EUROSLA Yearbook - Volume 1, Issue 1, 2001

This paper examines the relationship between fluency and vocabulary size, and also between fluency and word frequency level. Fluency was operationalised as the time learners need to recognize meanings of words sampled from different frequency levels. It was measured by a computerised vocabulary recognition speed test (VORST). The test was given to 488 native and non-native speakers who were divided by vocabulary size into four groups. The four groups were compared on speed of response to the 3000 level and University Word List (UWL) words. Speed was also correlated with vocabulary size. Additionally, response times to different frequency levels were compared for each subject. Results suggest that speed of retrieval is moderately related to vocabulary size and word frequency. Non-native speakers’ increase in speed lags behind increase in vocabulary size. Non-native speakers also respond more slowly to less frequent words. Responses of native speakers, on the other hand, are more homogeneous across subjects and across vocabulary frequencies. Speed of retrieval cannot be fully predicted from vocabulary knowledge and therefore speed tests should supplement tests of vocabulary size and depth.

This paper represents an exploration into the effectiveness and nature of vocabulary acquisition through reading in English as a foreign language. The subjects, Polish learners of English, were instructed to read three newspaper articles for comprehension while performing three reading tasks: ‘read only’, read for the main ideas, and read for selected information. Their gains in the knowledge of 60 potentially least known words were then measured. It was found that although all the students showed some vocabulary gains, the medium- and high-proficiency students profited more than the low-proficiency students. The while-reading tasks had a modest effect on learning unfamiliar lexical items, with the ‘read only’ task proving slightly more efficient than the other two tasks. The data did not support the hypothesis that increasing text comprehensibility promotes a proportional increase in vocabulary acquisition.

This article addresses the issue of underrepresentation or avoidance of colloquial words in a cross-sectional corpus of advanced French interlanguage (IL) of 29 Dutch L1 speakers and in a longitudinal corpus of 6 Hiberno-Irish English L1 speakers compared with a control group of 6 native speakers of French. The main independent variable analysed in the longitudinal corpus is the effect of spending a year in a francophone environment. This analysis is supplemented by a separate study of sociobiographical and psychological factors that affect the use of colloquial vocabulary in the cross-sectional corpus. Colloquial words are not exceptionally complex morphologically and present no specific grammatical difficulties, yet they are very rare in our data. Multivariate regression analyses suggest that only active authentic communication in the target language (TL) predicts the use of colloquial lexemes in the cross-sectional corpus. This result was confirmed in the longitudinal corpus where a t-test showed that the proportion of colloquial lexemes increased significantly after a year abroad.

The current state of affairs is characterised as one in which general SLA models have syntax as their core and pay less and variable attention to other linguistic levels, notably lexis. In order to improve the current situation we need involvement from both the vocabulary research community and SLA model builders. It is demonstrated how the former group readily borrows key concepts from psycholinguistics and SLA theory and rethinks them from a lexical point of view. However, such borrowing and recasting is often done in a piecemeal fashion to fit specific research issues. As for SLA model builders, some examples are discussed that are regarded as serious attempts at integrating lexis into a particular acquisition model. One is L2 reading research and vocabulary acquisition through reading, which illustrates a high degree of integration with common research goals and mutual theoretical inspiration. A second example underlines the fact that there is an obvious potential for including lexis in the ‘focus on form’ movement. It is our contention that more attention to lexis should supplement the predominantly grammatical ‘focus on form’ that is the current norm.

This paper reviews a variety of restrictions (input filters) on the conversion of input to intake and thence to acquisition. These filters are internal characteristics of the learner which seem to interfere with the ability to make use of L2 input for acquisition, even when that input seems, on the surface, to be appropriate and plentiful. Three sorts of filters are examined: affective filters, auditory/phonological filters, and cognitive filters. In the third category, three kinds of cognitive filters are discussed: (a) overload or conflict in the processing systems, (b) developmental filters, and (c) effects of previously learned languages. The discussion focuses on the role of instruction and feedback in making input more accessible to classroom learners and guiding them to perceive the difference between interlanguage patterns and those of the target language.

The findings from a comprehensive study on oral corrective feedback show that the success of such feedback as measured in a subsequent test is affected by its format, the type of error corrected, and certain learner characteristics. The most successful format of correction, both for the learners receiving the feedback and for their peers, is feedback successfully eliciting self-correction in practice situations. Among the least successful formats for both groups are recasts without further comments or repetition by the corrected learner. The type of error corrected most successfully differs for the two groups. Those corrected learn most from the correction of their grammatical errors and least from correction of pronunciation errors. Peers score best on pronunciation items and gain least from correction of lexical errors. Of the learner characteristics taken into consideration, verbal intelligence, relative proficiency (within levels at school or university), and the learners’ attitude towards correction proved to be most influential.

This article compares the relative effect of study abroad as opposed to foreign language instruction on an aspect of the L2 learner’s grammatical development, namely the expression of past time in target language (TL) French. Based on a cross-sectional quantitative analysis of oral data elicited from Irish advanced learners, a number of differences and similarities emerge between the learners’ development in the TL community and in the foreign language classroom. On the one hand, the more beneficial effect of study abroad is evident insofar as the study abroad learners attain a higher level of accuracy in their use of past time morphology across a more expansive range of aspectual contexts. On the other hand, however, similarities are also evident between the learners in both domains of acquisition. Based on a variationist analysis which controls for the effect of a number of linguistic factors on the learners’ choice of past time marker (grammatical aspect, inherent lexical aspect, and discourse grounding), the learners’ contextual use of past time morphology appears to be relatively similar. The results are firstly dicussed in relation to existing research evidence concerning the L2 learner’s grammatical development during study abroad, and secondly, in relation to the question of the manifestation of grammatical development in the L2 learner.

One proposed explanation for the observed differences between native and non-native speakers has been that certain peripheral systems interacting with the computational system are defective in L2 acquisition. This paper will consider some of the predictions that follow from assuming that the morphological module which interacts with the computational system (or their interface) is defective. If this basic assumption is correct, we should expect all learners to be able to acquire the L2 grammar equally well, and where mistakes are found they should be due to problems in the morphology. The results of an empirical study of the acquisition of grammatical gender in advanced English and Italian speakers of L2 Spanish do not support these predictions, as the errors found appear to be syntactic in nature.

This paper explores L1 effects on the L2 off-line processing of Dutch (grammatical gender) agreement. The L2 participants had either German, English or a Romance language as their L1. Non-gender agreement (finiteness and agreement) was tested to ascertain the level of proficiency of the participants. It was found that the German and Romance groups did not differ from the native speaker controls while the English group performed significantly worse. For the two grammatical gender experiments clear effects of L1 were found. No groups performed at a level similar to the native speakers, but of the L2 groups a hierarchy of performance was found. The German group performed the best, then the Romance group followed by the lower proficient English group. This was taken to mean that not only having grammatical gender in the L1 was an important factor but that the grammatical gender had to be similar in order for the L2 distinctions to be learnt.

The present study is an analysis of the acquisition of French by German children who were exposed to the language for the first time at the age of approximately three years. I investigated the usage of the French gender system, namely gender attribution and gender agreement, in order to determine whether these children were acquiring French as a ‘second’ first language, as bilinguals do with simultaneous input of two languages from birth onwards, or whether they were acquiring it as a ‘first’ second language. The analysis of several measures demonstrated that the usage of gender-marking elements of most subjects was more similar to that of bilingual children than of child L2 learners who have first been exposed to French after the age of 6. This suggests that bilingual first language acquisition is also possible with first exposure to a foreign language at the age of approximately three years.

Most studies concerning the issue of age have focused on the language outcomes of subjects who started acquiring a second language during childhood, or later on during adolescence or adulthood in naturalistic contexts. However, relatively few studies have been concerned with school contexts where a foreign language is a compulsory subject in the early stages of the curriculum. The aim of the present study is to address the question of the effects of starting age (8 versus 11) on the acquisition of English as a foreign language in a school context, with specific reference to written production. Data are analysed after 200 and 416 hours of instruction, that is, when learners are 10 and 12, and 12 and 14 respectively. Results suggest that an earlier start does not have clear benefits in the acquisition of EFL as reflected in written language.

This paper analyses the answers to a questionnaire in which learners of different age-groups and different proficiency levels were asked about their attitudes and types of motivation towards the L2 (EFL). First, motivation is seen to increase with school experience. Second, the younger learners show more intrinsic types of motivation, while the older groups show more extrinsic types and a preference for an instrumental type of motivation. That is, while the younger students do not, as a group, present higher motivation than the older students, they have a qualitatively different type of motivation. Third, significant statistical relations are shown between attitude towards language learning and achievement in some language tests, but not all. Significant relations are also found between achievement at the first measurement time and attitudes at the second in those students who were traced longitudinally, raising the issue of the directionality of the relation between motivation and second language achievement.

Connecting expressions reveal how the speaker copes with text organisation; and studying aspects of the development of these forms in L2 varieties helps us throw light on both pragmatic and syntactic text organisation in interlanguages. Syntactically, linking markers are involved in the development of subordination; pragmatically, their presence gives a map of learners’ discourse articulation. The present investigation of Italian L2 interlanguages showed that simple clauses and coordination appear before subordination, and that subordinate clauses seem to develop from adverbial to complement and relative clauses. At the pragmatic level, connecting particles emerge in less developed interlanguages. The data presented here are relevant to theoretical research on subordination hierarchies (central vs. marginal forms) and those cognitive categories (time, cause, concession, etc.) which are more likely to be expressed syntactically and/or pragmatically.

Traditionally, repairs have been defined as the traces of metalinguistic activities present in oral exchanges that reveal that the speaker(s) are trying to solve language problems which might affect the normal flow of communication (Duranti 1977, Griggs 1997, Levelt 1983, van Lier 1988). However, while most of these studies have highlighted the importance of repairs as tools to gain, expand or reinforce knowledge about the target language, they have not reflected how social identities determine its nature and shape the learners’ discourse. We will examine conversational interactions between pairs of adult learners of Spanish as a second language engaged in a role-play activity, acted out for the class. Such activities require learners to determine who they will be, where they will be and who they will be talking to from the perspective of the role-play, but at the same time they must continue to deal with who they are, where they are and who their audience is in the real world. We use conversational analysis and interactional sociolinguistics to analyse their repairs in these two simultaneous conversational contexts.

This article discusses the results of research investigating the effect of metacognitive strategy training on the reading comprehension and metacognitive knowledge of Polish intermediate learners of English as a foreign language. Results of a pretest and posttest questionnaire and a reading comprehension test administered to both an experimental and a control group of students suggest that students who were taught to apply self-regulatory strategies while performing a task related to reading could enhance their metacognitive knowledge of themselves as readers, their perceptions of the reading process and reading strategies, and their motivation as well as self-evaluation of reading skills. With respect to the students’ reading comprehension, a comparison of the effect of the training on students at two levels of language competence indicates that the training was more effective for the less proficient students. The study points to the effectiveness of metacognitive strategy training for students at an intermediate level of language proficiency. It also stresses the significance of learners’ beliefs concerning reading and underscores the role of metacognition in developing reading skills.

Precise definition of the term, ‘native speaker’, is extremely difficult and therefore usually avoided even though the concept is vital in SLA as in many other domains dealing with language ability. Most researchers rely on the assumption that there is a common understanding of what a native-speaker is. However, the requirements of scientific rigour make a close examination of this ‘common understanding’ an absolute necessity. We argue that reformulating the concept along the lines first suggested by Eleanor Rosch, i.e. using prototype theory, should provide the best way of introducing the necessary precision. This has the consequence that native-speakerhood becomes a gradient term with, respectively, core (prototypical) and peripheral features. This allows researchers to be more precise about what they, or the particular theoretical approach they adopt, claim to be the essential and non-essential features of nativeness and the necessary rigour is thereby achieved.