Open AccessThe use of the past tense aspect in Spanish by study At-Home and Study-Abroad Chinese learners in semi-guided writing tasks
Author(s) -
Yuliang Sun,
Lourdes Díaz Rodríguez,
Mariona Taulé
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
círculo de lingüística aplicada a la comunicación
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.298
H-Index - 6
ISSN - 1576-4737
DOI - 10.5209/clac.67944
Subject(s) - mandarin chinese , psychology , linguistics , past tense , study abroad , point (geometry) , language proficiency , second language , mathematics education , pedagogy , verb , philosophy , geometry , mathematics
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.