The Role of Digital, Learning by Design Instructional Materials in the Development of Spanish Heritage Learners’ Literacy Skills

This chapter investigates the role that pedagogical material based on the tenets of the Multiliteracies approach Learning by Design can play on the development of Spanish heritage speakers’ literacy skills and metalinguistic awareness. Twenty-nine students in an intermediate heritage Spanish class in an American Hispanic-serving university participated in this study. Throughout the course of a semester, they produced a variety of written and multimodal hybrid texts belonging to different genres, which became the data for this study. In addition, the participants also completed pre- and post-questionnaires that probed into the development of their metalinguistic knowledge. The results show promising growth in the participants’ level of literacy. However, the data also reveal the existence of gaps in the participants’ metalinguistic awareness.