CURRICULAR MATERIAL, CONTENT FAMILIARITY AND TOPIC INTEREST IN INTERACTION: INSIGHTS FROM SPANISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE PEDAGOGIC MATERIAL

This study investigates how second language (L2) fluency is influenced by two factors: Pre-task planning and content familiarity. Planning was adopted as a between-participant variable, combined with content familiarity as a within-participant variable, in a 2 × 2 split-plot factorial design. Nineteen measures of fluency phenomena, constituting eight categories, were used. Both planning and content familiarity were found to enhance fluency, but the positive effects of planning were stronger and noticeable on a wider range of measures. The availability of planning time also helped to compensate for lack of content familiarity. Implications for pedagogy and L2 fluency measurement are discussed.

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Content Familiarity and the Perception of Textual Relationships in Second Language Reading

RELC Journal ◽

10.1177/003368828501600104 ◽

1985 ◽

Vol 16 (1) ◽

pp. 43-51 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

David Nunan

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Second Language Reading ◽

Content Familiarity ◽

Textual Relationships

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THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PRIOR KNOWLEDGE AND TOPIC INTEREST IN SECOND LANGUAGE READING

Studies in Second Language Acquisition ◽

10.1017/s0272263198003015 ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 20 (3) ◽

pp. 285-309 ◽

Cited By ~ 30

Author(s):

Patricia L. Carrell ◽

Teresa E. Wise

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Reading Comprehension ◽

Prior Knowledge ◽

Significant Interaction ◽

Second Language Reading ◽

American University ◽

Language Studies ◽

Topic Interest ◽

And Gender ◽

The Relationship

The relationship between prior knowledge of and interest in a topic is complex. Although knowledge and interest may often go hand in hand, they do not necessarily correlate. The purpose of this study was to separate the effects of prior knowledge and topic interest on second language reading comprehension. Participants in the study were 104 students of English as a second language in an English-for-academic-purposes program at a large American university. On the basis of a prior-knowledge test and a topic-interest inventory, each student read passages and took multiple-choice comprehension tests on topics for which they had all four possible combinations of high and low topic interest and high and low prior knowledge. Results on the reading comprehension measure for the two main effects of prior knowledge and topic interest, although in the expected direction, did not reach significance, possibly because of a significant interaction between those two variables. There was also a significant effect for English proficiency level, as well as a significant interaction between interest and gender, with males more influenced by high topic interest than females. Our results are compared to those of other first and second language studies that have explicitly investigated the interrelationships among topic interest, prior knowledge, and gender.

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Content familiarity, task repetition and Chinese EFL learners’ engagement in second language use

Language Teaching Research ◽

10.1177/1362168816684368 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 21 (6) ◽

pp. 681-698 ◽

Cited By ~ 18

Author(s):

Xuyan Qiu ◽

Yuen Yi Lo

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Affective Response ◽

Cognitive Engagement ◽

Emotional Engagement ◽

Task Repetition ◽

Oral Performance ◽

Efl Learners ◽

Oral Production ◽

Content Familiarity ◽

And Task

Previous research has considered the effects of content familiarity and task repetition on second language (L2) performance, but few studies have looked at the effect of these factors on learners’ engagement in task performance. This study explores the influence of content familiarity and task repetition on English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ engagement in oral performance. Sixty EFL learners performed four narrative tasks with two familiar and two unfamiliar topics. They also repeated the same tasks to the same audience. Their oral production was analysed with various measures of behavioural and cognitive engagement. Stimulated recalls were collected from twenty-one participants to capture their emotional engagement. The participants were behaviourally and cognitively more engaged in tasks with familiar topics as well as having a more positive affective response to them. Repeating the tasks, however, negatively influenced behavioural and cognitive engagement, although the participants felt more relaxed and confident. In addition, the participants were more motivated to repeat unfamiliar topics, although they demonstrated more noticeable declines in their frequency of self-repair (an indicator of cognitive engagement) for these topics. These results provided empirical evidence for the relationship between task design and implementation factors and L2 task engagement. Teachers might base repetition decisions partially on learners’ familiarity with the topic.

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ERRATUM

Studies in Second Language Acquisition ◽

10.1017/s0272263199001084 ◽

1999 ◽

Vol 21 (1) ◽

pp. 173-173

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Prior Knowledge ◽

Second Language Reading ◽

Topic Interest ◽

The Relationship

In the article “The relationship between prior knowledge and topic interest in second language reading,” by Patricia L. Carrell and Teresa E. Wise (SSLA 20(3), September 1998), the labels “Females” and “Males” should be reversed in Figure 1, page 298.

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Distinctiveness and Assimilation in Vowel Perception in a Second Language

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/2019_jslhr-h-19-0074 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 62 (12) ◽

pp. 4534-4543

Author(s):

Wei Hu ◽

Sha Tao ◽

Mingshuang Li ◽

Chang Liu

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Native Language ◽

Vowel Identification ◽

Vowel Perception ◽

Perceptual Distance ◽

Vowel Space ◽

English Vowels ◽

Chinese Counterpart ◽

Vowel Categories

Purpose The purpose of this study was to investigate how the distinctive establishment of 2nd language (L2) vowel categories (e.g., how distinctively an L2 vowel is established from nearby L2 vowels and from the native language counterpart in the 1st formant [F1] × 2nd formant [F2] vowel space) affected L2 vowel perception. Method Identification of 12 natural English monophthongs, and categorization and rating of synthetic English vowels /i/ and /ɪ/ in the F1 × F2 space were measured for Chinese-native (CN) and English-native (EN) listeners. CN listeners were also examined with categorization and rating of Chinese vowels in the F1 × F2 space. Results As expected, EN listeners significantly outperformed CN listeners in English vowel identification. Whereas EN listeners showed distinctive establishment of 2 English vowels, CN listeners had multiple patterns of L2 vowel establishment: both, 1, or neither established. Moreover, CN listeners' English vowel perception was significantly related to the perceptual distance between the English vowel and its Chinese counterpart, and the perceptual distance between the adjacent English vowels. Conclusions L2 vowel perception relied on listeners' capacity to distinctively establish L2 vowel categories that were distant from the nearby L2 vowels.

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