Institutional Dimensions of Cultural Bias on the Texas-Mexico Border: Linguistic Insecurity Among Heritage Language Learners  

Oleh:

Martínez, Glenn A. ; Petrucci, Peter R.

Jenis: Article from Journal - e-Journal
Dalam koleksi: Critical Inquiry in Language Studies vol. 1 no. 2 (2004), page 89-104.
Fulltext: Vol 1, no 2, p 89-104.pdf (326.62KB)

Isi artikel

The present study measures linguistic insecurity among college level heritage language (HL) learners along the Texas-Mexico border. We measured students’ self-reported confidence in speaking and writing in English and in Spanish and analyzed students’ perception of instruction in both languages. We argue that high levels of linguistic insecurity correlate with an institutional framework emerging out of statemandated standardized testing and placement. We found that HL students labeled “developmental learners” display greater levels of linguistic insecurity in English than those labeled “non-developmental.” At the same time, we found that "non-developmental learners" display greater levels of insecurity in Spanish than “developmental learners.” We argue, however, that the groups are not symmetrically divided; instead, we contend that insecurity levels among developmental HL learners are convergent in the two languages and that they are divergent among non-developmental HL learners. We conclude our study suggesting ways in which linguistic insecurity among HL developmental learners may be seen as a resource in the classroom.

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