ABSTRACT
A significant proportion of students attending post-secondary educational institutions in the US have Spanish in their linguistic repertoire. Several institutions capitalize on these students' bilingual skills to develop proficiency in additional languages, especially cognate systems that can be acquired faster, such as French, Italian, and Portuguese. The communicative approach not only includes English and Spanish as 'reference languages' and Italian or French as 'target languages,' but also constant references to other Romance languages such as Portuguese, Catalan, French, Italian, and Romanian as 'auxiliary languages'. Of ultimate importance is the opportunity that Spanish speakers have to learn about other similar languages through contrast and comparisons that such an approach encourages, which ultimately enhances their motivation and ability to expand their multilingual repertoire. The chapter shows that curricular designers need to be attentive to subdivisions inside the generic "Spanish speakers" label.
