Guided induction and deductive instruction: Analyzing efficiency versus depth of processing in the L2 acquisition of Palestinian Arabic

Abstract

The present study examined the effects of guided induction (GI) and deductive instruction (DI) on the acquisition of verbal negation structure in spoken Palestinian Arabic (PA) using an interpretation task in a self-paced reading paradigm. The experimental design featured a 30- item pre-test, posttest and a delayed test used to assess the short- and long- term accuracy gains and reaction times. Twenty-seven learners of Arabic as a foreign language participated in the experiment. Results indicated that both groups benefited from their respective intervention at the immediate level as indicated by accuracy gains. However, only the guided induction group improved significantly from pretest to posttest, administered 4 weeks later. It also showed that while both groups performed comparably at the immediate level, GI group outperformed DI on the delayed test. Additionally, while reading times data was not informative, GI took significantly longer response time than DI. These results are in line with Cerezo et al. (2016) and Zhuang (2019)who found an edge for GI. In addition to finding a main effect for GI, results are original in terms of experimenting with the complex Arabic negation structure, thus extending evidence to a novel structure with multi-layered complexity.