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

The aim of the present study was establishing to what extent individual differences in cognitive aptitudes were associated with second language (L2) morphological acquisition under different practice distribution. Sixty participants studied morphological rules of a novel miniature-language system in order to use them for oral production. They engaged in four training sessions in either shorter-spaced learning (twice a week) or longer-spaced learning conditions (once a week). Their oral production performance both during and after the training was related to their metalinguistic rule rehearsal ability (MRRA) and working memory capacity (WMC). Multiple regression analyses revealed that MRRA predicted learners’ training and posttest performance mainly under the longer-spaced condition, while WMC played a limited role at best under both learning conditions. These results suggest that practice distribution may be individualized based on learners’ aptitude strengths to optimize L2 morphological learning.

Despite numerous positive findings of explicit instruction, this topic continues to engage scholars worldwide. One issue that may be crucial for the effectiveness of explicit instruction is the interaction between cognitive individual differences (language aptitude and working memory) and types of instruction. In this experiment, 128 learners of Spanish were randomly assigned to four experimental treatments and completed comprehension-based practice for interpreting object-verb and ser/estar sentences in Spanish. Results revealed that the various combinations of rules and practice posed differential task demands on the learners and consequently drew on language aptitude and working memory to a different extent. We argue that not only are rules and practice both necessary, but that their suitable integration ameliorates task demands, reducing the burden on the learner, and accordingly mitigates the role of participants’ individual differences, thus making a substantial difference for the learning of second language grammar.

This paper reports on a study investigating the role of working memory in predicting L2 development under immediate and delayed corrective feedback (CF) conditions. A total of 106 seventh-grade EFL learners were assigned to three groups: Immediate CF, Delayed CF, and Task Only. Each group underwent three treatment sessions during which they performed six focused communicative tasks – two in each session – involving the use of the English past tense. The Immediate CF group received feedback on their erroneous use of the target structure during their task performance in Session 1; the Delayed CF group did not receive feedback until the final treatment session; and the Task Only group performed the communicative tasks without receiving any feedback. Treatment effects were measured through a grammaticality judgement test and an elicited imitation test. Working memory was measured by means of an operation span test. The results revealed that working memory was a significant predictor only of the effects of delayed CF, not those of immediate CF or task only. The findings suggest that delayed CF may have imposed a heavier processing burden on the learners’ working memory due to the need to match the delayed feedback with the errors in their procedural knowledge manifested in previous sessions. Based on the results of this and other empirical studies, the authors argue for the superiority of immediate feedback over delayed feedback.

While there is copious evidence concerning the effectiveness of different instructional options in teaching grammar (e.g., Nassaji, 2017; Pawlak, 2017), less is known about the extent to which the contribution of pedagogical intervention is mediated by individual factors. The same can be said about the product of instructed but also uninstructed second language acquisition, that is the knowledge of target language grammar. The paper attempts to shed light on one such variable, that is working memory, which has recently been an object of intensive empirical inquiry (e.g., Li, 2017; Wen, Biedroń, & Skehan, 2016). It reports the results of a study that investigated the role of verbal working memory in the development of explicit and implicit knowledge of the English passive voice. Participants were 156 Polish university students enrolled in a three-year BA program in English. The data on verbal working memory were collected by means of the Polish Listening Span Test (PLSPAN), developed by Zychowicz, Biedroń and Pawlak (2017). Explicit knowledge was tapped by means of an untimed grammatically judgment test, which focused on reception, and a traditional grammar test, which targeted production. Implicit knowledge was tapped through a timed grammaticality judgment test for reception and a focused communication task (Ellis, 2003) for production. Correlational analysis demonstrated that verbal working memory was a weak predictor of explicit productive and receptive knowledge but not implicit knowledge.

Working memory, which accounts for the ability to process information in the face of interference, is critical to second language acquisition (SLA) and use. The interaction of working memory capacity (WMC) with specific pedagogical interventions is a logical place for empirical SLA research, both to examine the cognitive processes underpinning second language performance and to identify instructional treatments that may serve learners differently based on their WMC. This study considers WMC along with two different types of pre-task planning time (guided and unguided) as predictors of the attempted accuracy and fluency of learners’ discourse. Seventy-two intermediate ESL students from seven classes at a community college participated by completing two different working memory span tasks, as well as two different “There-and-Then” oral story-telling tasks. The treatment condition of the story-telling tasks was manipulated so that learners’ performance could be considered in terms of provision of pre-task planning (+/− planning), type of planning (guided vs. unguided), and order of planning (planning first or planning second). Task order had a clear effect on learners’ production, regardless of the provision of planning time. Guided planning time promoted a focus on attempted accuracy and unguided planning time fostered fluency. Finally, this study indicates that task conditions can affect high- and low-WMC learners in different ways: the former are more likely to comply with complex story-telling instructions, requiring them to focus on grammatical form at the expense of fluency, whereas the latter are less likely to comply with the same instructions.

Phonological short-term memory (PSTM) capacity is the ability to retain verbal information briefly (Archibald & Gathercole, 2006). Since PSTM facilitates the storage of verbal material, one expects a positive relationship between PSTM and several aspects of second language (L2) learning. Some studies have found a relationship between PSTM and oral production skills, such as fluency (e.g., O’Brien et al., 2006). This paper reports on the results of a study that looked at the inter-relations between complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF), and between these dimensions and PSTM. One hundred and thirty-five L2 learners of Spanish participated in the study. Results showed that performance in one L2 speech dimension did not have a negative impact on performance in another dimension, but that as complexity increased or decreased, there was a better chance of fluency than accuracy also increasing or decreasing. PSTM capacity was related to complexity and fluency, but not to accuracy. These results were interpreted as lending some support to Skehan’s Trade-off Hypothesis (Skehan, 2009).

To explore the value of introspective measures in aptitude-treatment interaction (ATI) research, this study analyzed the cognitive profiles and concurrent think-alouds of six university learners of Japanese who were highly successful, moderately successful, or unsuccessful under two computer-mediated feedback conditions in a larger (N = 80) quantitative ATI investigation (Sachs, 2011). That study had made indirect inferences regarding relationships among individual differences (IDs), cognitive processes, and learning on the basis of correlational results. Using Leow’s (2015) depth-of-processing (DoP) framework as a lens, what we found in the qualitative verbalization data highlighted that learners in the same condition with similar strengths in the IDs that are statistically associated with performance at the group level may nonetheless engage in different cognitive processes and achieve different learning outcomes, and vice versa. The findings also pointed toward more complex ID-DoP and ID-ID interactions that future research could explore, such as the possibility that a weakness in memory might limit the benefits of metalinguistic knowledge and analytic processing in a condition where group-level correlations suggest analysis is relevant to success, or that analytic processing might enhance the value of memory in a condition where memory is relevant to success. In our conclusions, we argue for the value of mixed-methods research in this area.