Multitiered systems of support hold promise for dual language learners when culturally and linguistically responsive practices guide instruction. We modeled growth on Spanish and English early literacy skills and examined the role of language exposure and use at the individual and classroom instruction level in a group of 313…

Today, the power of discourse is incontestable. Within the field of language policy and planning (LPP), language policy (LP) has been conceptualized in various ways. One paradigmshifting conceptualization is viewing LP as "discourse." The discursive power of language policies is quite real as it can be contested in official state…

The state of Delaware has a Dual Language Immersion program serving students from different backgrounds and varying socioeconomic statuses with a wide range of diverse needs. The state has ever-increasing difficulty finding qualified teachers who also speak the target language of the program, in this case, Spanish. As a result, districts within…

Spanish is the second most common language among US children aged 5-17, with 26.8% speaking it at home. To foster cultural understanding and promote positive relationships, it's crucial to introduce young children to different languages and cultures. Preschool language education can cultivate respect and empathy, building more inclusive…

This article touches upon the many social, political, and economic issues that negatively and disproportionately impact Afro-Mexicans (Sanders 2020). While reading, students are asked to circle the geographic areas mentioned in the article on a map of Mexico; this not only acquaints them with Mexican geography but also focuses their attention on…

Foreign language education in the United States has historically produced poor outcomes, with very few language learners achieving communicative competence. The increasing global demand for multilingual professionals makes the issue a salient one. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to explore the perspectives of U.S. middle school…

Spanish and French majors at our small, private, Southern U.S. liberal arts institution must study abroad for an entire semester, yet students embark and return with widely disparate levels of language and intercultural learning. To more fully foster learning-laden semester-long study abroad experiences we changed the curriculum and now majors…

Research into second language acquisition (SLA) has shown that individual difference (ID) variables can be strong predictors of language achievement (e.g., Dornyei, 2003; Skehan, 2003). Traditionally, this research conceptualized ID variables as static and monolithic variables (e.g., Dornyei, 2010). More recently scholars have questioned this…

This essay examines the state of Digital Humanities work in the subfield of literature from the Spanish speaking world. It provides a case study of a multiyear digital mapping project conducted with undergraduate students at a highly selective liberal arts college. This project serves as a means of examining the digital state of the field and…

Requirements for the undergraduate major in Hispanic literature and offerings of Spanish peninsular and Latin American literature courses surveying the canon, masterpieces, major works, major authors, major trends, or representative works at fifty-six selected US colleges and universities were examined for academic years 1990-91, 2002-03, 2013-14,…

This study investigated classroom interaction through the framework of "stancetaking" (Du Bois, 2007) to understand how Spanish second language (L2) learners positioned themselves when participating in communicative language learning activities. Data came from transcribed audio and video recordings of three 90-minute lessons in one…

This mixed-methods explanatory sequential study aimed to identify the most commonly used World Language curriculum models in New Jersey high schools, assess the level of curriculum coherence in Spanish programs, and examine their impact on student learning. Surveys and interviews with high school Spanish teachers revealed that, while theoretical…

Research on social media in the foreign language classroom has grown significantly in the last 10 years. However, there continues to be a gap in how social media, Twitter in particular, can be used as a tool to build community within a Spanish as a second-language literature classroom. The current action research project seeks to address this gap.…

This study explores access to Spanish dual-language education (DLE) programs via the perceptions of various stakeholders, including district personnel, school administrators, and parents at two public DLE elementary schools in a large mid-Atlantic metropolitan district in the United States. Through a lens of equity, this comparative case study…

The objective of the current study is to investigate the development of awareness of dialectal differences in Spanish by second language learners in a formal language learning classroom setting in the United States. Sensitivity toward different regional varieties of a language forms part of socio-linguistic--and ultimately,…