Truthfully, the idea for this blog post came from my own experiences from learning French as a second language. I noticed that I could speak and write fine in my academic work, but when it came time to engage with small talk or casual conversation, I felt like a mess! There seemed to be some kind of gap between my proficiency in formal situations versus that in informal situations. On the flip side, I noticed that my peers who were heritage learners\u2014students who learned French at home as a child, not academically as an adult\u2014seemed to flourish in small talk, but appeared to struggle more with formal academic contexts. These questions made me curious about how L2 learners versus heritage learners approached their target language, depending on linguistic register\u2014language used in a particular setting or context. This post is a bit more technical than the usual television recommendation, but hopefully, you’ll learn something new about how our environments affect the way we speak!<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Finding papers on linguistic registers in the context of language education was surprisingly more difficult than I anticipated. To start, I read \u201cVariability in heritage and second language writers\u2019 linguistic complexity: Roles of proficiency and motivational beliefs\u201d by Janire Zalbidea (2024). The study compared two groups of students learning Spanish: heritage learners (those who learned Spanish as a child) and L2 learners (those who learned Spanish in a formal academic setting). The researchers then asked participants to complete two writing tasks: first, an informal \u201cEmail to Friend\u201d and a formal \u201cLetter to Dean.\u201d The purpose of the study was to see whether heritage learners and L2 learners differed in linguistic complexity between registers (kind of like a linguistic Punnett square!). The study asked three questions: 1) do heritage learners and L2 learners demonstrate differing linguistic complexity depending on register conditions? 2) does Spanish proficiency differentially affect heritage learners’ and L2 learners\u2019 linguistic complexity? 3) does interest and personal value in language learning affect linguistic complexity?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Zalbidea found that both groups (heritage and L2 learners) demonstrated greater linguistic complexity in the Letter to Dean task (high register, \u201cformal\u201d) compared to the Email to a Friend task (low register, \u201cinformal\u201d). Overall, heritage learners exhibited greater linguistic complexity than L2 learners, for example, using more advanced grammatical structures and vocabulary. Last, Zalbidea found that all students who said they were interested in or enjoyed Spanish writing had enhanced linguistic complexity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s unsurprising to me that heritage learners had a richer linguistic \u201ctoolbox\u201d than L2 learners, though interesting that across both groups, students could recognize differences in register and change their language use as needed. It\u2019s possible that my feeling that I\u2019m terrible at small talk in French could stem from lack of practice\u2014I certainly have many tools in my toolbox to express myself in class or in an academic paper. However, when it comes to casual conversation, I don\u2019t have as much practice and thus fewer tools to express myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The most interesting takeaway of this paper was the third question: students who enjoyed what they were doing had higher linguistic complexity than students who didn\u2019t. This is why I believe in embracing mistakes, failures, and embarrassment! Zalbidea hypothesizes that \u201ctask performance is likely characterized by stronger attentional engagement, greater task interest, and more sustained involvement as they work toward meeting the communicative demands of tasks, leading to enhanced linguistic complexity\u201d (Zalbidea 2024:348-349). It goes without saying that having fun with learning leads you to spending more time and care with the subject, which only helps the process!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So\u2026 what are some takeaways from this paper? Regardless if you\u2019re a heritage learner or an L2 learner, you should recognize your talent in being able to assess your environment and use the appropriate level of register for that situation. Heritage learners showed more linguistic complexity in their high-register language, which makes sense! Those who learned a language as children may have seen a range of different environments where parents, siblings, or grandparents used the target language. For L2 learners, that environment may be limited to only the classroom. Fortunately, Reed has amazing resources where you can practice outside the classroom, such as attending Language House conversation hours or coming into the LangLab for tutoring! Additionally, L2 learners, don\u2019t discount yourself! Think back to the first month when you learned a language\u2026 you probably had a very limited set of vocabulary and grammar to work with. Still, you probably know when to use a certain degree of register in your speech. Last, make sure to enjoy the process! Struggling through something is better than not trying at all\u2026 which I have to keep in mind every time someone asks me \u201c\u00e7a va?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Truthfully, the idea for this blog post came from my own experiences from learning French as a second language. I noticed that I could speak and write fine in my academic work, but when it came time to engage with small talk or casual conversation, I felt like a mess! There seemed to be some … <\/p>\n
Zalbidea, Janire. \u201cVariability in heritage and second language writers’ linguistic complexity: Roles of proficiency and motivational beliefs.\u201d Studies in Second Language Acquisition<\/em>, vol. 46, 2024, pp. 330-353.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"