The Spanish psychological verb construction seems to be especially difficult for native English-speaking learners to acquire. Since some of the most common Spanish psych verbs, such as "gustar" (to please) and "encantar" (to delight), require a grammatical structure that is different from that of the English verbs frequently taken as their equivalents "to like" and "to love," it is understandable that native English speakers may struggle with the construction. This study presents data that describe the patterns of usage of students (n=105) in first-, second-, third-, and fourth-semester university-level Spanish courses. Each completed three descriptive writing tasks, which were analyzed for error patterns. Analysis identified three major error types: omission of preposition "a" (to) when inclusion is required; several object pronoun errors; and verb morphology errors. Results suggest that learners initially commit errors related to transfer of structures from the first language. Gradually, however, transfer errors decline and developmental errors increase as learners experiment with elements of the target language. It is proposed that within this learning pattern, it is possible to discern distinct stages in learners' progress toward acquisition. Contains 18 references. (Author/MSE)