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This study examines the effects of speech style, syllable stress, and proficiency level on the production of the second-language (L2) Spanish vowels /e/ and /o/. The study addresses traditional descriptions of L2 Spanish (e.g. Stockwell & Bowen, 1965), which claim that English-speaking learners, unlike native speakers (NSs), reduce vowels in unstressed syllables and diphthongize /e/ and /o/ in stressed syllables. Additionally, it adds to previous research by investigating how speech style affects L2 Spanish vowels, how these effects change by course level, and how they compare to NS style-shifting. Data was gathered from 55 adult learners of Spanish (SLs) at three course levels, as well as 10 NSs of Spanish using two elicitation tasks at different levels of formality. A total of 7,740 word-medial tokens of /e/ and /o/ was extracted, and vowels' F1, F2, duration, and diphthongization were measured using Praat. ANOVA tests were run to determine the main and interaction effects of participant group, elicitation task, and syllable stress on these four response variables for each vowel. Significant main effects as well as interaction effects were found for group, task, and stress on the F1 and F2 of /e/ and /o/, as well as interaction effects, providing evidence that the SLs and NSs centralized their unstressed vowels, that /e/ and /o/ became more raised and peripheral as course level increased, and that the SLs at all levels peripheralized their vowels in formal speech. / Master of Arts

<p dir="ltr">The present study examined the acquisition of Spanish grammatical gender in 22 bilingual children (aged 5;0 to 13;5 years; Med=9;4 years; STD=2.3) who were born and raised in the United States and acquired Spanish as heritage speakers—that is, they learned Spanish, the minority language, in a home setting (Valdes, 2001). Each of the child participants had at least one parent who was born and raised in a Spanish-speaking country before immigrating to the U.S. post-puberty. Eleven (11) of the adults/parents, (aged 18 to 60 years, Med=42; STD=8.5)—all native speakers of Spanish—participated with their children, providing a control group for comparison purposes. Specifically, the study examined whether child heritage speakers of Spanish have linguistic intuition that enables them to<i> </i>distinguish between grammatical and ungrammatical constructs of gender expression in Spanish heard in ordinary speech (Chomsky, 1965). An Acceptability Judgment Task (AJT) presented each of the participants with both grammatical and ungrammatical versions of Spanish sentences in four grammatical conditions: (a) determiner-noun (DET-NOUN) assignment, (b) determiner-adjective (DET-ADJ) agreement, (c) noun-adjective (NOUN-ADJ) agreement, and (d) determiner phrase (DP) directionality (Cuza & Perez Tattam, 2016). Results showed that the participants—both children and adults—correctly found the grammatical examples to be acceptable. The adult participants consistently rejected the ungrammatical examples while many of the child participants had difficulties recognizing the ungrammatical examples as unacceptable. Statistical analysis found that the external factors of language dominance and language experience were significant in relation to the ability to distinguish the ungrammatical items, suggesting that the children who were dominant in Spanish and had more experience with the language were also more likely to recognize the ungrammatical constructs of the language. This result is in keeping with the Bilingual Alignments Approach, which focuses on the correlation of expected responses with the external factors of language dominance and language experience (Sánchez, 2019).</p>

A la fragmentación de la comunidad de la enseñanza y el aprendizaje de español se suma la ausencia de una metodología científica que analice la calidad de las actividades educativas y culturales que se realizan en este ámbito académico. De esta forma no se valora su margen de mejora, su impacto ni su pertinencia reales. Propongo en esta investigación un modelo de planificación, ejecución y evaluación cualitativa y cuantitativa que permita conocer el grado de excelencia en la gestión y la satisfacción de sus participantes y destinatarios. El ámbito en el que se ha llevado a cabo esta propuesta ha sido la Enseñanza Superior de la República Popular China, donde he trabajado siete años. Entre 2017 y 2020 he cofundado con mis alumnos y coordinado la iniciativa colectiva Puente con el objetivo de demostrar que los estudios hispánicos tienen el potencial de reducir el desconocimiento cultural y la falta de comunicación e integración de la comunidad educativa, y plantear una serie de objetivos en común. Las redes sociales, la difusión de la narrativa oral china y una actitud comunicativa han servido como elementos unificadores para la celebración de cinco actividades a nivel nacional con un fin didáctico, académico y divulgativo. La meta propuesta supone una innovación y un complemento a la enseñanza reglada en el análisis del complejo contexto previo local más allá del aula. Tanto la metodología utilizada como los resultados obtenidos pueden resultar de utilidad para futuros estudios vinculados con la organización de eventos de enseñanza y aprendizaje no solo de español, sino también de otras lenguas y en otros entornos educativos. Y, en especial, tienen el potencial de promover el acercamiento y el entendimiento ante el creciente clima de tensión internacional. / Spanish: Advanced research in language and literature / Thesis directors: Vicente José Rodríguez Marcet (University of Salamanca) and Carmen González Vázquez (Autonomous University of Madrid).

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