The Verbal Theory in Spanish as a Foreign Language: A Contrastive Analysis of Values and Terminology of the Present Form in a Corpus of Textbooks and Grammars

The aim of this article is to analyse the treatment of the present indicative tense in a corpus of teaching materials consisting of thirty grammars and twenty-five textbooks of Spanish as a foreign language (SFL), of different levels and languages. The study is part of a broader research project which aims to undertake the theoretical study of the Spanish verbal system and its conceptualisation in SFL teaching, and which is grounded on the firm conviction that language teaching, in general, and Spanish language teaching, in particular, must combine theoretical reflection and teaching practice in order to obtain satisfactory results. Specifically, in this research we analyse the present indicative on the basis of the terminology used to refer to this verb form and the first examples that appear in the works of the corpus, in order to determine the values assigned to it and its prototypical or non-prototypical conceptualisation, and to compare the results between the grammars and the textbooks. To do so, we start from the values established by Fernandez Ramirez (1986) and by the Nueva gramatica de la lengua espanola (1999) and we carry out an ad hoc classification that allows us to compile all the cases found. The results show that, contrarily to what might be expected, there is a high percentage of non-prototypical values in the first exemplifications, especially in the textbooks, and that, on the other hand, the resources used to explain the values from a theoretical point of view are diverse and unsystematic, which leads to an oversimplification of the theory and a dispersion of the values exemplified. We conclude that an improvement in the quality of teaching in SFL requires a solid theoretical and metalinguistic training that allows explicit and conscious training of students. We also hope that this work will be useful for language teaching professionals in the design and selection of materials.