Corpus-based study of L3 acquisition on Spanish past tense: Evidence from learners' oral production

This paper focuses on a corpus-based study on the acquisition of L3 Spanish past tense in oral production through a learners' corpus. The main findings were: (1) Chinese-speaking learners in Taiwan demonstrated more accurate uses of the Spanish preterit than the imperfect in oral productions, same as the findings in their written productions and those in English-native speakers of Spanish; (2) These learners used telic verbs more correctly than those of activity and state in preterit form in both oral and written productions; (3) The developmental pattern of the Spanish past tense in the oral production of Chinese-speaking learners was similar to that of English-speaking learners of Spanish.