The Effectiveness of Collaborative Tasks on the Acquisition of the Spanish Subjunctive and Development of Mood Selection Abilities: Exploring Form-focused Instruction

The present study investigates whether the implementation of a dictogloss task within a proactive Focus on Form approach (e.g., Long 1991; Long and Robinson 1998) has significant effects on the acquisition of Spanish present subjunctive. A total of sixty-six learners in a fifth-semester Spanish course participated in the study and were assigned to three groups (control, dictogloss, and explicit and dictogloss), constituted by three intact classes. A pretest, post-test, and delayed post-test design was used and two assessment tasks were administered: an oral elicitation task and a written mechanical recognition and production task. Overall results indicate that the dictogloss task was effective at enhancing mood alternation abilities and mood production, as evidenced not only in the mechanical recognition task but also in the increased subjunctive production during the oral elicitation task.