Abstract
The present study connects research on the L2 acquisition of variable structures to the ever-growing body of research on the role of study abroad in the language learning process. The data come from a group of 46 English-speaking learners of Spanish who participated in immersion programs in two distinct locations, Valencia, Spain and San Luis Potosí, Mexico. Simultaneously, we tested a group of native speakers from each region to create an appropriate target model for each learner group. Learners completed a written contextualized questionnaire at the beginning and end of their seven-week stay abroad. Our instrument examines three variable grammatical structures: (1) the copulas ser and estar in pre-adjectival contexts, (2) the preterit and the present perfect in past-time contexts, and (3) the simple present and present progressive in present-time contexts. Findings indicate an overall development of sociolinguistic competence abroad, but to a differing extent depending upon the variable structure analyzed.
Acknowledgments
We express our gratitude to the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions. We are also thankful to Manuel Díaz-Campos for his feedback on an earlier stage of the project. All errors are, of course, our own.
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