Task and L1 effects: Dutch students acquiring the Spanish past tenses

Abstract

Research on tense-aspect phenomena has shown that the type of experimental task can affect the performance of L2 learners. This pilot study on the understudied language combination Dutch-Spanish investigates this issue by focusing on the interaction between known affecting variables (inherent aspect; L1 effects) and different tasks (multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blanks, free production). First findings show that, indeed, both task type and L1 have an influence on the outcome. Generally, Dutch learners seem to prefer the Imperfect over the Preterit. This stands in contrast to previous research but can be explained by the imperfective features of the Dutch Simple Past with which the learners associate the L2 forms. Whereas this L1 effect is not visible in the multiple-choice task where the choice is forced, it manifests itself in tasks where students can choose freely between forms they know. Especially in the free production task, the L1 effect interacts with a high individual variability.