Writing occupies a central position in university foreign language studies programs, yet little is known about the nature of writing instruction in upper‐division content courses. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative data, this study, which was part of an internal program assessment, explores faculty and student perceptions of students’ writing abilities as well as students’ perceptions of the quality, focus, and components of writing instruction. Findings point to a lack of clarity in expectations and students’ uncertainty about the relationship between content and language in writing. In addition, contradicting reports of students’ writing abilities suggest that process‐oriented instruction that incorporates faculty feedback supports and improves university students’ writing within the discipline. Suggestions for improving writing instruction and students’ outcomes are discussed in the context of previous scholarship on university curricula and faculty professional development.

Abstract:The verb forms ending in -ra and -se in modern Spanish both correspond to the imperfect subjunctive, but their use is far from equal throughout the Spanish-speaking world. Rojo (1996) documents that the -se form is all but obsolete in the majority of American nations, and Kempas (2011) records rates of use in Spain ranging from 11% to 44%. The highest rate corresponds to usage patterns in Galicia, where contact with the regional language, Galician, may provide a conservative influence with respect to the shift from -se to -ra. The present study considers the effects of age, sex, and primary language, as well as linguistic factors such as possibility of the event (i.e., Lavandera (1975)) on the acceptability and choice of -se or -ra in the protasis of conditional statements in Galician Spanish. To accomplish this, 29 speakers completed an online acceptability rating task of 24 statements with varying combinations of verb forms in the protasis and apodosis. They were asked to correct those statements that they rejected as incorrect and unused in their own speech, and their produced corrections were compared to their acceptance or rejection of forms in the models. Results indicated that neither social factors nor possibility significantly affect the acceptance of phrases in -ra or -se. However, individual idiosyncrasies do affect the production of these verb forms, in line with results from Kempas (2011) and Rojo and Vázquez Rozas (2014).

Though the existence of effects of Galician-Castilian contact on patterns of language use in Galicia have been well-documented, the exact scope and consequence of these effects is difficult to determine. This is due in part to the complex attitudes, both positive and negative, toward the Galician language. Because of this, societal reception of influences of Galician on Castilian –such as a heightened use of the verbal morpheme -se­– is not easily predictable, even though the form enjoys greater use in Galicia than elsewhere in the Spanish-speaking world. This study explores attitudes of 39 Galicians from the province of Pontevedra toward the production of the ‑se form, as well as how these attitudes impact participants’ production of the form. Results indicate that the Galician-influenced form ‑se is more prestigious than the ‑ra form that is more common outside of Galicia, though whether participants correctly perceive which form is influenced by the minority language is unclear.

This work investigates a place of intersection between advertising and politics in Galicia, namely the series of television spots created by the supermarket chain GADIS under the title Vivamos como galegos. Most studies of this series have focused exclusively on the first spot and have argued that the success of the ad is due primarily to the way it makes Galician identity attractive. While agreeing that this factor is important, the present analysis expands on previous studies by analyzing rhetorical devices in and intertextual relationships between five ads in the series to argue that these spots discursively create an imaginary world in which Galician language and culture are timeless and will not be lost. This ideal characteristic responds to a current concern of Galician society, namely, the decreasing use of the regional language among youth. In creating this Galician world, GADIS discursively paints itself as a defender of all things Galician, which has led it to become “a campaña de maior éxito do momento” (Souto 2008, 199).