Acquisition of Spanish Future of Probability

This paper is a background review for the project on the acquisition of the future of probability by intermediate students of Spanish at the University of Ottawa. In order to facilitate the presentation of future of probability for our students, who can be either English or French dominant, we need to know how the two language backgrounds affect their learning. In this study we review the history of the Romance Future, as well as the grammatical and the pragmatic aspects of the use of future form for epistemic interpretation in English, French, Spanish and Italian. We discuss several previous studies that have guided this study towards a pedagogical approach. Finally, we discuss how students' Spanish language learning can be facilitated through incorporating their L1 knowledge.