The study investigates the role of attention in monitoring second language speechproduction by means of analyzing the distribution and frequency of self‐repairs and the correction rate of errors in ...the speech of 30 Hungarian learners of English at 3 levels of proficiency and of 10 native speakers of Hungarian. The results indicate that the amount of attention paid to the linguistic form of the utterance does not vary at different stages of L2 competence and that the distribution of attention in monitoring for errors is markedly different inL1 and L2. In the case of advanced L2 speakers, the extra attentional resources made available by the automaticity of certain encoding processes were used for checking the discourse‐level aspects of their message.
This paper reports on a data-based study in which we explored - as part of a
larger-scale British-Hungarian research project - the effects of a number of
affective and social variables on foreign ...language (L2) learners’
engagement in oral argumentative tasks. The assumption underlying the investigation
was that students’ verbal behaviour in oral task situations is partly
determined by a number of non-linguistic and non-cognitive factors whose examination
may constitute a potentially fruitful extension of existing task-based research
paradigms. The independent variables in the study included various aspects of L2
motivation and several factors characterizing the learner groups the participating
students were members of (such as group cohesiveness and intermember relations), as
well as the learners’ L2 proficiency and ‘willingness to
communicate’ in their L1. The dependent variables involved objective
measures of the students’ language output in two oral argumentative tasks
(one in the learners’ L1, the other in their L2): the quantity of speech
and the number of turns produced by the speakers. The results provide insights into
the interrelationship of the multiple variables determining the learners’
task engagement, and suggest a multi-level construct whereby some independent
variables only come into force when certain conditions have been met.
This article reports on a study conducted with 42 participants from a Chilean university, which aimed to determine the effect of mode of response on test performance and test-taker perception of test ...features by comparing a semidirect online version and a direct face-to-face version of a speaking test. Candidate performances on both test versions were double-marked and analysed using both classical test theory and many-facet Rasch measurement. To gain an insight into students' perceptions of the two modes of delivery, we also asked candidates to complete a questionnaire after sitting each version. The many-facet Rash analysis showed no significant difference in the difficulty of the two versions of test. Nonetheless, there was a significant preference among candidates for the face-to-face version across a number of different features of the test.
•High L2 writing performance on integrated skills and email task.•Grade 7 students do better on Listen-Write and Email tasks than Grade 6 students.•Significant effect of cognitive factors is found ...only for academic editing task.•Meaningful but not significant effect for Grade 7 students on the Listen-Write task.•Younger learners with high WM showed more consistent performance across tasks.
This study investigated the role of working memory (WM) in the second language (L2) writing performance of young English language learners. It also examined how L2 writing achievement relates to task type and grade level and whether the effect of cognitive abilities varies across different task types and grade level. The participants were 94 young learners (Grades 6 and 7) in Hungary, who performed four writing task types as part of the TOEFL® Junior™ Comprehensive test-battery and completed cognitive tests that assessed their WM functions. Participants scored high on the email writing and integrated Listen-Write tasks. Irrespective of WM functions, on average learners in Grade 7 outperformed those in Grade 6 on the Listen-Write task and the Email task. Students gained lower scores on the non-academic version of an editing task than on most other types of tasks. WM functions had no significant relationship with L2 writing scores, except for the academic editing task. In Grade 7, the effect of WM was not significant on the integrated Listen-Write task, but it resulted in the change of expected score. Learners with high working memory in Grade 6 showed somewhat more consistent performance across tasks than did learners with low working memory.
Our study investigated lexical alignment in a reading-to-speaking task, in two modalities of input text presentation. We also explored whether participants’ vocabulary knowledge moderates the effects ...of text modality and difficulty on lexical alignment. We addressed these questions by analyzing lexical overlap in the speech of 128 Japanese learners of English. Students were asked to summarize the information given in two different expository informational texts that were presented in reading-only mode and in reading-while-listening mode, using a within-subject design. The results showed that participants produced fewer overlapping 5-grams in reading-while-listening condition than in the reading-only condition. However for shorter n-grams no significant differences between modes of exposure were found. Students with larger vocabulary size produced less lexical overlap with the input text at the level of single words. We discuss the implications of the findings of the study for language teaching pedagogy.
•Lexical alignment is frequent at the level of uni- and bigrams.•5-gram overlap with the source text is lower in the bimodal input condition.•Vocabulary size has negative effect on unigram overlap with the input text.
Hu and Nation's (2000) study, which stipulated that second language (L2) readers need to be familiar with 98% of lexical items for adequate text comprehension, has become highly influential in L2 ...vocabulary research and pedagogy. However, the 98% critical threshold figure is based on findings from a research project in which a regression analysis was conducted with only 66 university students in New Zealand. The present study replicated Hu and Nation's research in a context different from a typical Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic context with a sample of 104 Sri Lankan adult L2 learners in a nonacademic context. They each took a Vocabulary Levels Test and read one of five versions of two reading texts at different levels of density of unknown words before answering comprehension questions. The results of the original study could not be fully replicated.
A one‐page Accessible Summary of this article in nontechnical language is freely available in the Supporting Information online and at https://oasis‐database.org
Our study investigated the role of creativity in second language (L2) speech production using a picture narrative and an open‐ended argumentative task administered to 60 Japanese‐speaking learners of ...English. Following recent findings in the field of psychology, the participants’ creativity was assessed in terms of cognitive dimensions (divergent thinking fluency, convergent thinking) and a personality dimension (openness to experience). Participants’ speaking performance was analyzed using a set of complexity, accuracy, fluency and discourse measures. The results of hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that both divergent thinking fluency and convergent thinking played a role in the cohesion of speech (indexed by the frequency of connectives) in both speaking tasks, while only in the argumentative task did divergent thinking fluency contribute to an increase in the amount of information (indexed by the total number of words produced). Meanwhile, openness to experience was found to enhance syntactic and lexical complexity only in the picture narrative task. These findings suggest that speakers’ creativity is linked to syntactic and lexical sophistication and discourse aspects of L2 oral performance, all of which are related to conceptualization processes in L2 speech production.
In the present study, we surveyed the English language-learning motivations of 518 secondary school students, university students, and young adult learners in the capital of Chile, Santiago. We ...applied multi-group structural-equation modeling to analyze how language-learning goals, attitudes, self-related beliefs, and parental encouragement interact in shaping motivated behavior and to investigate age- and group-related differences in the internal structure of language-learning motivation. We compared our findings with previous studies using similar instruments in different settings, and based on our findings, we proposed a new interactive model of language-learning motivation, which consists of goal systems, attitudes, self-efficacy beliefs, and future self-guides.
This study used eye‐tracking to examine changes in how second language (L2) learners process target grammatical exemplars in written L2 input in implicit and explicit instructional conditions and how ...these changes relate to learning gains. In three separate sessions, 77 L2 learners of English read a story containing seven examples of a grammatical construction. The results of a growth curve analysis indicated significant main effects for the instructional condition and test sessions on total fixation duration and a significant interaction between these two variables. There was minimal attentional processing and no improvement in processing efficiency of the target construction in the unenhanced condition. Learners’ attentional processing in the textually enhanced conditions decreased and, by the end of the experiment, they engaged in establishing and fine tuning form–meaning links. In the two explicit instructional conditions, participants’ attention decreased over time and form–meaning representations of the target structure were strengthened.
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