The reconstruction of the development of the simple past tenses: Preterit and imperfect in six learners of Spanish as a second language (Spanish text)

The following paper is the reconstruction of the development of the past simple tenses: preterit and imperfect in six language learners of Spanish as a second language, who were attending Spanish courses at the State University of New York at Buffalo. In our paper we used a combination of the natural inquiry paradigm and the scientific paradigm. Our method was descriptive, interpretative, analytic and quantitative.; In our research we used introspective methods such as the retrospective report and metalinguistic interviews to validate our data and to explore their opinions regarding the distinction of the preterit and imperfect. Our research was done in three different faces. We started with the collective validation of the data through the retrospective reports of a fill in the blank grammatical exercise. The second language learners answered the exercise in each face and provided a composition. After we gathered our material we analyzed the data of the exercise and the compositions in terms of the formal accuracy and the aspectual selection. In the first part we counted the correct answers in form regardless the aspectual selection. We divided the number of correct answers by the total number of answers to find the percentages of formal accuracy. Then, we counted the instances in which the aspectual selection was correct regardless the forms, in that way we divided the number of correct responses by the total number of instances, in order to find the percentages of appropriate aspectual selection. The results were the formal accuracy was higher than the appropriate aspectual selection, the second language learners were producing a greater number of correct forms rather than making a correct aspectual selection. These students were very aware of the aspectual differences between the preterit and the imperfect but could not apply that knowledge when producing the data.; Regarding the contexts of errors in the aspectual selection, students were using preterit instead of imperfect with states that were taking place during the time of the narration. They were also using imperfect instead or preterit for not considering the inception of the preterit in the case of stative situations.