The effects of sharing attentional resources on the production of the copula by beginning learners of Spanish Lauren Schmidt Indiana University

Previous Literature • Attentional Resources • Acquisition of the Spanish Copula • Acquisition of Spanish Past Tense Aspect

Attentional Resources • VanPatten (1990) – Attentional resources are limited, and there is competition between devoting these resources to meaning and form, with priority usually given to meaning.

• Anderson (1995) – Learners must make decisions about allocating attentional resources, and if attentional resources are devoted to one area, this is usually done at the expense of another.

Attentional Resources • Sanz (1997) – Two Types of Processes: • Controlled Processes: capacity-limited, more attentional demands • Automatic Processes: permanent – Learning = Automatization of Controlled Processes – After controlled processes are automatized, then new controlled processes are available for new task demands – The more a learner must process, the less accurate the production will be.

Attentional Resources • Wickens (1989) – If one or more tasks are performed simultaneously from the same pool of resources, more attention will be demanded making the task more difficult and worsening performance. – Two Types of Processing: • Serial Processing: task components completed in succession, in a series • Parallel Processing: task components completed simultaneously; less quality attention for each task, possibly leading to poor performance

Learners’ Difficulty in Acquiring ser / estar Distinction • VanPatten (1985, 1987)—stages of acquisition of Spanish copula • Finnemann (1990)—learner differences • DeKeyser (1990, 1991)—study abroad context, monitoring of speech • Ryan & Lafford (1992)—study abroad context, stages of acquisition • Guntermann (1992)—learners in a naturalistic setting (Peace Corps volunteers) • Briscoe (1995)—extend stages of acquisition, acquisition of copula choice and correct production of entire sequence • Geeslin (2000a, 2000b, 2001, 2002a, 2002b, 2003, 2005)— semantic, pragmatic, and syntactic features, [copula + adjective]

Spanish Past Tense Aspect Forms: Preterit and Imperfect • Andersen (1991)—tested Aspect Hypothesis: inherent semantic characteristics of the predicates affect decision to mark verb with preterit or imperfect form • Salaberry (1999)—advanced learners and native speakers follow Aspect Hypothesis patterns, beginners do not • Camps (2002)—2nd semester learners of Spanish, results supported Aspect Hypothesis • Camps (2003)—past tense form complexity is an ideal context to determine how learners allocate attentional resources, found more attention devoted to agreement in person and number than to tense and aspect

Research Questions (1) How does an increase in processing difficulty due to the additional task of selecting past tense aspect (preterit or imperfect) affect accuracy of agreement (person and number) of the Spanish copular verbs (ser and estar) of beginning learners of Spanish? (2) How does an increase in processing difficulty due to the additional task of selecting past tense aspect (preterit or imperfect) affect accuracy of copula choice of beginning learners of Spanish? (3) What (if any) relationship exists between accuracy in agreement and accuracy in copula choice of these beginning learners?

Methodology • Participants: 26 college-level participants, first year Spanish (from an original pool of 37 participants) • Data collection: 5 in-class compositions, 4 spread over the course of the first semester and 1 from the beginning of the second semester (from Camps (1999)) • Tokens: 620 total tokens [ copula ] – 438 examples of [ copula present ] – 182 examples of [ copula past ]

Methodology • Tokens [ copula present ] La universidad es muy grande.

The university is very large. [ copula past ] Yo estuve muy triste.

I was very sad. • Categorization of tokens, according to: –Morphological agreement of the copula with the subject in number and person –Copula choice (ser or estar)

Methodology • Descriptive Analysis – Accuracy Rates for Agreement and for Copula Choice for [copula present] and [copula past] for each participant – Mean Accuracy Rates for Group as a Whole – Standard Deviation • Statistical Analysis – Wilcoxon Rank Sums – Pearson Product-Moment Correlation

Graph 1. Accuracy of Subject-Verb Morphological Agreement* for Present and Past Tenses (N = 26) 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

93.7 76.9

Agreement

Present

Past

*The difference in accuracy of agreement between present and past tense production was found to be significant according to the Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test (Z = -3.356, p < 0.01).

Graph 2. Accuracy of Copula Choice* for Present and Past Tenses (N = 26) 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

92.9 78.5

Copula Choice

Present

Past

*The Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test shows that the difference between the accuracy of copula choice in the present tense and in the past tense was significant as well (Z = -3.001, p < 0.01).

Graph 3. Mean scores of accuracy of agreement and copula choice for present and past tenses 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

93.7

92.9 76.9

78.5

Present Past

Agreement

Copula Choice

Results Table 1. Results of the Pearson Product-Moment Correlation for Agreement and Copula Choice (N = 26) _________________________________________ Present Tense

R = -.323

p = .108

Past Tense R = .115 p = .575 ________________________________________

Results Table 1. Results of the Pearson Product-Moment Correlation for Agreement and Copula Choice (N = 26) ________________________________________ Present Tense

R = -.323

p = .108

Past Tense R = .115 p = .575 ________________________________________

Conclusions (1) How does an increase in processing difficulty due to the additional task of selecting past tense aspect (preterit or imperfect) affect accuracy of agreement (person and number) of the Spanish copular verbs (ser and estar) of beginning learners of Spanish? - The beginning learners show a significantly higher degree of accuracy of agreement with the subject in the production of the copula in the present tense than in the past tense. - Surprising results?

Conclusions (2) How does an increase in processing difficulty due to the additional task of selecting past tense aspect (preterit or imperfect) affect accuracy of copula choice of beginning learners of Spanish? - The beginning learners show a significantly higher degree of accuracy of copula choice in production of the copula in the present tense than in the past tense. - These results (RQ 1 & 2) show that the increased processing demands of the additional task of selecting past tense aspect significantly effect the accuracy of agreement and the accuracy of copula choice.

Conclusions (3) What (if any) relationship exists between accuracy in agreement and accuracy in copula choice of these beginning learners? - The significant decrease in accuracy of agreement in the examples of the copula in the past tense displays a similar pattern to the significant decrease in accuracy of copula choice in the past tense. - Although the percentages are similar for accuracy of agreement and accuracy of copula choice for the present tense and for the accuracy of agreement and accuracy of copula choice for the past tense, there is no significant relationship between accuracy of the two tasks for either the present tense or the past tense.

Discussion • The results support the previous work done by Wickens (1989), Sanz (1997), and Anderson (1995) on the effects of the distribution of attentional resources: increasing processing difficulty leads to a greater distribution of attentional resources, negatively affecting the performance of the agreement and copula choice tasks of these beginning learners of Spanish. • The results suggest that perhaps these beginning learners of Spanish have not yet “automatized” (Sanz 1997) either subject-verb agreement or copula choice; these two tasks may still be “controlled processes” for learners at this level, and sufficient attentional resources must be allocated to each task in order for accurate performance to be achieved.

Future Research • Use a larger sample size, specifically eliciting more examples of [copula past] • Collect all data at same moment in time as opposed to a longitudinal collection – Expect to see an even stronger effect • Investigate further any relationship between errors in agreement and errors in copula choice • Compare effects of the additional task of past tense aspect on agreement and copula choice across beginning, intermediate, advanced, and superior learners

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Topics for Compositions F1—Write about life at the University of X: activities, classes, schedule, housing, fun, and your friends and the things you do with them. F2—Describe in detail the house or apartment where your family lives. Write about the activities that different members of your family usually carry out in the different parts of the house. F3—Write about your schedule of meals, the type of food you eat, and the places where you eat when you are in school. Compare that to what you do when you are at home with your family, and when you go on a vacation. F4—Write about the best vacation you ever took. S1—Write about the best vacation you ever took.