“Did you have some kind of blow to the head?”: Spanish heritage language learners, language ideologies and oral corrective feedback

Abstract

This ethnographic study examines one instructor's Oral Corrective Feedback (OCF) practices as conceptualized based on the interactionist framework, involving four Spanish heritage language (SHL) learners in a beginning-level community college Spanish classroom. Based on analysis of interview and observational classroom data, the findings reveal how the instructor's OCF embodies language ideologies and imposes dominant norms on learners. Findings also describe how the instructor's OCF practices contain ideologically charged metalinguistic commentary that reinforces her subtractive teaching philosophy with regard to SHL learners. OCF as conceptualized within the interactionist framework is considered an inherently neutral practice that can facilitate language learning but the findings from this study call this assumption into question. Moreover, the study validates a need for alternative analytic frameworks that connect OCF to SHL pedagogy to further clarify its use with SHL learners.