Successful Latino Professionals
and the
Teaching of Spanish as a
Heritage Language in California
On February 17, 1999, the San Jose Mercury News published a front-page
article entitled: LATINO
LAWMAKERS STUDY THEIR SPANISH. SOME WERE FLUENT AS KIDS BUT STUMBLE
TODAY The article pointed out that newly elected Latino lawmakers,
as products of a public- school system that emphasized English, and
immigrant parents who wanted their children to assimilate, were
wrestling to recover the Spanish that they had spoken fluently as
children. Many found themselves struggling to discuss complicated issues
of policy such as health care as they accompanied Governor Gray Davis to
Mexico. They realized that the pressure to perfect Spanish speaking
skills is rising as Spanish language media cover the Capitol and as
Latinos emerge as a major voting bloc. Faced with the need to campaign
in Spanish and to court the Latino population, the article reported,
many Latino lawmakers are taking intensive courses in Spanish and
immersing themselves in the language among family members and
Spanish-speaking aides.
A currently on-going research project of the Stanford Initiative on
Heritage Language Resources focuses on the issues raised by the Mercury
News article by surveying successful Latino professionals in the state
of California about the demands made on their Spanish by their everyday
professional interactions. Funded by the Spencer Foundation, the project
hopes to determine:
- patterns of English and Spanish used in childhood and early youth
by Latino professionals
- patterns of current used of English and Spanish by adult Latino
professionals
- formal study of Spanish in high school or college
- self-evaluation of existing language proficiencies in Spanish
- perceived needs for Spanish language proficiency in professional
lives
- types of community contacts that require proficiencies
- efforts made to improve/develop Spanish
- perceptions of kind of instruction that would have produced needed
proficiencies
- perceptions of community contacts that would have produced needed
proficiencies
- recommendations for secondary and tertiary institutions
The project will also survey California secondary and tertiary
institutions that are currently offering special courses for heritage
speakers of Spanish to determine:
- sequences of courses available for Spanish-speaking heritage
students
- curriculum content for courses in the heritage sequences
- course objectives in the heritage sequences
- materials used in heritage sequences
- classroom practices used with heritage students found to be
particularly effective
- methods of assessment used with heritage sequences
- instructors' language background (native, non-native,
heritage-speaking)
- instructors' training or preparation for teaching heritage
speakers
