The use of past tenses in the construction of temporality in Spanish L2 at advanced levels of proficiency

The aim of the current research is to describe and analyze the specific characteristics of the use of the Spanish verbal past tenses, specifically the imperfecto and indefinido, by Russian advanced learners of Spanish L2 with high proficiency level in a formal learning environment. The collected data come from a semi-spontaneous written production task based on an audiovisual stimulus. The results are analyzed and categorized on the basis of the narrative structure and the lexical aspect of the verb, with the aim of identifying the effect of these factors on the use of past tenses verbs. The results reveal an unambiguous preference for the prototypical combinations between grammatical, lexical and discursive aspects across all groups. Moreover, the highly proficient L2 Spanish learners show a native-like performance with respect to the use of the Spanish imperfecto and indefinido in the narrative writing task.