Showing papers on "Second-language acquisition published in 2015"

The Psychology of the Language Learner Revisited

Abstract: Preface 1. Introduction: Individual differences - then and now 2. Personality 3. Language Aptitude 4. Motivation 5. Learning Styles and Cognitive Styles 6. Learning Strategies and Self-Regulation 7. Other learner characteristics 8. Conclusion: Looking back and forward

Error Analysis: Perspectives on Second Language Acquisition

Abstract: The eleven essays in this book cover a wide range of topics from the role of 'interlanguage' and the influence of external factors on the process of language learning, to the development of syntax and the methodology of error analysis. Collectively they provide a valuable perspective on the learning process, which both enriches our theoretical understanding of the processes underlying second language acquisition and suggests ways in which teaching practice may best exploit a learner's skills.

Automatically Assessing Lexical Sophistication: Indices, Tools, Findings, and Application

Abstract: This study explores the construct of lexical sophistication and its applications for measuring second language lexical and speaking proficiency. In doing so, the study introduces the Tool for the Automatic Analysis of LExical Sophistication (TAALES), which calculates text scores for 135 classic and newly developed lexical indices related to word frequency, range, bigram and trigram frequency, academic language, and psycholinguistic word information. TAALES is freely available; runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems; and has a simple graphic user interface that allows for batch processing of .txt files. The tool is fast, reliable, and outputs results to a comma-separated value file that can be accessed using spreadsheet software. The study examines the ability of TAALES indices to explain the variance in human judgments of lexical proficiency and speaking proficiency for second language (L2) learners. Overall, these indices were able to explain 47.5% of the variance in holistic scores of lexical proficiency and 48.7% of the variance in holistic scores of speaking proficiency. This study has important implications for second language acquisition, for assessing L2 learners' productive skills (writing and speaking), and for L2 pedagogy. Limitations and future directions are also discussed.

The multilingual turn: implications for SLA, TESOL and bilingual education

Abstract: The Multilingual Turn is a ‘plaidoyer’ for an epistemological change in applied linguistics, within three main areas: second language acquisition (SLA), teaching English for speakers of other langu...

Why Only Us: Language and Evolution

Abstract: We are born crying, but those cries signal the first stirring of language. Within a year or so, infants master the sound system of their language; a few years after that, they are engaging in conversations. This remarkable, species-specific ability to acquire any human language -- "the language faculty" -- raises important biological questions about language, including how it has evolved. This book by two distinguished scholars -- a computer scientist and a linguist -- addresses the enduring question of the evolution of language. Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky explain that until recently the evolutionary question could not be properly posed, because we did not have a clear idea of how to define "language" and therefore what it was that had evolved. But since the Minimalist Program, developed by Chomsky and others, we know the key ingredients of language and can put together an account of the evolution of human language and what distinguishes us from all other animals. Berwick and Chomsky discuss the biolinguistic perspective on language, which views language as a particular object of the biological world; the computational efficiency of language as a system of thought and understanding; the tension between Darwin's idea of gradual change and our contemporary understanding about evolutionary change and language; and evidence from nonhuman animals, in particular vocal learning in songbirds.

Language Teacher Cognition in Applied Linguistics Research: Revisiting the Territory, Redrawing the Boundaries, Reclaiming the Relevance

Abstract: Understanding language teachers' mental lives (Walberg, 1972), and how these shape and are shaped by the activity of language teaching in diverse sociocultural contexts, has been at the forefront of the sub discipline of applied linguistics that has become known as language teacher cognition. Although the collective research efforts within this domain have contributed critical insights into what language teachers know, believe, and think in relation to their work (cf. Borg, 2006), limited progress has been achieved in addressing some of the most pertinent questions asked by applied linguists, policy makers, and the general public alike: How do language teachers create meaningful learning environments for their students? How can teacher education and continuing professional development facilitate such learning in language teachers? By revisiting the domain's epistemological, conceptual, and ethical foundations, this special issue sets an agenda for reinvigorated inquiry into language teacher cognition that aims to redraw its current boundaries and thus reclaim its relevance to the wider domain of applied linguistics and to the real-world concerns of language teachers, language teacher educators, and language learners around the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Utility and Application of Mixed-Effects Models in Second Language Research

Abstract: Second language acquisition researchers often face particular challenges when attempting to generalize study findings to the wider learner population. For example, language learners constitute a heterogeneous group, and it is not always clear how a study’s findings may generalize to other individuals who may differ in terms of language background and proficiency, among many other factors. In this paper, we provide an overview of how mixed-effects models can be used to help overcome these and other issues in the field of second language acquisition. We provide an overview of the benefits of mixed-effects models and a practical example of how mixed-effects analyses can be conducted. Mixed-effects models provide second language researchers with a powerful statistical tool in the analysis of a variety of different types of data.

Research into practice: Grammar learning and teaching

Abstract: This selective review of the second language acquisition and applied linguistics research literature on grammar learning and teaching falls into three categories: where research has had little impact (the non-interface position), modest impact (form-focused instruction), and where it potentially can have a large impact (reconceiving grammar). Overall, I argue that not much second language acquisition or applied linguistics research on grammar has made its way into the classroom. At the conclusion of the discussion of each of the three categories, I speculate on why this is so. I also find misguided the notion that research should be applied to teaching in an unmediated manner. This is not to say that research should have no impact on pedagogy. In concluding, I offer some ways that I believe it could and should.

Balanced bilingualism and early age of second language acquisition as the underlying mechanisms of a bilingual executive control advantage: why variations in bilingual experiences matter

Abstract: Recent studies revealed inconsistent evidences of a bilingual advantage in executive processing. One potential source of explanation is the multifaceted experience of the bilinguals in these studies. This study seeks to test whether bilinguals who engage in language selection more frequently would perform better in executive control tasks than those bilinguals who engage in language selection less frequently. We examined the influence of the degree of bilingualism (i.e., language proficiency, frequency of use of two languages, and age of second language acquisition) on executive functioning in bilingual young adults using a comprehensive battery of executive control tasks. Seventy-two 18- to 25-year-old English-Mandarin bilinguals performed four computerized executive function tasks (Stroop, Eriksen flanker, number-letter switching and n-back task) that measure the executive function components: inhibition, mental-set shifting, and information updating and monitoring. Results from multiple regression analyses, structural equation modeling, and bootstrapping supported the positive association between age of second language acquisition and the interference cost in the Stroop task. Most importantly, we found a significant effect of balanced bilingualism (balanced usage of and balanced proficiency in two languages) on the Stroop and number-letter task (mixing cost only), indicating that a more balanced use and a more balanced level of proficiency in two languages resulted in better executive control skills in the adult bilinguals. We did not find any significant effect of bilingualism on flanker or n-back task. These findings provided important insights to the underlying mechanisms of the bilingual cognitive advantage hypothesis, demonstrating that regular experience with extensive practice in controlling attention to their two language systems results in better performance in related executive functions such as inhibiting prepotent responses and global set-shifting.

Conceptualising the Potential Role of L1 in CLIL.

Abstract: Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) is a rapidly growing area of both research and practice in all parts of the world, especially in Europe and Asia. As a young discipline, CLIL has a good potential of distinguishing itself from monolingual L2 immersion education models by becoming more flexible and balanced about the role of L1 in CLIL lessons. Although recent years have witnessed increasing research on the potential role of L1 in foreign language teaching [e.g. Littlewood, W., & Yu, B. 2009. First language and target language in the foreign language classroom. Language Teacher, 42, 1–14], monolingual immersion ideologies are still dominant in many contexts in the world (especially in Southeast Asia) because of a whole host of ideologies. The beliefs affecting medium of instruction policies and practice have their roots in the traditional tenets (e.g. the maximum input hypothesis) in the discipline of second language acquisition (SLA). Although these tenets are increasingly being countered by...

Learning to perceive and recognize a second language: the L2LP model revised.

Abstract: We present a test of a revised version of the Second Language Linguistic Perception (L2LP) model, a computational model of the acquisition of second language (L2) speech perception and recognition. The model draws on phonetic, phonological and psycholinguistic constructs to explain a number of L2 learning scenarios. However, a recent computational implementation failed to validate a theoretical proposal for a learning scenario where the L2 has less phonemic categories than the native language (L1) along a given acoustic continuum. According to the L2LP, learners faced with this learning scenario must not only shift their old L1 phoneme boundaries but also reduce the number of categories employed in perception. Our proposed revision to L2LP successfully accounts for this updating in the number of perceptual categories as a process driven by the meaning of lexical items, rather than by the learners’ awareness of the number and type of phonemes that are relevant in their new language, as the previous version of L2LP assumed. Results of our simulations show that meaning-driven learning correctly predicts the developmental path of L2 phoneme perception seen in empirical studies. Additionally, and to contribute to a long-standing debate in psycholinguistics, we test two versions of the model, with the stages of phonemic perception and lexical recognition being either sequential or interactive. Both versions succeed in learning to recognize minimal pairs in the new L2, but make diverging predictions on learners' resulting phonological representations. In sum, the proposed revision to the L2LP model contributes to our understanding of L2 acquisition, with implications for speech processing in general.

The influence of teachers' anxiety-reducing strategies on learners' foreign language anxiety

Abstract: This quasi-experimental study investigated the effects on learner anxiety of anxiety-reducing strategies utilized by English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers in Saudi Arabia. The study was conducted in two stages. In the first stage, sources of foreign language (FL) anxiety for Saudi learners of English (N = 596) were identified using The Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS). In the second stage, 465 learners were divided almost equally into two groups (experimental vs. control) and 12 teachers were recruited. Anxiety-reducing strategies were implemented exclusively in the treatment group for approximately eight weeks. These strategies targeted the sources of FL anxiety identified at the first stage of the study like fear of negative evaluation, communication apprehension, and the negative attitudes toward English language class. At the second stage, a classroom observation scale was used to evaluate teacher's anxiety-reducing practices. FLCAS was used to assess learners' FL anxiety levels...

Working Memory in Second Language Acquisition and Processing

Abstract: Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Foreword: Michael Bunting & Randall Engle Zhisheng Wen, Mailce Borges Mota and Arthur McNeill: Introduction and Overview Part I: Theoretical Perspectives and Models 1. Alan Baddeley: Working Memory in Second Language Learning 2. Nelson Cowan: Second-Language Use, Theories of Working Memory, and the Vennian Mind 3. Zhisheng Wen: Working Memory in Second Language Acquisition and Processing: The Phonological/Executive Model 4. Yanping Dong and Rendong Cai: Working Memory and Interpreting: A Commentary on Theoretical Models Part II: Working Memory in L2 Processing 5. Sun-A Kim, Kiel Christianson and Jerome Packard: Working Memory in L2 Character Processing: The Case of Learning to Read Chinese 6. Yuncai Dai: Working Memory in L2 Sentence Processing: The Case with Relative Clause Attachment 7. Alan Juffs: Working Memory and Sentence Processing: A Commentary Part III: Working Memory in L2 Interaction and Performance 8. Shaofeng Li: Working Memory, Language Analytical Ability and L2 Recasts 9. Mohammad Javad Ahmadian: Working Memory, Online Planning and L2 Self-Repair Behavior 10. Yanbin Lu: Working Memory, Cognitive Resources and L2 Written Performance 11. Peter Skehan: Working Memory and Second Language Performance: A Commentary Part IV: Working Memory in L2 Instruction and Development 12. Kindra Santamaria and Gretchen Sunderman: Working Memory in Processing Instruction: The Acquisition of L2 French Clitic 13. Kaitlyn Tagarelli, Mailce Borges Mota and Patrick Rebuschat: Working Memory, Learning Conditions and L2 Syntax Acquisition 14. Melissa Baralt: Working Memory, Cognitive Complexity and L2 Recasts in Online Language Teaching 15. Anne E. Mitchell, Scott Jarvis, Michelle O'Malley and Irina Konstantinova : Working Memory Measures and L2 Proficiency 16. Clare Wright: Working Memory and L2 Development across the Life Span: A Commentary Part V: Final Commentary 17. John Williams: Working Memory in SLA Research: Challenges and Prospects Index

The Gender Gap in Second Language Acquisition: Gender Differences in the Acquisition of Dutch among Immigrants from 88 Countries with 49 Mother Tongues

Abstract: Gender differences were analyzed across countries of origin and continents, and across mother tongues and language families, using a large-scale database, containing information on 27,119 adult learners of Dutch as a second language. Female learners consistently outperformed male learners in speaking and writing proficiency in Dutch as a second language. This gender gap remained remarkably robust and constant when other learner characteristics were taken into account, such as education, age of arrival, length of residence and hours studying Dutch. For reading and listening skills in Dutch, no gender gap was found. In addition, we found a general gender by education effect for all four language skills in Dutch for speaking, writing, reading, and listening. Female language learners turned out to profit more from higher educational training than male learners do in adult second language acquisition. These findings do not seem to match nurture-oriented explanatory frameworks based for instance on a human capital approach or gender-specific acculturation processes. Rather, they seem to corroborate a nature-based, gene-environment correlational framework in which language proficiency being a genetically-influenced ability interacting with environmental factors such as motivation, orientation, education, and learner strategies that still mediate between endowment and acquiring language proficiency at an adult stage.

What exactly is Universal Grammar, and has anyone seen it?

Abstract: Universal Grammar (UG) is a suspect concept. There is little agreement on what exactly is in it; and the empirical evidence for it is very weak. This paper critically examines a variety of arguments that have been put forward as evidence for UG, focussing on the three most powerful ones: universality (all human languages share a number of properties), convergence (all language learners converge on the same grammar in spite of the fact that they are exposed to different input), and poverty of the stimulus (children know things about language which they could not have learned from the input available to them). I argue that these arguments are based on premises which are either false or unsubstantiated. Languages differ from each other in profound ways, and there are very few true universals, so the fundamental crosslinguistic fact that needs explaining is diversity, not universality. A number of recent studies have demonstrated the existence of considerable differences in adult native speakers’ knowledge of the grammar of their language, including aspects of inflectional morphology, passives, quantifiers, and a variety of more complex constructions, so learners do not in fact converge on the same grammar. Finally, the poverty of the stimulus argument presupposes that children acquire linguistic representations of the kind postulated by generative grammarians; constructionist grammars such as those proposed by Tomasello, Goldberg and others can be learned from the input. We are the only species that has language, so there must be something unique about humans that makes language learning possible. The extent of crosslinguistic diversity and the considerable individual differences in the rate, style and outcome of acquisition suggest that it is more promising to think in terms of a language-making capacity, i.e. a set of domain-general abilities, rather than an innate body of knowledge about the structural properties of the target system.

Variability and Variation in Second Language Acquisition Orders: A Dynamic Reevaluation

Abstract: The traditional morpheme order studies in second language acquisition have tried to demonstrate the existence of a fixed order of acquisition of English morphemes, regardless of the second language learner's background. Such orders have been taken as evidence of the preprogrammed nature of language acquisition. This article argues for a process-based, dynamic explanation of development, in which each developmental step is based on the dynamic interaction of all processes involved. Due to the complexity of these interactions, the developmental process cannot be predetermined and fixed. Although stages of development like the acquisition order of morphemes are commonly observed as a grand sweep effect at the group level, these stages may be meaningless at the level of the individual language learner. This paradox shows we can only make the observations that our method allows us. If we are interested in grand sweep effects that may be generalizable to large populations of learners, we will have to carry out group studies with representative samples that can be analyzed using Gaussian statistics based on the normal distribution. But if we are interested in how an individual learner progresses over time as a result of changing variables in a changing context, we will have to conduct longitudinal studies and use nonlinear methods of analysis.

Fundamentals of Formulaic Language: An Introduction

Abstract: 1. Formulaic Knowledge: Historical Overview 2. Defining Formulaic Language 3. Categorizing Formulaic Language 4. Mental Processing of Formulaic Language 5. Formulaic Language in First and Second Language Acquisition 6. Formulaic Language and Spoken Language 7. Formulaic Language in Written Language 8. Lexical Bundle Research in Formulaic Research 9. Formulaic Language in Language Teaching Bibliography Index

Investigating negotiation of meaning in EFL children with very low levels of proficiency

Abstract: Numerous studies hold that interaction has beneficial effects on second language acquisition among adults and children in second language contexts. However, data from children learning English as a foreign language are still unavailable. In order to fill this research niche, this study examines the conversational interactions of 8 pairs of young (ages 7-8) learners of English as a foreign language while playing a game in the classroom. The objective is to document which conversational strategies these learners use and to compare them to those previously reported for other populations. The analysis of our data shows that these children negotiate significantly less than other populations but use a variety of strategies to negotiate for meaning. Also, they resort to the L1 on some occasions and use explicit correction quite often. In light of these results we will argue in favour of using these types of interactive activities in the classroom.

Implicit AND explicit language learning: Their dynamic interface and complexity

Abstract: Learning symbols and their arrangement in language involves learning associations across and within modalities. Research on implicit learning and chunking within modalities (e.g. N. C. Ellis, 2002) has identified how language users are sensitive to the frequency of language forms and their sequential probabilities at all levels of granularity from phoneme to phrase. This knowledge allows efficient language processing and underpins acquisition by syntactic bootstrapping. Research on explicit learning (e.g. N. C. Ellis, 2005) has shown how conscious processing promotes the acquisition of novel explicit cross-modal form-meaning associations. These breathe meaning into the processing of language form and they underpin acquisition by semantic bootstrapping. This is particularly important in establishing novel processing routines in L2 acquisition. These representations are also then available as units of implicit learning in subsequent processing. Language systems emerge, both diachronically and ontogenetically, from the statistical abstraction of patterns latent within and across form and function in language usage. The complex adaptive system (N. C. Ellis & Larsen-Freeman, 2009b) of interactions within AND across form and function is far richer than that emergent from implicit or explicit learning alone.

Incidental Vocabulary Learning in Second Language Acquisition: A Literature Review

Abstract: This literature review aims to analyze previous studies that address the incidental learning of vocabulary in second language acquisition. The articles included in this literature review look into the understanding of vocabulary learning through incidental means, the relationship of reading and incidental vocabulary learning, and the strategies and tasks that promote the incidental learning of vocabulary. The findings show that L2 learners develop much of their vocabulary by incidental means through exposure to words in informative contexts. Moreover, this exposure is promoted by reading, and enhanced through multimodal glosses. Further research may focus on listening for higher lexical retention rates, the circumstances that allow incidental learning of multi-word phrases and collocations, and the use of technology-based methods for incidental vocabulary acquisition.

The Interference of First Language and Second Language Acquisition

Abstract: One of the most important and fascinating aspects of human development is language acquisition. The present review summarizes some difficulties that second language learners may face to learn English. It has tried to find out factors that play an important role in the acquisition of second language. It is a popular belief that first language has an effect on the second language acquisition, and it is claimed that L1 can interfere with the acquisition of L2. It is also believed that the role of L1 in the L2 depends on some similarities and differences between the two languages. The present review brings to the fore the similarities and differences between the first language and second language acquisition. It then concludes with some implications for teachers and researchers.

At the interface of contact linguistics and second language acquisition research: New Englishes and Learner Englishes compared

Abstract: This paper examines the possible interface between contact linguistics and second language acquisition research by comparing the institutionalized second-language varieties of English known as “New Englishes” and the foreign varieties of English called “Learner Englishes”. On the basis of corpus data representing several populations of various origins, it investigates four linguistic phenomena, ranging from syntax (embedded inversion) to lexis (phrasal verbs with 'up'), through phraseology (word clusters) and pragmatics (discourse markers), with a view to identifying similarities and differences between the two types of varieties at several levels of the language. The paper also explores avenues for going beyond a descriptive account towards a more explanatory one, in an attempt to build the foundations of a theoretical rapprochement between contact linguistics and second language acquisition research.