Educational institutions with world language requirements face increasing student demand to offer Spanish Language for Specific Purposes (SPSP) courses at lower proficiency levels to fulfill language requirements. Language for specific purposes courses are designed to fulfill the communicative needs of students within a specific professional context such as medicine, law, sciences, social work, business, translation and interpretation, among others. The focus of these courses is on the integration of language related competencies through connections to other disciplines. These traits are very attractive to students who feel they will be able to use their second language in future professional domains. This short-form article discusses the proposal to start offering SPSP courses earlier, before students reach advanced proficiency, and in mixed classes where second language learners and heritage students sit together, to benefit from the specific content. For this project, the authors compared students enrolled in the Spanish for the Professions course (SPSP) (n=44) with a group of students (n=42) enrolled in the traditional course. All participants were undergraduate students with an average age of 19.5 years. The authors undertook statistical analyses to compare both courses (SPSP/Traditional) and analyze variance as to student performance. They undertook analyses of variance (ANOVAS) with course type (SPSP, traditional) as a between-subjects variable and assessment type (compositions, oral presentation, unit exams, online homework) as within-subjects variable. The dependent variable was student performance in each class component. Results indicated that overall, students enrolled in the traditional topics' course outperformed the one in the SPSP group (83% versus 77%). A second important finding indicated that students enrolled in the SPSP course outperformed students in the traditional topics' course in the oral presentation component (91% versus 86%). The performance of Spanish heritage bilinguals (HSs) is also part of this analysis. It was compared with the performance of second language learners (L2) in both courses (SPSP and traditional). Not waiting to offer SPSP courses at the advanced level of proficiency opens multiple possibilities for students to collaborate with others who are bridging language content and professional applicability. It presents all students with the same task: learning challenging vocabulary for the real world of the professions.