Imitation in a Second Language Relies on Phonological Categories but Does Not Reflect the Productive Usage of Difficult Sound Contrasts

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 594-622 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miquel Llompart ◽  
Eva Reinisch
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Word Reading ◽  
Phonological Representation ◽  
Read Aloud ◽  
Perceptual Categorization ◽  
Reading Task ◽  
Lexical Representations ◽  
Acoustic Measures ◽  
Phonological Categories ◽  
The Relationship

This study investigated the relationship between imitation and both the perception and production abilities of second language (L2) learners for two non-native contrasts differing in their expected degree of difficulty. German learners of English were tested on perceptual categorization, imitation and a word reading task for the difficult English /ɛ/-/æ/ contrast, which tends not to be well encoded in the learners’ phonological inventories, and the easy, near-native /i/-/ɪ/ contrast. As expected, within-task comparisons between contrasts revealed more robust perception and better differentiation during production for /i/-/ɪ/ than /ɛ/-/æ/. Imitation also followed this pattern, suggesting that imitation is modulated by the phonological encoding of L2 categories. Moreover, learners’ ability to imitate /ɛ/ and /æ/ was related to their perception of that contrast, confirming a tight perception-production link at the phonological level for difficult L2 sound contrasts. However, no relationship was observed between acoustic measures for imitated and read-aloud tokens of /ɛ/ and /æ/. This dissociation is mostly attributed to the influence of inaccurate non-native lexical representations in the word reading task. We conclude that imitation is strongly related to the phonological representation of L2 sound contrasts, but does not need to reflect the learners’ productive usage of such non-native distinctions.

Activation of L1 orthography in L2 word reading: Constraints from language and writing system

2020 ◽  
pp. 026765832092776
Author(s):  
Lin Chen ◽  
Charles A Perfetti ◽  
Xiaoping Fang ◽  
Li-Yun Chang
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Word Reading ◽  
First Language ◽  
English Word ◽  
Writing System ◽  
Writing Systems ◽  
Reading Task ◽  
Co Activation ◽  
Cross Language ◽  
Color Judgment

When reading in a second language, a reader’s first language may be involved. For word reading, the question is how and at what level: lexical, pre-lexical, or both. In three experiments, we employed an implicit reading task (color judgment) and an explicit reading task (word naming) to test whether a Chinese meaning equivalent character and its sub-character orthography are activated when first language (L1) Chinese speakers read second language (L2) English words. Because Chinese and English have different spoken and written forms, any cross language effects cannot arise from shared written and spoken forms. Importantly, the experiments provide a comparison with single language experiments within Chinese, which show cross-writing system activation when words are presented in alphabetic Pinyin, leading to activation of the corresponding character and also its sub-character (radical) components. In the present experiments, Chinese–English bilinguals first silently read or made a meaning judgment on an English word. Immediately following, they judged the color of a character (Experiments 1A and 1B) or named it (Experiment 2). Four conditions varied the relation between the character that is the meaning equivalent of the English word and the following character presented for naming or color judgment. The experiments provide evidence that the Chinese meaning equivalent character is activated during the reading of the L2 English. In contrast to the within-Chinese results, the activation of Chinese characters did not extend to the sub-character level. This pattern held for both implicit reading (color judgment) and explicit reading (naming) tasks, indicating that for unrelated languages with writing systems, L1 activation during L2 reading occurs for the specific orthographic L1 form (a single character), mediated by meaning. We conclude that differences in writing systems do not block cross-language co-activation, but that differences in languages limit co-activation to the lexical level.

What Does Daneman and Carpenter's Reading Span Really Measure?

1997 ◽  
Vol 84 (2) ◽  
pp. 603-608 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michel Hupet ◽  
Donatienne Desmette ◽  
Marie-Anne Schelstraete
Keyword(s):  
Articulatory Suppression ◽  
Word Reading ◽  
Read Aloud ◽  
Reading Span ◽  
Final Word ◽  
Reading Task ◽  
Sentence Reading ◽  
Reading Condition ◽  
Processing Demands

Reading span was assessed in three conditions aiming at varying the processing demands of a reading task. In a Sentence Reading Condition, the participants read aloud lists of sentences and memorize the final word of each sentence as in the original task of Daneman and Carpenter. In two other conditions, each sentence was replaced either by a series of unrelated words (Word Reading Condition) or by a series of meaningless syllables (Syllable Reading Condition); in these two conditions, however, each series ended with the same test words as in the Sentence Reading Condition. There was no significant effect of the condition on the scores for reading span. It is concluded that the typically low scores on reading span are not so much due to the processing demands of the task as to the disruptive effects of the articulatory suppression which characterizes the original task.

scholarly journals Development of Second Language French Oral Skills in an Instructed Setting: A Focus on Speech Ratings

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 32-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pavel Trofimovich ◽  
Sara Kennedy ◽  
Josée Blanchet
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Read Aloud ◽  
Pitch Range ◽  
Pronunciation Instruction ◽  
Before And After ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Oral Skills ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Listening And Speaking ◽  
Intonation Accuracy

This study examined the relationship between targeted pronunciation instruction in French as a second language (L2) and listener-based ratings of accent, comprehensibility, and fluency. The ratings by 20 French listeners evaluating the speech of 30 adult L2 French learners enrolled in a 15-week listening and speaking course targeting segments, prosody, fluency, and connected speech processes (e.g., liaison, enchainment) were compared before and after instruction in read-aloud and extemporaneous (picture description) speaking tasks. Results showed that the learners improved in all speech ratings, especially in extemporaneous speaking. Results also revealed that accent ratings were linked to prosody (intonation accuracy, pitch range), while fluency and comprehensibility ratings were additionally linked to fluency phenomena (length of fluent run, hesitation rate). These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for L2 pronunciation learning and links between instruction, listener-rated dimensions of speech, and performance in different tasks.

Relationship between Predicted Stress and Measured Attentional Demand in a Simulated Driving Task

1974 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-122
Author(s):  
L. Bruce McDonald ◽  
Newton C. Ellis
Keyword(s):  
Word Reading ◽  
Design Stage ◽  
Difficulty Level ◽  
Attentional Demand ◽  
Highway Design ◽  
Reading Task ◽  
Driving Task ◽  
Insufficient Time ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Simulated Driving Task

The need exists for a method whereby a highway designer can determine, during the design stage, whether a highway design will demand so much of a driver's attention that he is left with insufficient time to look for and avoid accidents. Several methods exist for predicting how busy a subject will be under given circumstances. However, no direct comparisons between predicted stress and measured percent occupied have been attempted. In order to determine this relationship, various levels of difficulty of a tracking task and of a word-reading task were presented to 15 subjects. The stress for each difficulty level was predicted and attentional demand was measured directly. The relationship between predicted stress and percent occupied was found not to agree with the relationship commonly assumed in the literature on workload.

The role of immersion learning in the acquisition and processing of L2 gender agreement

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabrielle Klassen ◽  
Aline Ferreira ◽  
John W. Schwieter
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Study Abroad ◽  
Morphological Variability ◽  
Selection Task ◽  
Gender Agreement ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Term Study ◽  
Reading Task ◽  
Short Term Study

Abstract In this paper, we examine the effects of learning environment on second language (L2) gender agreement. English speakers learning L2 Spanish participated in a self-paced reading task and a picture selection task prior to and after a short-term study abroad experience. The results from the self-paced reading task showed that their reliance on the masculine article as the default (e.g., McCarthy, Corrine. 2008. Morphological variability in the comprehension of agreement: An argument for representation over computation. Second Language Research 24(4). 459–486) was reduced over time abroad. Findings from the picture selection task showed that the learners did not attend to the gender of articles unless it was their only cue, but that after the study abroad experience they began to use gender as an anticipatory cue for lexical selection. We interpret these results as support for an adapted version of the Shallow Structures Hypothesis (Clahsen, Harald & Claudia Felser. 2006a. Grammatical processing in language learners. Applied Psycholinguistics 27(1). 3–42; Clahsen, Harald & Claudia Felser. 2006b. How native-like is non-native language processing? Trends in Cognitive Sciences 10(12). 564–570) and the notion that in immersion contexts L2 learners shift their parsing strategy to be more communicatively focused (Schwieter, John W. & Gabrielle Klassen. 2016. Linguistic advances and learning strategies in a short-term study abroad experience. Study Abroad Research in Second Language Acquisition and International Education 1(2). 217–247).

Research meets practice

2016 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 236-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
ZhaoHong Han
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
The Other ◽  
Research And Teaching ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Instruction And Learning ◽  
The Relationship

At the recent CLTA-S2 conference, a spirited debate occurred between critics of second language acquisition (SLA) research and researchers who embraced it. Fascinating as it was, neither camp appeared to have convinced the other, but, more important, the debate left much of the audience flummoxed. In this paper, I intend to provide a follow-up, attempting to clarify a) the relationship between research and teaching in the context of Chinese as a second language (CSL), b) misunderstandings on the part of critics over research findings, and c) potential pitfalls in interpreting the SLA literature. My goal is to encourage, as well as contribute to, further communication between the two camps, for the ultimate good of CSL instruction and learning.

scholarly journals Language and Learner Specific Influences on the Emergence of Consonantal Place and Manner Features

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yvan Rose ◽  
Natalie Penney
Keyword(s):  
Language Learners ◽  
First Language ◽  
Phonological Representation ◽  
Previous Literature ◽  
Speech Sounds ◽  
Distributional Properties ◽  
Phonological Categories ◽  
Word Forms ◽  
The Way

This article focuses on the emergence of consonantal place and manner feature categories in the speech of first language learners. Starting with an overview of current representational approaches to phonology, we take the position that only models that allow for the emergence of phonological categories at all levels of phonological representation (from sub-segmental properties of speech sounds all the way to word forms represented within the child’s lexicon) can account for the data. We begin with a cross-linguistic survey of the acquisition of rhotic consonants. We show that the types of substitutions affecting different rhotics cross-linguistically can be predicted from two main observations: the phonetic characteristics of these rhotics and the larger system of categories displayed by each language. We then turn to a peculiar pattern of labial substitution for coronal continuants in the speech of a German learner. Building on previous literature on the topic, we attribute the emergence of this pattern to distributional properties of the child’s developing lexicon. Together, these observations suggest that our understanding of phonological emergence must involve a consideration of multiple, potentially interacting levels of phonetic and phonological representation.

scholarly journals Spelling Scoring Metrics in Malay Language: An Investigation among Young Spellers

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (12) ◽  
pp. 1622
Author(s):  
Swee Gek Tang ◽  
Julia Ai Cheng Lee ◽  
Jecky Misieng
Keyword(s):  
Primary Schools ◽  
Word Reading ◽  
Strong Relationship ◽  
Phonological Coding ◽  
Correct Letter ◽  
Highly Correlated ◽  
The Relationship

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship among three spelling scoring metrics, namely, words spelled correctly (WSC), correct letter sequences (CLS), and phonological coding (PC) in Malay language. The relationship between spelling measure and word reading measure was studied. There were 866 Primary 1 (Grade 1 equivalent) students from 11 randomly selected public primary schools in Kuching, Sarawak Malaysia who participated in this study. The study showed that the scores from each scoring metric were highly correlated to each other. There was a strong relationship between each spelling outcome to word reading.

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