimes think, "oh, well, they should be able to make these huge gains really quickly". And if we do that, we're kind of setting our learners up to fall short of expectations, when I think that's the opposite of what we should be doing. We need to understand that, that their learning is incremental and we have to support that, and we shouldn't expect something, you know, much, much greater, much quicker than what's realistic.
[Maria] That's really important for all of us to keep in mind. And I think it relates to something I, I call "the curse of being too good". Because heritage language learners coming to our classrooms with already the ability to do a lot of things. We think, "Oh, this should be easy to progress". But in fact, we know because of the way the actual proficiency standards are, are laid out, that it's harder to progress through to the harder - to the higher levels. There's more to do here.
[Melissa] Absolutely.
[Maria] Yeah. So now let's look at grammar. You've done a lot of work on grammar. Can you tell us what the research suggests about teaching grammar?
[Melissa] Um, sure. So I think - and here I'm going to talk a little bit about terminology, because I think it's really important. I think a lot of people get lost and get confused in the terminology that's used in the research and thats researchers fault - uh, that's our fault for doing that. A lot of the research on grammar points to some advantages for explicit over implicit instruction for heritage learners. And so everybody might be saying, "What did I hear that right?" Because it kind of runs counter to the observations that have also been made that explicit grammar instruction can cause frustration and even confusion for heritage learners. But actually, in my work, I found that - I don't think the findings are really contradictory. I think it's just that explicit instruction is used in different ways to describe different instructional practices in the two cases.
[Maria] Exactly.
[Melissa] So I'd want to take just a second to talk a little bit about that. So when we think about explicit instruction, if you say to somebody, uh, explicit instruction, usually what they think of most commonly is images of really traditional methods based on mechanical drills, repetition, using language in isolation, um, fill in the blanks that are maybe unrelated to any kind of communicative goal. The kinds of things that you might see in a lot of textbooks or you might have seen in a lot of textbooks in the past. Those practices would be considered explicit instruction, right? They involve rule presentation, which is one of the features that can define explicit instruction. But, they would also be further categorized as what the field calls "Focus on Forms", plural with an "s", because their primary emphasis is on linguistic structures. So any kind of activity,um, that's been created with the purpose of practicing a structure as characterized by the PPP, kind of "Present, Practice, Produce" method of teaching would be that sort of focus on forms, plural activity. So that might be something like, having students fill in blanks with future tense verb forms that are in parenthesis, right? So they have an infinitive in parentheses, they have to fill in blanks with future tense. Um, in a lot of those kinds of activities, you don't even need to understand the meaning of - you just fill in the blank, right? You look at the subject, you fill in the blank. In order to do the task, right? You can kind of blindly conjugate according to a verb chart or verb paradigm. And the meaning doesn't really matter, right, in terms of accomplishing that task. Now, those kinds of approaches, those very traditional focus on forms approaches, can be contrasted with focus on form singular approaches. And the terms are too similar, really, I think we need to change it, um, which consists of meaning focus interaction in which there's brief attention to linguistic forms. So focused on form singular assumes that acquisition occurs best when learners attention is drawn to particular structures when they're needed for communication. And that can be either planned in advanced by the teacher, or spontaneous in reaction to maybe a linguistic need that comes up in the course of communication. Like, for example, when a learner doesn't have the language form, he or she needs to communicate a desired meaning.
[Maria] So focus on forms is that - to summarize what I'm hearing you say - is driven by communication, real world language use.
[Melissa] Absolutely.
[Maria] And it - it tries to give learners the tools that they need to communicate in a, in a particular setting or context.
[Melissa] Absolutely, absolutely. So by definition, they can't be focused on form techniques, can't be decontextualized. They can't be rote, they can't be that kind of PPP, typical thing that I talked about at the beginning. And lots of research has shown that focus on form techniques are more effective than those traditional PPP approaches. For second language learners and research on grammar instruction for heritage learner supports that too. Um, and I should say that focus on form techniques are completely consistent with all the recommendations that we see for teaching grammar to heritage learners. And if, if teachers are looking for really, um, some great resources, I would recommend chapter eight of Beaudrie, Ducar, and Potowski's book, "Heritage Language Teaching: Research and Practice", which is dedicated to the topic of grammar, uh, ways to implement kinda focus on form and heritage classrooms. I know Maria, you've talked about top-down or macro approaches to heritage language teaching, which are also characterized by that kind of real-world language use, with grammar, taking a supporting role.
[Maria] Exactly.
[Melissa] Those are all prototypical examples of focus on form. And so I think, to kind of come around to where I started, that the anecdotal evidence we have about disadvantages of explicit instruction, like where it confuses learners or things like that, is probably actually referring to those traditional focus on forums plural PPP approaches, um, rather than to what we're talking about here. And I think those, unfortunately the focus on forms, plural PPP approaches, all too common. They're inappropriate in the heritage classroom - they're also inappropriate in the L2 classroom. But I think that's a conversation for another day, another podcast.
[Maria] Yes. That is a great way to put it, that grammar is ineffective when it is done with the focus on forms plural approach, but most effective, when is done with a focus on form singular approach. Excellent. Thank you. I know you've done research on instructed HL writing acquisition. Can you summarize some of this work for us?
[Melissa] Sure. So in terms of what writing research with HLs tells us, we know from surveys that heritage learners very commonly say writing is the skill they most need to improve. Which kinda makes sense, because it's usually the skill they have the least practice in with their heritage language. Um, and some work I've done with one of my former PhD students, looks at how the writing of university heritage learners of Spanish, who are taking a writing intensive heritage Spanish course, changed over the course of the semester. So we looked at a number of different features of their writing to look at aspects of language complexity, accuracy, and fluency. And we looked at the beginning of the semester and we looked at the end to see what changes we could identify. And what we found was that after a semester, the heritage learners - and we had a group that also wasn't getting instruction that we could compare to to make sure that the gains were really due to instruction and not something else. What we found isthat after the semester, the learners from the instructed class wrote with improved fluency, meaning they wrote more text more quickly, right? Which tells us that writing came more easily to them than at the beginning of the semester, which I think is really important. They also wrote with greater Syntactic Complexity. And so that was things like, they used more subordinate clauses as opposed to lots of compound sentences joined with the connector, "and" or "y" right, at the beginning we see a lot of "y", "y", "y" to join sentences. And I think a lot of Heritage teachers of Spanish will be very familiar with that. And we see more subordinate clauses at the end, right? Less dependence on this. We also saw more sophisticated vocabulary than at the beginning of the semester. I also want to say a little bit about what we didn't find because I think that's also important. Um, we didn't find that instruction had a significant effect on all aspects of their writing. So for instance, when we looked at overall accuracy, which in this case was basically a very crude measurement percent of error-free sentences, we didn't see a big improvement beginning to end of semester. If we look in greater detail, we look at particular structures that students covered in the course, we do see some improvement, right? So in certain features where we look just at those, we do see improvement. But overall on a big scale, we don't see huge accuracy gains across a semester. And I think that's important -
[Maria] Excuse me, sorry, when you mentioned, when you say accuracy, are you referring to Grammatical Accuracy, orthographic arc accuracy, both?
[Melissa]That's a very good question. In this case, we were looking at grammatical accuracy. We didn't, uh, we didn't measure orthographic accuracy because it wasn't really a focus of that particular course, that particular course, one of the things that, that the students were doing was learning how to use features in Word like spellcheck to help improve their orthography, but it wasn't something they were directly taught, like in some programs I know is the case. So we didn't think it was quite reasonable to look at their orthography when they didn't have access to those tools. So we were looking at grammar. Um, and I think those findings are important, because I think as teachers, we, we might also expect learners to improve in every single area at once. So if we're looking at writing, we might expect it to be more complex, more fluid, and more accurate - but that's also not too realistic. So the findings that I just told you about, um, they're the first to show that what we call trade-off effects, for which means gains in one area or occurring kind of at the expense of another, or an increase in one area happens within, decrease in another area. We know that happens with L2 writers, and this study shows that happens with heritage writers too. And so I think we can't expect everything to happen at once. Learning to write is a very long, very complex process in any language. Even studies that look at monolingual writers, who were in, let's say, like a College Composition course in their only language show that gains that they make are gradual, right? That is a typical pattern. So why would we expect more from bilingual writers who have a limited exposure to their minority language than we do from somebody who only is using English and isn't English composition course?
[Maria] Melissa, so would you say that if teachers are, are getting an assignment that is cognitively complex, such as an argument paper, then the focus on accuracy or the expectations for accuracy should be lower than say, if there's an assinment was a cognitively fairly simple such as presenting yourself?
[Melissa] Absolutely. Absolutely. I think that's a great point as well. So if there's something that's really cognitively challenging, like you're saying, putting together arguments, I think we have to imagine that a lot of the students mental effort is going to go into organizing those arguments. They're not going to have the resources to jump, to adjudicate, if you want to shift to accuracy, and actually the language forms they're going to use right there. Doing that argumentation are gonna be more advanced, exact less frequent than they would if they're just introducing themselves or giving a presentation about their family or something like that. So I think and for something like that, for something where you're expecting students to put together an argumentative paper, I think that's something that process writing is really good at. So maybe they, you know, they get their arguments down first as an outline and then they work that into a paper, and then maybe you have even a session where you do peer feedback. The students give peer feedback and maybe in one case they're focused on argumentation and in another session they're focused on the accuracy of the language. I think we, we need to take it step by step, um, and really break down these kinds of complex tasks for learners.
[Maria] Great point. Now, you have an edited book coming out on Instructed HL Aquisition, and I had the enormous pleasure of reading it to write the afterward, and I will tell you, I've told you this, I think that would be a really, really important book in our field. Besides grammar and writing, which you have worked on, what are some of the other topics covered in this book? And how would you summarize some of the main points that a teacher should know about?
[Melissa] Well, thank you for the kind words, I really was honored that you were willing to read it and to write the afterword that was, it's really a great, a great honor and a great pleasure for me, too. I'm really excited about the book. The title is "Outcomes of University Spanish Heritage Language Instruction in the United States". And it has two parts; so, the first part of the book focuses on how instruction effects development of specific aspects of grammar, and part two encompasses studies that examine other impacts that heritage language instruction has. So, all of the studies relate to the central question of social and educational outcomes that Spanish heritage language instruction has on university level learners, but in slightly different ways. Um, so we've talked a little bit about the grammar piece, but more on the other impacts. I think, what I would say is that heritage learners don't come to our classes, our university classes as blank slates. They don't just bring with them linguistic knowledge. They bring with them a lifetime of experiences in social and educational settings, many of which have caused them very unfortunately to have negative associations with their heritage language. We have to remember that and make every effort to ensure they have the opportunity to share their experiences, their concerns with us, and if we want to be successful in heritage language teaching, we can't think just of language in terms of linguistic features, but we have to be aware of the rich, multi-faceted nature of the heritage learning endeavor and what it entails for learners. It's not just words for them. It's attitudes, identities, emotional connections. And the studies in the volume show that heritage language classes can have a lot of positive impacts beyond just the language. So they can encourage learners to continue studying their heritage language, they can help them to have a more nuanced view of their language. So a lot of times students come to our heritage classes thinking that there is a good way to speak or a bad way to speak, or correct and incorrect words, right? We get a lot of that kind of attitude starting out. And then at the end of our course is hopefully they come out with a more nuanced view. They might develop an additional register, right? I don't - I always say, I don't want to tell anybody how they should talk to their Grandma, right? And I don't - I don't want to tell anybody what's right or wrong. What I want to do is to be able to give learners the tools to be able to make a choice and speak one way to their grandma and one way to a job interviewer and be able to make those choices. We also see from the studies that instruction, heritage language instruction is even correlated with higher retention and college graduation rates. So in that particular study and the book, Spanish speakers who took heritage classes were more likely to stay in college and to graduate than Spanish speakers who didn't take those classes - and this was at a Hispanic serving institution. Now, we can't say the classes cause higher retention and graduation rates directly, but we can see through the student's experiences, through interviews that they gave, that they certainly saw their participation in the Spanish heritage classes as a factor that kept them going: feeling part of a community, um... feeling that they were part of something really was beneficial to them.
[Maria] Communicating with other students such as themselves, right?
[Melissa] Exactly, exactly. And I think that kind of work underlines how important what we do as heritage language teachers is. So for heritage learners, their language is the crucial part of their identity, of their life. It's not just something they do in the classroom walls. And I think sometimes we might forget that, and I think it's a really important thing to remember.
[Maria] Now moving forward, what do you see the field going next? What are some areas of research I hadn't quite abandoned, developed yet. I know you have a book coming out that you will be the author of, the sole author of. Can you tell us a little bit about that book in answering this question?
[Melissa] Sure. So I think, uh, first, I'll sort of tell you where I think the field needs to go and then I'll talk a little about this book in particular. So I think there's a lot of work left to be done in instructed heritage language acquisition. So most of the work that's been done up to now has been in university contexts. So we desperately need research in other contexts where heritage language classes take place. So that's elementary, middle high schools, community schools, all those sorts of contexts. And in some ways I think the reason that most of the research was done at universities is that a lot of the researchers like my, like myself we're at universities. And so what do we have easiest access to? University students and university classes. But I think we have to do more to have partnerships with teachers in other contexts so that we can really make sure that we're able to do research there as well, because we want to make sure that those opportunities the students are getting the kind of instruction that will be most beneficial for them too. So I think partnerships with teachers in other contexts are really important for that work to happen. Most of the work that's been done in instructed heritage language acquisition has been non-Spanish, which make sense in one way because it's the most widely spoken heritage language. My colleague Julio Torres and I analyzed research that exists in an instructed HLA, and we've found just a handful of studies and other languages: Korean to Chinese and Russian specifically. So we desperately need work on other languages. Uh, I'm not saying not to work on Spanish. We need work on Spanish too, but we even more desperately need work on other languages. So some findings that we have from Spanish may apply to other languages, but others might not. And we won't know for sure unless we have research to either confirm or refute that. I also think we need more studies on receptive bilinguals. So a lot of the work that's done is with productive bilinguals. Bilinguals who were already to some extent speaking the heritage language, but we need more research on those who are understanding, but they're responding in English. How are they affected by instruction? Are they benefiting from the same kinds of instructional techniques as the productive bilinguals, or do they need something different? And that's an unexplored area. Um, I think also the way we talk about and measure proficiency. So a lot of the research studies rely on written measures of proficiency. Things like the "Dele" test that we use in Spanish. Even though we know it wasn't designed for heritage learners. We know they've probably underestimates heritage learners proficiency. So I think we need to, to get some additional measures, including oral measures like elicited imitation measures, or even looking into more global measures of proficiency, like integrated proficiency assessments. In order to really get a better sense of what's going on, and I think we're, we're seeing only a part of that we could be seeing
otherwise. And in terms of my book that I'm working on, um - so, my book takes a little bit of a different focus. So it's looking at context that maybe we haven't traditionally thought of as heritage language acquisition around the world, and it's taking from that what we can draw for the field of heritage languages specifically. So for instance, in most of Africa, which is quite highly multilingual, So you would rarely find someone who's not at least bilingual or trilingual. Most communities actually provide instruction to students in their home language, in their native language, through about fourth or fifth grade. Typically at that point, the educational system switch them over to some colonial language. So, then their schooling from that point forward is in English or French or something like that. But that research on what's going on in those classrooms, in the whole languages for those children? How does that impact maintenance of their home language and their transmission of that when they may be in a community where there are not so many speakers of the home language, they may be a minority in their country. Looking at some of that research and seeing, how does that have an impact on what we're doing with our heritage learners? That's kind of the, the focus on the book and it looks at research all around the world, which has been really eye opening, but also challenging because it's a lot of really new studies and new ways of looking at language that I hadn't looked at before.
[Maria] So would you say you would be looking at, you are going to be looking at naturalistic contexts as well?
[Melissa] Um... primarily, my focus has been on those cases where students do have access to classes. So it's - because the focus is still instruction, I do want to look at, you know, even in the cases in Africa, where the instructions only maybe through fourth or fifth grade, um, you know, what is that impact? If I find studies where - and I haven't found any so far - but, if I were to find a study where there was a group that had not received that type of instruction in their home language and one that had, certainly I would include it because I think that's - that would be an interesting comparison.
[Maria] I ask this question, Melissa, because as you know, experiential learning, is becoming increasingly important in foreign languages, and of course heritage languages. And yet, we don't quite know yet how learning proceeds in these contexts, which are really important for learning real-world language. So we, I would add to the wonderful list you gave us of areas in need of research, I would say, these kinds of experiential learning contexts, we need to understand them better.
[Melissa] Absolutely. I certainly agree with that. Things like project-based learning that's happening, um -
[Maria] Right! Service learning, internships, study abroad, et cetera.
[Melissa] Absolutely.
[Maria] Well, and this brings us to the end of this wonderful podcast. I am so grateful to you for taking time, a lot of time, as a matter of fact, to do this with us. I think a lot of us will benefit from this podcast, Melissa. And we look forward to reading your books, with a plural. [laughs]
[Melissa] All right, well, thank you so much, and um, feel free to edit me down a little bit if you think I've gone on too long or gone off tangent.
[Maria] Not at all, not at all.
[Melissa] So thank you everyone for inviting me and for listening.
[Maria] Thank you, Melissa.
[Melissa] Absolutely.