Abstract
This work focuses on the influence of L2 acquisition environments (At-Home and Study-Abroad) on the language proficiency of L1 Mandarin Chinese learners of Spanish. We chose the use of Spanish past tense aspect (pretérito indefinido and pretérito imperfecto) as the entry point to analyze Chinese learners proficiency in three semi-guided writing tasks. Our results reveal that the different teaching objectives in these acquisition environments promote a different development of Chinese learners’ language capacities in Spanish: the At-Home learners have a more native-like performance when factors at the discourse level are taken into account, whereas the Study-Abroad learners have a more native-like performance when factors at the lexical level are taken into account. However, the usage pattern of the Spanish past tense aspect by learners in both environments share prototypical associations at the lexical and discourse levels.
Highlights
Research comparing the performance of second language (L2) learners who study At-Home (AH) and who Study Abroad (SA) point out that the SA experience benefits learners, in their L2 language skills (Putra, 2014; Godfrey, Treacy & Tarone 2014; Schenker 2018), and in their personal motivation and confidence in learning the target language (TL) (Lee 2018; Thompson & Lee 2014)
We focus on the acquisition of Spanish past tense aspect by Chinese learners and analyze the differences found in the usage patterns of Spanish aspect by two groups of Chinese learners of Spanish in two different learning environments: the AH and the SA groups
We aim to: 1) analyze to what extent Chinese learners can benefit from their SA experience to make progress in their use of PIN and PIM compared to AH learners. 2) whether both Chinese learner groups follow the same developmental pattern as predicted by the Lexical Aspect Hypothesis (LAH, Andersen 1991; Andersen & Shirai 1994) and the Discourse Hypothesis (DH, Bardovi-Harlig 1994) in their usage patterns of Spanish aspect or whether studying at home or abroad plays a role in their usage patterns
Summary
In order to discuss the above presented results, we need to emphasize the differences in the acquisition contexts for our AH and SA Chinese learners of Spanish. When lexical aspectual class is taken into account as a variable, SA Chinese student groups show a stronger developmental tendency towards the prototypical association with states (states with PIM) from NAB1 to NAB2 than AH Chinese learner groups (see Figure 2 and Figure 3) This means that SA Chinese learners become more sensitive to lexical aspectual information throughout the development of their Spanish proficiency. Our results partially support the prototypical associations predicted by the LAH and the DH for both SA and AH Chinese learner groups of Spanish, an important effect of the differences in teaching objectives for AH and SA environments can be observed. We propose that the expectations of the progress to be made by studying abroad should conform to realistic possibilities (input effect on lexical aspectual classes choice), whereas in AH, the formal teaching context helps learners to improve their ability to discriminate discourse information (background/foreground), since this is an academic objective. By doing so will the L2 learners be able to choose the most appropriate course for them and take maximum advantage of it
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
