scholarly journals A ‘mixed methods’ approach for investigating aspect in a second language

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-66
Author(s):  
Laura Domínguez
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Mixed Methods ◽  
Research Methods ◽  
Supporting Evidence ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Single Task ◽  
Mixed Methods Approach ◽  
Aspect Hypothesis ◽  
Lexical Aspect ◽  
Oral Production

Abstract A leading hypothesis in the study of the L2 acquisition of aspect-related verbal morphemes is the Lexical Aspect Hypothesis (LAH) (Andersen, 1989, 1991; Andersen & Shirai, 1994) which claims that learners’ use of these forms is determined by the lexical properties of events. Reviews of major studies reveal that data from one single task, usually an open-ended oral task, have often been used to support this hypothesis. I discuss copious evidence from the acquisition of Spanish to argue that when studies use a ‘mixed methods’ approach (e.g. combining oral production and experimentally elicited data) they are able to test existing hypotheses such as the LAH more reliably and can offer more valuable insights. Existing evidence from the SPLLOC project (Domínguez, Tracy-Ventura, Arche, Mitchell, & Myles, 2013; Mitchell, Domínguez, Arche, Myles, & Marsden, 2008) is used as supporting evidence for this approach and to raise questions about the appropriateness of some research methods widely used in our field.

Recent research on the acquisition of aspect: an embarrassment of riches?

2002 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 172-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roumyana Slabakova
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Alternative Explanation ◽  
Review Article ◽  
Aspect Hypothesis ◽  
Lexical Aspect ◽  
Future Aspect

This review article surveys recent research on the first and second language acquisition of temporal and aspectual properties of natural languages.Three recently published books are discussed in the context of the primacy or aspect hypothesis and the prototype, the connectionist and the discourse explanations for the attested acquisition sequences. A potentially misleading terminological issue is highlighted: Deictic tense, grammatical and lexical aspect are often conflated in acquisition studies. Recent research from the (innatist) generative perspective (e.g., Olsen and Weinberg, 1999) is also examined. An alternative explanation of the skewed acquisition sequences in terms of processing costs is proposed. Some important topics for future aspect research are identified.

scholarly journals Research Methods in Foreign/Second Language Didactics

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Andrzej Cirocki ◽  
Aleksandra Arceusz
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Mixed Methods ◽  
Research Methods ◽  
English Language ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Applied Linguistics ◽  
Relevant Research ◽  
Teaching Literature ◽  
Research Paradigms ◽  
New Knowledge

This article provides an analytical overview of relevant research methods in applied linguistics significant to teaching practitioners. In the canon of language teaching literature, there are numerous volumes presenting insightful analyses of research into  English as a foreign or second language (EFL/ESL) context. This article seeks to familiarize English language practitioners with comprehensive, practical, and straightforward coverage of applied linguistics research within the three research paradigms of qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods. The twenty-first centurychallenges societies and systems with new demands and approaches, with schools and teachers being agents of those changes, responsible for their presentation, implementation and often evaluation. Teachers must have a good understanding of  such changes and should be prepared to put new knowledge into practice. This can be achieved when a teacher becomes a researcher, engaging themselves in various activities that lead to a better understanding of the processes, to reflection upon teaching, and finally, to the implementation of new practices: becoming researchers intheir own right.

Expanding the Definition of Aspect in L2 Acquisition: Assessing Advanced Levels of Competence to Understand Aspectual Knowledge

2021 ◽  
Vol 87 ◽  
pp. 7-16
Author(s):  
M. Rafael Salaberry
Keyword(s):  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Future Studies ◽  
Aspect Hypothesis ◽  
Tense And Aspect ◽  
Lexical Aspect ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Viewpoint Aspect ◽  
Advanced Stages ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Ultimate Attainment

In part due to the significant influence of Andersen's Lexical Aspect Hypothesis, research on the L2 acquisition of tense and aspect has focused primarily on the construct of aspect representative of the beginning and intermediate stages of acquisition. In the present article, I review the significance of two recent developments in the study of aspectual knowledge: the expansive view of recent research proposals (e.g., shifted effect of lexical aspect toward intermediate and advanced stages), and the focus on specific sub-constructs that provide a more precise target to assess ultimate attainment (e.g., iterativity versus habituality). I argue that the relevance of advanced stages of development of aspect is central to the analysis of L2 aspectual knowledge. To that effect, the objective of future studies needs to incorporate the explicit description of the connection between lexical aspect and viewpoint aspect

Effects of corrective feedback on L2 acquisition of tense-aspect verbal morphology

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadia Mifka-Profozic
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Corrective Feedback ◽  
Control Group ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Verbal Morphology ◽  
Aspect Hypothesis ◽  
Lexical Aspect ◽  
Improving Accuracy ◽  
Passe Compose

In this study, the effectiveness of implicit corrective feedback was examined with a group of 30 sixteen-year-old English native speakers learning French, who received either recasts or clarification requests on errors they made with the passé composé and the imparfait. The control group did not receive any feedback. Overall, the results indicate that recasts were more effective in improving accuracy of form and use for both the passé composé and the imparfait. However, an examination of language development with reference to the Aspect Hypothesis and the inherent lexical aspect of verbs showed that no change occurred between the pretest and the posttests. The passé composé was associated exclusively with achievement verbs, whereas the imparfait was limited to several frequent irregular stative verbs and a few activity verbs.

Initial acquisition of tense-aspect morphology in an artificial language

2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 517-538 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles M Mueller
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Artificial Language ◽  
Aspect Hypothesis ◽  
Tense And Aspect ◽  
Lexical Aspect ◽  
Initial Acquisition ◽  
Early Acquisition

Various explanations have been put forth for the asymmetrical acquisition of tense and aspect morphology across categories of lexical aspect. This experiment tested the adequacy of a subset of such accounts by examining English native speakers’ ( n = 40) use of progressive and past tense morphology within activity and accomplishment verb frames during their early acquisition of a miniature artificial language. Participants completed a lesson in which types and tokens of lexical aspect and past and present morphology were balanced. Although significant effects at p < .05 were found for lexical aspect and morphological marking, the interaction between these factors, expected by the aspect hypothesis, was non-significant. The experiment suggests that the effects of lexical aspect may be absent during the earliest phases of second language acquisition or may be due to factors methodologically excluded in this study such as distributional biases in second language input.

Innovations in second language research methods

2001 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 221-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan M. Gass
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Research Methods ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Stimulated Recall ◽  
Language Research ◽  
Acceptability Judgments ◽  
L1 Acquisition

Acceptance of the claims made by researchers in any field depends in large part on the appropriateness of the methods used to gather data. In this chapter I focus on two approaches to research in second language acquisition: (a) various types of acceptability judgments or probes aimed at assessing acquisition of syntactic structure; and (b) various types of stimulated recall designed to gather learners' accounts of their own thought processes. Both methods attempt to overcome a principal problem in psycholinguistics: the desire to describe a learner's knowledge about a language based on the incomplete evidence stemming from learner production. Refinements in acceptability judgments have come from some newer multiple-choice or truth-value story tasks that allow researchers to determine the level of learner knowledge about particular syntactic structures (in the examples here, reflexives). Stimulated recall offers some additional perspectives, but its usefulness can be greatly affected by the temporal proximity of the recall to the original task; the amount of support provided to prompt the recall; and the nature and amount of training given to both interviewer and interviewee. While these newer research methods can improve the accuracy and variety of data available to SLA investigators, research methods drawn from L1 acquisition or L1 research cannot necessarily be assumed to be equally valid when used to examine L2 acquisition.

scholarly journals The Aspect Hypothesis, the comparative fallacy and the validity of obligatory context analysis: a reply to Lardiere, 2003

2007 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasuhiro Shirai
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Context Analysis ◽  
Aspect Hypothesis ◽  
Methods Of Analysis

Lardiere (2003), in her reply to Lakshmanan and Selinker (2001), justifies the use of suppliance in obligatory contexts as a method of analysis in the investigation of the second language (L2) acquisition of past tense, and claims that such a method is characteristic of previous studies that have proposed the Aspect Hypothesis. It is argued here that this is a misrepresentation of research on the Aspect Hypothesis which, contra Lardiere, takes seriously the problem of the ‘comparative fallacy’ and the autonomous nature of interlanguage. Lardiere also argues that the Aspect Hypothesis studies suffer from a different kind of comparative fallacy, to which I reply by discussing the importance of refining methods of analysis in verb aspectual classification of learner data.

NARRATIVE STRUCTURE AND LEXICAL ASPECT

1998 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 471-508 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Adult Learners ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Verbal Morphology ◽  
Aspect Hypothesis ◽  
Proficiency Levels ◽  
Lexical Aspect

Two hypotheses regarding the distribution of emergent tense-aspect morphology in SLA have been proposed: the aspect hypothesis, which claims the distribution of interlanguage verbal morphology is determined by lexical aspectual class, and the discourse hypothesis, which claims it is determined by narrative structure. Recent studies have tested and supported both hypotheses individually. This study expands the investigation to include an analysis of both narrative structure and lexical aspectual class in a single corpus comprising 74 narratives (37 oral and written pairs) produced by adult learners of English as a second language at various proficiency levels. The results suggest that both hypotheses are necessary to account for the distribution of verbal morphology in interlanguage.

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