El mecanismo de las interrupciones en la conversación de alumnos taiwaneses de español como lengua extranjera

Abstract

When Spaniards converse, they utilize a conversational technique that involves frequent interruptions that, while emphasizing these interruptions, nonetheless guarantees the development of a smooth conversation. Thus, this model of conversation is something that Taiwanese students must attain when they are learning Spanish. Communicative transfers from the mother language make the learning of this conversational model difficult, however. In this research, we first describe this mechanism of interruption when Taiwanese students of Spanish as a foreign language speak Spanish at a B1 and B2 level, as well as in their mother tongue, Chinese. After the description of this phenomenon, we will demonstrate the differences among these three groups. We will then compare them with another group composed of Spaniards, by using a contrastive analysis of the production of these interruptions. The results help us to discover that influence of the mother language can result in conversational interferences between Taiwanese and Spaniards when they are speaking in Spanish. The results of the inferential and descriptive statistical show us that production strategies used by Taiwanese students who learn Spanish in an institutional context, when they speak Spanish with a B2 level, are more complex and closer to the native Spanish than strategies used by those with a B1 level. However, Taiwanese students with a B2 level, even though they were not learning about the mechanism of interruption, use production strategies closer to their mother language and do so differently than Spaniards do. We conclude that students in their seventh year of Spanish (B2 level) show transferences with the usage of the interruptions when they speak Spanish. This means that communication problems may emerge in a conversation between Taiwanese and Spaniards, and, as a consequence, block the process of language acquisition. Therefore, instructors of Spanish as a foreign language must help students to recognize, interpret, and use signals for controlling this mechanism so that the students effectively improve their communicative competence.