A study of integrating discourse-context information into Spanish aspect grammatical teaching for Sinophone learners

• Published in: Porta Linguarum Revista Interuniversitaria de Didáctica de las Lenguas Extranjeras no. VIII; pp. 83 - 97
• Main Authors: Sun, Yuliang, Qi, Zhongchen, Díaz Rodríguez, Lourdes
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 15.11.2023
• Subjects: aspecto del tiempo pasado de español; comprehension; compresión; contexto discursivo; discourse context; enseñanza de gramática; grammar teaching; producción; production; Spanish past tense aspect
• ISSN: 1697-7467; 2695-8244
• DOI: 10.30827/portalin.viVIII.29215

This work explores and evaluates the effect of teaching the Spanish past tense aspect (indefinite preterit and imperfective preterit) to Chinese learners in a discourse context compared with the traditional teaching of grammar. We postulate that this teaching methodology—which integrates the content of traditional grammar programs with implicit and explicit instruction on how to interpret discourse-contextual information—will be more effective for Spanish L2 learning in the Chinese university context. In order to test the effect, we conducted a study with two groups of students under two different conditions. The experimental group contained 18 subjects, and the control group, which was taught in a traditional grammar program, contained 17 subjects. Using a teaching experiment that involved three online video-based grammar classes and the gathering of students’ data from pre- and post-tests consisting of comprehension task and multiple-choice tasks, we observed that the instruction of how to interpret aspectual information in a discourse context improved the learners’ ability to analyse and comprehend the target grammar point. However, the learners did not show more accuracy in their use of stative verbs in the post-test than that in the pre-test. FUNDING INFORMATION. This research was funded by National Social Science Foundation of China (20CYY001).