Critical language awareness for the heritage context: Development and validation of a measurement questionnaire

Abstract

Critical language awareness (CLA) is increasingly identified as a central component of the Spanish heritage language (SHL) classroom (Leeman, 2005; Martínez, 2003; among others). As a minority language, SHL is subject to sociopolitical, cultural, and economic forces that devalue its status. It is devalued in the eyes of the public, as a legitimate U.S. language, and as something worthy of being maintained. It is essential that students receive instruction not only in the heritage language, but also on the contextual factors that affect the Spanish-English sociopolitical relationship in the United States. Such instruction will enable learners to begin resisting heritage language loss by questioning language ideologies that promote English monolingualism and standard, monolingual Spanish as the ideal norm. The aim of this study was to develop a questionnaire with adequate psychometric properties to measure CLA in the SHL context. The respondents were 301 students enrolled in SHL courses in four U.S. universities. The questionnaire results were submitted to a series of statistical analysis to investigate how well the instrument meets the criteria of reliability and validity specified in this study. The final 19-item instrument had adequate psychometric properties and detected change in the CLA of students in a class where CLA was taught.

Critical language awareness and L2 learners of Spanish: An action‐research study

“…Written reflections were analyzed alongside CLA survey results. First, written reflections were coded for student interpretations and evaluations of the following categories based on CLA themes from Beaudrie et al (2019): (a) Language variation and linguistic diversity; (b) dominance of English, language ideologies and prejudice; (c) Spanish in the United States and bilingualism; and (d) language policies and language maintenance. Then, open coding led to two additional emergent themes: Application of course content to personal experiences and commitment to community engagement.…”

“…Table 2 outlines the details of each participant. The instrument used to measure students' developing CLA was a survey adapted from Beaudrie et al (2019) to accommodate L2 learners from primarily English-dominant backgrounds. The CLA survey aimed to document participant attitudes towards Spanish in the United States, the role of English, and bilingualism.…”

“…APPENDIX A CLA survey (Adapted from Beaudrie et al, 2019) Item scoring: 7 = "strongly agree/very likely" and 1 = "strongly disagree/very unlikely" Reverse item scoring (indicated with *): 7 = "strongly disagree/very unlikely" and 1 = "strongly agree/very likely" APPENDIX B Weekly journal reflection prompts (Adapted from Crane, 2018 andJohnson, 2015) Prompt #1: Learning Spanish and learning about bilingualism and Latinxs in the U.S. This is a writing exercise in which you use the mode of reflection to think about your experiences and what they mean to you.…”

Teaching languages in multicultural surroundings: New tendencies

“…The stakeholders should be aware of these changes and introduce new skill and proficiency measurements while revising curricula, setting the goals of learning, choosing the format of learning (face-to-face, blended or online only), providing guidelines for writing teaching materials and deciding on forms of assessment. Today, in the same language classroom, there are often first, second, foreign, minority, international, and heritage language learners (Beaudrie et al 2019, 2021, Bergmann, Böhmer 2020, which requires flexibility of approaches.…”

Understanding Heritage Language Learners’ Critical Language Awareness (CLA) in Mixed Language Programs

“…The present study contributes to filling this gap by examining HL learners' CLA in a mixed Spanish undergraduate program at a small private university in the eastern United States, in order to understand the impact of mixed programs on CLA development. To do so, we rely on the questionnaire developed by Beaudrie et al (2019Beaudrie et al ( , 2020 to measure CLA. Additionally, this study identifies sociolinguistic areas that should be further explored in mixed language programs to promote C LA development.…”