Exploring the Relation Between Psychotypologies and Article Acquisition

The aim of this study is to explore whether there may be any correlations between psychotypology (i.e. perceived linguistic distance) and the number of article-related errors in L1 Polish students of L3 Spanish. Following a survey on the participants’ assessment of linguistic distance between the languages of their dominant language constellations, article-related errors were compared by means of a battery of non-parametric Mann-Whitney U tests. The results do not suggest significant differences between groups B1 and B2 in terms of article-related errors. However, positive correlations were found, at an all-encompassing B1+B2 level, between grammatical psychotypology and article omission errors, and in group B2 with regard to general article use and, more especifically, wrong article use and article omission errors. On the other hand, negative correlations were found between lexical psychotypology and article usage in group B2; phonetic psychotypology and wrong article use in group B1 in group B1; and grammatical psychotypology and unnecessary article use in group B1. The results seem to suggest that perceived linguistic distance among more experienced learners may be linked to the development of successful cross-linguistic associations, whereas it may lead to ‘false assumptions’ at lower levels of instruction.