Lexical effects on mood interpretation in French adverbial clauses

This is a follow-up on earlier studies of vocabulary acquisition and cross-linguistic influence (CLI) in advanced learners’ spoken French L3 (Lindqvist 2009, 2010; Lindqvist, Bardel & Gudmundson 2011). The purpose is to study advanced learners’ word choices in oral retellings of video films, focusing on the words chosen to express key objects, events or persons (see Jarvis 2000). It is investigated whether word choices differ between advanced learners and native speakers, and between advanced and low-intermediate learners. CLI in the learners’ word choices is also investigated. The results show that the learners use more general words than the native speakers. Furthermore, the advanced learners have more meaning-based CLI, while the low-intermediate learners have more formal CLI. Finally, some advanced learners transfer a preferred L1 option into L3.

To provide a comprehensive estimate of Korean college students’ lexical competence, this study compared L2 learners’ (EFL) use of single words and collocations with that of native speakers (NSs). The study compiled two text corpora, one from an existing native corpus and the other with texts from Korean EFL learners at three proficiency levels. There were significant differences between the two corpora in lexical diversity, although the difference between advanced EFL learners and NSs was non-significant, indicating that advanced learners were on par with NSs in terms of using a diverse range of words. In a comparison of lexical distribution of single words, however, these advanced learners were found to use words between the 1K and 4K level, whereas NSs used words beyond this level. This suggests the need to cover a wider range of words in classroom teaching and assessment. Regarding collocational knowledge, the difference between the NSs and EFL group was apparent and statistically significant, regardless of learners’ proficiency levels. Namely, EFL learners used far fewer collocations in a smaller range than their counterparts. The learners’ limited collocational competence indicates that collocations should be considered an integral component of the curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

This article discusses some of the results of an experiment in which native speakers of English, Dutch advanced and intermediate learners of English listened to frequently occurring English words, which had been sliced into fragments of increasing duration. From the initial 100 ms. of a word onwards, each fragment contained the preceding fragment and an added 50 ms. of the word. The subjects were asked to write down the sounds they had heard and to identify the test words as soon as they had sufficient perceptual information about the words. Their responses show that the Dutch intermediate learners needed significantly more perceptual information before they were able to recognize a word than the advanced learners and the native speakers. This article discusses some of the results of an experiment in which native speakers of English, Dutch advanced and intermediate learners of English listened to frequently occurring English words, which had been sliced into fragments of increasing duration. From the initial 100 ms. of a word onwards, each fragment contained the preceding fragment and an added 50 ms. of the word. The subjects were asked to write down the sounds they had heard and to identify the test words as soon as they had sufficient perceptual information about the words. Their responses show that the Dutch intermediate learners needed significantly more perceptual information before they were able to recognize a word than the advanced learners and the native speakers.

This study analyzes the durational patterns of native Japanese speakers learning English, with a focus on the two major prosodic effects: phrase-final lengthening and stress-timed shortening. To investigate the significance of these effects, a production experiment was conducted, adapting the method of Beckman and Edwards [Papers in Laboratory Phonology I, 152–178 (1990)]. Native speakers, beginning Japanese learners, and advanced Japanese learners of English were compared. Results are as follows: (1) The phrase-final lengthening effect is large and the stress-timed shortening effect is small in the speech of the native English speakers and the advanced Japanese learners; (2) all Japanese speakers are more successful in applying phrase-final lengthening before larger prosodic boundaries than before smaller ones. Further analysis shows that the native English speakers make more durational contrast between lexically stressed and unstressed syllables (this is called localcontrast) and also differentiate the three degrees of boundary strength hierarchically (this is called hierarchicalcontrast). These two types of durational contrasts are considered to be effective benchmarks to assess the acquisition of English stress-timing by Japanese learners, due to their considerable correlation with learner proficiency levels.

The current study investigated from a usage‐based perspective how phrasal frequency and collocational strength of verb–preposition collocations influence preposition placement in wh‐relative clauses. Native English speakers and Chinese learners of English as a second language of the intermediate and advanced English proficiencies completed a sentence completion task and an acceptability judgment task. The results showed that native and nonnative speakers had an overall preference for preposition stranding. Native speakers had a stronger acceptance of preposition pied‐piping than nonnative speakers; advanced learners had a stronger acceptance of pied‐piping than intermediate learners. The collocational strengths of verb–preposition combinations had a significant effect on the productive use and acceptability of preposition placement for both native speakers and advanced learners. Intermediate learners’ preposition placement was more affected by phrasal frequency. Overall, the findings confirm that the distributional properties of verb–preposition collocations influence speakers’ preference for the type of wh‐clause structure, which provides strong support to the usage‐based account of grammar analysis and grammar acquisition.

This study investigates how the cross-cultural variation between Spanish and Chinese interactional styles influences the interlanguage pre-request sequences in Spanish produced by Chinese-speaking learners. Ninety-four university students, including 40 Chinese learners of Spanish at intermediate and advanced levels, 24 native Spanish speakers and 30 native Chinese speakers, performed 10-item open role-plays that elicited requests. Results revealed that learners exhibited negative transfer concerning cross-cultural differences, but did not always make positive transfer in aspects of cross-cultural similarities. Notably, learners and native Chinese speakers differed from native Spanish speakers in their production of the pre-requests asking about the recipients’ availability and their responses to the pre-requests inquiring about the existence of certain belongings. Furthermore, in comparison with native speakers, learners more frequently used the pre-requests asking for a favor. The findings of this research highlight cultural diversity in speakers’ pre-request sequences and pragmatic transfer at the interactional level. Additionally, the study brings attention to the issue of verbosity in intermediate and advanced learners’ sequential organization.

Phonological memory and aptitude components: Contributions to second language proficiency

Purpose This study examines differences in intrinsic laryngeal muscle control during Mandarin vowel production between native Mandarin speakers and advanced South Korean learners. By analyzing vocal fold vibrations and muscle activation patterns, it provides a biomechanical perspective on second language phonetic challenges. Method Twenty native Mandarin speakers (control) and twenty advanced South Korean learners (experimental), all from the same university, participated in the study. Participants produced monosyllabic words while formant frequencies were recorded. A computational vocal fold-airway model simulated vowel production, focusing on the activation of the cricothyroid (CT), thyroarytenoid (TA), and lateral cricoarytenoid (LC) muscles. Simulated formant frequencies were compared with actual recordings to identify muscle control differences. Results Native speakers exhibited higher CT and TA activation for /a/ and /i/, while South Korean learners showed reduced activation of these muscles and increased reliance on the LC muscle. For /u/, the native speakers’ model revealed lower overall muscle activation, whereas learners over-activated all three muscles. Conclusions The findings reveal distinct laryngeal control patterns between native and non-native speakers, emphasizing the role of biomechanical modeling in second language phonetics research. By identifying specific muscle activation differences, this study provides insights into the physiological basis of vowel articulation challenges and lays the groundwork for future research on cross-linguistic phonetic and phonemic acquisition.

Learner writing has been shown to differ from native speakers’ (NS) writing in terms of frequency of certain words or structures (Granger et al., 2002). On the basis of data obtained from two comparable corpora, the Spanish component of the ICLE (International Corpus of Learner English) and the LOCNESS (Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays), the present study explores the use of it-cleft constructions, a type of focusing device that has been claimed to be over-represented in the written production of advanced learners with different L1 backgrounds (Böstrom Aronsson, 2003; Callies, 2009). Its objective is threefold: first of all, to investigate how Spanish advanced EFL learners compare with NSs from the point of view of their use of it-clefts, thereby contributing to the characterization of advanced learner variety (ALV). Secondly, it addresses the issue of how NNSs and NSs compare regarding their use of the different discourse functions of it-clefts (i.e. identification and contrast), and also regarding the selection of the highlighted element. Finally, the study investigates whether the differences between the two groups may be attributed to influence of the L1. The Independent Samples t-test indicates that Spanish EFL learners significantly underuse it-clefts (t=2.100; p?0.05). It is suggested that this underuse cannot be ascribed to L1 transfer but to the learners’ preference for other types of clefting, which points to the need for further research on the use of clefts in Spanish texts and in English texts written by Spanish learners. The results also indicate statistically significant differences between the two groups in the discourse functions assigned to it-clefts. It is suggested that the Spanish advanced learners’ underuse of contrast may also indicate that they prefer to use pseudoclefts and other lexical or syntactic means for this purpose. As regards the length and syntactic features (category and function) of the highlighted element and the use of the relative pronoun, our results confirm that Spanish learners have generally acquired the English pattern, even though more qualitative analysis is needed to provide a detailed description of this component of the learners’ pragmatic abilities.

This study examines the learning patterns of intermediate and advanced Korean learners in the acquisition of causative expressions according to their proficiency and the causative sentence type. We measured their grammatical knowledge using three types of grammaticality judgment tasks (GJTs) and self-paced reading tasks (SPRTs) differing in time limit and modality. We included the GJT A' score and reading time (RT) for SPRTs’ target and spillover regions. The results showed that intermediate learners’ accuracy for morphological and lexical causatives was lower than that for syntactic causatives, while advanced learners’ accuracy for lexical causatives was lower than that for syntactic and morphological causatives. Learners showed a lower accuracy for timed written and aural GJTs than untimed GJT. In SPRT, learners took twice as long to process the target regions as native speakers and even longer to process spillover regions. Advanced learners had a longer RT. Learners had a low correct rate for causative suffix substitution and adjectival root questions, substitution questions on causative markers, and substitution questions on causee case postpositions in morphological, syntactic, and lexical causatives. Learners showed confusion with active sentences in lexical causatives. This study has implications for understanding causative expression acquisition for learners’ proficiency levels.

This study examines the acquisition pattern of Korean monophthongsby Chinese female Korean learners with different learning levels,and it provides with the learning outcomes as well. For this, thecommon results from previous researches on the low levelKorean language learners were reviewed. In the case of theintermediate and advanced learners’ acquisition, this researchanalyzes a total of 93 voice outputs which were yielded by twolearners from each level respectively. The voice data werecompared to the voice output data which were produced byKorean native speakers. Through an in-depth study andphonological comparison of Chinese and Korean vowels, itdecisively demonstrates that there exists both the acquisitionpattern and a few issues when learning Korean monophthongsby the Chineses female learners. The additional research findingsfrom the current study are as follows: there is few changes onthe acquisition in that the learners pronounce /ㅓ/ from ratherhigher back tongue than Koreans. The learners tend to makepronunciation distinctions between /ㅓ/ and /ㅗ/ by raising thetone of /ㅗ/. The habit of tone raising of /ㅗ/ continuously are observed until they become the advanced level learners, and finally are likely to differentiate them. /ㅜ/, /ㅡ/,and /ㅣ/, like /ㅗ/, the high vowels appear to be generally raised. Both /ㅔ/ and /ㅐ/ are usually pronounced as /ㅐ/ by the low or intermediate level Korean learners, and they are likely to be realized as a raised sound /E/ of Korean native speakers by the advanced learners. The above research results can be applied when teaching pronunciation to Chinese Korean language learners.

The role of proficiency on processing categorical and associative information in the L2 as revealed by reaction times and event-related brain potentials

The role of the conjunction in the developing of the writings of arguments and opinions is vitally important. It is necessary for an advanced learner to be able to cope with such types of writing, because they are likely to be required to have the ability to write such statements and to write opinion essays. Therefore, this paper investigates the situational use of the conjunctions in the opinion essays of advanced learners and then compared and analyzed them with that of native speakers. There was no significant difference between both learners’ and native speakers’ use of conjunctions in numerical terms, but there were differences in some usage patterns. First of all, the use of high difficulty conjunctions was considered low for the advanced learner and the use of conversational conjunctions was noticeable. As we search the distinction according to a classified category, the learner had the highest number of ‘logical’ conjunctions. This is because the learner has actively used them, even if the native speaker omits the conjunction. Additionally, in this study, the learner did not use the conjunctions of ‘theorem’ and ‘understanding’ effectively. Most learners highly depend on initially learned conjunctions and may lack a full understanding of the various usages of these words. Lastly, the conjunction of ‘conversion’ was rarely used by learners and this could be viewed as a lack of understanding of the syntax that is used in opinion essays. Through these features, it was confirmed that advanced Japanese learners generally fell short in their ability to use conjunctions according to this genre of writing. Therefore when working with opinion essays , learning the proper way of operating with conjunctions is needed, separately from vocabulary learning.

English-speaking learners of Korean frequently have difficulty acquiring the Korean particle “to,” which is translatable as also. This study conducts two analyses: an error analysis of English-speaking learners’ use of “to” and a comparison of the use of “to” by advanced learners and native speakers. First, our error analysis of the learner corpus finds that beginners frequently make errors in positioning “to” and in combining “to” with other particles; intermediate learners also have difficulty with positioning “to” correctly, as well as with using “to” to make parallel connections. Advanced learners still struggle with parallel connections, but their overall error rate is significantly less. Second, the study’s contrastive interlanguage analysis investigates whether advanced learners can use diverse polysemous meanings of the particle “to” and whether they can use complex grammatical patterns, including “to,” as proficiently as native speakers. Compared to native speakers, advanced learners use two meanings less frequently: an “extreme presentation” meaning, where “to” can be translated as even; and an “emphasis” meaning, which lacks a single-word English translation. Our analysis also found that advanced learners use two grammatical patterns less frequently than native speakers: complex combinations of particles including “to,” and adding the meaning of “to” to a predicate.

Research into the role of listening strategies in acquiring knowledge of language has attracted increasing attention over last decades. The current study sought to determine the strategies used by intermediate and advanced learners. It also attempted to investigate the relationship between learners’ overall language proficiency and their choice of strategy. To this end, two language institutes were randomly selected in Yasouj. A Quick Placement Test was validated and administered. Based on the results, 30 intermediate and 30 advanced EFL learners were selected. Two listening tasks were given to each group. Think-aloud technique was used in order to elicit learners’ listening strategies. The protocols were coded by two raters in order to yield more reliable results. The data analyzed through descriptive statistics showed that advanced learners employed more listening comprehension strategies than intermediate listeners did. It was shown that advanced learners employed meta-cognitive strategies more frequently than cognitive and socio-affective strategies. However, intermediate language learners employed cognitive, and then social/affective strategies more frequently. The findings of the present study indicated that there was a relationship between overall listening proficiency of language learners and listening strategies employed by them.