"Spelling acquisition and development has been identified as a major obstacle for Spanish Heritage Language Learners (SHLLs). Instructors, too, struggle to find the best strategies to help their students internalize orthographic rules. Llombart argues that spelling is not simply the "cherry on top" of good writing or a mere editing issue; rather, the skills behind the acquisition of spelling lie beneath literacy development in general. The skill helps to improve other crucial literacy aspects, such as reading fluency, reading comprehension, and vocabulary growth. Written for instructors of SHLLs and researchers of SHL education, this book demonstrates why and how to address this critical skill, including the cognitive skills underlying spelling, the role of age and bilingualism, and a thorough description of the different types of spelling errors students make and their causes. In addition, instructors will find guidelines, recommendations, and ideas for creating spelling activities and meaningfully integrating them into their curricula. Combining novel research and practical strategies, Spelling in Spanish Heritage Language Education will be a valuable addition to Spanish instructors' and researchers' bookshelves"--

There is growing interest in heritage language learners—individuals who have a personal or familial connection to a nonmajority language. Spanish learners represent the largest segment of this population in the United States. In this comprehensive volume, experts offer an interdisciplinary overview of research on Spanish as a heritage language in the United States. They also address the central role of education within the field. Contributors offer a wealth of resources for teachers while proposing future directions for scholarship.

Spanish Heritage Learners' Emerging Literacy: Empirical Research and Classroom Practice introduces a comprehensive, multi-level empirical study on the writing abilities of Spanish Heritage Learners at the beginner level; the findings guide a broad selection of instructional activities and pedagogical resources to support writing development in the heritage language classroom. This is the first book dealing exclusively with writing competence among Spanish Heritage Language Learners through the integration of empirical evidence and instructional perspectives to address core questions on heritage language literacy. In addition to the in-depth analysis of Spanish production—spelling, verb usage, grammatical features, vocabulary, and discourse organization—the volume revises the latest perspectives within the Heritage Language Education field, and provides effective teaching approaches, innovative classroom implementations, and up-to-date resources. This versatile volume, designed for researchers and practitioners in the fields of Bilingual Education, Language Teaching Methods, and Heritage Language Pedagogy, integrates empirical evidence, global perspectives on heritage language teaching, and suggestions for further research.

"This book documents the latest research findings about the success of free voluntary reading in developing high levels of literacy"--Provided by publisher.

This is the first book on the acquisition of Spanish that provides a state-of-the-art comprehensive overview of Spanish morphosyntactic development in monolingual and bilingual situations. Its content is organized around key grammatical themes that form the empirical base of research in generative grammar: nominal and verbal inflectional morphology, subject and object pronouns, complex structures involving movement (topicalizations, questions, relative clauses), and aspects of verb meaning that have consequences for syntax. The book argues that Universal Grammar constrains all instances of language acquisition and that there is a fundamental continuity between monolingual, bilingual, child and adult early grammatical systems. While stressing their similarities with respect to linguistic representations and processes, the book also considers important differences between these three acquisition situations with respect to the outcome of acquisition. It is also shown that many linguistic properties of Spanish are acquired earlier than in English and other languages. This book is a must read for those interested in the acquisition of Spanish from different theoretical perspectives as well as those working on the acquisition of other languages in different contexts.

This book is the first volume to be devoted to the examination of the application of the multiliteracies pedagogical framework to the teaching of Spanish to heritage language learners in higher education institutions in the United States. The Hispanic population is a growing minority, and the presence of heritage speakers can be observed in second language Spanish classes in all levels of education, which presents unique challenges for practitioners. This collection focuses on differing populations of learners in educational settings in a variety of geographical areas, such as Arizona, California, Maryland, Massachusetts, Ohio, Tennessee, and Texas. The studies included in the volume offer invaluable data and methodological insights into the instructional advantages of multiliteracies pedagogies in heritage language classrooms, and they will appeal to Spanish practitioners and researchers, as well as those interested in the education and practice of heritage languages.

This edited volume focuses on Spanish use in education, public spaces, and social media in five macro-regions of the United States: the Southwest, the West, the Midwest, the Northeast, and the Southeast.