Studies in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) indicate that the use of discourse markers (DMs) in the academic writing of second language learners improves the overall quality of these texts by contributing to their cohesion and comprehensibility (Saif Modhish 2012; Jalilifar 2008; Intaraprawat & Steffensen 1995). However, despite the importance of the use of DMs in second language writing, the acquisition and production of DMs in the field of Spanish as a Heritage Language (SHL) has been given little attention. Few studies on the teaching of DMs to Spanish Second Language (SSL) learners have focused on oral discourse and suggest that both explicit and implicit instruction promote the learning and use of DMs among SSL learners (Hernandez & Rodriguez-Gonzalez 2013; de la Fuente 2009). However, pedagogies that promote the use of DMs in SHL writing have not yet been identified in the literature, and pedagogies for the use of DMs in SSL writing are few (Saiz 2003). For this reason, my Dissertation attempts to answer the following research questions: 1) What is the frequency of use of discourse markers used by SHL learners in narrations? and 2) Does the following pedagogical intervention (i.e., Explicit Instruction + Input Flood + Textual Enhancement) increase the production of discourse markers in the narrations of SHL learners compared to traditional instruction? For this study, 39 SHL students enrolled in advanced Spanish writing courses served as participants: 19 served as participants in the Experimental group and 20 in the Control group (i.e., who received traditional instruction). All participants were asked to write two narrations of two different short, silent films: a pre-test narration and a post-test narration. Before writing the second narration, participants in the Experimental group watched a video on the functions and uses of DMs (i.e., explicit instruction) while reviewing a sample narration that incorporated implicit instruction strategies (i.e., Input Flood and Textual Enhancement). Participants in the Control group reviewed a list of DMs and completed a fill-in-the-blank activity using DMs from the list provided. A total of 600 discourse markers from the pre- and post-test narrations were extracted and results indicate that participants resorted to using the same set of DMs: pero ("but") (16.3%), cuando ("when") (16.3%), luego ("then") (8.6%), entonces ("then") (7.5%), and porque ("because") (7.3%); these five DMs accounted for about 48% of the DMs used in the narrations written by participants. Results also indicated that participants showed a preference for singleword DMs that sequence events (e.g., cuando ("when") and luego ("then")). Results also showed that about one-third (i.e., six) of the participants in the Experimental group incorporated new, complex (i.e., two- to three-word) DMs, such as ya que ("given that") and tan pronto como ("as soon as"), in their post-intervention narrations; these DMs were explicitly mentioned and used in the video that served as the pedagogical intervention. This increase in the use of DMs suggests that a combination of Explicit and Implicit Instruction promotes the acquisition and use of DMs in SHL writing. Additionally, an independent samples t-test comparing the number of DMs utilized in the post-test narrations of both the Experimental and Control groups produced a significant t value (t(37) = 2.53, p < 0.02). An examination of the means revealed that the Control group had a lower mean than the Experimental group (M = 5.95 and M = 9.05, respectively). Lastly, this dissertation also addressed the effects of the age at which SHL learners began to produce Spanish on the syntactic complexity, morpho-syntactic accuracy, and fluency of SHL narrations. That is, do the narrations of SHL learners with different experiences with Spanish (i.e., early SHL speakers vs. late SHL speakers), enrolled in a third-year Spanish writing course, differ in syntactic complexity, morphosyntactic accuracy, and fluency measures? If so, what are the differences and/or similarities in the syntactic complexity (i.e., mean length of T-Unit and mean number of clauses per T-Unit), morphosyntactic accuracy (i.e., error-free T-Units per T-Unit and error type), and fluency (i.e., number of words, number of T-units, and number of subordinate clauses per text) of narrations produced by these two types of SHL learners? The analysis of the data collected for this Dissertation indicated that Early and Late SHL learners did not differ regarding the syntactic complexity (i.e., Mean Length of T-unit and Total Number of Clauses per T-unit) and fluency (i.e., Total Number of Words, T-units, and (Type of) Subordinate Clauses) of their narrations. However, Early and Late SHL participants differed regarding the morphosyntactic accuracy (i.e., Error-Free T-units) of both narrations. Nevertheless, both groups were similar in the types of errors most produced in their narrations given that more than 46% of the errors produced by Early and Late SHL participants were preposition and vocabulary errors. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. 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