Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics - Volume 27, Issue 2, 2014

This article is aimed to present a proposal for the categorization of phonic errors, which has been developed within the project AACFELE, with the objective of studying the Phonics component in depth. Throughout these pages we intend to display both the theoretical framework in which the proposal has been formulated and the criteria which have been followed. We will describe the different sections and subsections of the classification and illustrate each one of them with examples of phonic mistakes made by native speakers of eleven distinct languages. Our main goal is to provide a tool for analysis that makes it possible to describe, categorize and tag, uniformly, any type of phonic error in such a way that the outcomes obtained with prospective studies, apart from being comparable, will contribute to valid hypothesis formulation. We hope that it will promote further studies in order to embrace both error analysis and interlanguage from a multidimensional perspective.

The deficiencies in metalinguistic reflection of the Spanish language (L1) in the first degree course for Modern Languages is the origin of this research. The objective is to find the variable that has a greater influence on the development of metalinguistic reflection as part of the multilingual competence. The European Higher Education Area (EHEA), offered 43 students a classroom workshop production of texts. The selected variables are related to the knowledge of other languages (L1, L2 and L3), intrinsic motivation to participate voluntarily in autonomous work and years of studies in Spanish language. Through the analysis of Pearson correlation index it is concluded that the most influential variable in improving is motivation, followed by knowledge of other languages. This result is useful for future educational activities in Higher Education.

The objective of this study was to determine how the translation approach adopted in an elementary reading text affected its reception by a group of primary school children. Also studied was the impact that the translation approach used had on reading motivation. The three approaches were the following: (i) a domesticating approach that adapted cultural elements to the readership (Gonzalez Cascallana, 2006, p. 99); (ii) a foreignizing approach that preserved the elements of the source culture; (iii) a mixed approach with a combination of elements from both the foreign and domestic cultures. The sample population in the study was composed of 120 second-graders, who read different translated versions of the same story and subsequently answered questions about it to assess the understanding, recall, and motivation. The results obtained showed that the subjects had a greater understanding and motivation in the case of the domesticating translation, in which cultural elements were adapted.

This paper presents results from a qualitative corpus-based study on Spanish EFL learners’ metaphorical production. The analysis of a learner corpus of business English, which included essays written by undergraduates, showed that learners do make use of metaphorical language and that the metaphorical expressions identified in their texts — economy/business is a living organism, business is war, business is a relationship, and economic success and failure are movements on a vertical axis — match those used by native speakers, as stated in the literature (Burcea, 2010; Kovács, 2006; Kövecses, 2002; White, 2003; among others). In addition, data also confirmed that even in learner’s language metaphors are connected in large networks within the same text, which contribute to enhancing text global coherence, as pointed out by Semino (2008). Finally, the potential benefits of raising learners’ metaphorical awareness and making explicit to them cross-linguistic differences in the expression of general conceptual metaphors are highlighted.

In this article, we investigate the pluralization of presentational haber (e.g., Habían fiestas. ‘There were parties.’) in the Spanish of Havana, Santo Domingo, and San Juan. Drawing on Goldberg’s (1995) Cognitive Construction Grammar, we claim that the phenomenon consists in a language change from below: the pluralized variant of the presentational haber construction () is replacing the impersonal variant (). Using a mixed-effects regression analysis, we show that speakers of the Caribbean dialects pluralize the verb in 41–46% of the cases. The linguistic factors that were investigated in this study (typical action-chain position of the noun’s referent, clause polarity, verb tense, comprehension-to-production priming and production-to-production priming) argue in favor of considering the variation an argument-structure alternation. The comparative sociolinguistic analyses reveal that these factors have the same effects and relative strengths in the three communities. For the three communities, the results for gender and social class support that the phenomenon constitutes an advanced language change from below.

This article analyzes an interpreter-mediated speech event from Spanish into Italian. In the case study, the interactional dominance of the main speaker and his communicative style repeatedly challenge the participatory status and the face of the interpreter, who is constantly coping with the speaker’s attempts to involve her in the interaction as an entertainment resource. Although the communicative setting — a book presentation — is typical of conference interpreting events, this encounter was structured unconventionally as an informal story-telling session interspersed with several ad-libs and impromptu conversation exchanges with other participants, all interpreted in the short consecutive mode. The high degree of interactivity that emerged among the participants suggested the adoption of a qualitative multidisciplinary approach which, in addition to conference interpreting research, also draws on dialogue and media interpreting, as well as sister disciplines such as social psychology and conversation analysis in intercultural settings.

L3-Task is a pilot project based on a European project proposal by the University of Vienna (Austria), the University of Alicante (Spain), the University of Barcelona (Spain), the UNED of Madrid (Spain), and the University of Jena (Germany). The pilot project aimed at implementing and investigating peer-to-peer interaction between students of a third language (L3) through blended online tandems organized by the universities involved in the project, all of which offer formal courses of third languages. The present paper focusses on the participation in oral peer-to-peer interaction in German by students who are native speakers (NSs) of Spanish (L1), have studied English as a second language (L2) and are acquiring German as an L3 within a university program based on an A1 CEFR-based framework. In order to provide these non-native speakers (NNSs) of German with opportunities to develop oral competence, online tandems were organized with students at the University of Vienna who are NSs or near-native-speakers of German (NNSs-high). During their online encounter, the tandem partners carried out task-based interactions related to the formal German language course in university education. The interactions were carried out outside the classroom, and recorded and stored by the students themselves with the help of a common video-conference platform. In this article we present samples of transcribed interactions in German by 11 tandems composed of a NNS and a NS or NNS-high. The interactions were initially set up through the use of English, which is the tandem partners´ common L2.

Previous genre studies have mostly examined article introductions either in the Introduction-Method-Results-Discussion (IMRD) context or without specifying whether they are followed by a Literature Review section. This paper presents a detailed structural analysis of 30 article introductions, which are all followed by a Literature Review, in an applied discipline (i.e., civil engineering). The analysis identifies different types of introductions based on their major communicative functions, structural flows, and the nature and orientations of the studies reported. Among them, the two major categories of introductions were systematically studied and compared (i.e., the “Two-move Orientation” type and the “Research-oriented Traditional Creating a Research Space” type). They were found to differ greatly concerning their length, functions and organization. However, generally, when there is a subsequent Literature Review, the introductions are fairly flexibly yet simply structured with no dense use of sub-moves. The findings help to inform genre-based EAP writing instruction and materials writing.

Disagreement has been relatively less studied than other speech acts such as requests or compliments, especially as produced by nonnative speakers of English. The present study aims to analyze the production of disagreement by an international group of Master students who use English as lingua franca in an online collaborative project. More specifically, the study tries to answer the following research questions: (1) does linguistic proficiency entail pragmatic competence? and (2), what is the effect of explicit instruction on pragmatic competence? To this purpose, two subcorpora (prior to and post instruction) were gathered by means of two online collaborative activities, rendering a total of 25,347 words. The analysis of the data reveals that high linguistic proficiency plays a crucial role in pragmatic competence. On the other hand, explicit instruction seems to benefit students to different extents, with intermediate B1 students improving their expression of disagreement and lower level students still remaining far from pragmatic and linguistic competence.

In this paper, we will try to offer an analysis of multimodal representations in a sample of Riojan wine labels. Basic formal operation such as cueing has allowed us to present metonymic and metaphoric relations existing between brand names, their origins, Riojan culture as well as viticultural aspects. We present four models of pictorial metaphors and a model of blended space. The role of these conceptual mappings in meaning derivation is relevant in multimodal genre as well as in the communicative functions of wine labels. In this study we have considered ontological metonymies (Kövecses & Radden, 1998), formal and content cognitive operations (Ruiz de Mendoza, 2001, 2011) as well as multimodal representations (Forceville, 2005, 2009).

Spanish undergraduates of English Studies are required to submit their essays in academic English, a genre which most of them are not acquainted with. This paper aims to explore the extralinguistic side of L2 academic writing, more specifically, the combination of metalinguistic items (e.g. transition and frame markers, among others) with writers’ awareness of academic genre features. The research sample conveys a group of 200 Spanish undergraduates of English Studies; they are in their fourth year, so they are expected to be proficient in English academic writing but their written production quality varies considerably. Results are analysed following a mixed methodology by which metalinguistic items are statistically measured, and then contrasted with semi-structured interview results; SPSS® and NVivo® provide quantitative and qualitative outcomes, respectively. The analyses reveal that undergraduate students who produce complex sentences and more coherent texts show greater awareness of academic genre features, being able to (un)consciously employ academic language in their written expression. These high-scoring students make more proficient use of complex transition markers for coherence and frame markers for textual cohesion.

On the basis of previous lexical bundle studies, this paper examines the forms, structures and functions of 4-word bundles in a corpus of textbooks and a corpus of research articles in Biology. The study includes the main biological disciplines and focuses on three major features: the overall distribution of bundles, their typical structures, and their functions in discourse in Biology. The findings support the idea that lexical bundles are a basic linguistic construct with important functions for the construction of discourse in this area. Concluding discussion highlights the pedagogical implications of using research journals and/or textbooks to teach English to biologists in a second language context. Furthermore, the importance of explicit instruction in these word combinations in courses on English for Biologists is emphasized.

We utilize variationist methodology to explore the conventionalization and pragmatics of 3rd person direct object clitic placement in Spanish periphrastic constructions. Analysis of 652 tokens extracted from three Mexico City speech corpora indicates that while proclitic position is the majority variant, the rate of enclitic position depends on particular [finite + non-finite verb] constructions, distinguished by frequency measures and more grammaticalized meanings. At the same time, enclisis is favored by propositional or non-referential direct objects and by direct objects of low topic persistence, measured by subsequent mentions. In contrast, proclitic position is favored more by inanimate than human referents, especially those that show topic persistence and whose previous mention was in the syntactic role of direct object in the same or preceding clause. These quantitative patterns suggest that proclisis indicates prototypical DOs in non-prototypical use, i.e. topical inanimates. Thus, despite conventionalization of the general proclitic schema, particular constructions and semantic-pragmatic considerations are operative factors in the variation.

In Franco’s totalitarian state, censorship became from the start an efficient mechanism to control artistic production — and by extension, ideas — which was conceived to maintain and enhance the values of Francoist regime. But its violent and ruthless measures did not prevent it from being considered by some as arbitrary and inconsistent. The present article argues that Francoist censorship was a rigid and normalised system with fixed criteria that guided and determined censors’ decisions. The study carried out here compares three novels sharing the theme of sexuality, which were originally written in English and French and translated into Spanish under Franco’s dictatorship: The last of the wine, by Mary Renault (1961); Safo, by Alphonse Daudet (1964); and The anti-death league, by Kingsley Amis (1967). It aims to identify examples of censorship manipulation and establish translational patterns by analysing — both quantitatively and qualitatively — the strategies or censorship mechanisms detected in the translated texts. The results of the study illustrate the influence that Francoist censorship exerted upon the translation of novels with sexual content, contributing to unveiling the reasons behind their alterations.