Word Class Influence upon L1 and L2 English Word Association

2016 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Li Xiaosa ◽  
Wang Wenyu
Keyword(s):  
Word Association ◽  
Mental Lexicon ◽  
English Word ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Word Class ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Word Association Test ◽  
Word Classes ◽  
L1 And L2 ◽  
L1 English

AbstractThis study explores word class influence upon L1 and L2 word association. The participants included 26 L1 English speakers and 28 advanced EFL learners who finished an English word association test that involved three types of stimuli: nouns, verbs and adjectives. Response words to the stimuli were classified into paradigmatic, syntagmatic, encyclopedic and form-based categories. Results show that: 1) L2 mental lexicon largely resembled that of L1 English speakers in that both were dominated by paradigmatic association, but L2 syntagmatic association was obviously weaker than that of L1 across the three word classes; 2) Verbs and adjectives demonstrated a greater potential to elicit syntagmatic responses than nouns in both L1 and L2 association; 3) Compared with verbs and adjectives, nouns were more paradigmatically challenging to L2 learners.

scholarly journals A Study on the Way in which Words Are Organized in Iranian EFL Learners’ Mental Lexicon

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 80
Author(s):  
Sedigheh Sharifi ◽  
Masoud Khalili Sabet ◽  
Abdorreza Tahriri
Keyword(s):  
Word Association ◽  
Vocabulary Learning ◽  
Mental Lexicon ◽  
Association Test ◽  
Word Knowledge ◽  
Chi Square ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Word Association Test ◽  
L1 And L2 ◽  
The Way

Vocabulary learning in both L1 and L2 is considered important to master a language. Individuals need to learn the words in order to express ideas and to communicate. As a result, research into word knowledge is important as it provides useful information considering the way in which words are learned and organized in individuals’ mind; however different studies have been conducted in this regard, there is a long way to fully understand individuals’ mental lexicon. So, word association tests are used to examine the word knowledge, to study vocabulary learning process, and how it occurs in the language learners’ mind. Similarly, the aim of this paper is to investigate the way in which words are stored and organized in Iranian EFL learners’ mental lexicon through a word association test. To this end, a word association test was designed including eight prompt words from different word classes and was administered to 50 Iranian EFL learners. They were randomly selected and included 22 males and 28 females from Razi University and an institute in Kermanshah, Iran. After administering the test, to analyze the data, learners’ responses were classified and the frequency of each classification of word association was calculated and chi-square tests were run to compare responses. Results reveal that the participants displayed different patterns in their responses as syntagmatic and paradigmatic classification. Most of them made more syntagmatic responses than paradigmatic ones. As a result, it can be concluded that more participants make mental links with syntagmatic compared to others who make links with paradigmatic and there are significant differences between male and female learners in the use of syntagmatic and paradigmatic responses; on the other hand, it appears that there is no significant differences in learners’ word association regarding age. This study has useful implications for both EFL teachers and learners by helping them understand and improve the lexical acquisition process.

scholarly journals Probing into Native and Nonnative Students’ Mental Lexicon: a Case of Word Association Comparison

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-213
Author(s):  
Afrooz Marzban ◽  
Mohammad Sadegh Bagheri ◽  
Firooz Sadighi ◽  
Ehsan Rassaei
Keyword(s):  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Word Association ◽  
Mental Lexicon ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Placement Test ◽  
Chi Square ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Word Association Test ◽  
Proficiency Level ◽  
High Level

The present study compared British English speakers’ (native) and Iranian EFL learners’ (nonnative) mental lexicon structure focusing on how words are selected and used by the two groups. The types of word association links, syntagmatic and paradigmatic, more frequently applied by the two groups of the participants, were probed into. To this end, 40 native and 40 nonnative college students, both male and female, were compared as far as mental lexicon was concerned. Accordingly, through the Oxford Placement Test (OPT), the nonnative subjects were assigned to three ability levels; namely, high, mid and low. Next, the Word Association Test (WAT) was administered respectively to all native and nonnative participants. The comparison of the WAT results through a series of Chi-square tests and a test of Mann-Whitney indicated that the employed word association links varied among the native and nonnative participants. The findings revealed that the low and mid level nonnatives which comprised a majority of Iranian EFL learners employed the syntagmatic relation to a greater extent than the high level nonnatives. However, only one resemblance was observed between the natives and the high level nonnatives who frequently applied the paradigmatic link. Thus, it was concluded that the advanced Iranian learners performed in a similar way as that of the native English speakers; as a result, it was suggested that the improvement in the proficiency level could lead to a change in making mental links. The findings would contribute to the psychological concerns in language teaching and learning in most academic contexts of higher age ranges.

scholarly journals The relationship between phonotactic awareness and pronunciation in adult second language learners

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 185-214
Author(s):  
Hanna Kivistö-de Souza
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Language Classrooms ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
L1 English ◽  
L2 Pronunciation

Abstract: This study examined to what extent L1 Brazilian Portuguese (BP) EFL learners are aware of L2 phonotactics and whether there would be a relationship between L2 phonotactic awareness and L2 pronunciation accuracy. The language learners were tested regarding their awareness of L2 onset consonant clusters with a lexical decision task presenting nonword stimuli with legal and illegal onset clusters. L2 pronunciation was measured with a Foreign Accent Rating Task. The results showed that L1 BP participants showed a high awareness concerning L2 phonotactics, not differing from L1 English speakers, t(86)=.20, p =.83. Furthermore, high phonotactic awareness was found to be related to higher accuracy in L2 pronunciation (r= -.46, p <.001). The results suggest that phonotactics should be taught in foreign language classrooms since increasing learners’ awareness might be beneficial for the accuracy of their L2 pronunciation.

Development of sensitivity to phonological context in learning to spell in English

2010 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadya Dich
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Common Factor ◽  
Native English Speakers ◽  
English Word ◽  
Context Sensitivity ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Russian Speakers ◽  
Word Spelling ◽  
L1 And L2

The study attempts to investigate factors underlying the development of spellers’ sensitivity to phonological context in English. Native English speakers and Russian speakers of English as a second language (ESL) were tested on their ability to use information about the coda to predict the spelling of vowels in English monosyllabic nonwords. In addition, the study assessed the participants’ spelling proficiency as their ability to correctly spell commonly misspelled words (Russian participants were assessed in both Russian and English). Both native and non-native English speakers were found to rely on the information about the coda when spelling vowels in nonwords. In both native and non-native speakers, context sensitivity was predicted by English word spelling; in Russian ESL speakers this relationship was mediated by English proficiency. L1 spelling proficiency did not facilitate L2 context sensitivity in Russian speakers. The results speak against a common factor underlying different aspects of spelling proficiency in L1 and L2 and in favor of the idea that spelling competence comprises different skills in different languages.

scholarly journals Is there an interlanguage intelligibility benefit in perception of English word stress?

Loquens ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 061
Author(s):  
Rana Almbark ◽  
Nadia Bouchhioua ◽  
Sam Hellmuth
Keyword(s):  
English Word ◽  
Structural Knowledge ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Stress Perception ◽  
Sentence Recognition ◽  
Word Stress ◽  
Minimal Pairs ◽  
Unstressed Syllable ◽  
Final Stress ◽  
L1 English

This paper asks whether there is an ‘interlanguage intelligibility benefit’ in perception of word-stress, as has been reported for global sentence recognition. L1 English listeners, and L2 English listeners who are L1 speakers of Arabic dialects from Jordan and Egypt, performed a binary forced-choice identification task on English near-minimal pairs (such as[ˈɒbdʒɛkt] ~ [əbˈdʒɛkt]) produced by an L1 English speaker, and two L2 English speakers from Jordan and Egypt respectively. The results show an overall advantage for L1 English listeners, which replicates the findings of an earlier study for general sentence recognition, and which is also consistent with earlier findings that L1 listeners rely more on structural knowledge than on acoustic cues in stress perception. Non-target-like L2 productions of words with final stress (which are primarily cued in L1 production by vowel reduction in the initial unstressed syllable) were less accurately recognized by L1 English listeners than by L2 listeners, but there was no evidence of a generalized advantage for L2 listeners in response to other L2 stimuli.

scholarly journals LEXICAL BUNDLES IN L1 AND L2 ENGLISH DOCTORAL DISSERTATIONS

2021 ◽  
pp. 475
Author(s):  
Ilyas Yakut ◽  
Fatma Yuvayapan ◽  
Erdogan Bada
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Formulaic Sequences ◽  
Lexical Bundles ◽  
Functional Perspective ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Doctoral Dissertations ◽  
L1 And L2 ◽  
L1 English ◽  
American English Speakers

Based on contrastive interlanguage analysis, this study explores the usage of lexical bundles occurring in doctoral dissertations produced in the English language related studies in the USA by L1 American English speakers and in Turkey by Turkish speakers of English in the last ten years between 2010-2019. In our analysis of the data, we identified a significant number of types of 4-word bundles from both corpora from a structural and functional perspective. The findings regarding the types of lexical bundles and their structural and functional dispersions revealed significant differences between the two corpora. While L1 English writers refrained from heavily utilizing formulaic sequences, the opposite could be observed in the works of L2 English authors. This study has significant implications for academic writers producing work in the English language since corpus-informed lists and concordances might be of great help to L2 speakers of English in identifying appropriate lexical bundles that are specific to their disciplines.

scholarly journals Effects of reading Strategies and Depth of Vocabulary Knowledge on Turkish EFL Learners’ Text Inferencing Skills

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (8) ◽  
pp. 11
Author(s):  
Abdulvahit Cakir ◽  
Ihsan Unaldi ◽  
Fadime Yalcin Arslan ◽  
Mehmet Kilic
Keyword(s):  
Reading Strategies ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Word Association ◽  
Association Test ◽  
Vocabulary Knowledge ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Word Association Test ◽  
Major Implication ◽  
National Test ◽  
Significant Factors

<p>Within the framework of foreign language teaching and learning, reading strategies, depth of vocabulary knowledge and text inferencing skills have not been researched extensively. This study tries to fill this gap by analyzing the effects of reading strategies used by Turkish EFL learners and their depth of vocabulary knowledge on their text inferencing skills. Three different measures were used in the study: Word Association Test (WAT), Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory (MARSI), and inferencing questions used in a standardized national test. The association test and reading strategies scores were regressed on inferencing scores of the participants. The results revealed that depth of vocabulary knowledge was a better predictor of inferencing skills compared to reading strategies. However, the model created by using these two predictors accounted for only 15% of the variance, and the major implication of this result is that there are other more significant factors which affect text inferencing skills of EFL learners than reading strategies and depth of vocabulary knowledge.</p>

Prediction error and implicit learning in L1 and L2 syntactic priming

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 895-911
Author(s):  
Carrie N. Jackson ◽  
Holger Hopp
Keyword(s):  
Prediction Error ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Syntactic Priming ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Priming Task ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Post Test ◽  
Short Term Adaptation ◽  
L1 And L2 ◽  
L1 English

Aims and Objectives: This study examines the syntactic priming of adverb-first word order among 27 first language (L1) English, 33 L1 German, and 32 L1 German-second language (L2) English speakers to investigate the relationship between short-term priming and longer-term learning across different speaker groups. Design/Methodology: Participants completed a syntactic priming task in either English or German, in which they heard sentences containing fronted (i.e. adverb-first) or non-fronted adverbial phrases and described pictures containing similar adverbial phrases. Immediately before and after the priming task, participants completed picture description tasks containing similar sentence types to measure their baseline production of fronted adverbials, and whether subsequent production of fronted adverbials was modulated by the priming task. Data Analysis: We used mixed-effects logistic regression to compare participants’ production of fronted sentences during the priming task according to prime type (fronted vs. non-fronted) and their production of fronted sentences before versus after the priming task, including the additional factors of adverbial phrase (temporal phrase vs. locative phrase) and speaker group (L1 English vs. L1 German vs. L2 English). Findings/Conclusion: Participants exhibited greater short-term priming during the priming task for temporal versus locative phrases, with the L2 English speakers exhibiting the greatest short-term priming. There was a significant increase in the production of fronted sentences from baseline to post-test, with the L1 English speakers exhibiting the greatest gains. Originality: This study uses systematic between- and within-language comparisons to examine: (a) whether the extent of syntactic priming depends on the frequency of a construction in a speaker’s L1 or L2 (i.e. prediction error); and (b) whether prediction error and short-term priming lead to longer-term learning. Significance: Our findings show that the magnitude of prediction error influences both short-term adaptation and longer-term priming. However, the ability to harness prediction error for longer-term learning versus short-term adaptation may vary between L1 and L2 speakers.

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