Research subject Spanish Second Language Acquisition

In Sweden, Spanish is one of the most widely spoken Second Languages. Spanish is spoken by almost 600 million people worldwide, has 23 academias and is an official language in 21 countries. Spanish is the most commonly chosen Foreign Language in Swedish primary and secondary schools.

Research in Spanish as a Second Language at Stockholm University focuses on the acquisition and development of spoken language, motivation of Spanish as a school subject, written production in higher education, and on the use of Spanish by multilingual people. The Department of Romance Studies and Classics conducts internationally recognized research on the development of various grammatical, lexical and pragmatic phenomena in Spanish, often in comparison with French. The research programme High-Level Proficiency in Second Language Use (AAA, 2006-12), funded by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation, has been important for research of Spanish second language acquisition.

The research field of second language acquisition in Romance languages has grown considerably over the last 20 years. The research is interdisciplinary and combines findings on the development and use of a second language from psychological and social research, among others. It aims to understand more about how adult second language learning takes place in both formal (school) and informal learning settings (e.g. language contact learning during migration and Studies Abroad).