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Cynthia M. Ducar is Associate Professor of Hispanic Sociolinguistics at Bowling Green State University. Her research interests include Spanish as a heritage language (linguistic characteristics, motivations, pedagogy) and Spanish in the United States (attitudes, code-switching, identity, and maintenance and loss).

The field of heritage languages continues to grow along with the population of learners it aims to serve. As the presence of heritage language learners in classes at all levels and across nearly all languages continues to grow, so too does the need to assess those students. There are at least three major types of assessment that are pertinent to the HLL field: diagnostic assessment (or assessment for placement purposes), formative assessment and summative assessment.

Placement of heritage students involves at least a two-step process.  As Kim Potowski frequently states, you first have to separate the apples from the oranges – that is the second language learners (L2s) from the HLLs, and you then have to separate out all of the different varieties of apples and oranges as well, so that each can receive the proper nourishment.  Thus, an effective HLL placement tool must first identify HLLs and separate them from L2s while also being able to separate out the varying levels of linguistics abilities among the HLLs tested.  This can be done in a myriad of ways, from surveys regarding a student’s linguistic background, to oral interviews, compositions, multiple-choice exams, lexical identifiers (i.e. slang that L2s would be unlikely to know), to computer adaptive placement exams.  Issue 1 of Volume 9 of the Heritage Language Journal offers a comprehensive overview of placement issues in the HLL field for those interested in additional information.

Summative assessment is defined as assessment that intends to gauge a learner’s understanding post-instruction in order to assign a grade. Although summative assessment is what some might refer to as a “necessary evil," it is important to look at what types of evaluation tools are employed to assign students grades in the HL context, bearing in mind the natural language acquisition process through which a majority of HLLs initially acquired their heritage language.  The non-classroom context of early heritage language acquisition for most HLLs makes them less apt to be aware of metalinguistic terminology and academic discourse styles so common to testing in the L2 context (see Correa 2011a, 2011b). Thus, it is imperative that we design summative assessments with the HLL in mind rather than simply relying on measures already used in the L2 context.

Lastly, formative assessment refers to the continuous assessment that should occur in classes in order to enhance student learning (Carreira 2012). Formative assessment concerns itself with understanding the whole picture of language learning – from attitudes and motivations to the how, why and what of the knowledge being gained. The on-going feedback that such assessment offers is crucial to both student success and successful planning on the part of HLL instructors as well.  Such assessment helps instructors to know when to adjust the pace of their classes and modify both the topics and the teaching methods employed in class in order to be more effective teachers for their students. Given the heterogeneous nature of typical learners in the HLL classroom formative assessments that lead to differentiated instruction are key to successful HLL instruction (for specific examples of formative assessments in the HL classroom, see Carreira 2012).

References

Carreira, M. (2012). Formative Assessment in HL Teaching: Purposes, Procedures, and Practices. Heritage Language Journal, 9(1), 100-120.

Correa, M. (2011a). Subjunctive accuracy and metalinguistic knowledge of L2 learners of Spanish. Electronic Journal of Foreign Language Teaching, 8(1), 39-56.

Correa, M. (2011b). Heritage language learners of Spanish: What role does metalinguistic knowledge play in their acquisition of the subjunctive? In L. Ortiz (Ed.), Selected Proceedings of the 13^th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium (pp. 128-138). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.

The Heritage Language Journal, 9(1). Available for free download at: http://www.heritagelanguages.org