This book examines the effects of formal instruction on the learning/acquisition of standard Spanish by Hispanic heritage learners attending intermediate and advance level courses at the University of Houston. Using a variationist framework of correlating linguistic features with social variables, the book analyzes the expression of conditionality (i.e., hypothetical discourse) in a corpus of heritage learners' speech and written data. Another corpus compiled from traditional foreign language students of Spanish is used for comparison. The study addresses four major questions:

(1) What are the main differences between Hispanic heritage learners and traditional foreign language students of Spanish when learning the standard/academic variety of Spanish? (2) Are there significant differences among different production tasks among the heritage learners? (3) Is second dialect acquisition an additive process? (4) How effective is explicit grammar instruction for second dialect acquisition?

A comprehensive summary of Hispanic heritage language education in the U.S. is included, and pedagogical implications are suggested based on the findings.

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