How do heritage speakers support their [3rd generation] children’s bilingual development? An urgent call for making connections between family and institutional language policy decisions

There is a need across the United States for programs that support Spanish as a heritage language in established and new Latinx communities. An element of community language maintenance is how family language policy leads to continued or diminished use of Spanish within and outside of the home ( Zentella , 1997).

Although research in bilingual education has examined the ways in which language teachers’ teaching practices are shaped by the institutional context in which they work ( Lindholm Leary & Hernández 2011), no previous study has focused on how heritage speakers’ experiences growing up bilingual shapes their family language policy when they become parents.

This study seeks to describe how bilingual parents draw on previous experiences as they navigate the process of sharing their bilingualism with the third generation.