Oral Production Test Research Articles

Effects of task repetition with grammatizing on oral task performance and knowledge development

Abstract This study compared the effects of task repetition only (TR), task repetition with grammatizing (TR+GR), and grammatization with no task repetition (GR) on 94 EFL learners’ oral task performances. Participants’ productions were measured both in terms of complexity, accuracy, and fluency as well as receptive knowledge (measured by an error correction test) and productive knowledge (measured by a sentence-level oral production test) development. Immediately after performing a narrative task, the TR+GR and GR learners were required to restore the target structure, namely the English regular past tense, which had been deleted in a grammatized text. Learners in the TR group received no grammatization, and only the TR+GR and TR groups repeated the same task twice. Results revealed that although both TR conditions led to enhanced receptive knowledge, the TR+GR performed better than the TR in fostering learners’ receptive knowledge and improving accuracy and productive knowledge at a delayed posttest. The GR group improved their receptive knowledge in the immediate posttest, but this improvement tailed off in the delayed posttest. Lastly, the TR+GR group could also improve the complexity and accuracy of their narrative task performances–albeit at the expense of fluency.

Contrastive Study of Tone and Intonation in Koro Ashe and English

This paper undertakes a contrastive study of tone and intonation in Koro Ashe and English; an implication for Koro Ashe L2 learners of English with the hope of helping the study populace to improve in their spoken aspect of English. The sample consisted of 20 randomly selected Koro Ashe ESL learners of English in Karu Local Government, Nasarawa State. The instrument used in collecting data for this investigation is Oral Production Test (OPT), a pronunciation test that assessed the participants’ pronunciations of Koro Ashe words. The theoretical framework used in the paper was Contrastive Analysis (CA). The results showed that Koro Ashe is a tonal language and that tone in Koro Ashe is capable of performing lexical functions as it is demonstrated in words like [ìnȧk] L-L ‘cow’ and [inak] L-H ‘sp tree’, [iwei] L-L ‘toad’ and [iwei] L- H ‘fear’. Tone in Koro Ashe can perform grammatical function, that is, changing singular nouns to the plural as it is seen in words; [inak] (L-L) ‘cow’ and [inak] (H-H) ‘cows’, [inor] ‘wound’ (L-L) and [inor] ‘wounds’ (H-H), [imai] ‘generation’ (L-L) and [imai] ‘generations’ (H-H), [iguk] ‘pocket’ (L-L) and [iguk] (H-H) ‘pockets’, [iʤu] ‘fly’ (L-L) and [iʤu] ‘flies’ (H-H). However in English, intonation (pitch) in English conveys information of a broadly meaningful nature, it can be used to express attitudes, interest, doubt, emphasis, certainty, politeness, mark boundaries of syntactic units, signals division of utterances into intonation phrases, signals end of statement, signals “old” information and “new” information etc.

The effects of distributed versus massed corrective feedback on the acquisition of Spanish differential object marking

AbstractThis study compares the effects of distributed versus massed corrective feedback (CF) on Spanish differential object marking (DOM). Forty‐eight Spanish learners completed three communicative tasks with a researcher on three consecutive days, one task per day. Partial recasts were used to reformulate DOM errors. The distributed group (n = 16) received feedback in all three tasks. The massed group (n = 16) received feedback in the last task. The control group (n = 16) received no feedback. The total amount of CF provided to the two CF groups was controlled. Learners completed oral production and grammaticality judgment pre, post, and delayed posttests. Results showed that the massed group scored significantly higher than the control group across test types and times. However, the distributed group scored significantly higher than the control group only on the immediate and delayed oral production tests. We argue that the temporal contiguity, intensity, and consistency of feedback instances in the massed condition might be responsible for the relative superiority of the massed CF.

PHONOLOGICAL DEVIATION AMONG SPEAKERS OF ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE IN THE FEDERAL POLYTECHNIC NASARAWA, NASARAWA STATE, NIGERIA

In Nigeria today, most speakers of English are second users of the language because they acquire their different mother tongues before they come to learn English. This article studied the phonological deviation among speakers of English at the Federal Polytechnic. Nasarawa. Adopting the survey research design, the oral production test (OPT) was used whereby thirty (30) students were randomly selected to speak on some topical issues and issues; related to academics such as Examination Malpractice in Nigeria’s Higher Institutions, Campus Gangsterism, High Rate of Unemployment in Nigeria, The 2019 General Election and hate speeches among politicians during the 2019 electioneering campaign. The student’s speeches were recorded and transcribed in their raw forms and compared with the Received Pronunciation (RP) for the purpose of analysis. The results showed that there were deviations in the production of some sounds that are not present in the phonetic inventory of most Nigerian languages as well as wrong placement of stress on English words. The results also showed that the mother tongue plays a significant role in the wrong pronunciation of English words by most Nigerian English bilinguals.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0208/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Corrective feedback, individual differences in working memory, and L2 development.

The present study investigated the differential effects of explicit corrections, meta-linguistic corrective feedback (CF), and analogy-based CF on L2 learners' acquisition of English third-person singular form -s and whether and how individual differences in working memory (WM) mediate such effects. One hundred secondary school English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) learners at a junior middle school in inland China were randomly assigned to the explicit correction group (EG), the meta-linguistic CF group (MG), the analogy-based CF group (AG), and the control group (CG). Learners performed both an information-gap activity and a picture-description activity where their errors on target structure were treated according to their group assignment. The Untimed Grammatical Judgement Test (UGJT) and the Elicited Oral Production Test (EOPT) were used to measure learners' resulting performance. Learners' WM was measured with operation span test. Results revealed that (1) compared to the control group, all the CF groups significantly improved their performance of English third-person singular form -s over time; (2) explicit corrections and meta-linguistic CF displayed superior advantages over analogy-based CF on the immediate posttest. However, the three CF groups demonstrated no significant difference in their performance of English third-person singular form -s on the delayed posttest; (3) WM was only able to predict the effects of analogy-based CF but not explicit corrections and meta-linguistic CF; and (4) analogy-based CF was more favorable to learners with higher WM who can regulate their limited attentional resources more efficiently, whereas explicit corrections and meta-linguistic CF equalize learning opportunities for all learners with different levels of WM. The findings of this study suggest optimal, profile-matched pedagogical options for L2 learning through identifying CF conditions that cater to the needs of young learners with different levels of WM.

Effects of task repetition with consciousness-raising in wiki-mediated collaborative writing on the development of explicit and implicit knowledge

This study investigated whether repetitions of a wiki-mediated collaborative writing task with the intervention of consciousness-raising could enhance learners’ attention to past-counterfactual conditional in English and their explicit and implicit knowledge development. Sixty learners worked in pairs to complete the same essay-writing task four times within a 5-week time frame. One group received deductive consciousness-raising after the initial task performance (TR + DCR); a second group engaged in inductive consciousness-raising (TR + ICR); and a third group only repeated the task (TR, control condition). Explicit and implicit knowledge gains were measured via an untimed grammaticality judgment test (UGJT) and an oral production test (OPT), respectively. On the UGJT, the TR + ICR led to significant immediate and delayed knowledge gains, while the TR + DCR only resulted in immediate enhancement. The TR + ICR resulted in gains in OPT and had some advantage over the TR + DCR and TR. These findings contribute towards our understanding of the effectiveness of consciousness-raising as a focus on form intervention activity between repeated collaborative task performances with respect to explicit and implicit knowledge at relatively higher levels of second language acquisition.

Audio description and subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing

Abstract This paper presents the teaching innovation project AUDIOSUB, which aimed at assessing the didactic potential of audio description (AD) and subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing (SDH) in foreign language education. Within an online setting, 25 undergraduates of English Studies in a Spanish university worked collaboratively for two months and a half, in groups of five, so as to provide accessibility to complete short films. To that end, they were provided with a number of ad hoc tutorials and guidelines on technical issues related to AD and SDH, the two media accessibility modes used for this proposal. A pre-experiment was designed for data collection: pre- and post- writing and oral production tests, as well as general translation pre- and post- tests, were administered, and quantitative data were exploited using SPSS; pre-and post- questionnaires and observation were also used to triangulate and complement the analysis. The results show evidence of improvement both in written production and in general translation skills thanks to the pedagogical application of media accessibility and point towards a more systematic exploitation of didactic SDH and AD in the foreign language learning context.

Storytelling and Story Reading Impacts on Pre-intermediate English Language Learners’ Oral Language Production and Comprehension

The use of storytelling on students’ first language literacy and development were extended to foreign/second language learning, and a large number of researchers interested in the field attempted to use storytelling and story reading strategies in teaching oral language skills to foreign/second language learners. Despite the existence of a number of studies on the impact of storytelling on English language skills, the number of studies on the impact of storytelling and story reading approaches on pre- intermediate EFL learners’ oral language production and comprehension seems to be scanty. To do so, a quasi- experimental study was employed. Ninety Iranian language learners, from 6 intact classes (each consisting of 15), were divided to three sub-groups: storytelling, story reading and conventional groups. To one group, stories were told, one group only read the stories, and the third group received no stories. The data were collected through researcher developed oral language production and comprehension tests. One-way-ANOVA test and three independent samples-tests based on Bonferroni test were employed to analyze the data and locate the sources of the differences. Findings revealed that storytelling outperformed story reading groups on both production and comprehension tests. Story reading group outperformed the conventional group. It can be concluded telling and reading stories are effective techniques for improving EFL learners’ oral language production and recognition.

Investigating the Roles of Implicit and Explicit Knowledge in the Production of Grammatical Errors

This research aims to investigate the role of implicit and/or explicit knowledge in the production of grammatical errors in academic texts. Explicit knowledge is defined as conscious and declarative knowledge used to monitor language production while implicit knowledge is defined as an intuitive knowledge which enables the second language learners to use the language spontaneously without any reflection (Zhang, 2015). The reasons why this research is conducted is due to the fact that the students are still producing errors even though they have learnt English since elementary school. The data is gained from the academic text written down by fifteen English department students studying in a university in Jakarta. It is analyzed by using two different measurements: (1) Delayed Grammatical Judgment Tests (GJT), and (2) Interview including Metalingual Comment to investigate the role of explicit knowledge in the production of grammatical errors. The other two measurements are also used; they are (1) Timed Grammaticality Judgment Test (TGJT), and (2) Oral Production Test (OPT) to investigate the role of implicit knowledge. The results show that 19.2% of grammatical errors are produced due to the implicit knowledge and 80.8% is due to explicit knowledge. Since the explicit knowledge plays an important role in producing the grammatical errors, it can be concluded that teaching English grammar for university students is still important. If possible, the English Grammar lessons should be given more rooms in the overall curriculum

The effects of input and output based instruction on the development of L2 explicit and automatised explicit knowledge: a classroom based study

ABSTRACT The study investigates to what extent English as a second language (ESL) learners develop explicit and automatised explicit knowledge of two target-forms (third person singular ‘s’ and future conditional if-clause) after input and output based instruction and whether learning effects differ depending on the target forms. The study follows a pre-test–post-test design. Seventy-two intermediate level ESL learners from three intact classes were randomly assigned to two experimental groups (input and output) and one control group. The experimental groups completed a pre-test and received relevant instructional treatment: the input group received processing instruction that did not involve any production of output, whereas the output group received output based instruction. Immediately after the instructional treatment, the experimental groups took a post-test and after two weeks, a delayed post-test. The control group took the same tests without receiving any instructional treatment. An error correction test and an oral narrative production test were used to measure explicit and automatised explicit knowledge, respectively. The results showed that both the input and output groups outperformed the control group in developing explicit knowledge of the target forms, and the output group outperformed the input group in developing automatised explicit knowledge of both target forms.

The interaction between inhibitory control and corrective feedback timing

Abstract This article reports a study investigating the role of inhibitory control in the acquisition of Spanish noun-adjective gender agreement under different feedback timing conditions. Forty-three Spanish learners completed a communicative task through synchronous computer-mediated communication. The immediate group received reformulations immediately after their errors, whereas the delayed group received reformulations at the end of the task. The control group did not receive any feedback. Learners’ knowledge of the target form was assessed using oral production and grammaticality judgment tests at three different times: once before the treatment, once immediately after the treatment, and once ten days after the treatment. Inhibitory control was measured with the Flanker test. Results did not show a statistically significant interaction between inhibitory control and feedback timing group on either outcome measure even though the correlations between learners’ gains and inhibitory control were different across groups.

Surveying pragmatic performance during a study abroad stay: A cross-sectional look at the language of spoken requests

This paper documents a cross-sectional look at L1 transfer and L2 contact for learners of English in a UK study abroad (SA) context. The study employed an instructional experimental design over a 6-month period with 34 Chinese students assigned to either an explicitly instructed group or a control group receiving no instruction. Instruction took place prior to departure for the UK and performance was measured based on a pretest-posttest design using an oral computer-animated production test (CAPT). This paper explores the data in two specific ways. Firstly, the request data were analysed at the pre-and delayed test stages (six months into the study abroad period) to analyse the extent to which participants’ reliance on L1 request strategies and language changes over time. Secondly, we measured the amount and type of contact with English which participants reported prior to and six months into the study abroad period. Results show that instruction facilitated development of pragmatically appropriate request language over time, with instructed learners showing significantly less reliance on L1 transfer than non-instructed learners. Contact with English increased significantly for both groups on all measures of language production but not all receptive contact with English. When compared, there was no significant difference between the groups’ contact with English at each stage, suggesting that instruction did not result in significantly more interaction with English during the study abroad period.

Gesture-enhanced recasts have limited effects: A case of the regular past tense

This study investigates whether gesture-enhanced recasts lead to better production of the English regular past tense. Fifty-nine low-intermediate ESL students at a US university took part in communicative activities in class, during which they received, respectively, no feedback, verbal recasts, or gesture-enhanced recasts, the latter being a verbal recast accompanied by a point-back gesture indicating the non-target-like use or absence of the past tense. All learners also completed two assessments, a grammar test about the regular past tense and an oral production test that was designed to elicit the regular past tense, as a pre-test, an immediate post-test, and a delayed post-test a week later. Then, a repeated-measure ANOVA was used to analyse the linguistic development, using the obtained test scores. The results showed that there was no difference across the conditions in the grammar test, owing to the ceiling effect. On the other hand, learners significantly improved from the pre-test to the post-test in the oral production test, but there were no differences across the conditions. This contradicts a previous finding that teachers’ pedagogical gestures during recasts better facilitated the development of locative prepositions. Further, this study discusses how learning types (rule-based vs. item-based) involved in two different linguistic targets and different gestures used in the two studies may affect the efficacy of recasts.

The Relative Efficacy of Recasts and Prompts on Past Tense Use of ESL Learners

The objective of the study is twofold: to investigate the effects of corrective feedback (CF) on the accuracy of past tense use, and to compare the relative effectiveness of recasts and prompts on the accuracy of past tense use. The participants of the study consisted of 105 secondary school ESL learners in Malaysia. The target structure of CF was the regular and irregular past forms. CF was provided contingent upon the occurrence of past tense errors according to the type of corrective feedback (i.e., recasts, prompts and no corrective feedback) assigned to participants. By employing a pre-post- and delayed- post-test design, learning outcomes were measured by means of an oral production test (OPT), a written production test (WPT) and an untimed grammaticality judgment test (GJT). The results revealed that participants, regardless of type of corrective feedback, showed both short-term and long-term gains in accuracy of past tense use. However, on the delayed effects of CF, the findings suggest that the effects of prompts may be more durable compared to recasts or control. It was found that the effectiveness of corrective feedback was also affected by other mediating factors, including learners’ proficiency level, prior knowledge and the morphological structure of the target linguistic feature.

DEVELOPING EFL ORAL SKILLS THROUGH LINGUISTIC MEDIATION IN THE SECONDARY EDUCATION CLASSROOM

Linguistic mediation is one of the aspects to be developed within communicative competence, as established by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (2002). The aim of this study is to check whether linguistic mediation somehow contributes the development of other communicative constructs, in this case oral production. To this end, a group of 40 students from the 1st year of Bachillerato at a public secondary school in Madrid carried out a total of eight language mediation activities designed ad hoc. The activities were carried out once a week, in 50-minute sessions. The participants took an oral production test before and after the didactic intervention. Oral production was measured in terms of coherence and cohesion, lexical and grammatical variety, fluency, interaction, and pronunciation. The results showed that after the completion of the mediation activities, the students’ fluency and interaction had improved significantly, thus suggesting the added value of linguistic mediation not only as important in itself but as a facilitator in the development of other communicative skills.

The measurement of implicit and explicit knowledge

ABSTRACT This article presents a review of research that has investigated ways of measuring implicit and explicit knowledge of a second language (L2), focusing on grammar. It begins by defining implicit and explicit knowledge in terms of a distinguishing set of criteria. Two ways of investigating implicit knowledge are discussed – through experimental studies of implicit learning and by means of factor-analytic studies. This provides the basis for a taxonomy of tests designed to provide separate measures of the two types of knowledge. Proposals for oral production tests, comprehension tests, judgements tests, tests of metalinguistic knowledge and tests derived from psycholinguistic research are examined and critiqued. The article concludes by suggesting there is a need for tests of L2 pragmatic knowledge to complement those available for grammar and offers a number of suggestions for the design of such tests.

De rol van de Processability Theory van Pienemann in de verwerving van het Nederlands als tweede taal bij Poolse studenten

De rol van de Processability Theory van Pienemann in de verwerving van het Nederlands als tweede taal bij Poolse studenten Pienemann’s Processability Theory PT hypothesizes that the grammatical structures of a second language are acquired in an order that is universal for all languages. The main aim of this article is to investigate the validity and reliability of this theory for the acquisition process of Dutch as L2 by Polish students. PT was tested on a group of 15 first-year Dutch philology students at the Uni­versity of Wrocław, after 300 hours of intensive Dutch language course. The oral production test checked the acquisition level of three Dutch grammatical structures, representing consecutive stages of L2-development: agreement between adjective and noun stage III, agreement between verb and subject stage IV and word order in subordinate clauses stage V. Pienemann’s hypothesis seems to be valid for the acquisition of Dutch language as L2 only if the criterion of one correct use of a grammatical structure is taken into consideration. When it comes to the two other criteria 50% and 90% of correct use the structure representing stage III seems to be acquired after the structures representing stages IV and V, which forms a counter-evidence for the Processability Theory.

THE ROLE OF PROCEDURAL LEARNING ABILITY IN AUTOMATIZATION OF L2 MORPHOLOGY UNDER DIFFERENT LEARNING SCHEDULES

AbstractThis paper reports on the reanalysis of Suzuki’s (2017) experiment and investigated the extent to which learning schedules influence automatization of second language (L2) morphology. Sixty participants were separated into two groups, which studied morphological rules for oral production under short-spacing (3.3-day intervals) and long-spacing learning conditions (7-day intervals). Their oral production test performance resulted in two measures of automatization: reaction time (RT) as an index of speedup and coefficient of variance (CV) as an index of stability/restructuring. The results showed that, while RT of both groups declined significantly after the training, the 3.3-day group exhibited greater propensity for restructuring than the 7-day group. Furthermore, procedural learning ability measured by the Tower of London task was significantly associated with RT, but not with CV, in the 3.3-day group only. These findings suggest that learning schedules and procedural learning ability influence different stages of automatization of L2 morphological learning.

An exploratory study on the role of foreign language aptitudes in instructed pragmatics learning in L2 Chinese

AbstractThis study investigated whether and how foreign language (FL) aptitudes interacted with different instructional conditions to affect pragmatic gains in L2 Chinese. Fifty American learners of Chinese were randomly assigned to an (explicit) input-based treatment group, an (explicit) output-based treatment group, and a control group. Following a metapragmatic session, the two treatment groups practiced target request-making forms through their respective computer programs, while the control group did not practice. Gains in pragmatic performance were measured by a listening judgment test and an oral production test at immediate and delayed posttests. The participants also completed three foreign language (FL) aptitude tests assessing rote memory, grammatical sensitivity, and working memory. The results revealed different patterns of correlation between FL aptitudes and pragmatic gains. The input group showed positive correlations between working memory and reductions in judgment response times at both immediate and delayed posttests. The output group showed a positive correlation between grammatical sensitivity and gains in production speech rates at immediate posttest; a negative correlation was also found between rote memory and reductions in production planning times made at immediate posttest.

Explicit instruction of spoken requests: An examination of pre-departure instruction and the study abroad environment

The aim of this study is to evaluate the impact of explicit interventional treatment on developing pragmatic awareness and production of spoken requests in a study abroad context (taken here to mean those studying/using English for academic purposes in the UK) with Chinese learners of English at a British higher education institution. The study employed an experimental design over a 6 month period with 34 students assigned to either an explicitly instructed group or a control group receiving no instruction. Instruction took place prior to departure for the UK and performance was measured based on a pre-, immediate and delayed post-test design using an oral computer-animated production test (CAPT). The findings revealed that explicit instruction facilitated development of pragmatically appropriate request language in the short term and, to some extent, this was sustained over time. The CAPT data was also analysed in order to examine the use of internal and external modification of requests by each group. Results demonstrate that the explicit instruction group used significantly more modification at the immediate post-test stage but that the control group used significantly more at the delayed test stage.