Adult Learners Of English Research Articles

Metalinguistic knowledge, metalanguage, and their relationship in L2 learners

Abstract This paper reports on a study designed to investigate the acquisition of metalinguistic knowledge by L2 learners exposed to large doses of explicit grammar instruction, their facility with metalanguage, and the relationship between metalinguistic and metalingual knowledge. Seventy-six young adult Chinese learners of English as a foreign language completed an untimed rule verbalization task that involved 49 uses of 6 English target structures: the definite article, the indefinite article, the zero article, the simple present, the simple past, and the present perfect. The rule verbalizations were rated for acceptability, and all the metalingual terms used in the verbalizations were identified and coded for correct usage. Quantitative and qualitative analyses reveal that 1) the participants amassed much explicit knowledge of the target structures; 2) their explicit knowledge was mostly consistent with typical pedagogical rules; 3) they had a productive knowledge of a large number of metalingual terms; and 4) there was a positive relationship between metalinguistic knowledge and facility with metalanguage.

The acquisition of English dative alternation by Turkish adult learners of English

İkinci Dil Edinimi (İDE) araştırmaları kapsamında, aradil gelişimi önemli birunsur haline gelmiştir. Bu hususta, aradil gelişimine bağlı diğer etmenler olanaradil üzerinde anadil faktörü ve diller arası dilbilimsel farklılıklar ilgi alanınıgenişletmiştir. Bu çalışma İngilizceyi ikinci dil olarak öğrenen Türk yetişkinlerinaradil gelişimlerini ve sergiledikleri aradil özelliklerini İDE teorilerini dikkatealarak araştırmaktadır. Çalışmanın ana amacı Türk öğrenenlerin aradil gelişiminiöğrenenlerin dil edinimlerindeki benzerlik ve farklılıklar açısından incelemek veanadil olan Türkçe’nin öğrenenlerin aradilleri üzerindeki etkisini bir dil öğrenmestratejisi olarak değerlendirmektir. Bu amaçla İngilizcedeki dolaylı nesne yapıları,testler ve derlem verileriyle elde edilen çeşitli öğrenen verisi yoluyla incelenmiştir.Araştırma bulgularına göre, dolaylı nesne yapılarının kullanımlarında farklıİngilizce seviyelerindeki öğrenenler arasında istatistiki açıdan anlamlı bir farklılıkyoktur. Öte yandan, aradil özellikleri olarak ve anadil aktarımı adına bazı belliyapılarda aşırı genelleme ve yetersiz genelleştirme örneklerine rastlanmıştır

Perceptions of settlement well-being, language proficiency, and employment: An investigation of immigrant adult language learners in Australia

Second language (L2) learning and settlement in a new country are inextricably intertwined. This relationship varies across individuals who go through differing experiences across times, contexts and circumstances. One of the indicators of this relationship is the progress/success or lack thereof in L2 learning and how it impacts on one's perception of settlement. This study explores the settlement experiences of 46 adult immigrant learners of English from three first language (L1) backgrounds: Mandarin, Arabic, and Vietnamese. All were undertaking English language study in the Adult Migrant English Program (AMEP) at the time of investigation. Data were collected at two stages over a 1-year period and consisted of audio-recordings, transcripts, and field notes of semi-structured interviews. There was a significant positive relationship between proficiency gains and change in perception of well-being, indicating that the greater the extent of progress in proficiency, the more likely the perception of well-being increases. Findings also suggest that learners’ employment status had no effect on their perceptions of either settlement satisfaction or progress in L2. Qualitative analysis of data revealed that immigrants’ perception of their own language skills and settlement well-being impacted on their perception and process of L2 learning. While employment per se was not necessarily conducive to settlement well-being, the attainment of a job played a role in settlement and the L2 learning process in two ways: (1) by helping identify the requirements of L2 skills for the particular job, and (2) by facilitating their plans to attain a better job.

Predicting lexical proficiency in language learner texts using computational indices

The authors present a model of lexical proficiency based on lexical indices related to vocabulary size, depth of lexical knowledge, and accessibility to core lexical items. The lexical indices used in this study come from the computational tool Coh-Metrix and include word length scores, lexical diversity values, word frequency counts, hypernymy values, polysemy values, semantic co-referentiality, word meaningfulness, word concreteness, word imagability, and word familiarity. Human raters evaluated a corpus of 240 written texts using a standardized rubric of lexical proficiency. To ensure a variety of text levels, the corpus comprised 60 texts each from beginning, intermediate, and advanced second language (L2) adult English learners. The L2 texts were collected longitudinally from 10 English learners. In addition, 60 texts from native English speakers were collected. The holistic scores from the trained human raters were then correlated to a variety of lexical indices. The researchers found that lexical diversity, word hypernymy values and content word frequency explain 44% of the variance of the human evaluations of lexical proficiency in the examined writing samples. The findings represent an important step in the development of a model of lexical proficiency that incorporates both vocabulary size and depth of lexical knowledge features.

Literacy Instructors’ Perception on the Use of English as the Lingua Franca in Nigeria

The study investigated literacy instructors’ perception on the use of English as the lingual franca in Nigeria. Using a descriptive survey design, 126 literacy instructors (43 males and 83 females) randomly drawn from 20 adult literacy centers in Ibadan metropolis, Oyo state constituted the sample. Instructors’ English Language Perception Scale (IELPS) with r=0.84 was used to collect the relevant data needed to provide answers to the two research questions raised for the study. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics of frequency counts, percentages and weighted mean scores. The results reveled that literacy instructors have a favourable (positive) perception on the use of English as the lingual Franca in Nigeria. Some implications for adult English learning were discussed.

Classroom Interaction and Language Output

This study investigates the effects of classroom interactions between a) students and students and b) students and teachers on the learning of English passivization by L1 Chinese adult learners of English as a foreign language during the language input and output treatments. In phase 1, both groups were asked to read and underline the input material. After the materials were collected, the participants were required to produce the first reconstruction. After having been exposed to the same input material again, the participants produced the reconstruction the second time. In phase 2, participants wrote a short passage on a given topic and were presented a sample of the writing provided by the participating teacher. The results of this study suggest that classroom interaction and the language output may trigger learners to notice the target form and have a positive effect on improving the learning of a foreign language.

Developing a Service-Learning Curriculum for Linguistics

Service-learning integrates community service into a credit-earning course to enrich the learning experience and pair practice with theory in some content area. Linguistics courses offer tremendous potential for service-learning because there are a variety of ways in which language-related theory can be put into practice. This paper outlines the development of a service-learning curriculum for linguistics courses. While examples come from a project where students tutored adult second language learners of English, the activities in this paper extend well to other linguistics courses. Reflection is essential to service-learning, so necessary background and examples of it as a structured learning tool appear here. A second assessment tool, an anonymous online survey taken before and after tutoring, was used to explore any impact on language and diversity attitudes. More generally, service-learning has the potential to positively affect career development, to generate a sense of civic engagement, to facilitate greater understanding of other cultures and races and to make a difference in local communities.

Prosody in English Stop Representation by Korean Adult Learners of English

This study examines the patterns of prosodically induced variation in the English stop contrast produced by Korean learners of English. The acoustic...

Processing English Compounds in the First and Second Language: The Influence of the Middle Morpheme

Native English speakers tend to exclude regular plural inflection when producing English noun‐noun compounds (e.g., rat‐eater not rats‐eater) while allowing irregular plural inflection within compounds (e.g., mice‐eater) (Clahsen, 1995; Gordon, 1985; Hayes, Smith & Murphy, 2005; Lardiere, 1995; Murphy, 2000). Exposure to the input alone has been considered insufficient to explain this dissociation between regular and irregular plurals in compounds because naturally occurring compounds in English rarely have plurals of any type included within them (e.g., Gordon, 1985). However, the constraint on the production of plural inflection in English compounds could be derived from the patterns in which regular plural and possessive morphemes occur in the input. To explore this idea, native adult English speakers and adult Chinese learners of English were asked to process a series of compounds containing different medial morphemes and phonemes. Comparisons were made across compounds with regular and irregular plurals and possessive [‐s]. Native speakers (NS) of English processed compounds with medial possessive morphology faster than compounds with medial regular plural morphology. The second language learners did not show the same pattern as the NSs, which could be due to the fact that they had considerably less exposure to the relevant input patterns relative to the NSs. Regular plurals may be excluded before a rightmost noun in English because the pattern “Noun–[‐s] morpheme–Noun” is more frequently used for marking possession in English. Irregular plurals do not end in the [‐s] morpheme and therefore do not “compete” with the possessive marker and, consequently, may be optionally included in compounds. It is possible, therefore, that the input English learners receive could indeed be sufficient to constrain this aspect of English compound production.

Effects of age and experience on the production of English word-final stops by Korean speakers

This study examined the effect of second language (L2) age of acquisition and amount of experience on the production of word-final stop consonant voicing by adult native Korean learners of English. Thirty learners, who differed in amount of L2 experience and age of L2 exposure, and 10 native English speakers produced 8 English monosyllabic words ending in voiced and voiceless stops. These productions were presented to 10 English listeners for perceptual judgment and subjected to acoustic analyses to determine how well learners produced vowel duration and closure (stop gap) duration, two cues to stop consonant voicing. Results revealed that even learners with 10 years of L2 experience did not always produce stop consonant voicing accurately, that learners' age of acquisition influenced their production of both cues, that vowel duration was easier to learn than closure duration, and that English listeners used both these cues in their judgments of production accuracy.

An analysis of written errors of Turkish adult learners of English

This study examines errors in a corpus of 120 essays produced by 86 adult Turkish learners, who were beginners in their language proficiency in Çukurova University. The corpus was examined to identify and classify written errors in terms of the possible sources of errors. Errors were classified in accordance with two major categories: interlingual errors and intralingual errors, and some sub-categories were identified. It has been found that most written errors students produce result from the interlingual errors indicating interference of the first language. Some suggestions have been made in the treatment of errors.

ORIENTING TO “BEING ORDINARY”: THE (RE)CONSTRUCTION OF HEGEMONIC IDEOLOGIES IN INTERACTIONS AMONG ADULT IMMIGRANT LEARNERS OF ENGLISH

This article investigates the construction and maintenance of ideologies regarding the legitimacy of English as the dominant language in the United States in interactions involving adult immigrant learners of English. As both the researcher and these students' English as second language (ESL) instructor, I am a participant in the ESL classroom and interview conversations that are analyzed in this study. In my analysis, I consider how these adult ESL students and I take up positions and are positioned in ways that affiliate us with particular language identities, such as “Chinese speaker,” “non-native speaker of English,” or “English speaker,” among others. I argue that our subject positioning according to language affiliation provides one of the means by which normative beliefs about English in the United States are reconstituted.

TASK COMPLEXITY, FOCUS ON FORM, AND SECOND LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

Tasks have received increased attention in SLA research for the past decade, as has the role of focus on form. However, few empirical studies have investigated the relationship among tasks, focus-on-form techniques, and second language (L2) learning outcomes. To help address this gap, the present study examined how the task variable +/− contextual support combined with the focus-on-form technique known as recasting affects L2 morphosyntactic development. The participants were 90 adult learners of English as a foreign language, randomly assigned to one of five groups: four comparison groups and a control group. The comparison groups differed as to (a) whether they received recasts while describing photos and (b) whether they could see the photos while describing them. The control group only participated in the testing sessions. A pretest-posttest-delayed posttest design was employed to detect any improvement in participants’ ability to use the linguistic target, which was the past progressive form. Results from multifaceted Rasch measurement yielded two main findings. First, learners who received recasts but did not view photos outperformed learners who received recasts while viewing photos. Second, the group that viewed photos but did not receive recasts achieved greater L2 gains than the group who neither viewed photos nor received recasts.

The Acquisition of Tense–Aspect: Converging Evidence From Corpora and Telicity Ratings

The aspect hypothesis (Andersen & Shirai, 1994) proposes that language learners are initially influenced by the inherent semantic aspect in the acquisition of tense and aspect (TA) morphology. Perfective past emerges earlier with accomplishments and achievements and progressive with activities. Although this hypothesis has been extensively studied, there have been no analyses of the frequency, form, and function of relevant types and tokens in the input. This article reports the results of 2 corpus‐based studies investigating how various features of the input—frequency distributions, reliabilities of form–function mapping, and prototypicality of lexical aspect—affect TA morphology. Study I determined the relative frequency profiles of exemplars of English TA and employed various statistics to determine the associations between particular verb–aspect combinations. Study II expanded the aspect hypothesis, examining whether native speakers judge the most frequent forms in isolation to be more prototypical in lexical aspect. Analyses were then matched against acquisition data for different TA patterns by adult learners of English (Bardovi‐Harlig, 2000) to determine whether the verbs' acquisition order is determined by their frequency, form, and function in the input. Rather than testifying to the effect of 1 factor alone, the results suggest that frequency, distinctiveness, and prototypicality jointly drive acquisition.

Aptitude, phonological memory, and second language proficiency in nonnovice adult learners

ABSTRACTThis study explores the relationship between aptitude, phonological memory (PM), and second language (L2) proficiency in nonnovice adult learners of English as an L2. Native speakers of French (N= 77) enrolled in a university Teaching English as a Second Language program were the participants in the study. Exploratory factor analysis revealed three main factors corresponding to the variables examined: L2 proficiency, aptitude, and PM. Multiple regression analyses revealed aptitude subtests and PM together predicted 29% of the variance in L2 proficiency. Additional regression analyses carried out on lower and higher proficiency subgroups, created by a median split on proficiency scores, revealed that none of the variables predicted L2 proficiency in the higher proficiency subgroup. PM remained as a significant predictor for the lower proficiency subgroup, extending the pattern of results found elsewhere in younger populations to adult nonnovice L2 learners.

Effects of Synonym Generation on Incidental and Intentional L2 Vocabulary Learning During Reading

This study examined effects of synonym generation on second language (L2) vocabulary learning during reading in both incidental and intentional vocabulary learning contexts. Spanish‐speaking adult learners of L2 English (N = 114) at low‐ and high‐intermediate proficiency levels read an English passage containing 10 target words translated in the text. Participants were assigned to one of four conditions: (a) Read for meaning only (incidental). (b) Read for meaning and try to learn the translated words (intentional). (c) Read for meaning and generate Spanish synonyms for the translated words (incidental + semantic). (d) Read for meaning, try to learn the 10 translated words, and generate Spanish synonyms for the translated words (intentional + semantic). Posttest measures were English‐to‐Spanish and Spanish‐to‐English recall of target words. Target word recall was higher when explicit instructions to learn new words were provided and when synonym generation was not required. Negative effects of synonym generation emerged in both the incidental and intentional learning conditions.

Looking for Evidence of Language Learning in Practices for Repair: A Case Study of Self‐Initiated Self‐Repair by an Adult Learner of English

This paper uses methods from conversation analysis to investigate a well‐documented practice from mundane conversation (self‐initiated self‐repair) as it is accomplished during the interactions of one adult learner of English. The interactions took place during her classroom talk‐in‐interaction over the course of 18 months. The research describes the placement of repair initiations, the production practices used for initiation and repair, the activity contexts within which the repairs took place, and how the production of repair might give us a clue to emerging syntactic organization of language learners. By focusing on participant‐relevant language practices like self‐initiated self‐repair this research will add to socio‐cultural understandings of language learning and addresses the call for more longitudinal research in the area.

Practices for dispreferred responses using no by a learner of English

Responding in a manner that does not align with an action or affiliate with a stance implicated in just prior talk is potentially sensitive work. Conversation Analysis (CA) has shown that participants orient to the sensitive nature of sequences of talk used to project responses that do not align, or, are dispreferred (Pomerantz 1984) in some way. This paper examines such responses, especially with the use of no tokens. The talk comes from the interactions of one adult learner of English in a language learning classroom over the course of five ten-week terms. The findings show that the participant's use of no (for other-correction, third-position repair, and multiple sayings) is oriented to by peers as appropriate for the classroom community of practice. Learning, it is suggested, may be seen in the learner's orientation to the preference for affiliation when doing negative responses.

The challenge of developing and maintaining curriculum innovation at higher education

This paper describes a curriculum renewal project developed for adult learners of English that resulted in a more dynamic and effective program at a Turkish university. A multi-dimensional needs analysis was initiated to investigate the current situation across the three English-medium departments of the university as regards students’ English language requirements and their academic needs, and the language needs of the students receiving an English for Academic Purposes curriculum. Survey findings brought about the need to introduce five major innovative changes into the current curriculum. These curricular innovations are followed by the monitoring and evaluation of the new curriculum.

Practices for Social Interaction in the Language-Learning Classroom: Disengagements from Dyadic Task Interaction

Using conversation analysis and situated learning theory, in this paper we analyze the peer dyadic interactions of one adult learner of English in class periods 16 months apart. The analyses in the paper present microgenetic and longitudinal perspectives on the learner's increasing participation in his classroom communities of practice. The focus of the analyses is on the language practices for a social action that is not taught explicitly by the instructors—disengaging from teacher-assigned dyadic task interactions. The tasks from which the learner disengages are serial dyadic interaction tasks. In these tasks, a learner engages with a number of different classmates doing the same task consecutively. The serial dyadic interaction task design is shown to offer students ongoing opportunities to develop interactional routines for social actions and language practices needed to accomplish habitual actions such as opening and disengaging from their dyadic task interactions.