Auditory Processing in Learners of Spanish as an L2: The Role of Redundancy

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to assess the effects of redundancy on global perception and comprehension in sentences, as well as the processing of the meaning of morphological markers by learners of Spanish as a second language. The study followed an experimental design, and overt subject-verb agreement redundancy was chosen as the target structure. A total of 63 English-speaking learners of Spanish completed the experiment, which consisted of a written recall task to measure perception, a translation task to measure comprehension, and a sentence interpretation task to measure input processing. The experimental sentences featured an overt subject, while control sentences featured a null subject. The results of the input processing task suggest that the inclusion of an overt subject; that is, redundancy, had a facilitative effect on the processing of morphological markers. The results of the remaining tasks are inconclusive regarding the role of redundancy on perception and comprehension. These findings contribute to the body of research centered around the Input Processing theory and the distinct phases of the listening comprehension process.