Abstract:

Research on second language Spanish encompasses a sophisticated and broad-reaching body of work. Nevertheless, there is a bias in this literature toward English-speaking learners. The implication of this bias is that our search for universal trends of acquisition is undermined by an inability to distinguish between challenges that are specific to English-speaking learners and those that apply across learner populations. The goal of this essay is to demonstrate the value of extending the scope of second language Spanish research to include diverse first language populations and to illustrate new insights that might be gleaned through a presentation of recent research on Korean-speaking learners.