The Effect of Speech Elicitation Method on Second Language Phonemic Accuracy

The present study, a One-Group Posttest-Only Repeated-Measures Design, examined the effect of speech elicitation method on second language (L2) phonemic accuracy of high functional load initial phonemes found in frequently occurring nouns in American English. This effect was further analyzed by including the variable of first language (L1) to determine if L1 moderated any effects found. The data consisted of audio recordings of 61 adult English learners (ELs) enrolled in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) courses at a large, public, post-secondary institution in the United States. Phonemic accuracy was judged by two independent raters as either approximating a standard American English (SAE) pronunciation of the intended phoneme or not, thus a dichotomous scale, and scores were assigned to each participant in terms of the three speech elicitation methods of word reading, word repetition, and picture naming. Results from a repeated measures ANOVA test revealed a statistically significant difference in phonemic accuracy (F(1.47, 87.93) = 25.94, p = .000) based on speech elicitation method, while the two-factor mixed design ANOVA test indicated no statistically significant differences for the moderator variable of native language. However, post-hoc analyses revealed that mean scores of picture naming tasks differed significantly from the other two elicitation methods of word reading and word repetition. Moreover, the results of this study should heighten attention to the role that various speech elicitation methods, or input modalities, might play on L2 productive accuracy. Implications for practical application suggest that caution should be used when utilizing pictures to elicit specific vocabulary words–even high-frequency words–as they might result in erroneous productions or no utterance at all. These methods could inform pronunciation instructors about best teaching practices when pronunciation accuracy is the objective. Finally, the impact of L1 on L2 pronunciation accuracy might not be as important as once thought

The impact of strategy instruction on L2 learners'oral performance: investigating metacognitive learming strategies

Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras/Inglês e Literatura Correspondente.The present study investigated whether strategy instruction produces an impact on L2 learners' oral performance and whether there is a relationship between strategy use and L2 oral performance. The participants were 22 undergraduate students enrolled in the seventh semester of the Letras course at Unesc (Universidade do Extremo Sul Catarinense). Data were collected on a pre- and post-instructional basis with an experimental and a control group with 11 participants in each group. Learners' oral performance was assessed in terms of fluency, complexity, accuracy and weighted lexical density through a video-based narrative task. Reported strategy use was determined through questionnaires applied immediately after the narrative task. In the instructional phase of the study, the experimental group was taught the benefits of using the metacognitive learning strategies of planning, monitoring and evaluation in order to improve L2 oral performance. The control group, in turn, received no strategy instruction. Statistical analysis revealed that explicit strategy instruction had an impact on L2 learners' oral performance in terms of complexity, accuracy and weighted lexical density, but not in fluency as measured by speech rate pruned and unpruned. These results were explained in terms of trade-off effects among complexity, accuracy, weighted lexical density and fluency. Statistical analysis also showed that there was a relationship between increased reported strategy use and improved L2 speaking performance. Results further suggested that strategy instruction should be conducted in L2 classroom settings not only as a way to facilitate learners' endeavors to become successful L2 speakers but also to encourage the development of more positive attitudes towards L2 learning

The effects of direct instruction in phonological skills on L2 reading performance of Chinese learners of English

Phonological skills are found to be highly predictive of children's reading achievement in the English LI context. Chinese ESL learners are found to be weak in phonological skills because of their logographic Ll background. They often have difficulties in decoding English words, and thus affect their L2 reading development. \ud LI training studies showed that improvement in phonological skills will lead to improvement in reading performance. But no similar training study for Chinese ESL learners is found. This thesis reports three studies which aim at (i) confirming the relationship between phonological skills and reading development in the L2 context of Chinese learners, (ii) identifying the effects of phonological skills training on reading performance, and (iii) determining the effective level or age for receiving the training.\ud The first study compared two groups of Chinese ESL learners, one with phonological skills training in their LI literacy experience and the other without. Results indicated that better phonological skills had led to more effective L2 reading development of the former group. The second and third studies are phonological skills training experiments conducted to Hong Kong students at primary and secondary school levels. The studies found that training at primary level was effective in improving the students' phonological skills, decoding efficiency and reading performance. However, the phonological skills training at secondary level produced no significant effect.\ud Results of the three studies together add positive evidence to research related to phonological skills and reading development, especially in the L2 context. Results of the two training studies conducted at different levels indicate that phonological skills training can be effective if given at early stage, to support L2 literacy development and to counteract interference from Ll. The participants' age and the length of the programme could be determining factors for the effectiveness of the training.\u

ESL preschoolers' English vocabulary acquisition and story comprehension from storybook reading

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston UniversityThis experimental study examined the effects vocabulary acquisition strategies and story discussion styles on the English vocabulary acquisition and story comprehension of ESL preschoolers. Eighty preschool-aged, typically-developing, native speakers of Portugese who are also second language learners of English were pretested in L1 (Portugese) receptive vocabulary and L2 (English) receptive and expressive vocabulary to determine a baseline of vocabulary knowledge in each language. Matched according to age, gender, and pretest L2 receptive vocabulary scores, subjects were assigned to experimental or control groups. Subjects in the experimental group heard eight stories read three times with rich explanations of target vocabulary words and with several discussion questions within either a didactic-labeling style of discussion (i.e., explicit questions requiring children to recall basic facts or to recite text) or a performance-oriented style of discussion (i.e., implicit questions requiring children to analyze and integrate information within the text). Subjects in the control group heard eight stories read three times without explanation of target vocabulary words and without discussion questions. Parents of all participants returned questionnaires about children's home reading experience. Results for target vocabulary acquisition showed a strong and significant effect of treatment (i.e., rich explanation of new vocabulary) on ESL preschoolers' target vocabulary acquisition. Regression analyses showed that treatment, initial L2 receptive skill, home reading practices, and story comprehension accounted for 69% of the variance in target vocabulary scores. Initial Ll skill did not have a significant effect on target vocabulary acquisition. Results for story comprehension showed a weak but significant effect of the performance-oriented discussion style on children's story comprehension. Regression analyses showed that L2 receptive skill, treatment (i.e., performance-oriented style of discussion), L2 expressive skill, target vocabulary acquisition, and home reading practices accounted for 60% of the variance in story comprehension scores. Initial Ll skill did not have a significant effect on story comprehension. In conclusion, L2 skills are paramount to children's vocabulary acquisition and story comprehension. Moreover, the supportiveness of adult input (i.e., rich explanations and cognitively challenging discussion questions) and home reading practices make important contributions to ESL preschoolers' English vocabulary acquisition and story comprehension

Visual word recognition by bilinguals in a sentence context: Evidence for nonselective lexical access

Recent research on bilingualism has shown that lexical access in visual word recognition by bilinguals is not selective with respect to language. The present study investigated language-independent lexical access in bilinguals reading sentences, which constitutes a strong unilingual linguistic context. In the first experiment, Dutch-English bilinguals performing a L2 lexical decision task were faster to recognize identical and non-identical cognate words (e.g. banaan – banana) presented in isolation than control words. A second experiment replicated this effect when the same set of cognates was presented as the final words of low-constraint sentences. In a third experiment using eyetracking, we showed that early target reading time measures also yield cognate facilitation, but only for identical cognates. These results suggest that a sentence context may influence, but does not nullify, cross-lingual lexical interactions during early visual word recognition by bilinguals

Pronominal subjects in the English of Arabic, Finnish and French speakers

Ph. D. ThesisPrevious studies designed to investigate whether null-subject parameter settings transfer in second-language acquisition (L2A/SLA) have produced inconclusive, differing, and even conflicting results. While some researchers claim that the first language (L1) value of the parameter does not transfer into L2A, others argue that it does; furthermore, they disagree about whether its L1 value could be reset to a value appropriate to the second language (L2) (i.e., White, 1985; Hilles, 1986; Phinney, 1987; Tsimpli and Roussou, 1991; Al-Kasey and Pérez-Leroux, 1998; Liceras and Díaz, 1999; LaFond, 2001; Sauter, 2002; Judy, 2011; Orfitelli and Grüter, 2013). The aim of this study is to address these issues in a more accurate way by paying attention to a number of factors both internal and external to learners that have been overlooked in previous studies, resulting in conflicting conclusions about null-subject transfer and parameter resetting in L2A. This study investigates the acquisition of the obligatory overt subject pronouns in English by three groups of learners whose L1s belongs to three distinct language types – namely, non-null subject languages (French), partial-null subject languages (Finnish), and consistent-null subject languages (Arabic). The participants in each group were divided into three subgroups – lower intermediate, upper-intermediate, and advanced – on the basis of their scores on the proficiency test in order to examine how the investigated L2 grammar changes at the different developmental stages in relation to the learners’ different native languages. The data were collected from 487 participants by means of a grammaticality judgement (GJ) task and a translation task. The findings from the GJ task show evidence that all learners, regardless of linguistic background, start off with pro-drop and then transfer their L1 parameter setting at the intermediate and late stages of L2A, whereas the findings from the translation task suggest that the L1 setting of the null subject parameter transfers in L2A. However, the results show that there are structural, developmental, and situational/contextual (realised as task-type) constraints on when, where, and to what extent pronominal subjects can be null. The results indicate that learners persistently accept referential embedded null subjects in the GJ task beyond the stage of L2 development when they have established the requirement for overt subjects in their production. Moreover, the results provide evidence that all participants, as proficiency subgroups, regardless of their L1 backgrounds, treated null subjects in the two types of experimental sentences differently; they accepted significantly fewer null subjects in complement clauses than in adverbial clauses. However, only the French participants converged on the target grammar in all respects; the Arabic and the Finnish participants continued to perform non-target-like like in their judgement of null subjects, if only in adverbial clauses. Group results indicating that L2 learners’ performance varies from task to task and from structure to structure suggest that null subject parameter settings cannot be reset in L2A. These findings, which show that there are structural and situational or contextual constraints on when and where pronominal subjects can be null, suggest that L2 learners rely on discourse licensing of null subjects. In other words, the results indicate that argument omission vs. overt expression in L2 depends on the referent’s discourse status, which can be defined in terms of a range of discourse and pragmatic notions. The results also raise and leave unanswered several questions that require further investigation.Taibah Universit