scholarly journals Morphological awareness in L2 Spanish: What is learned incidentally and what requires explicit teaching?

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (13) ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia H. Sánchez Gutiérrez
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Reading Comprehension ◽  
Vocabulary Learning ◽  
Morphological Awareness ◽  
Morphological Knowledge ◽  
Explicit Teaching ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Pedagogical Treatment ◽  
The One ◽  
Distributional Knowledge

The development of morphological awareness positively impacts vocabulary learning, inferencing skills or reading comprehension. However, it is currently given very little attention in Spanish as a Second Language textbooks, due to the prevailing belief that derivational morphological knowledge can be developed without any explicit teaching. This idea has been repeatedly contested in the literature, and the present study aims to add to this ongoing discussion by specifying the aspects of morphological knowledge that would benefit the most from explicit pedagogical treatment. Four tasks were designed, which tapped into relational and distributional knowledge, both at the receptive and productive level. Students enrolled in three successive SSL course levels completed the tasks, as did one group of beginners who completed them twice: before and after a four-session long morphological training. Results indicate that participating in that training was advantageous in most tasks, but particularly so for the one that required distributional productive skills. Pedagogical implications of these results are further discussed.

scholarly journals Morphological Awareness in L2 Chinese Reading Comprehension: Testing of Mediating Routes

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haomin Zhang ◽  
Xing Zhang ◽  
Mengjie Li ◽  
Yiming Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Reading Comprehension ◽  
Word Meaning ◽  
Morphological Awareness ◽  
Vocabulary Knowledge ◽  
Chinese Reading ◽  
Morphological Knowledge ◽  
Chinese Learners ◽  
L2 Chinese ◽  
Path Models ◽  
Inference Task

This study aims to examine the contribution of morphological awareness to second language (L2) Chinese reading comprehension through potential mediating factors. Adult L2 Chinese learners (n = 447) participated in the study and completed two morphological awareness tasks (segmentation and discrimination), two vocabulary knowledge tasks (character knowledge and word-meaning knowledge), one lexical inference task, and one reading comprehension task. By testing alternative path models, this study identified the preferred model assuming the covariates of morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge. Morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge jointly contributed to L2 Chinese reading comprehension through lexical inference. The written modality of morphological awareness induced the activation of both morphological and orthographic information in print. The result suggests that morphological awareness (in the form of grapho-morphological knowledge) and vocabulary knowledge seem to be two parallel components under the same construct predicting Chinese reading comprehension. More importantly, this study underscores the intermediary effect of lexical inference in associating morphological awareness and reading comprehension in L2 Chinese learners.

Second Language Reading in Hypertext Environments

2011 ◽  
pp. 48-63
Author(s):  
Robert Ariew ◽  
Gulcan Erçetin ◽  
Susan Cooledge
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Reading Comprehension ◽  
Learning Environments ◽  
Vocabulary Learning ◽  
Second Language Reading ◽  
Learning Theories ◽  
L2 Reading ◽  
Proficiency Level ◽  
L2 Learners

This chapter introduces second language reading in hypertext/hypermedia environments. It discusses the development of a template to annotate reading texts with multiple types of media such as text, sound, graphics, and video so as to aid reading comprehension for L2 readers. The chapter also reports on a series of studies conducted using the template in a variety of L2 learning environments in order to explore L2 learners’ reading behavior and the effects of multimedia annotations on L2 reading and vocabulary learning. The chapter synthesizes the results according to multimedia learning theories and discusses the role of proficiency level and prior knowledge in relation to L2 learners’ reading comprehension in hypertext environments.

Effects of L1 morphological type on L2 morphological awareness

2021 ◽  
pp. 026765832199641
Author(s):  
Zhaohong Wu ◽  
Alan Juffs
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
First Language ◽  
Morphological Awareness ◽  
Morphological Type ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Unique Contribution ◽  
Morphological Knowledge ◽  
Advanced Learners

Previous studies on bilingual children have shown a significant correlation between first language (L1) and second language (L2) morphological awareness and a unique contribution of morphological awareness in one language to reading performance in the other language, suggesting cross-linguistic influence. However, few studies have compared advanced adult L2 learners from L1s of different morphological types or compared native speakers with advanced learners from a morphologically more complex L1 in their target-language morphological awareness. The current study filled this gap by comparing native English speakers (analytic) and two L2 groups from typologically different L1s: Turkish (agglutinative) and Chinese (isolating). Participants’ morphological awareness was evaluated via a series of tasks, including derivation, affix-choice word and nonword tasks, morphological relatedness, and a suffix-ordering task. Results showed a significant effect of L1 morphological type on L2 morphological awareness. After accounting for L2 proficiency, the Turkish group significantly outperformed the Chinese group in the derivation, morphological relatedness, and suffix-ordering tasks. More importantly, the Turkish group significantly outperformed the native English group in the morphological relatedness task even without accounting for English proficiency. Such results have implications for theories in second language acquisition regarding representation of the bilingual lexicon. In addition, results of the current study underscored the need to guard against the comparative fallacy and highlighted the influential effect of L1 experience on the acquisition of L2 morphological knowledge.

scholarly journals Receptive and productive vocabulary acquisition: effectiveness of three types of tasks. Results from French students of Spanish as second language

2021 ◽  
pp. 36-56
Author(s):  
Alicia San Mateo-Valdehíta ◽  
◽  
Cecilia Criado de Diego ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Vocabulary Acquisition ◽  
Vocabulary Learning ◽  
Learning Task ◽  
Feature Analysis ◽  
Gap Filling ◽  
The Third ◽  
Learning Tasks ◽  
The One ◽  
Writing Task

This study presents the results of research on the vocabulary acquisition of French students of Spanish as second language. The aim is to know (1) which of these three vocabulary-learning tasks is more effective: definition-choosing, gap-filling or sentence-writing; and (2) which kind of knowledge, receptive or productive, the participants acquire with each vocabulary-learning task. The analysis shows that the most effective task is sentence-writing, then gap-filling and, in the third place, definition-choosing. Also all the three learning tasks trained students to complete above all activities which require a receptive knowledge of the words—definition-choosing and gap-filling tasks—, but they were much less prepared to carry out the sentence-writing task, which requires a productive knowledge of the words. The only productive task proposed—sentence-writing—is the one that allowed the students to learn receptively and productively a higher number of words. We associate our results with the Involvement Load Hypothesis and Technique Feature Analysis.

Morphological insensitivity in second language processing

2004 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 603-634 ◽  
Author(s):  
NAN JIANG
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Reading Comprehension ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Word Reading ◽  
Morphological Knowledge ◽  
Second Language Processing ◽  
Language Competence ◽  
Esl Learners

Two competing explanations exist regarding the nature of morphological difficulty in adult second language acquisition: competence deficit versus performance deficiency. This study tested these explanations by examining English as a second language (ESL) learners' morphological performance in reading comprehension tasks. Chinese ESL speakers were asked to read English sentences for comprehension in three self-paced word by word reading experiments. Their reading times were measured to determine if they were sensitive to idiosyncrasies/disagreement in sentences that do and do not involve the number morpheme. The results show that they are not sensitive to number disagreement, but sensitive to other idiosyncrasies tested. This insensitivity to the number morpheme suggests that their morphological knowledge is not an integrated part of their automatic second language competence.

scholarly journals vocabulary to young learners

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
nurul isnaini
Keyword(s):  
Academic Achievement ◽  
Second Language ◽  
Reading Comprehension ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
Vocabulary Learning ◽  
Learning To Read ◽  
Young Learners ◽  
Foreign Language Acquisition ◽  
Speak Up

Vocabulary learning is very important for people who learn English both as foreign language and as second language. Tozcu and Coady (2004: 473) point out learning vocabulary is an important aspect of language two and foreign language acquisition and academic achievement and is vital to reading comprehension and proficiency, to which it is closely linked.Vocabulary is also an essential skill for learning to read, speak, write and listen. Without sufficient vocabulary, people cannot communicate and express their feeling both in form of spoken and written effectively. The more people master vocabulary the more they can speak, write, read and listen as they want. Wilkins in Thornbury (2004: 13) states that without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed. It means that even someone has good grammar but it will be useless if they do not know many vocabularies. In addition, it is supported by Ur (1996: 60) that vocabulary is one of important things to be taught in learning foreign language because it will be impossible to speak up without variety of words.

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