The acquisition of L3 Spanish articles: What can be learned from a simple linear regression analysis?

Despite being extremely frequent in the input, Spanish L3 articles pose one of the biggest challenges for Polish L1/English L2 students, even among the most advanced learners. However, little attention has been paid to the influence of task, especially since certain writing styles tend to make use of a higher number of NPs, thus increasing both the amount of article environments and the probability of error. A simple linear regression analysis was run for both groups separately (B1 and B2) and finally the whole intermediate level (n = 72). The results of the t tests suggest a significant linear relationship between the number of article-related errors and article tokens, between article-related errors and noun tokens, and between article and noun tokens. The article ends with some considerations on possible actions to be taken both for researching and teaching the Spanish article system to [−ART] L1 learners.