Journal of Second Language Studies - Volume 2, Issue 1, 2019

This study evaluated the effect of input variation on the production and perception of English phonetic segments by native Spanish adults who had immigrated to the United States after the age of 16 years. The native Spanish (NS) participants were assigned to three groups of 20 each according to years of English input (years of U.S. residence multiplied by percent English use outside the home). Experiment 1 assessed the perceived relation between English and Spanish vowels. It yielded similar results for the NS groups designated “Low input” (M = 0.2 years of input), “Mid” (M = 1.2 years) and “High” (M = 3.0 years). Experiments 2–4 examined English vowel discrimination, vowel production and consonant discrimination. Apart from a modest improvement in vowel discrimination, these experiments showed little improvement as years of English input increased. One possible explanation for the essentially null finding of this study is that input matters little or not at all when an L2 is learned naturalistically following the closure of a critical period. Another possibility is that adequate native speaker input is crucial for L2 speech learning but the input differences evaluated here were insufficient to yield measurable improvements in performance. We conclude the article by illustrating a new technique that might be used to choose between these competing explanations.

The present study supports the idea of heteroglossia and its contributions to language learning in second language acquisition (SLA) theory and bilingualism. Bakhtin’s (1934/1981) theory of heteroglossia differs from variety and register in that when acquiring a language, one internalizes the voices of others. Viewing interlanguage through a heteroglossic lens, it is possible that these voices in heteroglossia may have an effect on second language (L2) users’ language production. By blending sociolinguistic and sociocultural frameworks, this study analyzed the complexity, accuracy, and fluency of two French-English bilinguals’ narratives. Findings demonstrate a clear shift in all three measures of the CAF framework when participants enacted the voice of a perceived interlocutor or perceived self, versus when they recounted a narrative. These findings support the notion that an individual may have variable linguistic systems, and raise other important theoretical and practical implications for SLA research and L2 instruction.

The present study examined the lexical complexity profiles of academic presentations of three groups of university students (N = 93) – native English speaking, English as a second language, and English as a lingua franca users. It adopted a notion of lexical complexity which includes lexical diversity, lexical density, and lexical sophistication as main dimensions of the framework. The study aimed at finding out how the three academically similar groups of presenters compared on their lexical complexity choices, what the lexical complexity profiles of high quality students’ academic presentations looked like, and whether we can identify variables that contribute to the overall lexical complexity of presentations given by each group in a unique way. The findings revealed overwhelming similarities across the three groups of presenters and also suggested that the three dimensional framework provides a holistic picture of the lexical complexity for various groups of English for academic purposes presenters.

Second language acquisition cannot take place in the absence of exposure to input. However, despite extensive L2 instruction and/or learning content subjects in L2, many struggle to communicate adequately in their L2 in social and/or academic contexts. A clearer delineation of the concept of ‘exposure’, which requires a review of relevant language acquisition theories and findings, is needed. As such, substantial bodies of work in L2 acquisition by well-known language educators, namely Jim Cummins (‘BICS’ and ‘CALP’), Stephen Krashen (‘Comprehensible Input Hypothesis’), Michael Long (Interaction Hypothesis) and Merril Swain (Output Hypothesis) are reviewed. A review is also made of relevant neuroscience research. Two educational approaches, Content-based instruction (CBI) and Language across the curriculum (LAC), are discussed in relation to the insights obtained, with special reference to contexts influenced by Confucian heritage culture (CHC). To allow subject networking to take place, school managers/L2 policy makers need to actively revamp the curriculum.

The present study aimed to examine the effect of four prevailing teaching methods, i.e., translation, definition, etymology, and imageable expressions on the immediate and delayed retention of idioms in the receptive and productive modes. To meet this end, 120 EFL Iranian learners participated in the study. Thirty of them received idioms through definition, thirty through translation, thirty through pictures, and thirty through etymology in their first language. Twenty idioms were selected and taught in two sessions. Retention of the idioms, in the productive and receptive modes was measured immediately after the class and again two weeks later. The results indicated that etymology and pictorial methods had a remarkably more positive influence on the immediate and delayed retention of the idioms in both the receptive and productive modes.

This study investigated the topic-prominent characteristics of the interlanguage development of native speakers of Chinese learning English as a foreign language (EFL). Two groups of Chinese EFL learners – an intermediate group and an advanced group – were recruited to complete two production tasks: a written Chinese-to-English translation task and an oral story-retelling task. The findings showed that Chinese EFL learners at each proficiency level transferred Chinese topic-prominent structures to their target language production at a varying degree. The topic-prominent constructions in the learners’ production, based on a hierarchy of difficulty, were placed on two slightly different Gradation Zones, one for written production and the other for oral production. Gradation Zones were a generalized reflection of how discourse and pragmatic relations in topic-prominent Chinese were gradually reanalyzed as syntactic relations with the development of learners’ English proficiency level. There was a tendency for topic-prominent features to decrease and subject-prominent features to increase as EFL learners’ proficiency level progressed. It was also argued that sources of these topic-prominent properties in interlanguage were an interaction of factors, including degree of markedness, perceptual saliency, second language (L2) input, and language production task type.