Causal Discourse Connectors in the Teaching of Spanish as a Foreign Language (SLF) for Portuguese Learners Using NooJ

Abstract

Our paper focuses on the teaching of causal discourse connectors to learners of Spanish as a foreign language (SFL) whose mother tongue is Portuguese. It relies on the project about the pedagogical application of NooJ carried out by the IES_UNR research group since 2015, which mainly follows [11] and [12], and which makes use of [13]. The contrastive analysis in Portuguese is based on [14]. To develop discourse strategies for text comprehension and production, we implemented tags related to discursiveness and causality. Discourse connectors or markers may be understood as “constituents that exceed the limit of units such as the word, the phrase or the sentence” [7]. As cause and consequence concur, they involve the use of causal discourse connectors such as porque, ya que, gracias a, in Spanish, and porque, ja que, gracas a, in Portuguese (because, since, thanks to). We created dictionaries and grammars including two new features: Connector [C] (to name discourse connectors), and causal [+caus] (to identify causal discourse connectors). These features can be more effective for learners of Spanish, especially the one related to causality, since they refer to more general semantic knowledge.