On Maripaz García's article

Pronouns question in Spanish as a foreign language acquisition

Abstract

Recent research has shown that the Spanish pronoun system causes difficulties for English speaking students of Spanish as a second language in all levels of learning. In order to better understand this difficulty, this article explores three possible reasons with a focus on García’s study (2014) and two studies by the author (D’Amico 2007, 2013). The three purposed reasons are first language (English) transfer to the second language (Spanish), the small amount of instruction dedicated to the pronouns, and the low semantic value of pronouns. While it is possible that there are other reasons for English speakers’ pronoun errors, these three are well supported by empirical results.