Refers to an outline of a new grammar book from the Spanish Royal Academy. (SK)

In a comparison study, the receptive portion of the Screening Test of Spanish Grammar and the Spanish version of the Test of Auditory Comprehension of Language were administered to 20 Spanish-speaking Mexican American children (4 to 6-years-old). (Author/IM)

Maze use appears to be higher in bilingual speakers than in their functionally monolingual peers. One question is whether this is due to the speaker's bilingual status or to the characteristics of the bilingual's language(s). Narratives for 22 Spanish-English bilingual 4-6-year-olds and their functionally monolingual age-matched peers were…

This case study investigated the ways pre-major and pre-minor students of Spanish interacted with a grammar application from four perspectives. Firstly, using the computer's tracking ability to collect learners' behaviors, the study set out to uncover the different ways learners approached the application. Secondly, the study assessed the…

Despite the problems presented by lexical errors in second language (L2) communication, most computer assisted language learning (CALL) programs tend to focus on the acquisition of grammar points rather than on the development of the L2 lexicon. In addition, CALL vocabulary tasks are typically limited in scope and mechanical in nature, covering…

Multilinguals appear to become better at learning additional languages the more languages they know, and in particular, to be faster at learning grammar. This study investigates the use of grammar learning strategies in 144 participants who knew between 2 and 12 languages each, using a language background questionnaire, a set of 40 grammar…

The fastest growing Hispanic population centers in the United States are currently in the Southeast. In one Georgia community, immigrant children from Mexico, Central America, and South America use Spanish and English together in sentences. This paper compares the bilingual structures of sentences that show codeswitching between Spanish and…

Ensuring that students spend time preparing for class has always been one of the challenges of teaching. Indeed, when students are given an assignment that they are required to do before coming to the next lecture--whether it be written exercises or just studying--one wonders how often they are actually doing it. There are many ways in which…

This study tests the claim that word learning and retention in a second language are contingent upon a task's involvement load (i.e. the amount of need, search, and evaluation it imposes), as proposed by Laufer and Hulstijn (2001). Seventy-nine beginning learners of Spanish completed one of three vocabulary learning tasks that varied in the amount…

This study reflects a social constructivist theoretical framework in which the zone of proximal development (ZPD) is a central element, as two teaching approaches, communicative language teaching (CLT) and explicit focus on form (FonF) are examined. Research questions include: Are CLT and explicit FonF conducive to reaching the ZPD? Is there a…

This book is the first in a set of four occupational and business education curriculum guides which were developed for Spanish speaking students with limited English speaking backgrounds and also for foreign language students who desire to reinforce their Spanish language skills. The guides are structured so that the teacher can provide service to…

Bull (1965) has proposed that grammatical gender in Spanish is not an intrinsic characteristic of nouns but rather a matter of matching terminal sounds of nouns with those of adjectives and determiners. One implication of this theory is that the child has a cognitive understanding of the matching of terminal noun sounds with particular adjective…

There are four demonstrative adjectives in Spanish: "este,""ese,""aquel," and "el" (which is the same as the definite article). When "este", "ese," and "aquel" do not modify a noun, they have an accent mark (except in the neuter forms) and have the function of pronouns. The singular and plural articles in Spanish are derived from the Latin…

In Spanish, there is a very common type of sentence that has the following properties: (1) one of the arguments of the verb is a noun phrase that consists of an article and a noun; (2) there is also a dative pronoun dependent on the verb; and (3) the dative pronoun is understood as the possessor of the definite noun. It has been suggested that…

This beginning through advanced Spanish text includes grammar explanations, readings, and exercises with the emphasis on situations involving travel and tourism. The introductory lesson covers the Spanish language, the importance of Spanish in the United States, the Spanish alphabet, pronunciation, capitalization, punctuation, syllabication,…