Given the changing demographics of young children served by U.S. schools, educational equity practices must include ways of sustaining cultural heritage practices of children from ethno-linguistic, minoritized, and under-resourced communities. In the present study, we partnered with a bilingual Head Start serving mostly children of immigrant…

Higher education Spanish programs in the United States are diverse and complex, especially when it comes to student linguistic background. However, most studies on language proficiency were designed for traditional learners (L2s). In this study, we examine oral proficiency development of 125 Spanish majors in light of four linguistic profiles:…

Recent studies of heritage speakers, many of whom possess incomplete knowledge of their family language, suggest that these speakers may be linguistically superior to second language (L2) learners only in phonology but not in morphosyntax. This study reexamines this claim by focusing on knowledge of clitic pronouns and word order in 24 L2 learners…

Purpose: This study investigated the longitudinal, cross-linguistic developmental relationships of phonological awareness (PA), letter identification (letter ID), and morphological awareness (MA) in 71 heritage Spanish-English dual language learners (DLLs) in kindergarten and second grade. Method: Multiple linear regression was used to test if…

Latinx who do not feel confident speaking Spanish are usually questioned. To fight these ideologies, Pascual and Cabo and Prada (2018) suggest new pedagogical approaches to incorporate in the curriculum the experiences of the heritage language learner (HLL). Latinx in higher education expect a culturally relevant curriculum to critically listen…

The present study aimed to determine the cultural heritage elements in the social studies course curriculum in Turkey and the awareness of the middle school students about cultural heritage. In the study, the case study approach, a qualitative research design, was adopted. The study group was assigned with criterion sampling method, a purposive…

Studies from information-processing and language comprehension research have reported that background knowledge facilitates reading and writing. By comparing Chinese language development of heritage students who had home background in Chinese language and culture with those who did not, this study found that heritage learners did significantly…

This study investigates the use of overt and null subjects in Bulgarian in child heritage speakers with L2 German. The alternation of overt and null pronominal subjects in null-subject languages like Bulgarian depends on grammatical and discourse conditions and contrasts with German. Oral narratives were elicited in Bulgarian, comparing the…

This study investigates knowledge of gender agreement in Spanish L2 learners and heritage speakers, who differ in age and context/mode of acquisition. On some current theoretical accounts, persistent difficulty with grammatical gender in adult L2 acquisition is due to age. These accounts predict that heritage speakers should be more accurate on…

In the present study, I examined the effects of rater characteristics, in particular, raters' familiarity with a foreign accent, on the assessment of second language (L2) pronunciation. Forty-three native English-speaking teachers were divided into three groups according to their reported types of familiarity with Korean accents: heritage,…

The dynamics of Native American female leadership is becoming a more prevalent topic in the scholarly literature as more educated Native American women become visible in tribal higher education. This qualitative case study explored Native American female leadership, as a growing number of Native American women enter higher education and earn…

Conversely to plenty of studies describing how L1 transfer affects L2 systems, where the two grammars, L1/L2, often only come to interact later in life, less is known of dominant language transfer in heritage language grammars. Unlike in L2 speakers, the dominant language of the heritage speaker potentially affects its weaker language already from…

Answering calls to map college-level proficiency development (Modern Language Association, 2007) and longitudinally chart language learning (Barkaoui, 2014; Ortega & Byrnes, 2008), we mapped the oral proficiency growth of 1,922 lower-division college students of Chinese, French, Russian, and Spanish (in the second, third, or fourth semester of…

The Pasifika Early Literacy Project supports teachers to make space for the languages and cultures of Pacific children and families in early childhood settings in Aotearoa New Zealand. Dual-language books in five Pacific languages and English validate Pacific children's languages, literacies, and identities. We highlight teacher practices…

Dazu vocal music, a unique and cherished intangible cultural heritage, serves as the focal point of this research conducted in Chongqing, China. The study's objective is to investigate the contribution of cultural transmission of Dazu vocal music in Chongqing through education and literacy. The research site, Dazu City, is the epicenter of this…