This study examines how faithfully second language (L2) Spanish textbooks represent the variability found in natural language use with regard to variable clitic placement (VCP). We offer a corpus study of VCP in the language used throughout nine Spanish L2 textbooks, which constitute all the available textbooks designed to teach Rioplatense…

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…

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…

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…

This study compares Spanish instructors' use of preterite and imperfect in the foreign language classroom to the distribution of these forms in large-scale corpora, which represent the input learners would potentially receive in a naturalistic learning context. Twenty-four 50-minute class sessions were recorded, and all tokens of preterite and…

In seeking to both confirm previous conclusions and expand the literature of the field with a different group of participants, McNulty (2012) was (partially) replicated. Three instructional interventions were designed to ascertain which activity type was responsible for learner gains. One treatment group (R) included referential-only practice…

The 2007 MLA report "Foreign Language and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World," with its call to institutions of higher education to reexamine their curricula and include more in-depth cultural content into all courses, reminded foreign language educators of the important goal of helping students gain…

The purpose of this paper is to compare structured input (SI) with other input-based instructional treatments. The input-based instructional types include: input flood (IF), text enhancement (TE), SI activities, and focused input (FI; SI without implicit negative feedback). Participants included 145 adult learners enrolled in an intermediate…

Motivated by predictions of the theory of Input Processing, this study adds to previous research on second language (L2) Spanish pronunciation learning by investigating the impact of two distinct types of pronunciation assignments on first language (L1) English L2 Spanish students' improvement in pronunciation of the vowels /e, o/. Two sections of…

In this article, we examine whether the effectiveness of processing instruction (PI) is limited to forms targeted in the instructional treatment (primary effects) or whether it also extends to other forms (transfer-of-training effects). L2 Spanish learners (N = 123) received either PI or traditional instruction (TI) targeting third-person…

This study examines the effects of processing instruction (PI) alone versus PI and output (O) on the acquisition of three conjunctional and infinitival phrases in Spanish. Seventy intermediate and advanced-intermediate high school participants received: 1) PI on three consecutive days (PI + PI + PI); 2) PI for two days and meaning-based output…

This study explores how grammar instruction is conceptualized and applied in published Spanish materials. It sought to answer the following questions: What are the approaches to grammar instruction in current, college-level, beginning Spanish textbooks? How do they reflect current perspectives on grammar teaching? Six widely adopted Spanish…

Second-language learners use processing strategies, such as assigning agency to the first noun of an utterance when grammatical cues indicate a contrary interpretation, that can impede correct form-meaning mappings. Processing instruction was developed to push learners to use more optimal processing strategies so that they can make correct…

Research on Processing Instruction (PI) has yielded consistently positive results across a variety of measures. In addition, in comparison to other instructional interventions, PI tends to yield superior results. The one difference is comparative research with Meaning-based Output Instruction (MOI) in which in a number of studies, MOI is seen to…

Twenty-nine subjects enrolled in a fourth-semester Spanish course were assigned to one of two treatments, processing instruction and meaning-based output instruction. Results show that processing instruction has an overall greater effect than meaning-based output instruction on how learners interpret and produce the Spanish subjunctive of doubt.…