The effect of attitude and speaking tasks on heritage Spanish speakers' production of rhythm, lexical stress and speech rate

Abstract

This dissertation examines heritage language learners of Spanish enrolled in university Spanish courses, focusing on their strategic use of suprasegmental speech features in two speaking tasks. The research investigates attitudes' influence on heritage language learners’ speech production in different task types. Participants engaged in two Spanish spoken registers, completing attitude surveys alongside speech tasks. The analysis of heritage language learners' attitudes and speech patterns across different speaking tasks reveals pivotal implications. Firstly, task types significantly influence attitudes, with private, conversational settings eliciting higher confidence and more positive language attitudes compared to public, monologic tasks. This suggests a need for diversified pedagogical approaches, emphasizing personalized conversational tasks while integrating scaffolded monologic tasks to build up learners' confidence in public speaking situations. Additionally, the study highlights the complex relationship between language use and attitude stability, indicating that less frequent engagement with the heritage language may lead to more varied attitudes among learners. This research underscores the influence of task types on speech patterns, emphasizing the adaptability of heritage speakers in addressing linguistic demands based on situational characteristics like familiarity and anxiety. It also highlights the importance of task diversity in shaping positive language attitudes among heritage language learners. Based on these findings, it is proposed here that there is a need for pedagogical strategies that accommodate varying task types to enhance language proficiency while acknowledging the influence of language background on attitude stability. Finally, this project sheds light on the intricate relationship between attitudes, speech patterns, and task types, and subsequently calls for the inclusion of task effect in evaluating proficiency and designing effective language instruction for heritage language learners