Research on tap and trill acquisition by learners and native speakers of Spanish has analyzed production in phonological tap and trill environments separately, which makes it difficult to ascertain whether learners differentiate their production or if the same sound is produced in both environments. Therefore, the current study investigates individual speaker production to determine if learners produce contrasting sounds in phonological tap and trill environments and defines the developmental stages that occur as learners begin to differentiate between taps and trills. Thirty participants completed a narrative task: 24 learners and six native speakers. Results suggest learners pass through five stages before they differentiate between both environments. This process involves learning to tap followed by learning to associate frication (i.e. trill, tap+, and assibilated variants) with the phonological trill environment.

Previous research has shown that first language (L1) American English speakers discriminate the Spanish /ɾ/‐/r/ and /ɾ/‐/t/ contrasts significantly better than the /ɾ/‐/d/ contrast, regardless of their proficiency level in Spanish (Rose, 2010a). Therefore, the current study follows the framework of the Perceptual Assimilation Model (e.g., Best, 1995) and its application to the L2 context (PAM‐L2; Best & Tyler, 2007) to ascertain why L1 English speakers discriminate certain L2 Spanish contrasts before others. Thirteen L1 English speakers with little (n = 6) or no Spanish experience (n = 7) completed a cross‐language mapping task. Results indicate that native English speakers experience difficulty discriminating the /ɾ/‐/d/ contrast because they categorize the Spanish /ɾ/ and /d/ to similar phonemic categories in English. Results further suggest that both L2 Spanish experience and lexical context affect how L2 consonants are categorized in an L1.

Previous work in the field of interlanguage pragmatics suggests that learners of a second or foreign language benefit from metapragmatic instruction (e.g., Félix-Brasdefer 2008a; Kasper and Rose 2002; Koike and Pearson 2005). The most common approach taken in studies on instruction is to focus on a speech act and to develop a lesson that acts as a separate unit for the learners (or study participants). The current article presents a slightly different approach, suggesting that language educators enhance grammar lessons that are already part of the curriculum with instruction on pragmatics. Instead of developing additional units, this article shows how grammar lessons can be extended and enhanced using internet searches on Google and YouTube to find authentic materials in addition to authentic written texts. These lessons, in addition to providing metapragmatic instruction, also present opportunities to make cross-cultural comparisons between different Spanish-speaking countries and the United States.

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