Research on the second language acquisition (SLA) of Spanish has identified grammatical structures for which an analysis of errors for second-language (L2) learners is inappropriate (Geeslin, 2003; Geeslin & Guijarro-Fuentes, 2006; Gudmestad, 2006). This is because the norms of use for such structures are changing, and prescriptive grammars do not coincide with actual language use. Thus, in order to examine such sociolinguistically-variable grammatical features in learner language, researchers have shifted to an analysis of the predictors of use of a given variant, rather than an assessment of accuracy (Geeslin, 2000). Investigations following this approach on structures such as copula choice and mood choice have been largely based on written contextualized tasks (WCT), where use is contextualized and participants indicate a preference for one of the two possible variants. The advantage of this type of task is twofold. First, in comparison with grammaticality judgment tasks, participants are not forced to select one (presumably the only) grammatical sentence from the options provided. Consequently, the WCT is more in line with the idea that variation is indeed an acceptable, and even irrefutable, part of native-like speech. Secondly, in comparison with tasks that elicit less directed production, the WCT assures that each participant will respond to the same tokens (both lexically and in terms of the contextual features that predict selection of a given variant) and that each