Traditionally, teaching standard Spanish has been at the center of Spanish as a heritage language (SHL) instruction (Bernal-Enríquez & Hernández-Chávez, 2003; Hidalgo, 1990, 1997; Leeman, 2005; Martínez, 2003; Valdés, 1978, 1997; Villa 1996, 2002). A growing number of SHL scholars, however, have advocated for shifting the focus of instruction to the students’ language varieties and to dialect awareness (Bernal-Enríquez & Hernández-Chávez, 2003; Leeman, 2005; Villa, 2000). In the fall of 2011, a total of 62 SHL syllabi were collected from four-year public and private universities located in 15 different U.S. states. A content analysis of the course goals and objectives was employed to determine the approach to language variation that each course adopted (eradication, expansion, appreciation, appropriateness-based, or critical). In order to establish reliability, two coders independently categorized the course goals and objectives in all syllabi, obtaining an acceptable inter-rater agreement level. Findings show that earlier eradication approaches have almost disappeared while appreciation approaches are gaining popularity. Other more recent approaches have been adopted in only a small number of syllabi. The results corroborate prior research showing that the teaching of the standard continues to be a central goal in SHL education (Valdés et al., 2006). In addition, SHL courses have been slow to adopt sociolinguistically rich practices.
The effects of dialect awareness instruction on nonmainstream American English speakers
