Child L2 Research Articles

Vocabulary sophistication in children’s L2 school writing

Abstract This paper tests three hypotheses about written vocabulary in child L2 English. Specifically, as children mature, (1) the mean frequency values of the nouns they use increase; (2) the mean frequencies of other parts-of-speech decrease; (3) the use of academic vocabulary increases only in certain types of writing. Using a corpus of writing by children in Norway, hypothesis 1 was confirmed up to the mid-teenage years. The mean frequency values of nouns then decreased. Analysis showed that the early increase is due to decreased repetition of low-frequency topic words. After age 15, frequencies drop as the main source of vocabulary moves from a region around the 150th most frequent lemma to one around the 550th. Hypotheses 2 and 3 were partially confirmed. Mean frequencies of non-nouns decreased in non-stories after Year 9. Non-stories became more academic across school years. Stories had much lower scores overall but also showed an increase at Year 10.

Training Child Learners on Nonnative Vowel Contrasts With Phonetic Training: The Role of Task and Variability

AbstractSubstantial research suggests that high variability (multitalker) phonetic training helps second language (L2) adults improve differentiation of challenging nonnative speech sounds. Is such training also useful for L2 children? Existing studies have mixed findings and important limitations. We investigate the potential benefits of computerized phonetic training for 50 Dutch 7‐year‐olds and 39 11‐year‐olds trained on English vowel contrasts in a 2‐week study in a classroom setting. Half received multitalker, and half received single‐talker input (i.e., high variability vs. low variability; HV vs. LV), with learning evaluated by a battery of tests. Both groups improved in training; however, 11‐year‐olds improved more. Moreover, 11‐year‐olds showed generalization to novel talkers, and 7‐year‐olds did not, with Bayes factor analyses providing evidence for the null. Generalisation in 11‐year‐olds was no greater following HV than LV input, with evidence for the null on one of two tasks where generalization was found. Results are discussed in terms of the interplay between age, task demands, and talker variability.

German Noun Plurals in Simultaneous Bilingual vs. Successive Bilingual vs. Monolingual Kindergarten Children: The Role of Linguistic and Extralinguistic Variables

(1) Background: The complex phenomenon of German noun plural inflection is investigated in three groups of German-speaking kindergarten children: (a) monolinguals (1L1), (b) simultaneous bilinguals (2L1) also acquiring Croatian, and (c) successive bilinguals (L2) acquiring Turkish as L1. Predictions of the usage-based schema model and of Natural Morphology concerning different linguistic variables are used to explore their impact on plural acquisition in the three groups of children. (2) Methods: A longitudinal study (from mean age 3;1 to 4;8) is conducted using two procedures (a formal plural test and spontaneous recordings in kindergarten), and the data are analyzed using generalized linear (mixed-effects) regression models in R. (3) Results: All children produce more errors in the metalinguistically challenging test compared to spontaneous speech, with L2 children being particularly disadvantaged. Socioeconomic status (henceforth SES) and teachers’ plural type frequency are most relevant for 1L1 children, and kindergarten exposure is more relevant for L2 children, while the linguistic variables are more important for 2L1 children. (4) Conclusions: The main predictions of the schema model and of Natural Morphology are largely confirmed. All of the linguistic variables investigated show significant effects in some analyses, but morphotactic transparency turns out to be the most relevant variable for all three groups of children.

The Effect of Self-Concept and Self-Efficacy on Learning Engagement and Subsequent Reading Performance: The Difference Between L1 and L2 Reading in First-Grade Students

ABSTRACT Reading self-beliefs, comprising self-concept and self-efficacy, play a pivotal role in shaping students’ learning engagement and learning outcomes. However, existing literature on the self-beliefs of school-entry students primarily originates from Western contexts, and the exploration of differences in self-beliefs, engagement in learning, and their impact on reading performance among L1 and L2 learners remains uncharted territory. This dearth of knowledge leaves us questioning whether self-concept and self-efficacy function uniquely in shaping the reading development of L1 and L2 children. Research Findings: By conducting multigroup SEM analysis, this study found no significant differences in self-efficacy or self-concept between L1 and L2 Chinese first-grade students. However, it did reveal distinct patterns in their impact: In L1 students, self-efficacy and self-concept predict learning engagement, with self-concept having a stronger influence on reading performance. Conversely, for L2 students, self-efficacy primarily affects their learning engagement, which indirectly impacts reading performance. Practice or Policy: This study enhances our understanding of different roles of self-beliefs in L1 and L2 learning and offers pedagogical insights for language teaching in countries with both ethnic minority and local populations.

Investigating the effect of nativeness and speaker age on the credibility of spoken sentences

Previous studies found mixed results regarding a bias in credibility ratings for trivia statements made by L2 speakers in comparison to L1 speakers. Perceptual fluency, social attitudes, and pragmatic lenience have been proposed as underlying causes for the bias. The present study examined credibility ratings for L2 speakers and extended the scope of the investigation by adding the factor age of the speaker. In the present study, German native adult listeners were asked to judge the credibility of trivia statements recorded by L2 adults and L1 children in Experiment 1 and statements by L1 adults and L1 children in Experiment 2. In Experiment 1, the ratings showed no difference in credibility between the L2 adult statements and the L1 child statements. In Experiment 2, listeners rated statements from L1 child speakers as more credible than statements from L1 adult speakers, suggesting a positive bias for the credibility of children. The results are discussed in terms of their relevance for previously suggested causes contributing to a credibility bias.

L1 어린이의 탐험 욕구와 L2 성인의 알고자 하는 욕구에 관한 언어 발달 비교 연구

The purpose of this paper is to observe how L2 adult learners get close to L1 children in their language development in terms of attachment, curiosity and mediation. Five high-intermediate English major college students were engaged and instructed to understand the concepts of attachment and mediation. After this, they were provided with seven types of English material, consisting of four different language-focused materials (dialogue, situation-based explanation, deep cultural words, and conventional words) and three different content-based materials (advice, humor, and impression). The participants were supposed to collect preferred language items in each type and write reasons spicking the items. They also reported their preference in order among the seven types of material. They were evaluated on whether their preferred language items would function as mediation or as a goal to learn English. The results showed that the humor type of language was the best to function as mediation, followed by the impression type. The dialogue type was the worst. However, the participants’ reports were the opposite. Most of them chose situationbased explanations as the best. The participants tended to show that content-based material was not appropriate for learning English. Mediation was not considered a key factor in learning a language.

Child L2 Writers: A Room of Their Own. Lázaro‐Ibarrola, A.John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2023.

Child L2 Writers: A Room of Their Own. Lázaro‐Ibarrola, A.John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2023.

Two facets of context sensitivity and reading comprehension in L2 children

Two facets of context sensitivity and reading comprehension in L2 children

Wanna contraction in first language acquisition, child second language acquisition, and adult second language acquisition

Abstract Contraction of want to to wanna is sometimes possible (e.g., Who do you want to/wanna stay with ___ ?), but sometimes impossible (e.g., Who do you want ___ to/*wanna stay?). This contrast is attributable to the grammatical constraint that a wh-trace blocks the contraction of want and to. Most first language (L1) and second language (L2) acquisition studies testing learner knowledge of this constraint have used elicited production tasks and focused on adult participants, with inconsistent results. Using a child-friendly acceptability judgment task, the current study shows that children as young as 3;11 and both child and adult L2 learners have target-like knowledge of the constraint on wanna contraction. This result is in line with the position that L1 acquisition, child L2 acquisition, and adult L2 acquisition are qualitatively similar.

Reseña: Lázaro-Ibarrola, Amparo (2023). Child L2 writers. A room of their own. John Benjamins Publishing.

Las tareas y los procesos de escritura realizados en segundas lenguas ofrecen a los estudiantes oportunidades no solo para mejorar sus habilidades de escritura y comprender contenidos, sino también posibilidades reales de desarrollo y aprendizaje de la segunda lengua. Partiendo de esta premisa, Lázaro-Ibarrola revisa los fundamentos teóricos que avalan estos beneficios de la escritura y analiza los resultados de los estudios que han investigado las tareas de escritura en segundas lenguas entre participantes de la etapa escolar de primaria. Esta monografía además propone nuevas líneas de investigación y ofrece una serie de pautas pedagógicas para implementar las tareas de escritura en las aulas.

The Neurocognitive Underpinnings of Second Language Processing: Knowledge Gains From the Past and Future Outlook

AbstractThe past decades have seen an explosion of research using electrophysiological or neuroimaging techniques for studying the neurocognitive underpinnings of second language (L2) processing. Although this field has a shorter history than does research on language learning more generally, important insights into the neurocognitive basis of L2 processing have driven it to the center stage of language science. In this target article for Language Learning’s 75th Jubilee volume, I illustrate the field's impressive achievements by selectively reviewing electrophysiological and neuroimaging research on L2 processing and bilingual brain organization. I also review changing perspectives in the field (including individual difference and experience‐based perspectives, neural network approaches, neuroplasticity, and L2‐learning related neural changes) and identified challenges, promises, and future directions (revisit native‐speaker benchmark, increase linguistic diversity, enhance ecological validity, intensify research on child L2 learners’ brain, adopt lifelong approach to L2 learning) that can lead to a better understanding of the neural underpinnings of L2 learning and processing.

Raising Bilingual Children in Home Environment of Brunei: A Study on Vocabulary Acquisition

This study aims to contribute to current research on bilingual children's vocabulary studies and the home environment. It explored how home environments affected children's L1 and L2 vocabulary acquisition. The children in this small-scale study (n=40) were exposed to Brunei Malay (L1) alongside English (L2) from a young age, classifying the children as bilingual first-language learners (BFL). This study examines the children’s L1 and L2 language development and it used vocabulary knowledge as a measuring tool for data analysis. It also considers the home environment and parental role as factors contributing to the children’s language progress. As a result, this study found positive correlations between children's L1 and L2 receptive and active vocabulary knowledge. It also found the children’s L1 and L2 interaction at home with family members. Conversely, the findings shown that there was no significant difference between the responses of 5 and 6 year old children in their L1 and L2 comprehension as well as production tests. This study also found that children who performed well in L1 and L2 vocabulary tests come from households that were open to bilingualism. In addition, parents were open to bilingualism for their children with the condition that the children prioritised their L1 more than L2. The main motive for bilingualism for their children was to enhance their communication skills and increase their chances of future employment. Hence, parents' perception of L1 and L2 is crucial because it shapes the language usages that were exposed to the children at home.

Mind the gap: Psycholinguistic and individual factors affecting expressive and receptive vocabulary skills in English-Gaelic bilingual children

AbstractThis study investigated the psycholinguistic and child-related variables that modulate vocabulary development and the so-called receptive–expressive gap in child L2 learners of Gaelic with English as their L1. In total, 50 6- to 8-year-old English-Gaelic bilingual children attending Gaelic-medium immersion education were administered the English and the Gaelic Crosslinguistic Receptive and Expressive Lexical Tasks (CLTs). On the Gaelic CLT, children performed better on nouns than verbs. Accuracy was modulated by item-related variables such as the estimated age when a word is acquired and its morphophonological complexity. The receptive–expressive gap was larger in the minority L2 than in the majority L1 and did not narrow after 1 year of schooling. The gap was smaller for nouns than verbs in English but not in Gaelic. Exposure to English differentially affected the receptive–expressive gap across languages. This study offers new insights into the psycholinguistic and individual factors affecting the receptive–expressive gap in bilingual children in immersion education.

The early language gap between first- and second-language learners: acquisition of Chinese characters among preschoolers.

For culturally and linguistically diverse children, early second language (L2) development is important for school achievement and social inclusion. These children face challenges in acquiring L2, especially in Hong Kong, where the dominant Chinese language contrasts strongly with their home languages. Studies that compared the language abilities of first language (L1) and L2 students in English-speaking contexts have reported young L2 learners' disadvantage in using the dominant language in oral language and comprehension at school entry. The findings raise the question of whether L2 learners who fall behind their L1 peers in language abilities will be further disadvantaged, showing a weaker development gradient. This study used the Chinese Character Acquisition Assessment (CCAA) to compare character acquisition of 491 L2 children aged from 3 to 6 years against that of 240 of their L1 peers from Hong Kong kindergartens. The CCAA is comprised of six subtests and assesses children's abilities to make associations among character written form (orthography), sound, and meaning. Results showed that L2 learners had greater development in meaning and sound associations across class levels, implying that they may first develop oral language related abilities. In addition, results indicate that diverging gaps between L1 and L2 learners' Chinese character acquisition existed across class levels for the associations involving written character form, but not in regard to associations between character meaning and sound. This study highlights the Chinese learning needs of L2 preschoolers and provides understanding of their abilities in mapping among character written forms, sounds, and meanings. The findings suggest the importance of supporting L2 children's oral language at earlier stages of Chinese learning, and the need to provide instructional support to compensate for their relative weakness in literacy at school entry.

Sensitivity to syntactic dependency formation in child second language processing: a study of numeral quantifiers in Korean

AbstractThis study investigates whether child second language (L2) learners can use syntactic information during the processing of sentences involving unbounded dependencies and how their processing patterns compare to those of child monolinguals and adult L2 learners. Through a self-paced reading experiment involving the numeral quantifier (NQ) construction in Korean, we tested participants’ sensitivity to agreement violations between a noun phrase (NP) and an NQ in local and nonlocal conditions. The results showed that a subset of child L2 learners who demonstrated target-like knowledge of NP-NQ agreement in an offline task spent a longer processing time in the NP-NQ mismatch than in the NP-NQ match condition, in both local and nonlocal contexts. These child L2 learners’ processing patterns were comparable to those observed in child monolinguals and adult L2 learners. These findings suggest that child and adult L2 learners rely on the same system of syntactic representations and processing mechanisms that guide first language processing.

Teachers’ perceptions of letter learning among adults: The case of basic literacy education in Swedish for immigrants

This article sets out to examine teacher perceptions of letter learning in literacy programmes for L2-adults with limited earlier schooling, as demonstrated in their teaching. The theoretical frame is taken from New Literacy Studies, with literacy perceived as socially shared and organised. The study draws on occasions during lesson observations where teachers addressed the issue of coding and decoding of letters. Findings suggest that these teachers follow patterns that build on assumptions and traditions with roots in the teaching of L1 children and use the material that they have at hand. The teachers’ prosodic knowledge in relation to letters and spelling was insufficient. We argue that when teachers are not aware of the phonetic and phonological challenges facing adult L2 learners, they may not give students enough support in their development of early literacy skills. Although explicit letter teaching represents only a small part of overall teaching, if teachers miss out on phonetic and phonological knowledge, they may not be able to identify difficulties for students and may even create unnecessary stumbling blocks for them. We conclude that there is a strong need for the development of basic literacy education for L2-adults to include both teacher knowledge and teaching aids.

Do position and lexical knowledge matter in children’s second language speech perception?

This study examines whether child second language (L2) learners’ perception of the voicing contrast in English stops depends on word position and whether lexical knowledge effects can be detected. Thirty-eight 9-year-old Korean-speaking child learners of English with beginning-level proficiency completed an AX discrimination task in English, either with real word pairs (RW; n = 20) or nonsense word pairs (NW; n = 18). Each pair comprised two words with each containing a voiceless stop or a voiced stop. The categories in comparison appeared in word-initial, word-medial, or word-final position. The analysis revealed a significant effect of position in both groups, but in different directions: Whereas the RW group performed best on the word initial contrast, the NW group performed worst on the word initial contrast. This result is in line with the possibility that L2 sounds are mapped onto L1 phonemes in beginning-level child L2 learners. Furthermore, the fact that the RW group showed lower accuracy on the AX task than the NW group provides evidence for lexical knowledge effects on beginning-level child learners’ L2 perception, indicating that immediate lexical retrieval may hinder subsequent activation of phonological representation.

L1 Transfer in the Acquisition of Word Order in the Adjective-Added Korean Classifier Phrases by L1-Chinese and L1-Russian Children

This study explored first language (L1) transfer in child second language (L2) acquisition, testing whether L1-Chinese children learning L2 Korean show an advantage over L1-Russian children in the acquisition of adjective-added Korean classifier phrases. Chinese, like Korean, has classifier phrases with similar word orders, while Russian does not. L1-Chinese (n = 18) and L1-Russian (n = 27) children (age = 11-12 years) with L2 Korean completed an acceptability judgment task (AJT) designed to explore grammaticality in the orderings of Korean classifier phrases. The L1-Chinese children also completed a Chinese-version AJT, a translation equivalent to the Korean AJT. The study resulted in two main findings. First, in the Korean AJT, the L1-Chinese children showed more target-like performance than proficiency-matching L1-Russian children. Second, the L1-Chinese children showed comparable ratings between the Korean AJT and the Chinese AJT. The results suggest that L1 transfer takes place during child L2 acquisition, countering claims of a limited role of L1 transfer in child L2 acquisition.

Scaffolding children’s participation during teacher–child interaction in second language classrooms

ABSTRACT This study investigates the nature of teacher–child interaction and teacher scaffolding in Finnish second language (L2) classrooms. Although previous research on classroom interaction has highlighted the importance of scaffolding in language learning, much less is known about the importance of scaffolding for younger children's L2 learning. Utilising a sociocultural approach, this study aims to fill this gap. The data were collected from seven pre-primary/early primary L2 classrooms, with four teachers and 205 children through video recording (56 h) and observational field notes. The interaction analysis focused on the communicative functions of teacher–child interaction, teacher and student initiations, and teachers’ scaffolding children's participation during whole-class and small-group sessions. The results show how teacher–child interaction during small-group sessions supported the children’s active participation in L2 interaction and learning. The results also suggest how changing from teacher-centred modes of classroom interaction to child-centred and playful interaction is challenging and requires strong teacher professionalism.

<p>Young EFL learners' pausing behavior: exploring pause thresholds in two proficiency levels</p>

The study of pausological behavior in L2 writing has been a matter of interest in recent years (see Lindgren & Sullivan, 2019), leading to a number of empirical studies which have explored pausing behavior from different angles. Among the many elements of pausological behavior, the pause threshold has aroused controversy in recent years (Alves et al., 2008) given its role in helping to discern lower-level and higher-level cognitive processes associated with L2 writing. While the research intent has focused recently on observing how pausological behavior varies according to the pause thresholds in adult L2 writers (Medimorec & Risko, 2017), this element of writing has not been examined in children L2 writers. For that purpose, this study analyzes pausological behavior and transcription fluency based on a picture-based story task by children L2 writers. Results indicate that pauses at word boundaries were more frequent than at sentence or paragraph boundaries. Likewise, the text boundary effect was not fully replicated, contrary to what studies in adult L2 writers have shown (see Wengelin, 2007).