Heritage language learners in linguistics courses: at a major (but fixable) disadvantage

Most heritage language learners (HLLs) of Spanish cannot produce grammatical terminology, simple grammatical analysis, and/or simple grammatical items on demand. Possible causes are: the naturalistic manner in which language was acquired, lack of opportunities to learn basic concepts in beginning courses (because they were skipped), or the belief by some instructors that over-emphasising the mastering of grammatical rules may be negative for this population. This study examines and compares the level of verbalisable metalinguistic knowledge (understood as the ability to identify grammar terminology and provide grammatical rules) among HLLs (n = 9) and foreign language learners (FLLs) (n = 43) present at the beginning and at the end of an introductory Hispanic linguistics course (third year of college). Results show that although HLLs start with a considerable disadvantage over FLLs - which is not overcome in the short period of time of the course - they still improve at the same pace as FLLs, which has important implications for curriculum development.