The system of second person singular forms of address (2PS) in Medellín, Colombia is tripartite consisting of "tú, vos," and "usted," while also including the existence of a dual "usted." The current study compares usage of the intimate "usted" versus the distant "usted" with data from an oral…

The current study contributes to the argument regarding whether L2 learners up to advanced levels make agreement errors on grammatical gender. It reports gender agreement accuracy on a written Grammaticality Judgment Task (GJT) and an Elicited Oral Production Task (PDT) on known nouns assigned the correct gender by participants on a vocabulary…

While translation was once a key component of language teaching, throughout the twentieth century, it largely gave way to methods and approaches with a greater focus on communicative competence. However, efforts have been made in the past few decades to return translation and more generally multilingual language learning to classrooms. In the…

When bilinguals read in either their first language (L1) or their second language (L2), words from both languages are unconsciously and automatically activated in their mind (e.g., Kroll et al. 2006; Van Heuven and Dijkstra 2002). Many bilinguals, particularly in Florida, choose to learn Portuguese in college as a third language (L3), thus…

This study examines the variable occurrence of preposition duplication in contexts of coordination in Spanish (e.g., "Fui con mi madre y (con) mi padre"). We build on previous research on this variable morphosyntactic phenomenon (namely, prepositions in contexts of coordination) by expanding the type of data and the independent variables…

The use of English-origin spontaneous loanwords (e.g., "la babysitter," "el counter," etc.) in otherwise Spanish discourse is criticized by many as a strategy that bilinguals use to compensate for a lack of lexical knowledge in Spanish. The purpose of the current research is to examine the question of lexical proficiency as a…

The present study explores subjunctive recognition and production among low-proficiency learners in the written and aural modalities. It seeks to establish whether mood recognition and production are increased due to irregular morphology and/or input manipulation. A total of 97 participants enrolled in second-semester Spanish classes completed…

This study investigates whether dynamic visual enhancement affects the recall of second language (L2) vocabulary and whether working memory interacts with visual enhancement and vocabulary recall. Participants in four groups completed a pre-test, immediate post-test, and delayed post-test that measured the effects of the type of dynamic…

The present study compared the performance of two groups of second language learners processing three linguistic structures in Spanish. The linguistic targets were passives, object pronouns in O[subscript pro]VS sentences, and gender-cued null subjects in subordinate clauses. The primary differences between the two groups were language experience…

The Philadelphia Mural Movement is internationally known; admittedly, it is one of its most sought attractions when visiting the city. Using this form of art as the backdrop, a telecollaborative task-based project between two universities located in two different countries, in two different continents, was designed in fall 2015. Universidad…

This article explores the use of two epistemic adverbs in Argentine Spanish, "quizás" and "capaz". While scholars have noted the existence of "capaz" as an epistemic adverb, it had not been systematically studied prior to this investigation. To examine the epistemic stance of the adverbs, 117 participants completed an…

The aim of a discourse-pragmatic approach to teaching the indicative/subjunctive contrast in Spanish is to engage students to move beyond grammar and semantics and enter the domain of language use in complete texts. Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research have mostly focused on the morphology, semantics and syntactic aspects of…

The present study investigates whether the implementation of a dictogloss task within a proactive Focus on Form approach (e.g., Long 1991; Long and Robinson 1998) has significant effects on the acquisition of Spanish present subjunctive. A total of sixty-six learners in a fifth-semester Spanish course participated in the study and were assigned to…

The current study examines English-speaking learners of Spanish and their pragmatic development of request forms during a six-week immersion program in Madrid, Spain. Elicited production and intuition data were analyzed, focusing on personal deictic orientation, directness evidenced by clause type, and the use of "por favor"…

This study focuses on variation within a group of learners of Spanish (N = 253) who produced requests and complaints via a written discourse completion task. It examines the effects of learner and situational variables on production--the effect of proficiency and addressee-gender on speech-act choice and the effect of perception of imposition on…