This study examined the combined and unique contributions of home, teacher, and peer English exposure levels on Spanish-speaking preschoolers' (N = 107) English receptive and expressive vocabulary skills. The combined levels of English exposure during the fall of preschool were positively associated with children's English receptive and expressive vocabulary skills in the spring. Furthermore, English exposure levels at home were uniquely and positively associated with children's English receptive and expressive vocabularies, whereas peer English exposure levels were uniquely and positively associated with children's English expressive vocabulary. Teachers' English exposure levels were not uniquely associated with children's English vocabulary. The findings highlight the importance of the home environment and peer experiences in the classroom for maximizing Spanish-speaking children's early English vocabulary skills.Language-minority (LM) students comprise approximately 21% of all students in the United States and face unique academic challenges (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2010). Because instruction is conducted only in English in most US schools, LM children need to learn enough English to comprehend their teachers' instructions, engage with classroom content, and participate in classroom discussions before they can begin learning academic skills such as

The Spanish subjunctive has been known to pose difficulties for learners of Spanish whose native language is English (e.g., Collentine, 1997, 2003; Terrell, Baycroft, & Perrone, 1987). Investigating the same feature in heritage learners of Spanish can provide more information about the linguistic development of this growing population. This pilot study compared heritage and foreign language (FL) learners' ability to recognize native‐like and nonnative‐like mood choice in volitional constructions. Students enrolled in heritage and traditional FL Spanish courses at 3 universities in the Northeast completed a grammaticality judgment (GJ) task and an editing task, which contained examples of indicative, infinitive, and subjunctive use in volitional constructions. Heritage learners scored significantly higher on average than their FL peers on the editing, GJ, and combined (editing and GJ) tasks. These results suggest that home and community exposure play an important role in subjunctive acquisition and that instruction should be tailored to heritage learners' abilities.

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Following a cognitively-oriented framework, this study builds upon the authors’ previous work (Elola and Mikulski 2013; Mikulski and Elola 2011), which analyzed writing processes (planning time, execution time, revision time), fluency, and accuracy of Spanish heritage language (SHL) learners when composing in English and in Spanish. By analyzing Spanish foreign language (SFL) learners’ writing processes when composing in English and Spanish, the current study compares writing behaviors in both languages within the SFL group, as well as provides a comparison between the writing behaviors of the SHL and SFL learners completing the same writing tasks. SFL learners wrote less fluently, performed more surface revisions, and demonstrated less accuracy when writing in Spanish than in English, but monitored more in English. However, they allocated similar amounts of time to execution and planning across languages. Compared to their SHL counterparts, SFL learners wrote less fluently and accurately and devoted less time to Spanish intersentential planning and English monitoring. The SFL learners performed more surface revisions in Spanish and fewer meaning revisions in English and Spanish than the SHL learners. Insights into cross-linguistic transfer of writing skills and pedagogical suggestions are provided.

This study examines the motivations, attitudes, and goals of a Spanish for native speakers (SNS) class at a large Midwestern university over a semestel; using questionnaires, student interviews, classroom observation, and instructor interviews as data sources. It presents results from four students who participated in the data collection, but focuses primarily on the experiences of one student. Students enrolled in the course for both academic and personal reasons. Their goals included improvement of writing skills and mastery of orthographic accents and other grammarlspelling aspects of Spanish. Throughout the semestel; they demonstrated positive attitudes and reported improvement in their Spanish. Furthermore, the development of their skills led them to reevaluate their relationship with language in general and Spanish in particular.