The project aims to cover new data investigating the acquisition of Tense and Aspect by English learners of Spanish. The aim is to analyse both oral production and interpretation data from three different groups of learners (beginners, intermediate and advanced) in order to test the predictions made by two leading hypotheses on Tense and Aspect development: the Lexical Aspect Hypothesis (which predicts that the use of tense and aspect is determined by the properties of the verb) and the Discourse Hypothesis, (which predicts that the use of tense and aspect is determined by the discursive context) paying special attention to those scenarios where these hypotheses make contradictory predictions. This project will provide new learner data which will be available to the research community, and will contribute to answering current theoretical questions about second language learning such as how different grammatical components (ie semantics, morphology, syntax) are involved in the acquisition of Tense and Aspect. It will also assist in curriculum design and evaluation by providing better description and understanding of typical learner development in Spanish which can be utilised by policy makers, curriculum developers and teachers.

Data come from 60 UK learners of Spanish: 20 Year 10 pupils, 20 Year 13 pupils and 20 final year undergraduates. Data from 15 native speakers of Spanish were included as well. Learners undertook 4 tasks (two narrative story-retelling tasks, a guided interview, and a picture-description task) which were designed by the team to explore learners' developing ability to describe past events orally in L2 Spanish in a variety of ways, and to relate these in sequences, in both more open and more controlled contexts. The learners undertook these speaking activities individually with a member of the research team which recorded each of the sessions using small portable digital voice recorders. Data were transcribed and morphologically tagged following CHILDES conventions.