Chapter 11: When Phonological Limitations Compromise Literacy:A Connectionist Approach to Enhancing the Phonological Competence of Heritage Language Speakers of Spanish

Heritage language students of Spanish experience significant difficulties mastering the orthographic rules of Spanish stress. This study reveals that this difficulty does not stem from a systemic inability on their part to hear the phonetic cues of Spanish stress, but rather from their inability to access these cues for purposes of making explicit linguistic judgements. Research in applied neuroscience suggests that training with amplified phonetic cues can render sound differences more salient for children with language-based learning disabilities (Tallal et al., 1996). In keeping with this line of work, we trained thirteen heritage language students of Spanish to identify the location of stress in words whose stressed syllables they heard with exaggerated pitch, loudness, and duration. A control group listened to the same words uttered without any exaggeration. Posttest scores reveal that the experimental group improved significantly in its ability to identify the location of the stressed syllable in words rendered without exaggeration. In contrast, the control group registered a much more modest improvement. These results indicate that training with amplified phonetic cues can render the phonetic cues of Spanish stress more accessible for heritage language speakers of Spanish.