Chapter 2: Empowering Spanish/English Speakers in the United States: Reclaiming Their Bilingualism¹

Throughout the years different expressions have been used to describe the linguistic abilities of Spanish speakers in the United States and we continue to grapple with the difficulties of compartmentalizing the broad spectrum of Spanish speakers within one single category. As the number of Spanish speakers enrolling in Spanish courses at schools and universities in this country continues to increase, researchers and teachers struggle to find appropriate taxonomies for these students. It is not an easy chore. Few are the Spanish teachers these days that encounter a homogeneous student population in the foreign language (FL) classroom. Nowadays, instructors have to deal with second language learners and second dialect learners, oftentimes in the same classroom.