Search Results (4)

Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) has transformed personal and professional domains by enabling creative content generation and problem-solving. However, the influence of users’ grammatical abilities on AI-generated responses remains unclear. This exploratory study examines how language and grammar abilities in Spanish affect the quality of responses from ChatGPT (version 3.5). Despite the robust performance of Large Language Models (LLMs) in various tasks, they face challenges with grammatical moods specific to non-English languages, such as the subjunctive in Spanish. Higher education students were chosen as participants due to their familiarity with AI and its potential use in learning. The study assessed ChatGPT’s ability to process instructions in Chilean Spanish, analyzing how linguistic complexity, grammatical variations, and informal language impacted output quality. The results indicate that varied verbal moods and complex sentence structures significantly influence prompt evaluation, response quality, and response length. Based on these findings, a framework is proposed to guide higher education communities in promoting digital literacy and integrating AI into teaching and learning. Full article

This study investigates the factors that significantly constrain mood selection in Galician within uncertainty adverb constructions, applying a logistic regression model. This analysis identified several significant factors affecting the choice between the indicative and subjunctive moods, including the temporal context of the clause, the preceding adverb, and the interaction of fictional and nonfictional registers with the verb type of the predicate and the gender of the speaker/writer. Time reference and the preceding adverb emerged as primary factors conditioning mood choice, with present and future time frames and adverbs encoding weaker epistemic values significantly predisposing toward the subjunctive mood. This study also highlighted the influence of the gender of the speaker/writer, demonstrating the preference of women toward the indicative mood in fictional texts. Verb type and register interact in complex ways that only partially align with previous findings. The results of the present study contribute to a deeper understanding of syntactic variation in Galician, adding to a growing body of quantitative research on Galician grammar. Full article

The acquisition of a second language requires the construction or reconstruction of linguistic knowledge about the new language system. Learners of a second language have to acquire the linguistic structures of the second language by constructing or reassessing their own knowledge in the light of the new one. Some of these new linguistic structures may be more or less complex to process and/or difficult to acquire. In this review, we focus on an example of linguistic complexity in French, namely, the subjunctive. Through a discussion of some selected studies on the second language acquisition of the French subjunctive, our purpose is to argue that these findings, considered from a psycholinguistic perspective, could be fruitful for further research employing neuroscience techniques, such as electroencephalography or neuroimaging in order to better understand the neurocognitive processing of this complex structure both in French native speakers and in learners of French. Hence, we aim to contribute to exploring the question of linguistic transfer in the field of second language acquisition, the typological distance/relation between L1–L2, the syntactic acquisition of complex structures in adult second language learners, and the potential contributions of electroencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging to the processing of the subjunctive, selected as an example of linguistic complexity that has not yet received much attention. Full article

This article investigates the effects that Mindful Conceptual Engagement (MCE) had on the teaching of the Spanish subjunctive on second (L2) and heritage language learners (HL) of Spanish. A total of 26 university-level undergraduate students participated in the study; 12 were advanced L2 students and 14 were intermediate HL students. The methodology used was MCE, which is based on the principles of Concept-Based Instruction (Negueruela 2003; Negueruela and Lantolf 2006). MCE has its origins in Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory and it proposes that the creation and manipulation of didactic models by students promotes the internalization of complex grammatical concepts that would otherwise require long grammatical explanations. Models need to be generalizable and informative and can include, for example, flowcharts, pictures, or schemas among others. In the present study, the concept of [±EXPERIENCE] (Bull 1965) was used to teach the variable uses of indicative and subjunctive in adjectival relative clauses (Busco unas tijeras que cortan/corten). Students had to create their own models and use them to complete a series of assignments in class and at home. Production and interpretation exercises were used in pre- and post-test questionnaires to gauge their improvement. Feedback questionnaires were administered three weeks after the intervention to measure the attitudes and perceptions towards the use of didactic models. Results indicate that both groups improved their indicative/subjunctive interpretation and production abilities after MCE. However, statistically significant differences exist between HL and L2 students according to type of task and student group. Feedback questionnaire results also show that MCE was regarded as positive and useful by both groups. Full article