The Impact of Virtual Exchanges on the Development of Sociolinguistic Competence in Second Language Spanish Learners: The Case of Voseo

This study investigates how sociolinguistically informed instruction and virtual exchanges affect the use of the second-person singular pronouns (usted, tú, and vos) by adult second language learners of Spanish enrolled in a third-semester course at a four-year college. The results from written contextualized tasks and oral discourse completion tasks show that participants who engaged in virtual exchanges with native speakers from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador (experimental group) significantly improved their use of vos compared to those who did not participate in these exchanges (control group). Both groups increased their use of tú and vos over time, with notable differences between written and oral tasks. These findings provide empirical support for incorporating virtual exchanges into language learning curricula, demonstrating their effectiveness in teaching regional dialectal features such as voseo. Additionally, by focusing on the often-overlooked regionally variable pronoun vos, this study enriches the existing literature on Spanish language instruction and opens new avenues for research on dialectal variation and sociolinguistically informed pedagogy.