Spanish receptive bilinguals: Understanding the cultural and linguistic profile of learners from three different generations

The growing amount of research in heritage languages (HL) consistently suggests that HL learners are a diverse population with language abilities that span across the whole spectrum of the bilingual range (Valdés 2001). Receptive bilinguals, sometimes called passive bilinguals, are at one end of this bilingual range, almost at the verge of culminating the language shift towards English monolingualism. This population of HL students has received scant attention from HL programs and researchers alike. The present study fills this gap in the literature by focusing specifically on receptive bilinguals of different generations enrolled in Spanish classes at a large university in the southwestern United States. It seeks to provide insights into their cultural and linguistic profile so as to begin to understand the factors that have influenced their current Spanish use and linguistic abilities in the language.