scholarly journals English Past Tense Morphology in Adult Arab EFL learners: Mental Representation Mechanism and Types of Errors

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 1038-1046
Author(s):  
Muneera Muftah
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Frequency Effect ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Oral Production ◽  
The Past ◽  
Single Mechanism ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
Irregular Verbs ◽  
Dual Mechanism

English past tense morphology is one of the most difficult but yet one of the most important areas in the acquisition of English language by L2 Learners. The objectives of this study were to: (a) determine the acquisition sequence of English regular and irregular past tense forms in adult Arab EFL learners; (b) identify whether English past tense forms are represented by a single mechanism or a dual mechanism, and (c) investigate types of errors that L2 learners produce in their acquisition of English past tense morphology. In total, 77 adult Arab EFL learners participated in an oral production task. The use of the verbal inflectional morphemes in obligatory contexts in each learners production is examined. The results show that L2 learners acquire the past tense morphology of the regular verbs before they acquire the past tense morphology of the irregular verbs and that there is frequency effect for the irregular verbs, but not for the regular verbs. This indicates that the dual system theory accounts for the mental representations of English past tense forms for the L2 learners in this study. The most frequent error types produced by the Learners are omission, overregularization and overgeneration of be forms.

scholarly journals acquisition of tense-aspect morphology and the regular-irregular debate

2003 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 195-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasuhiro Shirai
Keyword(s):  
Past Tense ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Mechanism Model ◽  
The Past ◽  
Single Mechanism ◽  
Early Use ◽  
Irregular Verbs ◽  
Dual Mechanism ◽  
L1 Acquisition

This paper reviews research on English past-tense acquisition to test the validity of the single mechanism model and the dual mechanism model, focusing on regular-irregular dissociation and semantic bias. Based on the review, it is suggested that in L1 acquisition, both regular and irregular verbs are governed by semantics; that is, early use of past tense forms are restricted to achievement verbs—regular or irregular. In contrast, some L2 acquisition studies show stronger semantic bias for regular past tense forms (e.g., Housen, 2002, Rohde, 1996). It is argued that L1 acquisition of the past-tense morphology can be accounted for more adequately by the single-mechanism model.  

An exploration of target L2 morphemes in the oral production of young EFL learners in Croatia

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jelena O'Reilly ◽  
Eva Jakupčević
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Research Area ◽  
Simple Construction ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Oral Production ◽  
The Past ◽  
Base Form ◽  
Production Study ◽  
Efl Students

Although the second language (L2) acquisition of morphology by late L2 learners has been a popular research area over the past decades, comparatively little is known about the acquisition and development of morphology in children who learn English as a foreign language (EFL). Therefore, the current study presents the findings from a longitudinal oral production study with 9/10-year-old L1 Croatian EFL students who were followed up at the age of 11/12. Our results are largely in line with the limited research so far in this area: young EFL learners have few issues using the be copula and, eventually, the irregular past simple forms, but had considerable problems with accurately supplying the 3rd person singular -s at both data collection points. We also observed a be + base form structure, especially at the earlier stage, which appears to be an emergent past simple construction.

Gesture-enhanced recasts have limited effects: A case of the regular past tense

2019 ◽  
pp. 136216881987028 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimi Nakatsukasa
Keyword(s):  
Repeated Measure ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Production Test ◽  
Esl Students ◽  
Oral Production ◽  
The Past ◽  
Post Test ◽  
Locative Prepositions ◽  
Learning Types ◽  
Us University

This study investigates whether gesture-enhanced recasts lead to better production of the English regular past tense. Fifty-nine low-intermediate ESL students at a US university took part in communicative activities in class, during which they received, respectively, no feedback, verbal recasts, or gesture-enhanced recasts, the latter being a verbal recast accompanied by a point-back gesture indicating the non-target-like use or absence of the past tense. All learners also completed two assessments, a grammar test about the regular past tense and an oral production test that was designed to elicit the regular past tense, as a pre-test, an immediate post-test, and a delayed post-test a week later. Then, a repeated-measure ANOVA was used to analyse the linguistic development, using the obtained test scores. The results showed that there was no difference across the conditions in the grammar test, owing to the ceiling effect. On the other hand, learners significantly improved from the pre-test to the post-test in the oral production test, but there were no differences across the conditions. This contradicts a previous finding that teachers’ pedagogical gestures during recasts better facilitated the development of locative prepositions. Further, this study discusses how learning types (rule-based vs. item-based) involved in two different linguistic targets and different gestures used in the two studies may affect the efficacy of recasts.

Processing of English Sentences Consisting of Frequency Adverbs by Japanese EFL Learners

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (11) ◽  
pp. 952
Author(s):  
Prabath B. Kanduboda
Keyword(s):  
University Students ◽  
Information Flow ◽  
Repeated Measures ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
English Language ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Parts Of Speech ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
L2 Learners

Previous studies suggest that, adverbs can have comparatively free positioning to that of other parts of speech in English language. This study focused on frequency adverbs which represent number of occurrences of an action or a condition. Since different positioning may produce relatively different meaning (or focus) of given sentences, processing of such sentences is assumed to be complex especially for L2 learners. Therefore, this study investigated how L2 learners process English sentences consisting of adverbs in different positions. The main goal of this study is to reveal which information-structure is mostly identified among Japanese EFL learners. A sentence-correctness-decision task was conducted with a group of university students (n=30). Stimuli were selected via a free-production written task. The data were analyzed using SPSS statistics with repeated measures (i.e., ANOVAs). A simple comparison between alternative ordering showed that, the sentences consisting of adverbs in between-positioning were processed faster to that of initial-positioning, assumable due to the different information flow. Thus, according to this study, English sentences consisting of frequency adverbs with the between-positioning [S (A (VO))] is likely to possess a high acceptability among Japanese EFL learners to that of initial-positioning sentences [A (S (VO))].

Inflection and Derivation

2019 ◽  
pp. 241-261
Author(s):  
Andrew Spencer
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Personal Pronoun ◽  
Past Participle ◽  
Double Object ◽  
Completely Regular ◽  
Auxiliary Verbs ◽  
The Past ◽  
Irregular Verbs ◽  
Categorial Status

The chapter presents an overview of phenomena which pose important problems of description and analysis. I focus on the inflectional system, which has undergone severe attrition and shows idiosyncrasies typical of such systems. For nominals I describe the personal pronoun paradigm and the ‘possessive -s’ clitic/phrasal affix. The controversial categorial status of adverbs in -ly is discussed, while for verbs, all the subcategories prove to be highly problematical. For instance, only 50 irregular verbs distinguish past tense from past participle (e.g. wrote/written), so it is not even clear whether the past participle category is a highly restricted subcategory, with the vast majority of verbs showing past tense/past participle syncretism, or whether this is a case of ‘overdifferentiation’, like the forms am, are, were of the verb BE. On the other hand, the polyfunctionality of the completely regular -ing suffix, which derives verb, noun, and adjective forms, also poses serious unresolved problems. Auxiliary verbs and related phenomena alternate between periphrastic, clitic, and genuinely morphological (affixal) constructions. The chapter concludes with consideration of those aspects of derivational morphology which seem to be indisputably productive, hence part of the grammar, including (certain types of) event nominalization, some cases of double object alternation, and morphosemantic mismatches of the kind electrical engineering ⇒ electrical engineer.

Producing inflected verbs

2010 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wieke Tabak ◽  
Robert Schreuder ◽  
R. H. Baayen
Keyword(s):  
Picture Naming ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Mechanism Model ◽  
The Past ◽  
Inflected Form ◽  
Present Tense ◽  
Dual Mechanism ◽  
As Effects

Four picture naming experiments addressing the production of regular and irregular pasttense forms in Dutch are reported. Effects of inflectional entropy as well as effects of the frequency of the past-tense inflected form across regulars and irregulars support models with a redundant lexicon while challenging the dual mechanism model (Pinker, 1997). The evidence supports the hypothesis of Stemberger (2004) and the general approach of Word and Paradigm morphology (Blevins, 2003) according to which inflected forms are not derived from the present-tense stem, but accessed independently.

Regional variation in the English verb qualifier system

2002 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Sampson
Keyword(s):  
Regional Variation ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Past Participle ◽  
Standard Language ◽  
The Past ◽  
Redundant Data ◽  
Irregular Verbs ◽  
Past Tenses ◽  
English Verb

Nonstandard dialects often use the same form for the past tense and past participle of irregular verbs for which the standard language has distinct forms. One possible reason would be that some speakers have a nonstandard system of verb qualifiers (tense, mood, and aspect markers) in which the past tense/past participle distinction is functionally redundant. Data on spontaneous speech in Britain in the 1990s partly supports this by showing marked regional variation in the use of the Perfect construction. However, some nonstandard past tenses cannot be explained in terms of a nonstandard qualifier system.

The Impacts of Distance Interactivity on Learners' Achievements in Online Mobile Language Learning

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 19-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morteza Mellati ◽  
Marzieh Khademi
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
English Language ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Language Instruction ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Efl Context ◽  
The Past ◽  
English Language Instruction ◽  
Language Classrooms ◽  
Passionate Debate

The expansion of technological applications such as computers and mobile phones in the past three decades has impacted our life from different perspectives. Language teaching is no exception and like other fields of study, language teaching has also influenced by new language teaching sources and software. More recently, there has been a passionate debate about the usefulness of the smart-phones for educational purposes and their possible uses in English language instruction; therefore, the present study investigated the impacts of interactivity perceptions on EFL learners' achievements in Online Mobile Language Learning (OMLL) course. To conduct the present study, 68 Iranian intermediate EFL learners were chosen among which 43 participated in Online Mobile Language Learning (OMLL) course and 25 others participated in conventional language classrooms. The results of the study demonstrated that OMLL has significant effects on learners' achievements; however, there are some challenges in conducting online mobile language learning (OMLL) courses in Iranian EFL context.

scholarly journals The Effect of Immediate and Delayed Error Correction on Accuracy of EFL Learners’ Oral Production

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 93
Author(s):  
Fatemeh Safari
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Error Correction ◽  
English Language ◽  
Corrective Feedback ◽  
Specific Situation ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Oral Production ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
The Subject ◽  
English Language Institute

The concept of corrective feedback in learning a second language has gained more importance and it has been the subject of many researches during recent years. Therefore, considering some aspects that affect it such as when and how to correct, and also what types of corrective feedback are more preferable and effective is of crucial concern. The aim of this study is to find the most effective type of error correction (especially the best time: whether immediately or delayed) in the case of accuracy of Iranian EFL learners’ oral production. Thus, in order to investigate this study, 30 homogenous intermediate EFL learners were selected randomly (female) aged 13 to 30 from Tak English language institute in Dezful, Iran. The participants were divided into 2 groups of 15. For G1 errors were corrected immediately and for G2 with some delay, i.e. after finishing their speech during a term. At the end of the term, each student were asked to discuss one of the topics they have covered during the term, while their voices were recorded and transcribed later. Measures of accuracy were developed to examine the results. Data analysis indicated that both Immediate and Delayed Error Correction had positive effects on the accuracy of learners’ oral production. However, it was evident that although both types of CF were beneficial, the effects of Immediate Error Correction were larger than the other. In conclusion, regarding the specific purpose of language learning in a specific situation and classroom, it is recommended that teachers should be familiarized with all types of CF and then cautiously select the most appropriate one.

scholarly journals NUANCE IN SIMPLE AND PAST TENSE PATTERNS BY INDONESIAN EFL LEARNERS: A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 219
Author(s):  
Lalu Suhirman
Keyword(s):  
Error Analysis ◽  
Systematic Study ◽  
English Language ◽  
Learning Problems ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Research Subject ◽  
Contrastive Analysis ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
First Semester ◽  
Similar Elements

This article aims to identify the differences between Indonesian and English in constructing affirmative, negative, and interrogative  sentences in simple present and present progressive, and simple past and past progressive tenses. This research is descriptive qualitative design. The 40 first semester students of STIKOM Jayapura was selected as research subject. The result indicated that Contrastive Analysis was the systematic study of a pair of languages with a view to identifying their differences and similarities with the assumption the different elements between the native (Indonesian) and the target (English) language caused learning problems, while similar elements did not cause any problems. Contrastive analysis hypothesis is criticized for not all problems predicted by contrastive analysis always appear to be difficult for the students. Errors that do turn up are not predicted by contrastive analysis, but if errors cannot be identified through Contrastive Analysis, it will be suggested using Error Analysis. 

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