Missed Opportunities: Oral Corrective Feedback, Heritage Learners of Spanish, and Study Abroad in Peru

Abstract

Abstract This study explores how negative attitudes toward U.S. Latinx students during a study abroad program can be embodied and transmitted through instructional practices that result in missed opportunities for learning Spanish as a heritage language. Specifically, we employ ethnographic and discourse analytic methods to examine one teacher’s oral corrective feedback (OCF) practices involving two Latina students in the context of a Spanish-immersion program in Cuzco, Peru. Our analysis identifies how OCF can be imbued with deficit-based language ideologies and limit the Spanish language input that heritage learners receive during study abroad. We describe how particular OCF practices validated the school’s curricular focus on prescriptive grammar, involved the exclusionary use of grammar terms, and stigmatized heritage learners’ knowledge and abilities in Spanish. Our findings demonstrate a need for critical approaches to language pedagogy, teacher training, and program design that meet the educational needs of this growing population of study abroad students.