Writing development in Spanish as a second and heritage language: a corpus study on complexity

ABSTRACT

Few studies have analyzed the writing features of second language (L2) alongside heritage language (HL) learners of Spanish. Focusing on the development of writing complexity, we collected data from students at the beginning and at the end of a composition sequence. Comparing the groups at the outset revealed HL students’ greater mood complexity. After 14 weeks, both groups improved in tense complexity, mean essay length, and lexical sophistication. Our findings suggest that, given sufficient time, both HL and L2 students can progress in similar ways in at least some measures of linguistic complexity. Nevertheless, they might gain from instruction that facilitates new and diverse vocabulary, and the construction of longer sentences. L2 students specifically would benefit from greater emphasis on the subjunctive. Our study supports the claim that achieving writing complexity takes time and comes in stages, contributing to a more nuanced understanding of L2 and HL writing development.

RESUMEN

Pocos estudios analizaron las características de la escritura en aprendices de español como segunda lengua (L2) junto a hablantes de herencia (HH). Enfocándonos en el desarrollo de la complejidad escrita, recabamos datos al principio y al final de una secuencia de composición. Al comparar los grupos al comienzo del curso observamos una mayor complejidad de modo verbal en los HH. Después de 14 semanas, los dos grupos mejoraron en el tiempo verbal, largo del ensayo y sofisticación léxica, lo que demuestra que progresan de forma similar en algunas medidas. No obstante, hay áreas que podrían mejorarse: un mayor énfasis en vocabulario nuevo y diverso, y fomentar el largo de las oraciones; para los L2 además se recomienda más práctica del subjuntivo. Esta investigación apoya la idea de que la complejidad escrita requiere tiempo y ocurre en etapas, contribuyendo a nuestro conocimiento de las trayectorias de desarrollo escrito en estos grupos.

KEYWORDS:

• academic writing
• L2 Spanish
• learner corpus
• Spanish as a heritage language
• writing complexity
• writing development

PALABRAS CLAVE:

• escritura académica
• español como segunda lengua
• corpus de aprendices
• español como lengua de herencia
• complejidad de la escritura
• desarrollo de la escritura

Notes

1 https://github.com/ucdaviscl/cowsl2h

2 https://perpetualworks.com/

3 Even though COWS-L2H does not contain any additional demographic data for participants, department surveys indicate that the majority of HL students enrolled in the composition sequence have either been born in the US or arrived at a young age, and were schooled in English. Hence, they were not considered Spanish-dominant.

4 Some cross-sectional participants participated both at the beginning and end of data collection.

5 The use of conditional alone may not reflect tense complexity as a whole, as this may be a byproduct of the task. Future studies could investigate how other tenses demonstrate complexity.

6 https://www.bcbl.eu/databases/espal/index.php