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Understanding the Heritage Speaker
October 27, 2020 at 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Join Dr. Diego Pascual y Cabo of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies, who will discuss understanding the Heritage Speaker.
In this presentation, we will examine the impact that ongoing demographic changes have had on the teaching and learning of the Spanish language in the context of the United States. Highlighting insights gained through recent theoretical and empirical findings, Dr. Cabo will propose a visionary approach that places Spanish as a heritage language –and most importantly, its speakers– in a much more prominent role across all institutional levels.
Attendees will be invited to think critically about their own teaching language practices so that they can better understand and more effectively engage with their students. Specifically, the discussion will focus on how best teaching practices and research-informed strategies can result in very positive (and at times unexpected) outcomes.
Diego Pascual y Cabo is Assistant Professor of Hispanic Linguistics and Director of the Spanish Heritage Language Program at the University of Florida. His primary research interest is heritage speaker bilingualism. Over the past few years, his work on this topic has appeared in several scholarly journals such as Applied Linguistics, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, Heritage Language Journal, Foreign Language Annals, and International Review of Applied Linguistics (among others).
In 2014, Diego founded the Symposium on Spanish as a Heritage Language, which has since become an annual event in the field of heritage speaker bilingualism. In 2021, the symposium will be held at the Graduate Center (CUNY) in New York city. Diego also serves as the Editor-in-chief of the Spanish Heritage Language journal, an international refereed journal co-published by the University of Florida Press and the Department of Spanish & Portuguese Studies at the University of Florida.
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For his collective efforts in teaching, research and service, Diego has received a number of awards. Among these, the more notable being the 2017 Texas Tech University New Faculty Award, the 2017 College of Arts & Sciences Teaching Excellence award, and the 2014 National Heritage Language Resource Center – Russ Campbell Young Scholar Award.