ASU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes most of the ASU Theses and Dissertations from 2011 to present. ASU Theses and Dissertations are available in downloadable PDF format; however, a small percentage of items are under embargo. Information about the dissertations/theses includes degree information, committee members, an abstract, supporting data or media.
In addition to the electronic theses found in the ASU Digital Repository, ASU Theses and Dissertations can be found in the ASU Library Catalog.
Dissertations and Theses granted by Arizona State University are archived and made available through a joint effort of the ASU Graduate College and the ASU Libraries. For more information or questions about this collection contact or visit the Digital Repository ETD Library Guide or contact the ASU Graduate College at gradformat@asu.edu.
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- All Subjects: Spanish language--Study and teaching--Foreign speakers.
- Creators: Gelderen, Elly van
Description
The study of Spanish instructors’ beliefs is a recent development and the body of work is
small with little research conducted on their insights on the acquisition of any grammar form. Still, Spanish grammar includes the notoriously difficult subjunctive, a grammatical irrealis mood that is affixed to verbs. A national survey was conducted on Spanish professors and instructors (N=73) who teach at institutions randomly selected from a representative sample of American institutions of higher education. The survey was conducted to inquire on their beliefs regarding the most complex forms in Spanish, the causes of the subjunctive difficulty, and their preferred methods of teaching the form. The results first indicate that participants rated the subjunctive the most difficult grammar form. They attributed the cause of difficulty to be primarily interference from the first language and its abstractness. For instructing the subjunctive, participants generally supported form-oriented instruction with a metalanguage approach that focuses on forms. However, the participants disagreed greatly on whether meaning-focused instruction was valuable and dismissed drilling instruction of the subjunctive. Data from the participants provides a distribution of overextended tense, moods, and aspects in lieu of the Spanish subjunctive. However, instructors indicated that their students’ competence of the subjunctive was higher than their performance and that comprehension was not necessarily reliant on correct usage of the subjunctive as it was for proficiency. Moreover, they provided qualitative data of effective methods and pedagogical challenges of the subjunctive. This study illuminates some of the contributing factors of subjunctive difficulty and preferred pedagogical approaches for teaching it. It also has implications that meaning may not be obstructed if students do not use subjunctive.
small with little research conducted on their insights on the acquisition of any grammar form. Still, Spanish grammar includes the notoriously difficult subjunctive, a grammatical irrealis mood that is affixed to verbs. A national survey was conducted on Spanish professors and instructors (N=73) who teach at institutions randomly selected from a representative sample of American institutions of higher education. The survey was conducted to inquire on their beliefs regarding the most complex forms in Spanish, the causes of the subjunctive difficulty, and their preferred methods of teaching the form. The results first indicate that participants rated the subjunctive the most difficult grammar form. They attributed the cause of difficulty to be primarily interference from the first language and its abstractness. For instructing the subjunctive, participants generally supported form-oriented instruction with a metalanguage approach that focuses on forms. However, the participants disagreed greatly on whether meaning-focused instruction was valuable and dismissed drilling instruction of the subjunctive. Data from the participants provides a distribution of overextended tense, moods, and aspects in lieu of the Spanish subjunctive. However, instructors indicated that their students’ competence of the subjunctive was higher than their performance and that comprehension was not necessarily reliant on correct usage of the subjunctive as it was for proficiency. Moreover, they provided qualitative data of effective methods and pedagogical challenges of the subjunctive. This study illuminates some of the contributing factors of subjunctive difficulty and preferred pedagogical approaches for teaching it. It also has implications that meaning may not be obstructed if students do not use subjunctive.
ContributorsPowell, John Warren William (Author) / Gelderen, Elly van (Thesis advisor) / James, Mark (Thesis advisor) / Beaudrie, Sara (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
Adult second-language learners of Spanish struggle with the acquisition of preterite and imperfect selection due to the overtly morphological representation of grammatical aspect. Prior studies have documented the effect of a default encoding without influence of the lexical aspect in the emergence of aspectual morphology, and have proposed the Default Past Tense Hypothesis (DPTH).
This study investigates the emergence of aspectual morphology by testing the DPTH and the effect of adverbials at interpreting grammatical aspect in this process of acquisition. Twenty-eight English-speaking learners of Spanish (beginning, intermediate and advanced) and twenty native-Spanish speakers are tested with two written comprehension tasks that assess the interpretation of habitual/imperfect and episodic/preterite readings of eventive verbs. The truth-value judgment task incorporates forty short stories with two summary sentences, from which participants must choose one as true. The grammaticality judgment task presents sixty-four sentences with temporal adverbials of position and duration, thirty-two are grammatical and thirty-two are ungrammatical. Participants must accept or reject them using a 5-point likert scale.
The findings indicate that the DPTH is partially supported by the statistical data showing a default marker, imperfect for beginning learners, and preterite for intermediate learners. This provides support to the argument of unsteady aspectual checking of [-bounded] in the spec of AspP and not necessarily by only checking [+past] in the TP for intermediate learners. The influence of the lexical aspect value of the verb is partially evident with advanced learners. Temporal adverbials play an important role at interpreting grammatical aspect with intermediate and advanced learners. Results show that beginning learners are not influenced by the presence of adverbials due to their inexperience with the Spanish aspectual morphology.
The findings also allow the confirmation of prior results about factors that influence the interpretation of preterite and imperfect. First, the instruction of aspectual morphology co-indexed with specific temporal adverbials, and second, that learners rely on lexical cues at the sentential level, while native speakers rely on discursive ones.
This study investigates the emergence of aspectual morphology by testing the DPTH and the effect of adverbials at interpreting grammatical aspect in this process of acquisition. Twenty-eight English-speaking learners of Spanish (beginning, intermediate and advanced) and twenty native-Spanish speakers are tested with two written comprehension tasks that assess the interpretation of habitual/imperfect and episodic/preterite readings of eventive verbs. The truth-value judgment task incorporates forty short stories with two summary sentences, from which participants must choose one as true. The grammaticality judgment task presents sixty-four sentences with temporal adverbials of position and duration, thirty-two are grammatical and thirty-two are ungrammatical. Participants must accept or reject them using a 5-point likert scale.
The findings indicate that the DPTH is partially supported by the statistical data showing a default marker, imperfect for beginning learners, and preterite for intermediate learners. This provides support to the argument of unsteady aspectual checking of [-bounded] in the spec of AspP and not necessarily by only checking [+past] in the TP for intermediate learners. The influence of the lexical aspect value of the verb is partially evident with advanced learners. Temporal adverbials play an important role at interpreting grammatical aspect with intermediate and advanced learners. Results show that beginning learners are not influenced by the presence of adverbials due to their inexperience with the Spanish aspectual morphology.
The findings also allow the confirmation of prior results about factors that influence the interpretation of preterite and imperfect. First, the instruction of aspectual morphology co-indexed with specific temporal adverbials, and second, that learners rely on lexical cues at the sentential level, while native speakers rely on discursive ones.
ContributorsFistrovic, Tatiana Katy (Author) / Gelderen, Elly van (Thesis advisor) / Renaud, Claire (Committee member) / Muñoz-Liceras, Juana (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016