Dissecting L2 Spanish Learner Narratives

One of the most researched challenges in learning Spanish is the acquisition and use of the past aspect, namely, the preterit and imperfect. L2 learners encounter this challenge due to differences in how native English and Spanish speakers view past events. Numerous studies on the Spanish past aspect have analyzed L2 learners' past aspectual selections through two hypotheses: the lexical aspect hypothesis (LAH), which claims that lower-level L2 learners are guided by the lexical semantics of the verb in their selections of past aspect; and the discourse hypothesis (DH), which claims that as L2 learners become more proficient, they make past aspectual selections to foreground and background information. The present study uses both hypotheses to analyze past aspectual selections in beginner, intermediate, and advanced L2 learners as well as native speakers. By doing so, it was possible to analyze how past aspectual selections differ across proficiency levels on the basis of lexical aspect and narrative grounding. 75 L2 learners and 20 native Spanish speakers produced two uncontrolled, written narratives. The first was a film-retell based on a five minute clip of "Alone and Hungry" from Modern Times and the second was a personal narration of a favorite vacation. All verbs within each narrative were coded for lexical aspect: atelic states and activities as well as telic accomplishments and achievements. Next, foregrounded clauses (preterit) were separated from backgrounded clauses (imperfect) in order to capture how narrative structure played a role in past aspectual selections. The researcher and a second coder determined the accuracy of use of the preterit and imperfect. Quantitative data consisted of contingency tables and chi-square analyses for the film-retell task and the personal narrative task separately that captured total use of preterit and imperfect morphology for the LAH. It also captured correct use of preterit and imperfect for the DH. Finally, type-token ratios (TTRs) were used to assess the lexical variety of verbs on the basis of grammatical aspect, lexical aspect, and proficiency level for the fill-retell task. The results revealed that for the film-retell and personal narrative tasks, there was support for the LAH. Participants across proficiency groups were guided by the LAH when making past aspectual selections. There was also partial support for the DH in that participants across proficiency groups consistently selected preterit morphology for atelic states and activities, even if the lower-level proficiency groups made more errors in their past aspectual selections. However, showed very little evidence of correct use of imperfect morphology with telic achievements and accomplishments. Additionally, analysis of type-token ratios (TTRs) showed that participants across proficiency groups repeatedly used high-frequency verbs to complete their narratives. This was particularly noticeable for state and activity verbs within the beginner group. Task type appeared to be a major influence in participants' selections of past aspect for the film-retell task. Participants were influenced by the numerous sequential scenes of the film task, which accounted for the high frequencies of preterit to mark bounded events, but much lower frequencies of imperfect to mark unbounded events. For the personal narrative, frequencies of the preterit were higher than imperfect across each lexical class. When assessing both film-retell and personal narratives, participants produced very few contexts for imperfect with achievement and accomplishment verbs. Participants either did not have the knowledge to do so or felt that their own narrations of "Alone and Hungry" and their personal narrative was sufficient to complete the task.