This study investigates the comprehensibility of the preterite and imperfect explained in grammar books addressed to both international and Swedish audiences and how useful those explanations are in practice. One grammar book is in Spanish, one is in English and three are in Swedish, one of which is a textbook for teaching purposes. The aim of this study is to test whether a high abstraction level of the grammatical explanations could be counterproductive, while a low abstraction level could be incorrect. The analysis is based on five cases expressed in five Swedish sentences, with each sentence containing one verb which is to be put in the preterite or imperfect tense while transmitted into Spanish. The analysis shows that the abstract explanations of the Spanish monolingual grammar, and the lack of examples in Spanish and comparisons with other languages, make it difficult for the learner to choose between the preterite and the imperfect tense in the cases, while the short explanations of the Swedish grammars don’t always hold enough information to help the learner choose between the tenses. The grammar book with explanations in English has long explanations, many examples in Spanish and comparisons with English and a low abstraction level, which appears to provide the learner with the best help.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:su-143178 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Wikström, Joakim |
| Publisher | Stockholms universitet, Romanska och klassiska institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Spanish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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