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This paper compares the effects of recasts and clarification requests as two implicit types of corrective feedback (CF) on learning two linguistic structures denoting past aspectual distinction in French, the passé composé and the imparfait. The participants in this classroom-based study are 52 high-school learners of French FL at a pre-intermediate level of proficiency (level B1 of CEFR). A distinctive feature of this study is the use of focused, context constrained communicative tasks in both treatment and tests. The paper specifically highlights the advantages of feedback using recasts for the acquisition of morpho-syntactically complex grammatical structures such as is the French passé composé. The study points to the participants' communicative ability as an essential aspect of language proficiency, which seems to be crucial to bringing about the benefits of recasts. Oral communicative skill in a foreign language classroom is seen as a prerequisite for an appropriate interpretation and recognition of the corrective nature of recasts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Here, the Spanish grammatical aspect and its traditional qualities in perfect and imperfect verb forms are analyzed in order to expose a problem of conceptual inconsistency. Taking into account the Real Academia Española (RAE) normativity, there is a misperception in the aspectual distinction between the simple and compound tenses in Spanish, or in Latin, infectum and perfectum. After a proper understanding of the concept of participle, formed by the auxiliary to have, a different terminology is proposed to solve the problem: the terms continuous and discontinuous are proposed as new qualities of the grammatical aspect. Such a change would also suggest a new verbal accident: that of state. An explanatory methodology was implemented in this project, in order to specify the concept of aspect in the field of the Spanish language. To a lesser degree, a descriptive methodology was also used, by means of the presentation of specific, insightful examples to support the current concept of aspect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The usage of passe compose and imparfait is one of the most challenging topics in French grammar for anglophone learners. Based on the aspect hypothesis formulated by Andersen and Shirai (1994), this study explored the patterns of errors made by higher-ability as opposed to average-ability students and male vs. female students with different abilities in the acquisition of the two French tenses. A model for predicting the difficulty of test items related to passe compose and imparfait was previously devised by Nikolova (2009). The current article further develops the ideas in the above-mentioned study and examines similar data from a more pedagogical point of view. It brings forth evidence that female students scored better than males on prototypical usage of the tenses and females of high ability outperformed all other groups on instances of their nonprototypical usage. The study discusses these results in light of findings on giftedness, gender, and second-language acquisition. It suggests ideas for differentiating instruction for various groups of students attempting to master this grammatical topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

L'analyse de l'imparfait narratif et non-narratif au niveau de la séquence textuelle nous permet d'observer que les facteurs de cohérence textuelle sont fondés sur des rapports logiques qui nous conduisent à un calcul cognitif sur la relation entre deux ou plusieurs phrases et qui ne concernent pas directement les temps verbaux. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]