How should heritage languages be taught?: The effects of a free voluntary reading program

The United States has experienced a sharp vise in recent years in the number of heritage language (HL) bilinguals, students who speak a language other than English at home. Due to a lack of advanced language development in other settings, many of these students enroll in foreign language courses in their respective home languages. This paper reports on a program designed to promote heritage language and literacy development in one university-level HL course, Spanish for Native Speakers (SNS). The ten-week program involved two classes of mostly English-dominant SNS students participating in an experimental course that included a combination of the following elements: free voluntary reading (FVR) outside the classroom, in-class literature circles (small group book discussions), a survey of popular literature in Spanish, and individual inquiry learning projects. Three measures of the course were used to evaluate its success in terms of vocabulary acquisition, attitudes toward Spanish literacy development and reading habits. The experimental group made significant gains in word knowledge, read more than a comparison group of SNS students, and exhibited positive attitudes toward Spanish literacy at the end of the ten-week course. The evidence in favor of FVR, theoretical justifications for the approach in SNS courses, and implications for redesigning heritage language curricula at the secondary and university levels are discussed.