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Perceptions of Spanish heritage and L2 writing.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

Four compositions written in Spanish by two Spanish heritage speakers and two second language learners are evaluated and commented on by twenty native Spanish speakers from eleven Spanish-speaking countries. The study addresses what differences they notice in the writing and what aspects they find positive and negative. While grammar was troublesome in all, heritage speaker fluency tended to be perceived as denoting better writing.

Introduction

Heritage language learners generally do not perform as well in literacy skills as they do in oral proficiency due largely to a lack of formal education in the Spanish language. Although a wide range of proficiencies exists among heritage learners, much of their knowledge is normally of a more informal register which allows them to function successfully in their home and, perhaps, community environment. In order for heritage learners to take full advantage of their valuable bilingual abilities among the larger communities of Spanish speakers and in business settings, they need to become knowledgeable in academic registers of Spanish (see Achugar, 2003, for a discussion of academic registers in speech). Their writing, and speech, will be scrutinized and they may be prejudged unjustly to be less intelligent or incapable if they do not conform to a professional register in formal situations.

Background

Lipski (1993:161-164) lists some common problems that occur in heritage speaker writing: 1. instability of nominal and adjectival inflection (mi blusa es blanco[a]), 2. incorrectly conjugated verb forms (yo no sabo [se] bien), 3. incorrect use of definite and indefinite articles (yo iba a[la] escuela), 4. errors of prepositional usage, and 5. categorical use of redundant subject pronouns. These errors are common in L2 learners' compositions as well. In addition, heritage speakers make many characteristic spelling errors which stem from interference from oral Spanish and little exposure to the written form. Colombi (1997: 179) lists some of these common spelling mistakes as: the letter "h" (habrir abrir, e estado he estado), and confusion between the letters "c" and "q" (esquela escuela). Colombi (1997) gives more examples of oral influence and English interference in writing at the lexical, semantic, syntactical and discourse levels as well. Kroll (1990:2) states that

It should not be presumed that the act of writing in one's first language is the same as the act of writing in one's second language. For example, first and second language learners may not approach a writing task in the same way nor attend to feedback in the same way.

Schwartz (2003:236) cautions that "our heritage students are not second language learners". The matter is even further complicated when considering second dialect acquisition versus...

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