Strengthening Writing Voices and Identities: Creative Writing, Digital Tools and Artmaking for Spanish Heritage Courses

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of poems, digital art, and accompanying analytical essays authored by four college students taking an advanced Spanish as heritage language. This paper highlights the ways in which creative writing, along with digital tools for artmaking, can enhance the teaching of language literacy to heritage learners. It proposes that creative writing opens up simultaneously meaningful and transformative experiences for students: they engage with the performativity of creative writing, use their voices beyond the constraints of specific genre conventions, engage with critical language awareness exercises, and become motivated to use their writing in order to reach out to the wider Spanish-speaking communities outside the classroom. Digital technologies played a key role in the creative process, as they provided a range of artistic tools and flexibilities that enhanced and complemented the power of the written word. The paper aims to contribute to the pedagogy of Spanish heritage courses and to expand the notions of literacy and writing under which we work in the SHL classroom.