scholarly journals Accuracy order in L2 grammatical morphemes: Corpus evidence from different proficiency levels of Turkish learners of English

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 607-627
Author(s):  
Erdem Akbaş ◽  
Zeynep Ölçü-Dinçer
Keyword(s):  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Natural Order ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Proficiency Levels ◽  
Learner Corpus ◽  
Grammatical Morphemes ◽  
Accuracy Order ◽  
Third Person

The present study empirically scrutinizes the fixed natural order of grammatical morphemes relying on a manual analysis of an EFL learner corpus. Specifically, we test whether the accuracy order of L2 grammatical morphemes in the case of L1 Turkish speakers of English deviates from Krashen’s (1977) natural order and whether proficiency levels play a role in the order of acquisition of these morphemes. With this in mind, we focus on the (in)accuracy of nine English grammatical morphemes with 2883 cases manually tagged by the UAM Corpus Tool in the written exam scripts of Turkish learners of English. The results based on target-like use scores provide evidence for deviation from what is widely believed to be a set order of acquisition of these grammatical morphemes by second language learners. In light of such findings, we challenge the view that the internally driven processes of mastering grammatical morphemes in English for interlanguage users are largely independent of their L1. Regardless of L2 grammar proficiency in our data, the observed accuracy of some morphemes ranked low in comparison with the so-called natural order. These grammatical morphemes were almost exclusively non-existent features in participants’ mother tongue (e.g., third person singular –s, articles and the irregular past tense forms), thus suggesting the influence of L1 in this respect.

Expanding lindsei to spoken learner English from several L1s across cefr levels

Corpora ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-285
Author(s):  
Lan-fen Huang ◽  
Tomáš Gráf
Keyword(s):  
Data Collection ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
First Language ◽  
International Database ◽  
Proficiency Levels ◽  
Spoken English ◽  
Learner Corpus ◽  
Speaking Proficiency ◽  
Corpus Studies

Learner corpus studies typically investigate the language of second-language learners with a different first language (L1) or with proficiency levels inferred from external criteria (e.g., the Louvain International Database of Spoken English Interlanguage, lindsei; Gilquin et al., 2010 ). This paper reports the process of expanding the original Czech ( Gráf, 2017 ) and Taiwanese ( Huang, 2014 ) sub-corpora (predominantly at B2 and C1; Huang et al., 2018 ) with samples from learners of other L1s across cefr levels. In addition to sixty interviews by the German, Finnish and Norwegian lindsei teams, another eighty-three interviews with university students in Taiwan and Finland were held. The data collection and transcription procedures were adapted from lindsei guidelines to ensure comparability. Each fourteen-minute interview was anonymised using Audacity, and orthographically transcribed and aligned by means of exmaralda. The levels of speaking proficiency in the supplemented data were assessed by two expert raters. The expanded learner corpus, containing 243 interviews, will be of considerable value for studying the development of learner English.

Querying a Static and Dynamic Learner Corpus

2018 ◽  
pp. 494-511
Author(s):  
Trude Heift ◽  
Catherine Caws
Keyword(s):  
Language Learners ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
User Group ◽  
Proficiency Levels ◽  
Learner Corpus ◽  
Study Results ◽  
Call System ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
Activity Types ◽  
Cyclical Process

This chapter discusses the cyclical process of collecting and recycling learner data within the E-Tutor CALL system and presents a study on student usage of its data-driven learning (DDL) tool. E-Tutor consists of a static and dynamic learner corpus for L2 learners of German. The static learner corpus has been constructed from approximately 5000 learners who used the system over a period of five years. These learners provided millions of submissions from a variety of activity types. In addition, all concurrent E-Tutor users contribute data to a dynamic corpus, which allows them to compare and examine their ongoing system submissions to those contained in the static corpus. The authors conducted a study with 84 learners and recorded their interaction with the DDL tool of E-Tutor over one semester. Study results on student usage suggest that investigating sample input of a large, unknown user group might be less informative and of less interest to language learners than their own data. For the DDL tool to be useful for all proficiency levels, training and scaffolding must also be provided.

scholarly journals Effects of orthographic forms on pronunciation in experienced instructed second language learners

2015 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
BENE BASSETTI ◽  
NATHAN ATKINSON
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Word Reading ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Vowel Duration ◽  
Writing System ◽  
The Past ◽  
Word Repetition ◽  
Repetition Task

ABSTRACTIn spite of burgeoning evidence that the orthographic forms (“spellings”) of second language (L2) words affect L2 learners’ pronunciation, little is known about the pronunciation of known words in experienced learners. In a series of four studies, we investigated various orthographic effects on the pronunciation of L2 English words in instructed learners with 10 years’ experience of learning English. Participants were native users of the phonologically transparent Italian writing system. Study 1 investigated the pronunciation of “silent letters,” using a word-reading task and a word-repetition task. Study 2 examined the effects of vowel spelling on vowel duration, namely, whether L2 speakers produce the same target vowel as longer when it is spelled with a vowel digraph than with a singleton letter. Study 3 explored the effects of the morphemic spelling of the past tense marker <ed> using a verb paradigm-production task. Study 4 tested whether L2 speakers produce homophonic words differently when they are spelled differently. Results confirmed that orthographic forms affect experienced instructed learners’ pronunciation of known words, albeit less so in immediate word repetition than in reading-aloud tasks.

The case of the conditional and the imperfect in variable mood-choice contexts in second-language and native-speaker Spanish

2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aarnes Gudmestad
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Proficiency Levels ◽  
Form Function ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Range Of Functions ◽  
Mood Choice

The current study builds on research on mood distinction in Spanish, which has focused on the subjunctive mood, by examining the full inventory of verb forms that second-language learners and native speakers (NSs) of Spanish use in mood-choice contexts. Twenty NSs and 130 learners corresponding to five proficiency levels completed three oral-elicitation tasks. The results show that participants use a wide repertoire of tense/mood/aspect forms in mood-choice contexts and that NSs and learners use largely the same forms. An analysis of the conditional and imperfect suggests that learners tend to restructure and strengthen their form-function connections between these verb forms and a range of functions.

scholarly journals Linking learner corpus and experimental data in studying second language learners’ knowledge of verb-argument constructions

ICAME Journal ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ute Römer ◽  
Audrey Roberson ◽  
Matthew B. O’Donnell ◽  
Nick C. Ellis
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Data ◽  
Second Language ◽  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
First Language ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Advanced Learners ◽  
Learner Corpus ◽  
Learner Corpora

Abstract This paper combines data from learner corpora and psycholinguistic experiments in an attempt to find out what advanced learners of English (first language backgrounds German and Spanish) know about a range of common verbargument constructions (VACs), such as the ‘V about n’ construction (e.g. she thinks about chocolate a lot). Learners’ dominant verb-VAC associations are examined based on evidence retrieved from the German and Spanish subcomponents of ICLE and LINDSEI and collected in lexical production tasks in which participants complete VAC frames (e.g. ‘he ___ about the...’) with verbs that may fill the blank (e.g. talked, thought, wondered). The paper compares findings from the different data sets and highlights the value of linking corpus and experimental evidence in studying linguistic phenomena

scholarly journals L1 INFLUENCE ON THE ACQUISITION ORDER OF ENGLISH GRAMMATICAL MORPHEMES

2015 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 365-401 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akira Murakami ◽  
Theodora Alexopoulou
Keyword(s):  
Absolute Accuracy ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Proficiency Levels ◽  
Learner Corpus ◽  
Grammatical Morphemes ◽  
L1 Influence ◽  
Acquisition Order ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Universal Order

We revisit morpheme studies to evaluate the long-standing claim for a universal order of acquisition. We investigate the L2 acquisition order of six English grammatical morphemes by learners from seven L1 groups across five proficiency levels. Data are drawn from approximately 10,000 written exam scripts from the Cambridge Learner Corpus. The study establishes clear L1 influence on the absolute accuracy of morphemes and their acquisition order, therefore challenging the widely held view that there is a universal order of acquisition of L2 morphemes. Moreover, we find that L1 influence is morpheme specific, with morphemes encoding language-specific concepts most vulnerable to L1 influence.

scholarly journals The SweLL Language Learner Corpus

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 67-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Volodina ◽  
Lena Granstedt ◽  
Arild Matsson ◽  
Beáta Megyesi ◽  
Ildikó Pilán ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Personal Information ◽  
Language Learner ◽  
Management Tool ◽  
Learner Corpus ◽  
Selection Principles

The article presents a new language learner corpus for Swedish, SweLL, and the methodology from collection and pesudonymisation to protect personal information of learners to annotation adapted to second language learning. The main aim is to deliver a well-annotated corpus of essays written by second language learners of Swedish and make it available for research through a browsable environment. To that end, a new annotation tool and a new project management tool have been implemented, – both with the main purpose to ensure reliability and quality of the final corpus. In the article we discuss reasoning behind metadata selection, principles of gold corpus compilation and argue for separation of normalization from correction annotation.

scholarly journals Errors in Making Indirect Questions in the Interlanguage of Students at the Faculty of Food Technology

2022 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Antonija Šarić
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Word Order ◽  
English Language ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
First Language ◽  
Food Technology ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
Last Stage

In this paper, the author attempts to identify the most common errors that occur in the interlanguage of students at the Faculty of Food Technology when formulating indirect questions in English language. According to Processability theory (PT), language is acquired in a predictable way, in six stages, the last stage being acquiring word order in subordinate clauses, i.e. cancelling inversion. Since interlanguage presents a dynamic language system that retains some features of the first language or generalizes the second language rules in speech or writing, the origin of errors can be found in mother tongue or in the misapplication of the rules when adopting a second language. Although PT is not concerned with the errors made by the second language learners, this paper will try to identify the origin of errors that appear in the students' interlanguage and the acquisition of the last stage, i.e. the word order in subordinate clauses. In that way, it will be determined whether the errors (inter- or intralingual) made by the students prevent them from acquiring the last stage of PT.

scholarly journals Knowledge of expletive and pronominal subjects by learners of Spanish

2002 ◽  
Vol 135-136 ◽  
pp. 37-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristóbal Lozano
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Subject Pronouns ◽  
Third Person ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Empty Element ◽  
Gender Features

Abstract Abstract A number of studies investigating second language acquisition (SLA) from the perspective of Principles and Parameters Theory (P&P, CHOMSKY, 1981, 1995) have focused on the pro-drop parameter, and have argued that older second language learners are sensitive to the different, properties it purportedly covers (e.g., AL-KASEY & PÉREZ-LEROUX, 1998; LICERAS, 1989; PHINNEY, 1987; WHITE, 1986). In this paper we extend this work by investigating two of its syntactic corollaries, namely, referential pronominal subjects (ProS) and expletive pronominal subjects (ExpS). In so-called [+pro-drop] languages both may be realised as an empty element (pro). While on the surface these forms are identical, referential subject pro is different from expletive subject pro both syntactically and semantically; syntactically because referential pro co-exists with a set of overt subject pronouns (yo 'I' , tú 'you', etc), whereas there are no overt expletive pronouns; semantically because referential pro is distinguished for 3 persons, number and gender features, whereas expletive pro would appear to be a third person, singular, gender-neutral pronoun. We will examine whether older L2 learners are sensitive to these differences by using paired grammaticality judgement tests (PGJT). Results are consistent with the claim that learners have different mental representations for ProS and ExpS.

The functional roles of lexical devices in second language learners’ encoding of temporality: A study of Mandarin Chinese-speaking ESL learners

2019 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Li Ma ◽  
Gita Martohardjono ◽  
William McClure
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Functional Roles ◽  
Past Time ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
Esl Learners

AbstractThe present study investigates the functional roles of two lexical devices, past-time temporal adverbials and frequency adverbs, in Mandarin Chinese-speaking ESL learners’ encoding of temporality in their English interlanguage. The results of the present study indicate that past-time temporal adverbials are facilitative in Mandarin Chinese-speaking ESL learners’ encoding of past time. Meanwhile, the existence/absence of the matrix agreement, which is a linguistic device that has not been discussed in previous studies, may also lead to learners’ different reactions. The results of the present study also show that the introduction of frequency adverbs is associated with a higher usage rate of the present tense and causes more difficulty in a past tense context. This association is found to exist not only in learners’ data, but also in English native speakers’ data. The present study contributes to our understanding of the development of second language learners’ expression of temporal locations and relations.

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