Teaching verbal aspect of Spanish and French past tenses.

Abstract

Aspect is one of the most challenging syntactic elements for Anglophone students of Spanish and French to master. While aspect is expressed in English, morphological and semantic differences among English, Spanish, and French often hinder students’ comprehension. The present study examines why English-speaking students have such difficulty using aspect in Spanish and French through a discussion of relevant literature and surveys distributed among instructors of Spanish and French and offers methods to communicate these concepts to students more effectively. Pedagogical methods proposed by other researchers will also be discussed, and several French and Spanish textbooks will be analyzed in terms of their presentation of the past tense.