Showing papers in "Hispania in 2000"

The Use of Tense-Aspect Morphology in Spanish Oral Narratives: Exploring the Perceptions of Advanced Learners.

Abstract: In a study of the use of verbal morphology in oral narratives by advanced learners of Spanish, eight participants recounted two oral narratives, one a segment of a silent film and the other a personal experience. The learners then commented, in an immediate retrospective protocol, on their use of perfective and imperfective morphology. The reported reasons for their selection of aspectual morphology can be grouped into four categories: (1) the nature of the narrative task, (2) lexical aspect, (3) the role of the narrator in constructing discourse, and (4) the impact of instruction. Some of the reasons for tense-aspect morphological selections have implications for research methodology in future studies on the acquisition and use of tense-aspect morphology, while others invite reflection on teaching practices and on the role and utility of teaching and learning grammatical rules.

The Language of Glosses in L2 Reading on Computer: Learners' Preferences

Abstract: Comprehension difficulties in reading authentic texts make adaptations such as vocabulary glossing helpful. A study of forty readers in third-semester Spanish attempted to ascertain their behavior, specifically whether non-native learners of a second language who read a second language text on a computer screen access glossed vocabulary more frequently when the glosses are written in L1 or in L2. Reading a computerized Spanish-language passage containing 67 glossed items, some students could consult a translation into English and others a synonym in Spanish. Results tracked the number of items viewed in order to determine their preference. Students also responded to a number of survey questions about reading on the computer.

Tense, aspect, and narrative structure in Spanish as a second language

Abstract: The performance of four immersed L2 Spanish speakers is used to test both the Aspect Hypothesis, initially proposed by Andersen (1986; 1991) and the Discourse Hypothesis (Bardovi-Harlig 1994). Personal narratives in four oral interviews support the interaction between the inherent lexical aspect of verbs and grammatical aspect, in accordance with the Aspect Hypothesis. A closer analysis of the narratives within the framework of foreground versus background information shows significant levels of interaction between past grammatical aspectual distinctions and grounding principles, in favor of the Discourse Hypothesis. Thus, these results reveal the two hypotheses as necessary and complementary frameworks of analysis which should be used to obtain a more complete picture of the interpersonal variation in the aspectual system of contact speakers of Spanish as a second language.

[-Person] direct object drop : The genetic cause of a syntactic feature in Paraguayan Spanish

Abstract: Omission of impersonal direct object has been observed in Spanish spoken in Paraguay. This linguistic phenomenon has been previously analyzed as a result of direct transfer from a similar syntactic feature of Guarani, the language with which Spanish has coexisted for more than four centuries in Paraguay. Nevertheless, the data collected indicated that the omission of [-person] direct object clitics is present in the speech of all socio-educational classes, among both bilinguals and monolingual Spanish speakers. Additionally, the occurrence of the same phenomenon in other regional varieties of Spanish, as well as another Romance language and its dialect proves that the external explanation, namely Guarani substratum theory, cannot be the only genetic cause behind the origin of this phenomenon.

Caribbean romances : the politics of regional representation

Abstract: This interdisciplinary volume on postcolonial Caribbean culture brings together ten essays by exciting young scholars who challenge some of the established assumptions of postcolonial studies.

Embodying Enlightenment. Knowing the Body in Eighteenth-Century Spanish Literature and Culture

Abstract: Acknowledgments Introduction Naming the Body, Knowing the Body: Anatomy, Medicine, and the Language of 'Experience' Seeing the Body: Pornography, Sensation, and the Nexus of Sight and Desire Reading the Body: Petimetres, Physiognomics, and Gendered Otherness Other Bodies, Other Selves: The Virtuous Masculine Body in the Cartas Marruecas Conclusion Notes Bibliography

Learning Spanish as an Older Adult.

Abstract: To what extent can a highly motivated older adult acquire a new language? This question served as the focus for a case study of a 57-year-old woman's endeavor to learn Spanish in an immersion setting. The learner's experiences, as recorded in diary entries, are examined in relation to the literature on cognitive aging. An analysis of pre- and post-immersion tests of speaking and writing abilities provides indications that learning a foreign language as an older adult is still an achievable goal.

Evaluating Intermediate Spanish Students' Speaking Skills through a Taped Test: A Pilot Study.

Abstract: A pilot study used the Spanish Oral Proficiency Test (SOPT)-a taped oral test to evaluate oral proficiency level of students of Intermediate Spanish. Based on the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines (1986), the Intermediate-Mid was the appropriate level of oral proficiency for students at the end of two years of college-level language study. The study also examined what variables might affect the development of students' oral skills. The results showed that foreign language learning experience in academic settings or outside of class, such as study abroad and travel abroad, might affect students' overall speaking proficiency. In addition, linguistic inaccuracy from informal training may keep speakers to lower levels of proficiency. Learners should be more aware of the need to speak correctly to maintain a balance between function, content, and accuracy.

Spanish Applied Linguistics in the Twentieth Century: A Retrospective and Bibliography (1900-99).

Abstract: A review of selected influential works in Spanish Applied Linguistics in the twentieth century is presented with an accompanying bibliography. This research can be divided into four eras (1900-44, 1945-65, 1965-79, 1980-99) which are defined by paradigm shifts that occur when significant changes are perceived in the following areas: psychological/second language acquisition (SLA) theories, linguistic theories, themes treated, types of studies carried out, and the origin/source of the data. The article concludes with a discussion of the application of Spanish SLA research to the classroom and a brief research agenda for the twenty-first century.

Women through women's eyes : Latin American women in nineteenth-century travel accounts

Abstract: Chapter 1 Life among the Elite in Chile and Brazil Chapter 2 Peregrinations of a Self-Proclaimed Pariah Chapter 3 Women's Lives in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Mexico Chapter 4 A Swedish Novelist in the New World Chapter 5 A Parisian in a Slavocrat Society Chapter 6 A Naturalist's Wife and Educator in Brazil Chapter 7 A German Schoolteacher in Brazil Chapter 8 Keeping House in Northern Mexico Chapter 9 A Wellesley Graduate's Travels in Guatemala Chapter 10 A Naval Captain's Wife on Tour

The Post-Boom in Spanish American Fiction

Abstract: The article discusses the dating of the beginning of the Post-Boom, the factors involved in discussing it, and lists possible representative writers belonging to it. The views of Skármeta, Allende and others are reported and a list of possible Post-Boom characteristics is suggested. It is argued that there are difficulties in the way of relating the Post-Boom easily to Postmodernism, but that the notion of Post-colonialism may prove helpful in future criticism. This article is available in Studies in 20th Century Literature: http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol19/iss1/3 The Post-Boom in Spanish American Fiction Donald L. Shaw University of Virginia Any attempt to discuss the Post-Boom in Spanish American fiction must attempt to deal with four questions: 1. Can we postulate some general characteristics of the PostBoom? In other words, what does the term mean? 2. Can we, as yet, say anything useful about periodization? In other words, when did the Post-Boom begin? 3. Can we name a suitable group of representative Post-Boom novelists? In other words, who are the Post-Boomers? 4. Can we relate the Post-Boom convincingly to Postmodernism? In other words, where does the Post-Boom fit? Questions 1 and 2 can be answered fairly briefly, if somewhat arbitrarily. We can agree with Elzbieta Sklodowska that the Post-Boom began in the mid-1970s (ix). A suitable date might be 1975, that of the publication of Antonio Skarmeta's first novel, Sone que la nieve ardia, which is about the collapse of the left wing Allende government in Chile. Just as the great decade of the Boom was the sixties, so the great decade of the Post-Boom appears to be the eighties, beginning in 1982 with the runaway success of Isabel Allende's La Casa de los Espiritus and including a number of works that indicate the adoption of a PostBoom stance by older Boom authors such as Jose Donoso, who weighed in early with La misteriosa desaparicion de la marquesita de Loria in 1980, the lesser-known but very representative Carlos Martinez Moreno of Uruguay with El color que el infierno me escondiera (1981), Gabriel Garcia Marquez himself, with El amor en los tiempos del colera (1985), and Mario Vargas Llosa with I,Quien mato a Palomino Molero? (1986). Just as a number of Boom novelists were active before 1 Shaw: The Post-Boom in Spanish American Fiction Published by New Prairie Press 12 STCL, Volume 19, No. 1 (Winter, 1995) the sixties, so a number of Post-Boom novelists were active before 1975. The question is not when they began to publish, but when they began to emerge recognizably as a group whose work illustrated a definite shift of outlook and technique. As to representative writers: Skarmeta who does not readily accept the term Post-Boom, mentions in addition to fellow Chileans like Ariel Dorfman: Jose Agustin, Gustavo Sainz and Jorge Aguilar Mora from Mexico, Luis Rafael Sanchez (Puerto Rico), Manuel Puig and Eduardo Gudiiio Kieffer (Argentina), Reinaldo Arenas and Miguel Barnet (Cuba), Oscar Collazos (Colombia) and Sergio Ramirez (Nicaragua) (\"Al fin\" 139). Ricardo Piglia mentions his fellow Argentines Juan Jose Saer and Puig, Skarmeta, Dorfman, Rafael Humberto MorenoDuran (Colombia), Agustin, Sainz and Jose Emilio Pacheco (Mexico) (Viereck 131). We must, of course, add Mempo Giardinelli (Argentina), and most importantly the new group of women novelists including Isabel Allende (Chile), Luisa Valenzuela (Argentina), Elena Poniatowska (Mexico) and sundry others. It is with the Post-Boom that women novelists in Spanish America really come into their own. So far, so good. But the real task is to try to outline some ofthe main characteristics of the Post-Boom as we see them at present.' It helps to recognize that to some extent the Post-Boom is a reaction against the Boom on the part of younger writers who tended to be critical of it on three grounds: I. excessive elitism and reader-unfriendliness 2. excessive cosmopolitanism and desire for universality at the expense of the here and now in Spanish America 3. excessive emphasis on technique, on the supposed mysteriousness of reality, and on the possible inability of language to express it. This is not the place to enter into a detailed discussion of the characteristics of the Boom in order to try to clarify the degree to which those of the Post-Boom might be different. I and other critics have given our views on this elsewhere.2 Suffice it to say that what characterizes the Boom writers above all is their radical questioning: a) of reality and b) of the writer's task. This is seen as having led to the rejection of oldstyle realism, with its simple assumptions about time and about cause and effect, and its replacement on the one hand by a heightened sense of the mystery and ambiguity of things and on the other by a greater 2 Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature, Vol. 19, Iss. 1 [1995], Art. 3 http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol19/iss1/3 DOI: 10.4148/2334-4415.1359

Memorias de Leticia Valle: Rosa Chacel o el deletreo de Io inaudito

Abstract: Memorias de Leticia Valle desvela un nuevo sentido de la palabra inaudito: lo inaudito por cotidiano, es decir, lo que de tanto sonar ya no se oye y pasa inadvertido. Al mismo tiempo la novela establece una intima relaci6n entre este nuevo sentido y el comunmente aceptado-el de lo inaudito por extraordinario: lo que nun- ca se ha oido. El espacio entre lo uno y lo otro desaparece: lo extraordinario se gesta en lo cotidiano y s61o hace falta una mirada o un oido atento para descubrirlo. La estrategia narrativa que sustenta esta visi6n con- siste en situarse en el punto culminante de la historia, aludiendo a 61 pero sin nombrarlo, y desde ahi retroce- der hasta el principio de todo. Es un ejercicio de indagaci6n rigurosa, ordenando y sopesando los recuerdos en relaci6n al papel que juegan en el desencadenamiento de la apoteosis final.

The Canonizer De-Canonized: the Case of William H. Prescott

Abstract: No Hispanist was more instrumental in defining the field of Latin American Colonial Studies than William H. Prescott (1796-1859). His histories, most notably the History ofthe Conquest ofMexico (1843), were bestselling works which informed the U.S. public about Latin American antiquity during the "Manifest Des- tiny" period of mid-century. Despite Prescott's outspoken criticism of the Mexican-American War of 1846-48, the historian has often been situated in recent scholarship as a "cause" of U.S. imperialism. Such a view is counterproductive, inasmuch as it diverts critical attention away from the imperialist contours of Prescott's codification of a Colonial Latin American textual canon. Prescott thus invites present-day Hispanists to reflect upon the ideological agendas that continue to underlie the act of canon-formation, as well as upon the possible long-term political effects of what is produced today under the guise of "disinterested" scholarship.

Individual Cognitive Styles of University Students and Acquisition of Spanish as a Foreign Language.

Abstract: Varying methodological conditions changed the emphasis of Spanish instruction for 212 English-speaking university students. Evaluation of the cognitive style preferences of first semester students via the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory, Learning Styles Inventory, and a specially designed questionnaire produced a single cognitive preference score. The scores guided the filling of eight classes: two classes for students preferring whole language usage (gestalt style), two for students preferring grammar explanations (analytic style), and four mixed styles control classes. Each of four instructors taught one experimental emphasis class (either gestalt or analytic) and one control class, using the same curricular materials. Classes of students tested at the beginning and end of the semester showed differing improvement. Regression analysis significant at.05 or below and comparison of means indicate greater improvement in the experimental emphasis classes than in the control classes, supporting the hypothesis that students learn more when teaching style matches student cognitive style.

Extracurricular Standards: An Application of the National Standards to a FLEX Summer Camp

Abstract: The National Standards for Language Learning can be extended beyond formal classroom curricula to include extracurricular language programs. A summer language camp offers a model of an independent week-long language program that is guided by the five "Cs" in spite of its extracurricular status.

Machado de Assis : reflections on a Brazilian master writer

Abstract: Introduction 1. Dom Casmurro: Realism and Intentionalism Revisited (John Gledson) 2. Dom Casmurro: Simulacrum and Allegory (Joao Adolfo Hansen) 3. Dependents Play Chess: Political Dialogues in Machado de Assis (Sidney Chalhoub) 4. Machado in English (Daphne Patai) References Index

La "crisis referencial" y la modernidad hispanoamericana

Abstract: Epistolas y poemas de Ruben Dario, publicado en 1888 pero escrito en 1885, se enfrenta a las concepciones tradicionales impuestas en la regi6n desde el siglo XVI con la Conquista espafiola Ese enfrentamiento inicia un proceso de dislocaci6n de las representaciones del lenguaje castizo provocando una crisis referencial en las mismas Este fen6meno demuestra en la literatura hispanoamericana el comienzo de una nueva epoca: la modernidad

On the Labiodental Pronunciation of Spanish /b/ among Teachers of Spanish as a Second Language.

Abstract: Analysis of the speech habits of Spanish language instructors at the University of Southern California (USC) revealed that native Spanish speakers, as well as near-native Spanish speakers, sometimes produce labiodental [v] as an allophonic variant of Spanish /b/. Quantitative analysis by the VARBRUL statistical program indicated that linguistic, social, and stylistic factors condition the application of the labiodental. These results provide tentative evidence for the influence of English on the pronunciation of [v] in Spanish and suggest that the variation observed here may be a reflection of the confusion surrounding the labiodental, which is sometimes prescribed, but more often proscribed, in Spanish.

Encouraging Second Language Literacy in the Early Grades.

Abstract: Current emphasis in curricular design for FLES programs dedicates little time to the developmept of second language literacy in foreign language learners in the elementary school. A focus on developing these literacy skills is essential, if communicative competence is to be the goal in a fully articulated K-12 curriculum for Spanish. The vehicle necessary for developing these skills lies in curricular objectives that emphasize literacy and in teacher development programs that foster the growth of this instructional skill in FLES teachers. In light of a theoretical discussion of the need for group reading instruction, an instructional unit serves as a model for developing the first and second language literacy of early elementary language learners.