Non-native Speakers Of Spanish Research Articles

Dialect-specificity and learners’ L2 perceptual resilience after study abroad

Abstract The present study examined the perception of two regional variants of Spanish (theta /Ɵ/ and zheísmo/sheísmo [ʒ, ʃ]) by nonnative speakers of Spanish with and without study abroad experience. The study’s goals were to determine whether learners who study abroad accept regional variants more frequently than at-home learners, and whether this effect is limited to cues participants are exposed to while abroad. Participants were L1 English speakers asked to determine whether they considered real and nonce word pairs with matching and mismatching regional variants to be instances of the same word. The findings reveal higher acceptance rates of mismatching variants by L2 learners who had studied abroad than of classroom learners but results for specific location of study abroad that suggest learners likely build perceptual resilience while abroad that goes beyond the specific cues they are exposed to.

Software-assisted identification of non-native pitch elements for Russian-speaking learners of Spanish

In this paper we present the results of an automatic comparative-contrastive analysis of functional elements of intonational contour (anacrusis, first peak, body, nucleus and final inflection) produced by non-native speakers of Spanish, whose first language is Russian. This analysis was carried out with the Plugin for phonetic-phonological analysis in Spanish (PAFe), a software tool for an instant comparative analysis of a non-native speakers’ pronunciation which takes audio recordings as input and implements multiple intonation comparison algorithms between native and non-native speakers of Spanish to calculate the percentage of similarity in intonation production. We used the intersyllabic analysis function of PAFe in order to identify which functional pitch elements of Russian speaking learners of Spanish -male and female- present more tonal deviations. Our results show that most tonal differences occurred in the body of the f 0 contour for female speakers whereas for male speakers the greatest tonal contrast was in the first peak. The obtained data indicate that these pitch elements are potentially challenging for Russian speaking learners of Spanish in their pursuit of acquiring phonetic-phonological competence. In addition, this study allowed us to identify which parameters of PAFe analysis per syllables require further refinement, such as processing of limited intonational spectrum values.

A Study of Effective Dual Language Program Models for Non-Native Spanish Speakers

As the United States population becomes increasingly ethnically and linguistically diverse, more school districts, families, and students are beginning to recognize the need and value of bilingual education, specifically dual language programs, for both native and non-native Spanish speakers (Collier & Thomas, 2020). With dual language programs on the rise, it is important to consider which program model(s) most benefit the students within a particular program. The purpose of this explanatory sequential mixed methods study was to compare the effect of different dual language program models (including immersion programs) on primary-level students’ Spanish and English language acquisition by the time students reach fourth grade. The study fRobocused specifically on non-native Spanish speakers, utilizing both quantitative and qualitative data. Such data included Spanish and English literacy levels of students who had been in a dual language program from kindergarten through fourth grade and evidence from surveys and interviews of students and teachers. The study compared two schools, one with an 80:20 program model and one with a 50:50 program model. Overall, School 1’s 80:20 dual language program model appeared to be more effective than School 2’s 50:50 model in equally developing students’ Spanish and English language acquisition. Teachers and students from both schools indicated room for growth in their respective programs.

On experimental lexical production in Spanish as L1 and L2.

This study investigates lexical production in Spanish as L1 and L2 in an experimental context. Based on a series of lexical availability tasks, words produced by native and non-native speakers of Spanish are contrasted in relation to test modality, oral or written, and response time. The production of native speakers is characterized by being significantly higher and more accurate, while L2 responses reflect lower lexical competence, the influence of L1 and divergent acquisition patterns. Although previous studies had not found significant differences between the number of responses produced orally and in writing, we find that such differences exist, but that they are conditioned by the response time, which affects differently the production in L1 and in L2, although their evolution describes a similar trajectory in both cases. This methodological factor would also cause the neutralization of the qualitative differences between oral and written responses in both groups of participants.

Agents Strongly Preferred: ERP Evidence from Natives and Non-Natives Processing Intransitive Sentences in Spanish.

Are non-native speakers able to process their second language in a native-like way? The present study used the Event-Related Potentials’ (ERPs) method to address this issue by focusing (1) on agent vs. agentless intransitive sentences and (2) on person vs. number agreement morphology. For that purpose, native and high proficiency and early non-native speakers of Spanish were tested while processing intransitive sentences containing grammatical and ungrammatical subject–verb agreement. Results reveal greater accuracy in the agent (unergative) condition as compared with the agentless (unaccusative) condition and different ERP patterns for both types of verbs in all participants, suggesting a larger processing cost for the agentless sentences than for the agentive ones. These effects were more pronounced in the native group as compared with the non-native one in the early time window (300–500 ms). Differences between person and number agreement processing were also found at both behavioral and electrophysiological levels, indicating that those morphological features are distinctively processed. Importantly, this pattern of results held for both native and non-native speakers, thus suggesting that native-like competence is attainable given early Age of Acquisition (AoA), frequent use and high proficiency.

Mujeres con voz propia. Antología guiada

Mujeres con voz propia. Antología guiada

Expressing uncontrolledness in narratives of accidental events: A comparison between native and non-native speakers of Spanish

This paper compares the range of alternating constructions to convey the notion of uncontrolledness in narratives of accidental events told by native and non-native speakers of Spanish. The paper addresses the question of whether or not these speaker groups convey an accidental event differently. Using a meaning-focused production task, natural-like oral narratives of accidental events were elicited from a group of 45 English-speaking learners of Spanish at advanced instructional levels and 45 Colombian monolingual Spanish speakers. Constructions conveying uncontrolled events in finite clauses across the whole stories were contrasted. Special attention was paid to constructions with se conveying accidentality in which syntactic features such as agreement, word order, and null subjects were analyzed. The results of the study show that native Spanish speakers use significantly more constructions with se conveying accidentality than non-native speakers, especially in the story climax. A form-focused acceptability judgment task was carried out to address metalinguistic knowledge and compare its results with those from the production task, which arguably reflects a greater use of procedural-communicative knowledge. The paper gives evidence of a different performance of native and non-native speakers of Spanish in production and acceptability tasks.

Uso y adquisición de artículos en español como segunda lengua

The objective of this research is to establish a typology of errors linked to the use of articles in SSL, and to associate the greater or lesser recurrence of errors at different levels of target language: A2 and B2. The contribution of this work is to help the more systematic and consistent treatment of articles among non-native speakers of Spanish. This investigation contemplated the analysis of 67 free Spanish-language essays in two language levels, from which a taxonomy of errors was created. Subsequently, a module for teaching the articles to each level group was carried out to see the effect that the instruction had on the handling of these elements, an effect that was measured in relation to a pretest and a posttest. The results show that after the teaching module increases the overuse and the wrong selection, over the concordance errors that appeared before the teaching module. The explanation for this may be the use of hyper generalization strategies and a greater feeling of trust among the learners. The error counts also show a positive correlation between a higher level of language, and a better use of articles in Spanish. Finally, it can be said that after the teaching module a better use of the neutral is observed, although the difficulties with the defined articles persist.

Short-term accommodation as a function of addressee language proficiency

AbstractThis paper examines patterns of phonetic accommodation as a function of addressee target language proficiency. Specifically, it analyzes short-term adjustments in the articulation of coda consonants /s/, /ɾ/, and /n/ in the speech of eight New York Dominican Spanish speakers during a series of conversations with different addressees – a native speaker and three nonnative Spanish speakers who have varying levels of Spanish proficiency. Results demonstrate that addressee native-speaker status and proficiency play a statistically significant role in both the degree and direction of phonetic accommodation exhibited by the native speaker informants. While the informants converge with both the most- and least-proficient addressees, they initially diverge from the mid-proficient addressee. The study finds that the native speaker informants use overtly-prestigious variants to attune to the academic Spanish of the most-proficient addressees and use covertly-prestigious, emblematic variants with both the mid-proficient and native speaker addressees to demonstrate outgroup and ingroup membership, respectively.

Enhancing instructor candidate oral proficiency through interdepartmental collaboration

National trends indicate that approximately half of world language instructor candidates in the United States struggle to meet the benchmark oral proficiency standard established by ACTFL (Kissau, 2014; Swender, 2003) and measured by the Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI). Given the critical instructor shortage, more needs to be done to help aspiring world language instructors to successfully complete this gatekeeper assessment. To help world language instructors develop the strong oral communication skills they need to successfully complete the OPI, an online, proficiency‐based interdepartmental course was designed to enhance the oral communication skills of nonnative speakers of Spanish, many of whom were aspiring K–12 Spanish instructors. Interview and OPI data suggested that the course succeeded in enhancing students’ oral proficiency when communicating in Spanish. The study presents a collaborative model demonstrating how education and language and literature faculty can work together to better prepare the next generation of world language instructors.

La intervención didáctica para promover la alfabetización inicial de dos niños no nativo hablantes de español, un estudio de caso

The purpose of this article is to present the results of the didactic inter- vention promoting the initial literacy stage of two non-native Spanish speakers. One of them had as a rst language (L1) hnahnu (am indigenous language from the central region of Mexico) and the other, Chinese (Mandarin). At the beginning of the inter- vention both managed to communicate with their colleagues in Spanish and had little knowledge of the writing system (Ferreiro and Teberosky, 1979). The inter- vention was carried out as part of the in- ternship of a Preschool Education student from the Marist University of Queretaro, Mexico.The applied methodology was the case study. The follow-up was performed during 25 sessions; each session designed with a constructivist approach with the intent of promoting graphic and reading decisions solving communicative problems (Alvarado and Vernon, 2001, Brousseau, 2007). At the end of the 25 sessions both children presented alphabetic writings

Multilingual self: Inspired by a recent trip to Peru

Funded by GATESOL, I had the privilege of presenting at the 2016 Peru TESOL conference in Arequipa. In this poem, I write about my inspiration of becoming fluent in Spanish by drawing on my interactions with and observations of locals and backpackers, non-native speakers of Spanish, in Cusco, Machu Picchu, Lima, and Ollataytambo beyond Arequipa during my extended 10-day stay in Peru. I describe how exhilarating it was to try out my limited Spanish and to watch crosslinguistic influences at work. In this poem, I write in all four languages of which I have varying proficiencies: Korean, English, Farsi, and Spanish in hopes to encourage teachers to allow multilingual students to draw on all linguistic repertories when learning in school (please see Ofelia García and her colleagues’ work on translanguaging). ReferenceGarcía, O. Wei, L. (2015). Translanguaging, bilingualism and bilingual education. In W. E. Wright, S. Boun, & O. Garcia (Eds). The handbook of bilingual and multilingual education (pp. 223-240).

Multilingual self: Inspired by a recent trip to Peru

Funded by GATESOL, I had the privilege of presenting at the 2016 Peru TESOL conference in Arequipa. In this poem, I write about my inspiration of becoming fluent in Spanish by drawing on my interactions with and observations of locals and backpackers, non-native speakers of Spanish, in Cusco, Machu Picchu, Lima, and Ollataytambo beyond Arequipa during my extended 10-day stay in Peru. I describe how exhilarating it was to try out my limited Spanish and to watch crosslinguistic influences at work. In this poem, I write in all four languages of which I have varying proficiencies: Korean, English, Farsi, and Spanish in hopes to encourage teachers to allow multilingual students to draw on all linguistic repertories when learning in school (please see Ofelia García and her colleagues’ work on translanguaging). ReferenceGarcía, O. Wei, L. (2015). Translanguaging, bilingualism and bilingual education. In W. E. Wright, S. Boun, & O. Garcia (Eds). The handbook of bilingual and multilingual education (pp. 223-240).

Strategie discorsive in spagnolo L1 ed L2 a confronto: un’indagine su corpora dialogici

According to previous studies on L1 Italian and Spanish, speakers prefer different pragmatic strategies and adopt specific pragmatic patterns to express their attention to the interlocutor. This study deals with communicative strategies used in dialogic speech in L1 and L2 Spanish considering both textual structure and interaction between the two interlocutors. More in detail, the aim of this research is to analyse how speakers introduce and manage Discourse Topics in order to compare the behaviour of native and non-native Spanish speakers. The study examines two corpora of task-oriented dialogues, the corpus DiESPA, of Peninsular Spanish L1 ?collected in different geographic areas? and the corpus DiELE-(I), of Spanish L2 –collected in the University of Salerno with Italian learners of a CEFR level B2-C1. The analysis of Discourse Topics introduction and management allows defining crucial textual characteristics and defining speakers’ attitudes towards interlocutors. From a qualitative and a quantitative analysis, which examines the percentage of occurrences of pragmatic moves used by native and non-native speakers, it emerges that differences in native speakers and L2 learners’ strategic choices used to complete the task are due to their limited linguistic competence, especially grammatical and lexical, rather than to pragmatic and cultural factors.

Variety of pronunciation models in European and American teaching or (self-)learning manuals of pronunciation for non-native speakers of Spanish

This paper analyses a corpus of Spanish pronunciation manuals published in Europe (Spain and Italy) and in the Americas (United States, Canada, and Brazil) from the 1970s onwards, which are aimed at second-language learners.
 The aim is to answer the following questions: Which pronunciation model is adopted in (self-)learning pronunciation manuals for non-native speakers of Spanish in Europe and America? Is it possible to observe a convergence towards a unique model or do these manuals reflect a plurality of different models? What is the role of the Castilian norm? Is it still the only reference model in Europe? Is it still viewed as a prestige model in non-Spanish speaking parts of the American continent, as it has been for a long time? Finally, what are the phonetic and phonological characteristics of the pronunciation norms employed in these manuals?
 The results of the analysis show that the manuals in the corpus reflect a plurality of different pronunciation models. The Castilian norm, which distinguishes between /θ/ and /s/, and in most manuals also between /ʎ/ and /ʝ/, still has an undisputed primary role in Europe. In America, by contrast, three basic models can be observed, namely a neutral American— which in its main features coincides with the Spanish of Latin American highlands—, the European one, and Buenos Aires Spanish. Moreover, it must be pointed out that in American manuals the European model is always an alternative to the neutral American one and it is never proposed as a unique reference standard. Brazilian manuals, on the other hand, represent an anomalous case due to the lack of a unique reference standard as the teaching model. In this case, the three mentioned reference models represent alternative options based on characteristics of different kinds, as discussed in the article.

Proficiency Matters: L2 Avoidance in Spanish Complex Wh- Production

The Derivational Complexity Hypothesis (Jakubowicz & Strik 2008) proposes that computationally complex structures interact with syntactic constraints in linguistic production, causing the rise of avoidance strategies in child L1 and adult L2 speakers. These avoidance strategies have until recently been understudied in the field of SLA (as opposed to the use of ungrammatical structures), but they actively compete with target-like forms during the language acquisition process and can therefore advance our understanding of non-native linguistic development. This article provides evidence for the DCH based on avoidance strategies shown by non-native speakers of Spanish in the production of the wh- island (How did you say when the jewels were stolen?). Through a game-based elicitation task, speakers at the intermediate and near-native level were prompted to produce questions containing a wh- island. The results show that intermediate speakers of Spanish significantly avoid producing questions that contain an island, as opposed to native and near-native speakers. The strategies used instead of the target are of a less complex nature (pronominalization of the second clause, omission of the middle verb), therefore supporting the DCH. Near-native and native data, on the other hand, show a use of creative strategies that is absent from the intermediate data. Off-target constructions by these groups often consist of questions that are structurally more complex than the intended target forms (use of relative clauses and embedded NPs).

Intercultural competence in synchronous communication between native and non-native speakers of Spanish

Abstract This paper discusses to what extent synchronous communication via Skype by Argentine university students of History and Danish university students of Spanish contributed to fostering intercultural competence in the two groups of participants. Intercultural gains are considered both as part of the planned tasks to be solved by the participants (intentional learning) and in the spontaneous communication that arose in the course of the Skype conversations (incidental learning). The overall objective of this telecollaboration project has been the promotion of intercultural competence, with particular focus on the learning and teaching of Argentine regional history. Several tools, synchronous and asynchronous, were used for this purpose. The focus of the present paper will be the analysis of instances of intercultural awareness observed in Skype conversations, and of the affordances and obstacles that this modality of communication seems to pose for the native and non-native participants.

The influence of L1 on auditory perception of Spanish/L2

The objective of this paper is to examine first language influence on phonic perception capabilities by non-native speakers of Spanish and subsequently analyze some of the existing links between perception and production processes in foreign language acquisition. The assumption is made that both processes are interlinked, and that they develop in line with each other, as the phonological categorization of new units—whereby proper speech production is achieved—starts from complex perceptual processes wherein the first language (L1) plays a crucial role. In order to conduct the study, a perceptual test was taken by 300 students (both men and women) from 20 different countries. Spanish levels ranged from A2 to C1. Data collected (61,200 responses) has been analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. Our results show that first language influence on perception is low. They also suggest that, although dependent on each other, production and perception are developed differently.

Subject expression in Spanish

Research on variation demonstrates that analyses of frequency and predictors of use contribute to our understanding of languages. Investigations of subject expression in Spanish in particular have identified differences across person and number of the verb that suggest that linguists should focus their analyses exclusively on a single category of that variable (e.g., Torres-Cacoullos and Travis 2010). The current paper examines the subject-expression forms produced in first- and second-person contexts in separate analyses, exploring the degree to which patterns of use generalize across verbal person categories. Data from 32 sociolinguistic interviews with native and non-native speakers of Spanish in the same speech community were coded for independent linguistic variables, such as switch reference, perseveration, tense, mood and aspect of the verb form, verbal negation, presence of object pronouns, specificity and reference cohesiveness. Separate multivariate analyses for first- and second-person referents show subtle differences between NSs and NNSs.

Structural and inherent case in the non-native processing of Spanish: Constraints on inflectional variability

This article reports an eye-tracking study on the native and non-native processing of case in Spanish. Twenty-four native and 27 first language (L1) German non-native speakers of Spanish were tested on their sensitivity to case marking violations involving structural case with objects of ditransitive verbs and to violations of inherent case for objects of transitive verbs (differential object marking; DOM). Both groups distinguished between grammatical and ungrammatical case marking for all sentence types in off-line acceptability judgments. In reading, however, the non-native speakers, unlike the native speakers, were sensitive only to violations of structural case marking with ditransitive verbs and the erroneous realization of DOM with inanimate objects. In contrast, they did not show processing slowdowns for the omission of DOM with animate objects. We interpret the asymmetry in non-native processing as reflecting sensitivity of the parser to grammatical feature hierarchies in that the parser licenses default case markings, yet flags feature clashes occasioned by the suppliance of erroneous inflectional forms with inherent case marking. We discuss the findings in the context of current approaches to second language (L2) acquisition and processing.