The effects of processing instruction on the acquisition of ser and estar

Extending previous research on the acquisition of Spanish clitic pronoun (elements with high commuincative value), this study compares the relative effects of two types of instruction, processing instruction and traditional instruxction, on the acquisition of the verbs ser and estar with adjectives and past participles. The dual roles of these verbs as semantic and aspectual indicators in combination with their low communicative value for comprehension make the subtle distinction complicated for English-speaking learners in the early stages of acquiring a second language. However, when only the estar (make copula) data is analyzed, the results of this classroom-based research with second-year college students who recieved traditional instruction improved only on sentence production and guided composition tests, while that of the processing-instruction group improved on both interpretation and production tests.