This article focuses on the complex web of issues involved in Esmeralda Santiago's acculturation to US society after arriving from Puerto Rico as a girl. The article is based on examples from Santiago's second memoir, "Almost a Woman" (1998) and the 2001 film adaptation of this memoir; the observations of critics who have written about other…

Second-language learners use processing strategies, such as assigning agency to the first noun of an utterance when grammatical cues indicate a contrary interpretation, that can impede correct form-meaning mappings. Processing instruction was developed to push learners to use more optimal processing strategies so that they can make correct…

The interrogative intonation of Cubans and Cuban Americans living in Miami is investigated. Two different intonation patterns are used in this variety of Spanish to convey absolute interrogative meaning: one with a falling final contour, as has been observed in Cuban Spanish, and one with a rising final contour, as is used in American English and…

This study examines the potential native language (L1) attrition of the ongoing value of the Spanish present tense among long-term Spanish immigrants. Based on the assumption of second-language (L2) transfer and proposals on the permeability of interface-conditioned structures, it is hypothesized that long-term Spanish immigrants will show…

The purpose of this article is to briefly describe the design and piloting of a branched, online placement and credit examination that measures receptive as well as productive and creative language abilities in the heritage language of college students entering the Spanish for Heritage Learners Program at the University of Houston, a major…

Nationally, there is a shortage of foreign language educators, and the rate of attrition in certain areas of the southeastern part of the United States is startling. The researcher investigated foreign language teachers' (N = 463) perceived efficacy teaching languages in Georgia, and findings suggest there is a link between perceived efficacy and…

Domestic abuse continues to claim many lives in Spain despite a series of new laws to protect women and to punish abusers. This essay explores the cultural influences of contemporary Spanish cinema on domestic violence. Four films are assessed against a Portfolio Model of social responsibility that uses two basic dimensions: realism and human…

The present investigation examines possible social and linguistic factors that influence forms of address used in Chilean Spanish with various interlocutors. A characteristic of the Spanish of Chile is the use of a variety of forms of address for the second person singular, "tu", "vos", and "usted", with corresponding verb conjugations (Lipski…

Although it is broadly accepted that adult second-language (L2) learners focus attention only on those aspects of sounds needed for phonemic contrast, the role that allophony plays in the process of L2 speech learning is less well understood. It is widely assumed that speakers do not have conscious awareness of and access to first-language (L1)…

A survey was conducted with public secondary school students of English as a foreign language in Spain and with similar public secondary school students of Spanish in the United States on their perceptions of writing likes and needs. Their teachers were surveyed as well. In general, the perceived needs outweigh the likes, and the students of…

This article is based on a qualitative study documenting how Spanish teachers, as some of the few Spanish-speaking educators in new Latino diaspora communities, bear an especially heavy burden as dual role interpreters and unofficial school representatives. Drawing from the semistructured interview data of twenty-six north Georgia educators, I…

In this paper, I begin with the identification of a moment of intertextuality between "Un viejo que leia novelas de amor" (1989) by Chilean Luis Sepulveda and "La voragine" (1924) by Colombian Jose Eustasio Rivera as an analytical motif for a reevaluation of the environmentalism and political ecologies in the Spanish American "novela de la selva"…

Francisco Rojas Gonzalez's 1944 novel "La negra Angustias" is recognized as the only novel of the Mexican Revolution that features a black woman military officer. Critics have observed that, although this semi-biographical novel portrays Angustias as a gender nonconformist who seeks justice for women and the poor, the conclusion ushers her firmly…

At the beginning of the twentieth century a new subgenre of poetry written in Spanish, but rooted in Japanese literary tradition, began to emerge in the works of Spain's vanguard and Generation of 1927 poets and among young modernist poets in Mexico and South America. Transmitted first through France and later directly from Japan, the popularity…

The present preliminary study empirically investigated Spanish heritage language (HL) speakers in Spanish for native speakers (SNS) college courses. It focused on their attitudes and motivation to improve their HL and on their varying linguistic competences in that language. A well-established second language acquisition (SLA) motivational model…