Teaching Written Accent Marks to Spanish as a Heritage Language Learners

Abstract

Accent marks are one of the top reasons why heritage language learners of Spanish decide to study the language formally, yet many SHL instructors struggle to teach accent marks in a comprehensible way and there is a dearth of pedagogical research in this area. This paper presents a discovery-learning method of teaching written accent marks to HL learners that is student-centered and allows students to deduce the rules of accentuation from linguistic data. A step-by-step approach is explained along with tips for building background knowledge, implementation, and differentiation. The relationship between oral proficiency, reading proficiency, phonological awareness and morphological awareness are discussed, along with suggestions for future research.