The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to uncover how high-achieving university Spanish instructors engage in the core practice of building a classroom discourse community at a doctoral-level university in the southwestern United States. The second goal of this study was to determine whether student performance on reading and writing assessments was impacted by a focus on oral communication. Findings indicated that high-achieving university Spanish instructors employed the use of personalized contexts for interaction and purposefully conceptualized planning and enacting of communicative tasks, although specific approaches in creating a classroom discourse community varied by the instructor. Despite the focus on oral communication in the participants' classes, student performance in courses taught by high-achieving instructors was significantly higher in reading and writing assessments than the performance of students in courses taught by other instructors in the same course and language program. Findings support the notion that high-leverage teaching practices have a palpable, practical impact on student learning.