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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There is conflicting empirical evidence regarding the role of awareness in second language learning. Possible explanations for the contradictory results include the modality in the exposure and ...assessment phases of previous experiments. Our study investigated the acquisition of a novel determiner system under incidental exposure conditions and examined the effect of modality in both exposure and assessment phases. Animacy served as a hidden regularity in the determiners, which were embedded in sentences and presented to Chinese speakers of English either in auditory or in visual mode. Learning was assessed by a two-alternative forced-choice test either auditorily or in writing. Implicit and explicit knowledge were measured using retrospective verbal reports and source judgements. Bayesian analysis provided moderate evidence for above chance level learning. Significant learning effects were observed regardless of whether participants based their accuracy judgements on explicit or implicit knowledge. Bayesian analysis showed moderate evidence for above chance learning effects for aware participants. Generalized linear mixed-effects modeling revealed a small-size significant benefit of the auditory exposure modality over the written modality but indicated no significant effect of the modality of assessment or awareness. Our research underscores the importance of considering the role of modality of exposure in incidental second language learning contexts.
This experimental study explores the impact of textual enhancement on English language learners' noticing of and grammatical awareness of expressing future plans and intentions. The study was ...conducted over five weeks with a pre‐test, immediate post‐test and delayed post‐test research design with the participation of 97 tertiary level students in Bangladesh. The results reveal that exposure to textually enhanced input facilitates the development of metalinguistic knowledge of the ‘be going to’ construction, as well as the learners' controlled use of the construction ‘will’ for expressing future plans and intentions. Input enhancement alone, however, was not effective in helping the participants to gain a full understanding of the complexities of form to function mappings with regard to targeted future meanings.
Der Einfluss von Textaufbereitungen auf das grammatikalische Bewusstsein von EFL‐Lernern In dieser experimentellen Studie wird untersucht, wie sich Textaufbereitungen für Lerner des Englischen auf das “noticing” und das grammatikalische Bewusstsein beim Ausdruck von zukünftigen Plänen und Handlungen auswirken. Die Studie erstreckte sich über fünf Wochen mit einem Prätest, unmittelbaren Posttest und zeitverzögerten Posttest Design mit 97 Teilnehmern aus dem terziären Bildungsbereich in Bangladesch. Die Studie ergab, dass verbesserter Textinput die Entwicklung von metalinguistischem Wissen über die “be going to”‐Konstruktion erleichtert, ebenso wie die kontrollierte Verwendung der “will”‐Konstruktion durch die Lerner, um Pläne und Intentionen in der Zukunft zu beschreiben. Verbesserter Input erwies sich jedoch nicht als effekiv für das Ziel, den Teilnehmern zu helfen, ein vollständiges Verständnis der Komplexitäten der Form‐Fuktion‐Zuordnung im Bereich der untersuchten Futurbedeutungen zu vermitteln.
Previous studies examined the association between motivational characteristics and language learning achievement, but considerably less is known about young language learners' task-specific ...motivation in assessment contexts. Our study investigated the task motivation of young learners of English when completing computer-administered integrated test tasks, and the relationship between task performance and test task motivation. Hundred and four learners aged between 11 and 15 years completed three computer-administered assessment tasks: a Listen-Write task, which required a summary of a listening text, and two Listen-Speak tasks, in which learners had to retell a listening text with academic and non-academic content, respectively. Participants also filled in a task-motivation questionnaire, containing items on appraisals of task difficulty, task-related emotions and anxiety, effort and subjective competence. The results indicated that the young learners held positive views on the integrated assessment tasks. Nevertheless, they found the Listen-Speak tasks significantly more difficult, more anxiety-provoking and less enjoyable than the Listen-Write task and they judged their competence to be lower than in the Listen-Write task. Task-motivational factors accounted for a low level of variation in task performance. These findings have important implications for the design and use of computer-administered integrated tasks in assessing young L2 learners.
While the research literature on second language (L2) fluency is replete with descriptions of fluency and its influence with regard to English as an additional language, little is known about what ...fluency features influence judgments of fluency in L2 French. This study reports the results of an investigation that analyzed the relationship between utterance fluency measures and raters’ perceptions of L2 fluency in French using mixed-effects modeling. Participants were 40 adult learners of French at varying levels of proficiency, studying in a university immersion context. Speech performances were collected on three different types of narrative tasks. Four utterance fluency measures were extracted from each performance. Eleven untrained judges rated the speech performances and we examined which utterance fluency measures are the best predictors of the scores awarded by the raters. The mean length of runs and articulation rate proved to be the most influential factors in raters’ judgments, while the frequency of pauses played a less important role. The length of pauses was positively related to fluency scores, indicating a prominent cross-linguistic variation specific to French. The relative importance of the utterance measures in predicting fluency ratings, however, was found to vary across tasks.
In the field of second language (L2) fluency, there is a common adherence to quantitative methods to examine characteristics and features of speech. This study extends the field by reporting on an ...investigation that analyzed native-speaker listeners’ perceptions of L2 fluency in French from a qualitative perspective. Three untrained judges rated students’ performance on speech tasks varying in cognitive demand and provided justifications for their perceptions of fluency. The goal of the research was to examine the factors that affect raters’ evaluations of fluency in response to three oral performances from 40 adult learners of French of varying proficiency. Qualitative analysis revealed that the main speech features that influenced native listeners’ perceptions of L2 fluency were speed, rhythm, pause phenomena, self-correction and efficiency/effortlessness in word choice, but also in target-like rhythm and prosody. The results of using such qualitative methodology highlights the important role that rhythm plays in fluency judgements in syllable-timed languages such as French, a factor which has not always been given much prominence in previous L2 fluency quantitative research.
Abstract
Our study investigated the differences in low-level L1 skills and L2 reading, listening, and reading-while-listening outcomes between young dyslexic and non-dyslexic Slovenian learners of ...English. The research, in which children completed four language assessment tasks in three modes in a carefully counter-balanced order, also examined the relationship between low-level L1 skills and L2 reading, listening, and reading-while-listening performance. The findings show that, in Slovenian, which is a transparent language, dyslexic students are behind their non-dyslexic peers in word-level L1 skills after five years of literacy instruction. The results also call attention to the fact that students with weak L2 reading and listening skills might not always be at risk of, or diagnosed as having, dyslexia. Importantly, the findings suggest that the accuracy and speed of real and non-word reading in L1 might serve as useful indicators of L2 reading difficulties of young language learners. Furthermore, L1 dictation tests were also found to yield diagnostic information on young L2 learners’ listening and reading-while-listening problems.
The research reported in this paper explores which variables predict native and non-native speaking teachers' perception of fluency and distinguish fluent from non-fluent L2 learners. In addition to ...traditional measures of the quality of students' output such as accuracy and lexical diversity, we investigated speech samples collected from 16 Hungarian L2 learners at two distinct levels of proficiency with the help of computer technology. The two groups of students were compared and their temporal and linguistic measures were correlated with the fluency scores they received from three experienced native and three non-native speaker teacher judges. The teachers' written comments concerning the students' performance were also taken into consideration. For all the native and non-native teachers, speech rate, the mean length of utterance, phonation time ratio and the number of stressed words produced per minute were the best predictors of fluency scores. However, the raters differed as regards how much importance they attributed to accuracy, lexical diversity and the mean length of pauses. The number of filled and unfilled pauses and other disfluency phenomena were not found to influence perceptions of fluency.
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