DEVELOPING ACADEMIC WRITING AND CULTURAL IDENTITY FOR SPANISH HERITAGE LANGUAGE LEARNERS (HLLS) THROUGH WRITING TEXTS IN SPANISH

The present study investigated the implementation of a genre-based approach to the instruction of academic writing in a High school Spanish class to heritage language learners (HLLs). The intervention explicitly taught students the ways of meaning in the genre of biographies. In addition, discussions around the theme of identity were explored in this class. Analyses of students’ writing assessment tools revealed that students’ writing performance developed in terms of the genre-specific features from the pre-test to the post-test. Moreover, findings of this study showed that unpacking the ways of meaning in a particular genre positively influenced the quality of writing in the target language that HLLs produced. The class also provided a space for HLLs to unravel their multiple identities through classroom discussions. Through interviews, video-recordings of the classes, and short written responses, the process with the genre approach was described. The effect of the genre-based intervention was documented, and it helped strengthen students’ academic literacy in Spanish. In addition, students showed some discomfort when discussing their multiple identities during the classes. The present study demonstrated that explicit instruction in a particular genre positively influenced the quality of students’ academic writing in that genre. Future research on genre-based instruction and the implementation on different levels in heritage language classes is needed