Child L2 Research Articles

The Effects of Multiple‐Exposure Textual Enhancement on Child L2 Learners’ Development in Derivational Morphology: A Multi‐Site Study

AbstractMuch research exists on the role of textual enhancement in instructed second language (L2) development, yet little is known about how its effectiveness is influenced by multiple exposures, whether it can facilitate the acquisition of L2 derivational morphology, and how it may affect child language learning. To fill these gaps, this study employed a six‐week multiple‐exposure design to investigate the extent which to textual enhancement can benefit children’s knowledge of L2 derivational morphemes. The study employed a pretest‐posttest design, with six treatment sessions. Participants were 91 L2 learners of English in two primary school EFL contexts (Romania, Sweden). In each context, participants were randomly assigned to two groups: the +highlight group received textually enhanced texts, whereas the –highlight group read unenhanced texts during the treatment. The children read the texts through a digital reader application during their English lessons. The target constructions were the –ion and –ment morphemes. The pretest and posttest included a non‐word derivational suffix choice and a nonword derivational suffix decomposition task. Results of linear mixed effects models found a small advantage of textual enhancement for the acquisition of the –ion morpheme by Swedish learners on the suffix choice task, but Romanian learners showed no benefits from highlighting.

The Effects of Task Repetition on Child EFL Learners’ Oral Performance

While the role of task repetition has received much attention in task-based research, few studies have examined how exact task repetition affects the performance of child second language learners. Also, little is known about the impact of exact task repetition on trade-off effects between linguistic performance areas among child learners. To help fill this gap, we investigated the impact of task repetition on 40 Chinese EFL learners’ oral production. The children repeated the same story-telling task three times, and transcripts of their performance were coded for linguistic complexity, accuracy, and fluency. Complexity was expressed in terms of overall complexity and subordination and phrasal complexity. We assessed accuracy with weighted clause ratios and proportion of errors. Fluency was captured by repair and breakdown fluency measures. Wilcoxon signed rank tests revealed positive effects for task repetition on fluency and accuracy. Trade-off effects observed during participants’ first performance had decreased by their third retelling. These results support Skehan’s (1998) Limited Capacity model and suggest that task repetition is a useful pedagogical tool in instructed child L2 contexts.

Phrasal Learning Is a Horse Apiece: No Recognition Memory Advantages for Idioms in L1 and L2 Adult Learners

Native (L1) and to some extent non-native (L2) speakers have shown processing advantages for idioms compared to novel literal phrases, and there is limited evidence that this advantage also extends to memory in L1 children. This study investigated whether these advantages generalize to recognition memory in adults. It employed a learning paradigm to test whether there is a recognition memory advantage for idioms compared to literal phrases in adult L1 and L2 learners considering both form and meaning recognition. Additionally, we asked whether the presence of unfamiliar vocabulary interferes with phrasal learning by looking at recall of such unfamiliar words. When encountering new idioms, L2 learners often must cope with both figurative meaning and unfamiliar vocabulary. While single word meaning need not interfere with idiomatic meaning, it is a building block for the meaning of literal phrases. In Experiment 1, L2 learners showed equal recall for the form and meaning of literal and idiomatic phrases in which either all words were highly familiar, or one word was unfamiliar. However, unfamiliar words decreased overall recognition and were also remembered significantly better in literal compared to idiomatic phrases. In Experiment 2, L1 speakers also showed no recall differences between phrase types, but they displayed a trending increase in recognition in the presence of unfamiliar words. We conclude that there is no inherent recognition memory advantage for idioms based on figurativeness alone, and word- and phrasal meaning interact differently in learner groups.

Micro-variation in subject realization and interpretation: an introduction

In this introduction to the Special Collection of the same title, we start out by discussing some key issues addressed by recent research on micro-variation in subject realization and interpretation in anaphoric contexts (Section 1). This includes the status of some subject anaphoric devices in null vs. non-null subject languages, the possibility of micro-variation among null subject languages, and the way in which L2 speakers, elderly speakers and children deal with the task at stake and the factors that may influence this process. Then, we briefly summarize the seven contributions to this collection (Section 2) and relate the findings of each contribution to one another as well as to previous research (Section 3). As a whole, the studies in this collection not only shed light on many of the above mentioned issues, but they also raise novel research questions that open new perspectives of investigation into the choice and interpretation of subject referring expressions.

Moroccan immigrants learning Spanish writing (compared with L1 children)

In this article we present a comparative and qualitative study of the phenomena observed in the development of writing by L2 adults of Moroccan origin who are becoming literate in Spanish. Writing samples were gathered in Granada, Spain, and analyzed using a theoretical framework based on the classification of stages of Spanish L1 children’s development of writing as presented by Ferreiro and Teberosky (1979). The results suggest that L2 adults go through the same stages in learning to write as L1 children although some differences are observed, mainly with regards to the absence of the pre-phonic stages and the syllabic sub-stage in the case of the adults who are also influenced by other languages and writing systems. In order to obtain more representative results, future studies should gather samples of other immigrant communities.

The role of age and timing in bilingual assessment: non-word repetition, subject-verb agreement and case marking in L1 and eL2 children with and without SLI

ABSTRACT Diagnostics in bilingual children is challenging, due to an overlap of production patterns in typically developing (TD) bilingual children and monolingual children with specific language impairment (SLI). To screen bilingual children effectively, the Language Impairment Testing in Multilingual Settings (LITMUS) tools were developed in an international project. The present study tests three of these tools for their suitability and diagnostic accuracy for early second language learners (eL2) of German, aged six to eight years. The study focuses on the timing in first language (L1) TD acquisition, investigating early and late acquisition phenomena of the morphosyntactic domain (subject-verb agreement [SVA], and case marking), combined with a non-word repetition (NWR) task targeting phonological complexity. The study aims at evaluating these three LITMUS-tools regarding their diagnostic accuracy, compared to a standardised assessment tool (LiSe-DaZ). To this end, forty-two children were tested using the LITMUS-tools, namely, contrastive case marking (CCM), supplemented by an elicitation task for the prepositional case, SVA and NWR. Four groups of children participated: eL2 children with SLI (mean age 7;6, mean age of onset 3;1), eL2 children with TD (mean age 7;10, mean age of onset 2;11), L1 TD children (mean age 7;3) and L1 SLI children (mean age 7;2). Results show NWR and SVA as suitable markers and the LITMUS-tools as suitable screenings. Conversely, CCM does not disentangle SLI from TD in the investigated bilingual population by this age.

Patterns and predictors of reading comprehension growth in first and second language readers

BackgroundThe present study examined patterns and predictors of reading comprehension growth in first language (L1) and second language (L2) readers in the upper grades of primary school. Previous research suggests that L1 and L2 readers differ in their growth trajectories and that differences in language proficiency play a role in this. However, how predictors at different levels of processing influence growth has not been investigated. In particular, the role of unification skills such as syntactic integration and the ability to form a situation model of a text is under‐investigated.MethodIn a longitudinal study, 63 L1 Dutch and 109 L2 Dutch readers were followed from fourth to sixth grade (mean ages 10 to 13 years). L2 children had a variety of language backgrounds. In Grades 4–6, reading comprehension was assessed. In Grade 4, participants were also assessed on cognitive ability (nonverbal reasoning and working memory), decoding, vocabulary, and unification skills (syntax and situation model building ability). Patterns and predictors of growth were investigated by means of mixed‐effects modelling.ResultsReading comprehension growth was predicted by vocabulary and decoding, such that participants with lower decoding or vocabulary scores made more reading comprehension gains. L1 and L2 readers with high vocabulary scores did not differ in their reading comprehension growth. L2 readers with low vocabulary made less reading comprehension gains than L1 readers with low vocabulary. Unification skills predicted initial reading comprehension but not growth.ConclusionsFindings suggest that linguistic skills above the word level predict initial reading comprehension but not growth. Children with lower initial literacy skills caught up on reading comprehension, but this was less true for L2 children. L2 children with high vocabulary, however, did not differ from their L1 peers.

Orthographic learning through self-teaching among learners of English as a second language

Children can teach themselves new words via independent text reading. Previous studies on self-teaching heavily focused on learning to read in a first language (L1). Limited work was devoted to learning a second language (L2). We investigated the roles of exposure time of target pseudowords (four vs. six), availability of context (cohesive story vs. scrambled text), and phonological structure of target pseudowords (single consonant vs. consonant cluster) in self-teaching among English L2 learners. Forty-fifth-grade Chinese L1 children who are learning English L2 in Mainland China participated in the study. Children were asked to read through eight texts embedded with one regularly spelled pseudoword in each, consisting of four cohesive stories and four scrambled texts. The target pseudowords appeared four or six times in each half of the texts. Twenty-two children learned pseudowords with single initial consonants, and the other eighteen learned pseudowords with initial consonant clusters. An orthographic decision and then a spelling task were administered both immediately after text reading and after 3 days to assess orthographic learning. Results show that, in learning to spell, English L2 children were able to acquire novel English words with four exposures, and two more exposures and context benefited their performance. Targets with initial consonant clusters posed a challenge. In visual word recognition, context facilitated the learning of targets with initial consonant clusters. Our findings suggest that English L2 learners are able to self-teach; exposure time, context, and phonological structure all play important roles in orthographic learning in L2.

Different Cognitive Correlates of Early Learning of Spelling of Different Target Types in Korean Hangul Among First Language Children and Adult Foreign Language Learners

This study examined whether different cognitive correlates are associated with spelling of different target types, such as phonologically consistent and inconsistent syllables, of Korean Hangul among 94 five-year-old first language (L1) Korean children and 41 foreign language (FL) learners who are Hong Kong Chinese college students. Korean children performed tasks of spelling, along with measures of syllable and phoneme coda awareness, phonological and orthographic working memory, morphological awareness, vocabulary, and orthographic knowledge. Among Korean 5-year-old children, coda awareness and orthographic working memory explained unique variance in spelling of phonologically consistent syllables, whereas syllable and coda awareness, orthographic working memory, orthographic knowledge, and vocabulary all explained unique variance in spelling of inconsistent syllables. When Chinese college students were tested on spelling of Korean Hangul as a foreign language, along with a battery of tasks in Korean similar to those administered to the L1 children, only orthographic working memory significantly explained spelling of consistent syllables, whereas only vocabulary knowledge explained spelling of inconsistent syllables. In both groups, spelling accuracy was lower in phonologically inconsistent than in consistent Hangul syllables. These findings suggest that different cognitive demands are involved in early spelling of phonologically consistent and inconsistent syllables in Korean Hangul among L1 and FL learners.

Teaching Turkish‐Dutch kindergartners Dutch vocabulary with a social robot: Does the robot's use of Turkish translations benefit children's Dutch vocabulary learning?

AbstractProviding first language (L1) translations in L2 vocabulary interventions may be beneficial for L2 vocabulary learning. However, in linguistically diverse L2 classrooms, teachers cannot provide L1 translations to all children. Social robots do offer such opportunities, as they can be programmed to speak any combination of languages. This study investigates whether providing L1 translations in a robot‐assisted L2 vocabulary training facilitates children's learning. Participants were Turkish‐Dutch kindergartners (n = 67) who were taught six Dutch (L2) words for which they knew the L1 (Turkish), but not the L2 Dutch form. Half of these words were taught by a Turkish‐Dutch bilingual robot, alongside their Turkish translations; the other half by a monolingual Dutch robot. Children also completed Dutch and Turkish receptive vocabulary tests. Results of generalized linear regression models indicated better performance in the Dutch‐only condition than in the Turkish‐Dutch condition. Children with well‐developed Turkish and Dutch vocabulary knowledge outperformed children with less well‐developed vocabulary knowledge. The majority of children preferred working with the bilingual robot, but children's preference did not affect word learning. Thus, contrary to our prediction, we found no evidence for a facilitating effect of providing L1 translations through a robot on bilingual children's L2 word learning.

Mayers-Scotten’s 4-M Model: A Qusai-Experimental Study of Pashto-English Morphological Ability

Bilingualism has been a myth for linguists and language policy and planning professionals for decades. Current study observes morphological ability and bilingual profile of L1 and L2 of Pashto mother-tongue children. Bilingual profile of the participants measured through bilingual language profile (BLP) tool. Both L1 and L2 children were tested before and after intervention. Morphological ability was measured through 4 M model. After 4 weeks of intervention, experimental child was able to read and write complex words with bridge morphemes. In contrast, controlled sample was not exposed to the intervention. The participants performed assigned language tasks and their performance-expressions were analyzed. Study confirms that early and late bridge morphemes are acquired and children have intelligibility of the language despite the fact that BLP shows low profile of the mother tongue. Significant effects of mother tongue were recorded in the participants’ performance. Effects of explicit morphological instruction was focused on identifying Pashto orthography and applying morphological ability on word formations. Findings reveal bilingual profile and patterns of morphological ability after didactic practice of intervention. Intervention contributed in developing Pashto orthography that was crucial for reading and writing proficiency. Direct impact on text-based inference and reading comprehension was another milestone of this qusai-experimental research. This model can be used for longitudinal studies.

Testing a Research-Based Digital Learning Tool

This study examines the English language learning outcomes of young Chinese L1 children when using a digital self-guided learning tool, ABCmouse English, created by Age of Learning, Inc. and designed based on principles of second language research. In a pretest, posttest study design, experiment group participants used the digital learning tool to engage in English language learning activities for 15–20 minutes daily for six months while a control group used a comparable digital tool to do online math activities for an equivalent amount of time. Results showed that experiment group learners demonstrated significantly greater English language gains than control group peers. Data from parent surveys support these results, shedding light on children’s overall engagement in the activities, and providing information about their motivation and confidence levels in English. Findings show that the research-based digital language learning activities in ABCmouse English were effective at promoting learning in this population, supporting the idea that teachers and parents can use tools like this to help younger learners develop English language skills in English as a Foreign Language contexts like China.

Children's requestive behavior in L2 Greek: The core request

In interlanguage pragmatics, the request development of young learners has been rather underresearched, often without being compared with baseline (L1) data. The present study explores the request behavior of two intermediate proficiency groups of primary school children (8- and 11-year-olds, respectively) who learn Greek in an immersion setting. A Cartoon Oral Production Task was designed to elicit requests of differentiated degree of imposition which were addressed to familiars and strangers, adults or peers. The base constructions which emerged from the data analysis were compared to those deployed by age-matched L1 Greek-speaking children. The L2 participants of the study exhibited a more extended requestive repertoire and a more sophisticated sociopragmatic sensitivity than reported in previous research. Convergences and divergences from their L1 peers’ behavior across communicative situations point to a developmental phase in their interlanguage which could be best pictured as midways along the path defined by the pragmalinguistics-sociopragmatics continuum. Findings of the study can more generally contribute to descriptive and methodological issues in child L2 pragmatic development research.

The contribution of morphological awareness to vocabulary among L1 and L2 French-speaking 4th-graders

The present study examines the concurrent relationship between morphological awareness and vocabulary breadth and depth after accounting for the effect of other potential contributors. A sample of French-speaking fourth-grade children who spoke either French at home (L1) (n = 55) or another language (L2) (n = 85) completed a number of tests assessing vocabulary breadth, vocabulary depth, morphological awareness, phonological awareness, word reading fluency, word spelling, and nonverbal intelligence. The results showed that morphological awareness was strongly correlated with vocabulary breadth and depth for L1 and L2 participants. Moreover, hierarchical regression analyses indicated that after controlling for one dimension of vocabulary, phonological awareness, word reading fluency, word spelling, age and nonverbal intelligence, morphological awareness explained significant variance in the outcomes on the other dimension of vocabulary for L2 participants. However, the magnitude of the contribution of morphological awareness remained significant in the prediction of vocabulary depth for L1 children only. This paper highlights the implications for research and educational practice of our findings.

Vocabulary Growth: Dual Language Learners at Risk for Language Impairment.

Purpose This research project examined the vocabulary growth patterns of typically developing (TD) Cantonese-English dual language learners (DLLs) and their peers who are at risk for language impairment. Method Two studies were done. Study 1 examined the concurrent validity of a pilot vocabulary screening measure, the Kai Ming Vocabulary Test, that was designed for Cantonese-English preschool DLLs. Participants were 53 preschool children who learned Cantonese as their first language (L1) and English as a second language (L2). Their scores on the Kai Ming Vocabulary Test were examined in relation to their language sample measures, including number of different words and mean length of utterance, in L1 and in L2. Study 2 examined the vocabulary growth patterns of 24 TD Cantonese-English DLL preschoolers and 24 DLLs who are at risk for language impairment (At-Risk group). Each child was tested 3 times during an academic year. Results Results of Study 1 showed that children's vocabulary scores (n = 53) were significantly correlated with their language sample measures in each language. In Study 2, hierarchical linear models were used to compare the TD and At-Risk groups. Results showed that children in the At-Risk group had lower L1 receptive vocabulary scores and children in the TD group had relatively higher L2 expressive vocabulary gains. Conclusions Children who are at risk are likely to continue to have lower vocabulary knowledge compared to their TD peers. The growth trajectories of DLLs provide valuable information for early identification and intervention.

Adaptation to an Unfamiliar Accent by Child L2 Listeners.

The study examines school-aged L2 listeners' adaptation to an unfamiliar L2 accent and learner variables predicting such adaptation. Fourth-grade Mandarin L1 learners of English as a foreign language (N = 117) listened to a story twice in one of three accent conditions. In the single-talker condition, the story was produced by an Indian English (IE) speaker. In the multi-talker condition, the story was produced by two IE speakers. In the control condition, the story was produced by a Mandarin-accented speaker. Children's (re)interpretation of IE words/nonwords was assessed by referent selection tests administered before and after the first and the second exposures to the story. Repeated exposure to IE-accented speech forms influenced performance: the participants demonstrated better recognition of IE words across the referent selection tests but worse (re)interpretation of IE nonwords sounding similar to existing lexical items. Exposure to an IE-accented story yielded an additional advantage in word recognition, but the advantage was limited to words heard in the story. Furthermore, children's English phonological awareness, phonological memory, and vocabulary predicted their reinterpretation performance of the accented forms. These results suggest that school-aged L2 listeners with better phono-lexical representations develop better capacity in adapting to an unfamiliar accent of a foreign language by loosening their acceptability criteria for word recognition but the adaptation does not necessarily entail perceptual tuning to the specific phonological categories of the accent.

Learnability in the acquisition of the English tough construction by L1-Korean adult and child L2 learners

In the English tough construction (TC), knowledge of tough movement is necessary for target performance (the object-interpretation only; e.g. Johni is easy to see ei). The acquisition of the English TC raises a learnability problem for first-language (L1) Korean learners of English as a second language (L2): (1) Korean has no tough movement; (2) no input dictates that the ‘subject interpretation’ is disallowed in the English TC; and (3) no classroom instruction covers the English TC. According to the Fundamental Difference Hypothesis, L2 children – but not L2 adults – can overcome this learnability problem. L1-Korean adult ( n = 49) and child ( n = 30) L2 learners’ (L2ers’) knowledge of the English TC was assessed via a truth-value judgment task manipulating (1) verb transitivity to make the infinitival object gap more vs. less salient and (2) context to avoid vs. strengthen bias toward the (erroneous) subject interpretation. Notably, some high-proficiency adult L2ers showed significantly above-chance performance, despite the error-inducing manipulations, suggesting that adult L2ers can overcome the learnability problem.

Sentence imitations in monolingual and early second language learners and the implications for grammar teaching

Abstract In the present article I investigated whether data obtained from 7-year-old German L1 and German-Turkish eL2 children by means of an elicited imitation task including grammatical and ungrammatical sentences mirrored current findings in acquisition research concerning case marking, adjective inflection, V2 position and finiteness. The results show that L1 children have full mastery of all four phenomena, as they revealed a greater tendency to correct ungrammatical sentences than to introduce errors into grammatical sentences. On the other hand, eL2 children differed from L1 children in terms of how they dealt with the noun-related phenomena, as they did not reveal a clear preference for either changing grammatical items or correcting ungrammatical items. In the discussion, I propose how to minimise the likelihood that participants simply repeat ungrammatical items verbatim in further imitation studies and be thus able to collect more reliable data on their grammatical knowledge. The article ends with a proposal for a primary school exercise on case marking that involves correcting errors on case marking. The suggestion is that ungrammatical sentences can be used in grammar teaching to assess pupils’ linguistic knowledge and also to guide their attention to specific regularities of the language, thus stimulating language reflection.

Syntactical Development on Second Language Writing: A Case of L2 Child Learner on Immersion Experience Abroad

Development of child language is tremendously complex, remarkable and wondrous. In a second language acquisition context, a child can acquire his second language in either acquiring both languages at the same time or learning the second language after mastering the first one. This present research is concerned to describe the syntactical development particularly for second language writing of an eight-year old child who has experienced immersion abroad for one year in L2-speaking country. The participant is an eight-year old child from Jakarta Indonesia who has experienced immersion environment in Australia for one year. The research will be carried out qualitative naturalistic research design. Not less than 38 documents of participant’s paperwork during her school year were then collected, grouped and analysed. From the findings, it is known that morphological processes on L2 such as affixes and verb changes have emerged. Meanwhile, the findings also show the development on morphemic, phrasal and sentential level on acquiring L2. Some morphemes have been acquired such as the suffix, the changing of verb, the -ing form. Moreover, post-noun prepositional phrases are the most emerged phrases. On sentential level, active declarative sentences are the most frequently appeared. However, some errors and inconsistency also occur indicating the development of her second language.

Eight Months Later: A Family Case Study of L2 Acquisition of English Morphology

This is a follow-up of our 2010 family case study (Zhang & Widyastuti, 2010)in which we examined the acquisition of L2 English morphology by three members of an Indonesian family who had been living, working and studying in Australia for 12 months. In this paper, we will present a fresh set of data collected after a further 8 months in order to build a longitudinal picture of their L2 English morphology development. We will focus on the Mother and her 6-year-old Daughter, whose L2 English morphology, in 2010, was found to be at the beginning and post-beginning stages as measured by the ‘emergence criterion’ (Pienemann, 1998). We are interested in the extent of progress they had made since, and whether the L2 English grammatical morphology had been fully established by the end of their 20 months of residence in Australia. Our analysis of their speech data showed that while there was indeed progress, the progress was not comprehensive and the acquisition was incomplete. We discuss the finding from the perspective of immersion, home environment, and affective factors in L2 grammatical development, in particularly, in child L2 learners. The results of the study may inform language professionals and parents of young child L2 learners of the lengthy period required as well as the type of optimal L2 environment for their L2 grammatical development.