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The Analysis of Oral Self‐Correction as a Window into the Development of Past Time Reference in Spanish
Author(s) -
Camps Joaquim
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
foreign language annals
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.258
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1944-9720
pISSN - 0015-718X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1944-9720.2003.tb01473.x
Subject(s) - imperfect , verb , psychology , feature (linguistics) , linguistics , narrative , focus (optics) , window (computing) , past tense , mathematics education , computer science , philosophy , physics , optics , operating system
This study explored how beginning learners of Spanish develop the ability to use preterit and imperfect past tense forms, by analyzing the self‐correction behavior they exhibited in their oral production. Each of 15 participants produced five narratives during their second semester of instruction, which were analyzed for the features learners focused their attention on when they attempted to self‐correct. The results showed that the frequency of errors in the verb forms they used, the rate of self‐correction, and the success of those corrections, varied depending on the feature analyzed. It seems that learners may be able to focus different degrees of attention on features such as person and number on the one hand, and features such as tense and aspect on the other.