The benefits of social interaction and proficiency for foreign language acquisition of Spanish conventional expressions

Several studies have examined the second language acquisition of English conventional expressions (CEs) in the study abroad context. However, there is a lack of studies that investigate Spanish CEs and CEs in general in the at-home context. This study examines the foreign language acquisition of Spanish CEs in the at-home context and the effect of proficiency and Spanish social interaction outside of the classroom. Three levels of learners (3rd semester, 5th semester, and graduate level) (N = 32) and a Spanish speaker comparison group (N = 10) completed an oral discourse completion task, a recognition task, and a social interaction questionnaire. Results showed that social interaction in Spanish leads to better recognition of conventional expressions and that proficiency is a significant predictor of production of these expressions. Results have pedagogical implications, including the importance for instructors to provide input of expressions related to a variety of contexts.