Innovation in Language Learning
What Role for Code-Switching in Spanish Classes? Instructor Ideologies, Correction, and Pedagogical Orientations
Andrés Correal, University of Wisconsin-Madison (United States)
Leslie Del Carpio, Indiana University Bloomington (United States)
Abstract
Prior research indicates that instructors do not evaluate all features of U.S. Spanish uniformly and that code-switching is likely to prompt correction [3]. This mixed-methods study examines how graduate student instructors evaluate samples representing code-switching, borrowing, calques, and semantic extensions in U.S. heritage Spanish. It also investigates how coursework and professional development in heritage-language pedagogy, U.S. Spanish and heritage-speaker research, language variation, and bilingualism relate to Critical Language Awareness (CLA) scores and correction decisions. Data come from an adapted CLA scale [2], evaluation tasks, and open-ended rationales. Results indicate infrequent correction and relatively high CLA scores. Nevertheless, intra- and inter-sentential code-switching emerge as the phenomena most likely to prompt correction, paralleling prior teacher research [3]. Higher CLA scores tend to align with lower correction, although the relationship is modest and no clear predictors emerge. Qualitative analysis identifies appreciation and an emergent comprehensibility-based acceptance orientation as the most frequent responses to borrowing, calques, and semantic extensions. Responses to code-switching, however, do not fit consistently within existing approaches to language variation [1]. Instructors draw on overlapping logics of eradication, expansion, and appropriateness, shaped by the classroom context they imagine and their assumptions about what Spanish instruction should accomplish. The presentation uses this tension to discuss the role of code-switching in Spanish classes and how teacher preparation can address both correction decisions and interpretations of bilingual practices. Future research should recruit a heterogeneous sample, establish clearer comparison groups, distinguish limited from sustained preparation, and further examine how instructors conceptualize bilingual practices.
Keywords: code-switching; heritage Spanish; teacher education; critical language awareness; corrective feedback
REFERENCES
[1] Beaudrie, S. M. (2015). Approaches to language variation: Goals and objectives of the Spanish heritage language syllabus. Heritage Language Journal, 12(1), 1-21.
[2] Beaudrie, S., Amezcua, A., & Loza, S. (2019). Critical language awareness for the heritage context: Development and validation of a measurement questionnaire. Language Testing, 36(4), 573-594.
[3] Román, D., Pastor, A., & Basaraba, D. (2019). Internal linguistic discrimination: A survey of bilingual teachers' language attitudes toward their heritage students' Spanish. Bilingual Research Journal, 42(1), 6-30.
