Linguistic inclusivity with Spanish heritage learners: Valuing student feedback

The purpose of the present study is to describe a traditional Spanish heritage language course design, provide an account of an interfaced approach to heritage language instruction (a communicative language teaching approach which promotes linguistic inclusivity combining both traditional explicit grammar instruction and aspects of implicit-learning focused instructional techniques), and compare student perceptions and performance across the two instructional treatments. Participants included 81 learners enrolled in lower-level and intermediate-level Spanish Heritage Learner (HL) language courses. All participants completed course-exit perception and satisfaction surveys over two semesters targeting the Traditional Instruction (TI) course design and the interfaced course-design (IFI). All participants also completed the Diplomas de Español como Lengua Extranjera (DELE) test at semester-onset and course-final points of time. Preliminary findings showed within-group gains in grammar and vocabulary only for participants who were exposed to the interfaced approach.