Competencia estratégica en español como lengua extranjera en estudiantes universitarios

Abstract

This article represents a report of a research in progress and aims to study the development of verbal competence of foreign students of Spanish in Córdoba, Argentina. It addresses the communicative strategies employed. We consider theoretical contributions on speech processing and the notions of communicative and strategic competence. The goals were to determine which strategies students use in an oral evaluation, with what frequency, and to reflect on their impact on foreign language teaching processes. We used quantitative analysis of the data and a qualitative interpretation from psycholinguistic approaches. We found that most of the strategies employed compensate for speech impairments, and we conclude that the greatest difficulties are concentrated around production rather than comprehension. Finally, we consider that for the study of oral production in foreign languages it is necessary to consider the cognitive processes that take place when using language as well as the communicative situational context.