Written “corrective” feedback in Spanish as a heritage language: Problematizing the construct of error

The number of Latinx students enrolling in Spanish language courses in the United States has been steadily increasing in the last decades. Many of these students, referred to as heritage language (HL) learners, use linguistic forms and practices that are often stigmatized in academic communities for purportedly being “incorrect” or “inappropriate.” The current investigation explores whether a group of Spanish high school teachers (n = 48) perceives some of the lexical items HL learners produce as “errors” and examines the type of written corrective feedback (CF) that they provide. Their CF on target items was coded as indirect, direct, or metalinguistic, and their metalinguistic CF was further coded as eradication-oriented, appropriateness-oriented, or expansion-oriented. The most common CF types in our results were direct and metalinguistic, and the metalinguistic CF offered was classified primarily as eradication-oriented. Our discussion centers around what is generally deemed “erroneous” in HL learners’ productions, and hence a trigger for written CF, and how a critical reconceptualization of the construct of “error” eliciting this CF may help educators more effectively advance a critical language awareness pedagogy, thereby promoting self-reflection, social justice, and rhetorical agency.