Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics - Volume 28, Issue 2, 2015

The acquisition of the Spanish morpheme se has proved to be problematic for L2 learners both because of its polyfunctionality and because of the restrictions regarding the types of predicates with which it can combine. This paper sheds light on this problem by focusing on a specific type of se (anticausative se; e.g., El jarrón se rompió ‘The vase broke’) and exploring its acquisition across four proficiency levels. Results of a scalar grammaticality judgment task indicate that lower-proficiency participants’ performance is in line with previous research, which claims that this aspect of Spanish grammar is particularly challenging for L2 learners (as reflected in omission and overgeneralization errors). However, the near-native group shows sensitivity to the abstract features that uniquely characterize verbs that undergo the causative/inchoative alternation. Thus, the current findings suggest that L2 learners manage to overcome the problems experienced at lower levels and, in fact, do succeed at the level of ultimate attainment.

This article draws on a corpus of transnational encounters that are not a priori about learning, recorded at a university in Catalonia immersed in processes of internationalization. However, by taking a CA-for-SLA approach to the data, it is shown how opportunities for language teaching and learning emerge across the settings, from the most institutional (i.e. formal ceremonies) to the most informal interactions (i.e. friendly conversation), and are mediated by available plurilingual and multimodal resources. In this regard, the analysis yields results that differ from previous research conducted in similar higher education contexts in which categorizations of participants as language ‘experts’/‘non-experts’ or ‘teachers’/‘learners’ were avoided (e.g. Kurhila, 2004). Such data prompts the author to argue that beyond simply recognizing the potential for second language learning ‘in the wild’ at universities going about internationalization, active steps could be taken to implement strategies that would enhance opportunities for language learning to happen.

One of the most frequent English social dialects that we can hear in American cinema is the so-called Black English or Ebonics, whose users are typically (although not exclusively any more) African American characters. In this study, we attempted an approach to the linguistic portrayal of black characters on screen and the translation of these ‘black-speech’ traits into Spanish by closely examining both the original and dubbed versions of a total sample of 19 films belonging to the genre of Afro-American cinema. We hypothesized that, even when the general tendency would most likely be neutralization, the resulting target text might still be characterized by ethnically marked discourse, having a distinctive and recognizable identity. We believe that the data obtained needs to be complemented with further research in order to accurately prove our hypothesis; however, we could conclude that the target version contains some specific elements that may provide the audience with the necessary clues that would lead them to associate this ethnically marked dubbed discourse with black ethnicity.

Sustainability has become a key concept in the debate over global environmental challenges. With the view that at the heart of the environmental debate is undoubtedly the text, this paper examines the rhetorical construction of text and provides linguistic insights into how the concept of sustainability is textualized. Corpus findings show that the discourse of sustainability is constructed by interwoven discourses which depict sustainability as a goal, as a problem, or as an object of analysis or study and implemented by companies and institutions. The rhetorical construction of the argumentation of the discourses of sustainability further suggests that the news magazines convey a multiplicity of obvious or hidden communicative purposes. This paper critically examines how resources such as evaluation, hedging or intertextuality are used in journalistic discourse to convey the author’s stance towards sustainability, trying to position the audience and thus to shape the public awareness and acceptance of sustainability.

The study draws on a diverse sample of adult users of online support groups to investigate how men and women engage in written conversations, and how these interactions are carried out in English and in Spanish contrastively. We will see to what extent female and male communicators in online support groups display similar power behaviours since some authors believe that these fora seem to provide a context where factors such as power and status are neutralised. In general, the detailed quantitative analysis suggests that women use powerless markers far more frequently than men. Therefore the findings support the contention that gender-based differences persist on the Internet, an arena which was initially believed to be free of built-in bias. On the other hand, the inter- and cross-cultural comparison indicates that the discourse practices in English include more powerless markers than those in Spanish. Interestingly, the abundant use of occurrences of formal addresses and polite forms displayed by men in Spanish may suggest that, in online support groups, men may be adopting communicative strategies traditionally associated with women’s discourse.

The present research, firstly, aims to determine the global structure of the virtual discussion forum/unspecialized medical appointment genre from the analysis of its superstructure. The pattern of the genre presents a tripartite division in which three types of postings succeed each other: problem messages, advice messages and thanks messages. Secondly, the study of the sections and movements that establish the formal structure of these types of messages is completed with the description of the macrostructural level, in which the content or semantic structure of textual productions is covered, without sacrificing the functional exponents and the microstructural supports that contribute to its elucidation.

This article, based on an experimental corpus of 1,020 sentences, provides a description of the intonation of wh-questions in Central Catalan, which had not been studied in depth so far. The data show that wh-questions display a greater variety of intonation patterns than yes/no questions. The paper argues that each intonation pattern is preferably associated with a specific pragmatic meaning (asking for information, offering information, giving an order and so far).

It is widely recognized that the development of mood selection in Spanish poses a unique challenge for English-speaking L2 learners, but the role that aural mood recognition plays in this process has yet to be fully explored (Collentine, 2010). This present study, conducted with intermediate-advanced L2 Spanish students, considers issues of aural saliency for regular and irregular present subjunctive forms, and argues that if students cannot perceive mood modeled in spoken input, the necessary frequency-driven, form-meaning connections essential for acquisition could be hindered, impacting mood production (Ellis, 2002, 2009). These exploratory results suggest a positive correlation between phonological sensitivity to the present subjunctive form and target-like mood production, especially when coupled with mood noticing strategies. The outcome of this study offers insight into L2 mood selection development and adds support to pedagogical approaches that strengthen aural mood recognition and encourage explicit strategies for mood processing.

This paper examines the challenges posed by discourse markers (DM) for learners at secondary school level of French as a foreign language (FFL), based on a corpus of samples of written work by FFL students. The first section looks at how DM are presented and described in the textbooks and dictionaries used by secondary school teachers and learners. The next section focuses on organizational discourse markers, with an analysis of student errors in the corpus. The range of semantic possibilities explored in the case of enfin and finalement offers a good illustration of the difficulties faced by teachers and learners alike in the acquisition of DM, due to the multifunctionality of the particles and their formal similarity to the Spanish DM en fin and finalmente. The final section makes some observations regarding the effectiveness of teaching DM systematically from the earliest stages of FFL learning, based on recent work by Donís Pérez (2014).

While research on peer interaction in language learning has proliferated over the past two decades, little is known regarding why students interact differently with their peers and how collaborative patterns can be developed to promote the effectiveness of small group work in L2 learning. To fill such a void in the research literature, the present case study investigates the factors that shape the collaborative pattern of a small group of Chinese EFL learners in peer feedback activities. Multiple sources of data were collected, including video recordings of peer feedback sessions, semi-structured interviews, stimulated recalls, and student drafts of writing. The findings show that students’ beliefs and values, students’ motives and goals, the use of mediating artifacts, and the power relationship among the students shape the patterns of group interaction considerably. This study deepens our understanding of the nature of peer interaction in peer feedback for L2 writing and contributes new knowledge to the research on pair and small group work in L2 learning.