Comparison between native Spanish and Second Language Spanish Xxxx, Xxxxx-Xxxxx and Xxxxx (1987) asked the question whether acquisition strategies in a first and second language are the same. They made a comparison between native Spanish children and native English adults who are learning Spanish as their second language. The focus of their study was on the acquisition of noun gender and its functions in gender. 20 Spanish children were divided into four different proficiency levels, according to their year in school (preschool, first grade, fourth grade and sixth grade). The second language group also consisted of 20 participants and they were all native English speakers who chose Spanish as a field of study in their university. This group was also divided into four different proficiency levels, according to their year of studying Spanish (first-year students, second year, third and fourth year, and graduated students). Participants had to complete five experimental tasks concerning gender agreement. Results showed that the most proficient children and adults had significantly better results than the youngest children. The most advanced adults also performed better than the first-year students. So, when the proficiency increased, the scores increased as well. When looking at the Spanish children, the participants in the higher proficiency levels scored significantly better than the lowest level participants. This suggests that the strategy of matching articles and adjectives with the noun using the correct gender improves when the proficiency increases. The native English participants did not show a similar progression, which suggest that the participants in the lowest proficiency level already had access to a certain strategy of matching articles and adjectives with the noun using the correct gender. Xxxx et al. (1987) concluded that there is an increase in the development of the acquisition of Spanish gender agreement in both groups. However, the production of adult-like language was only visible in the most proficient group of the native Spanish children, whereas the strategy was visible in all adult groups. These findings suggests that there could be a “semantically based transfer strategy operating from L1 to L2 for adults” (pp. 350).
