Community College Focus Group

To address the issues that community college instructors have cited above, we will create a working group to gather data on community college Spanish and Russian HL learners and their environment, surveying instructors and students at 10 Los Angeles area colleges. We will convene a focus group to discuss instructional issues that will inform the development of a teacher survey of the types of classes offered in their language programs, heritage speaker enrollment, instructional challenges, the complications of teaching mixed HL/L2 classrooms, levels offered, materials and strategies used, best practices, instructors’ experiences of students’ academic and socio-affective needs, instructors’ educational backgrounds, and the education they have received in HL teaching. Results from this survey will be used to create a second student survey that will allow us to assess the needs and skills of community college HL students.