Effective communication is a fundamental aspect of human relationships and a key interpersonal skill to be considered and developed at an EFL Teacher Education Program. Yet, a variety of challenges are posed for those in the process of becoming (proficient) users of English in an environment where Spanish is the main means of communication. Our…

This contribution, based on the DICONALE ON LINE (FFI2012-32658) and COMBIDIGILEX (FFI2015-64476-P) research projects, aims to create an onomasiological bilingual dictionary with online access for German and Spanish verbal lexemes. The objective of this work is to present the most relevant contributions of the dictionary based on two lexemes from…

The paper provides an example of how immigration is constructed by receiving societies as a comprehension or language problem that requires special solutions. It focuses on the application of Easy-to-Read, a simplified register currently in expansion which addresses different groups of people with intellectual disabilities, to immigrants in Spain.…

Acquiring a second language (L2) has been increasingly recognized to be an ongoing developmental process, one that progresses in a fluid and non-linear fashion (Larsen-Freeman, 2015). Instead of operating like a mechanical black box that parses incoming linguistic information and outputs oral/written language indiscriminately, the learner's…

Learning a foreign language is a critical skill in the current context of globalization and multicultural communication. Present secondary and post-secondary foreign language classes admit increasing numbers of students with learning disabilities (LD). Given the particular challenges faced by these students in the area of language processing,…

Cognates are words that are the same or nearly the same orthographically and semantically in English and Spanish. The majority of the more than 20,000 cognates are academic vocabulary words comprised of Latin and Greek roots and affixes. Several thousand cognates can be found in the picture books that have earned the Américas Book Award, which was…

This article focuses on two main issues. On the one hand, it deals with early prevention of literacy difficulties. On the other hand, it deals with the same issue once pupils already present serious difficulties in reading and writing. Consequently, this paper has two main aims. Firstly, it aims to show teachers that, in order to carry out…

In this article we offer up a particular linguistic phenomenon, quantifier-variable binding in Kannada ditransitives, as a proving ground upon which competing claims about learnability can be evaluated with respect to the relative abstractness of children's grammatical knowledge. We first identify one aspect of syntactic representation that…

I provide an update on the state of the art of the research--the last one being Collentine (2003)--on the acquisition of the function of the subjunctive and mood selection, as well as the research's implications for pedagogy. The article considers what we currently know about the role of universal grammar, psycholinguistic perspectives on the…

Heritage language speakers constitute a unique cultural and linguistic resource in the United States while also presenting particular challenges for language educators and language programs. This paper examines the potential of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) in a curriculum for Spanish second language learners/heritage speakers, with…

This report shows a classification of differential item functioning (DIF) sources that have an effect on the adaptation of tests. This classification is based on linguistic and cultural criteria. Four general DIF sources are distinguished: cultural relevance, translation problems, morph syntactical differences, and semantic differences. The…

Addresses the topic of discourse markers and, using the concepts of denial and contrast, with modifications, examines markers of contrast in English and Spanish. The article shows that the markers in each language correspond very closely in what they signal about the interpretation of the utterances of which they are a part. (Nine references)…

The Spanish verb "haber" presents unresolved puzzles concerning its meaning and derivations. Apart from its familiar and recent function as auxiliary in the perfect tenses, the verb's underlying meaning "to have, to hold" persists in the impersonal "hay" while other morphemes previously associated with "haber" may prove unrelated. (Author/MSE)

Presents two different types of progressive construction in Spanish and Catalan, one referring to a state or event, and the other to the development of an event. The article argues that the first is predicated of a homogenous period of time, whereas the other is predicated of a period of time divided into consecutive phases. (23 references)…

Discussion of the sequence of tenses and the subjunctive in Spanish language textbooks demonstrates that there is a lack of mechanical morphonological agreement and that subjunctives may have a temporal value independent of that of the matrix with associated semantic differences; that is, subjunctives do not function as neutralized forms…