English and Spanish do not behave in the same way with respect to the subjunctive mood. This empirical study investigates the transfer of the Spanish subjunctive into English by 20 L2 university learners of English in their first year of the B.A. in English Studies at the University of Valladolid and whose native language is Spanish. We have designed two translation tasks. The first translation task aims to observe if the transfer of the Spanish subjunctive into English poses problems for Spanish L2 learners of English. The second translation task aims to observe if there is an improvement in the results of the translation task when students are provided information on how to translate the Spanish subjunctive into English. The analysis of the data shows (1) that there are some structures that are difficult to translate and (2) that the information that participants were given on how to translate the Spanish subjunctive into English helps to improve the results in the second translation task.
展开▼
