Verb Learning Research Articles

Learning the Causative Alternation in English and Japanese Speakers: Statistical and Non-statistical Effects

ABSTRACTChildren acquire argument structure through distributional evidence, but how does this interacts with event semantics and existing verb knowledge? The current study compares verb learning in adult speakers of Japanese (where lexical causatives span wider semantic categories) and English (where alternation is more restricted). In the Fully alternating familiarization, internally caused events (similar to descend) and externally caused events (similar to rock) occurred with novel verbs in transitive and intransitive frames. In the Semi-alternating familiarization, internally caused events occurred with intransitives only while externally caused events occurred with both frames. During the test, participants rated the naturalness of transitive and intransitive descriptions for all events. For internally caused events, transitives were rated equivalently low across speakers after the Semi-alternating familiarization (which featured only intransitives), while intransitives were more felicitous for English compared to Japanese speakers. For externally caused events, all participants rated transitives higher than intransitives, despite equal occurrence across familiarizations. This may be related to the presence of salient animate agents in scenes. Together, this suggests that syntactic and semantic biases concurrently influence the interpretation of distributional evidence. Input statistics are interpreted through existing syntactic representations, and salient semantic distinctions may exert a bias for syntactic instantiations.

Investigating the effect of real-time multi-peer feedback with the use of a web-based polling software on e-learners’ learning performance

ABSTRACT This study seeks to investigate the impact of a real-time multi-peer feedback process with the use of a web-based polling software on adult e-learners’ learning performance. Two groups of participants with 30 members in each were involved in the experiment. In the two-and-a-half-hour experiment, the experimental group adopted a web-based polling software – Rain Classroom to carry out the real-time multi-peer feedback activities for the learning of some English infinitive verbs, while the control group was applied the real-time single-peer feedback mode in learning the same content. A pretest, a posttest, a delayed posttest, a questionnaire survey and a follow-up interview were employed as the instruments for the experiment. The results revealed that the multi-peer group significantly outperformed the single-peer group on the delayed posttest, though no significant difference was found in the posttest between the two groups. The questionnaire survey and the follow-up interview showed that the multi-peer method gained great popularity among the participants and could enhance learners’ engagement in learning. Other related issues are also discussed.

이미지와 문맥이 L2 학습자의 영어 구동사 학습에 미치는 영향

이미지와 문맥이 L2 학습자의 영어 구동사 학습에 미치는 영향

Perceptions of Turkish EFL Student Teachers Towards Learning Phrasal-prepositional Verbs Through Corpus-based Materials

The current study aims to explore the perceptions of 55 Turkish EFL student teachers towards using corpus-based materials in English phrasal-prepositional verb learning. It also explores gender-based differences and similarities towards using such materials in the learning of English phrasal-prepositional verbs. To do so, the study adopted a mixed method approach. The quantitative data were collected through a questionnaire, and the qualitative data were collected through focus-group interviews. The results of the questionnaire revealed that the learners had somewhat positive perceptions of using corpus-based materials in their phrasal-prepositional verb learning. The results of the interviews also showed that the learners enjoyed using corpus-based materials in their phrasal-prepositional verb learning, thereby supporting the questionnaire data. Gender differences that emerged from the study showed that the female learners had higher positive perceptions of using corpus-based materials than the male learners. This study provides further evidence that Turkish EFL learners feel that using corpora in language learning is an effective approach, and language teachers questioning whether to use corpora in language teaching can make use of such sources to help their students learn different aspects of vocabulary in English.

Making Sense ofOutPhrasal Verbs: the Instruction ofOutSenses

The issue of phrasal verb learning has caused much discussion and attracted vigorous investigation. Inspired by the theory of conceptual metaphor, a pedagogical experiment was conducted to investigate whether an approach focussing on sense extension of particle out in terms of conceptual metaphors can enhance the learning of phrasal verbs containing out. One control group was instructed with general reading materials embedded with various phrasal verbs, and two experimental groups with self-constructed lessons, in which six sense types of out were identified and corresponding phrasal verbs were selected, and in addition, an L1 lexical item was employed to illustrate the mechanism of metaphorical extension for one experimental group. The result showed that learners receiving a cognitive inspired approach to instruction achieved significantly better learning outcomes than those receiving the traditional approach, not only on taught items but also on untaught items. However, the use of L1 lexical items to illustrate sense extension was not as effective as expected in boosting the learning of out-phrasal verbs . It was concluded by discussing the benefit of the proposed approach to phrasal verb instruction and, more importantly, the need of teaching materials providing more profound understanding of phrasal verbs so as to facilitate phrasal verb learning.

Can Young Children Ignore Irrelevant Events, or Subevents, during Verb Learning?

ABSTRACTChildren learning a verb may benefit from hearing it across situations . At the same time, in everyday contexts, situations in which a verb is heard will be interrupted by distracting events. Using Structural Alignment theory as a framework, Study 1 asks whether children can learn a verb when irrelevant, interleaved events are present. Two½- and 3½-year-old children saw dynamic events and were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions (differing in orders of events) or one of two control conditions. They extended the verbs in the experimental conditions, and not the control conditions. Three ½-year-olds were more successful than 2½-year-olds, though the younger children could extend verbs. A more difficult task is segmenting dynamic action into subevents that could be relevant for a verb (e.g., finding “chopping” in a cooking scene). In Study 2, 2½-, 3½-, and 4½-year-old children were assigned to experimental conditions in which relevant events flowed into irrelevant events (or vice versa) or to a control. Two½-year-olds failed to extend the verbs at test, differing from the older children; children in experimental conditions extended the verbs while children in the control condition did not. Altogether, these results show children can ignore irrelevant events (and subevents), and extend new verbs by 3½ years. Results are important to understand learning in everyday contexts in which verbs are heard in varied situations over time.

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder May Learn from Caregiver Verb Input Better in Certain Engagement States.

The relation between caregiver follow-in utterances with verbs presented in different states of dyadic engagement and later child expressive verb vocabulary in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) was examined in 29 toddlers with ASD and their caregivers. Caregiver verb input in follow-in utterances presented during higher order supported joint engagement (HSJE) accounted for a significant, large amount of variance in later child verb vocabulary; R2= .26. This relation remained significant when controlling for early verb vocabulary or verb input in lower support engagement states. Other types of talk in follow-in utterances in HSJE did not correlate with later verb vocabulary. These findings are an important step towards identifying interactional contexts that facilitate verb learning in children with ASD.

Sound Symbolism Facilitates Long-Term Retention of the Semantic Representation of Novel Verbs in Three-Year-Olds

Previous research has shown that sound symbolism facilitates action label learning when the test trial used to assess learning immediately followed the training trial in which the (novel) verb was taught. The current study investigated whether sound symbolism benefits verb learning in the long term. Forty-nine children were taught either sound-symbolically matching or mismatching pairs made up of a novel verb and an action video. The following day, the children were asked whether a verb can be used for a scene shown in a video. They were tested with four videos for each word they had been taught. The four videos differed as to whether they contained the same or different actions and actors as in the training video: (1) same-action, same-actor; (2) same-action, different-actor; (3) different-action, same-actor; and (4) different-action, different-actor. The results showed that sound symbolism significantly improved the childrens’ ability to encode the semantic representation of the novel verb and correctly generalise it to a new event the following day. A control experiment ruled out the possibility that children were generalising to the “same-action, different-actor” video because they did not recognize the actor change due to the memory decay. Nineteen children were presented with the stimulus videos that had also been shown to children in the sound symbolic match condition in Experiment 1, but this time the videos were not labeled. In the test session the following day, the experimenter tested the children’s recognition memory for the videos. The results indicated that the children could detect the actor change from the original training video a day later. The results of the main experiment and the control experiment support the idea that a motivated (iconic) link between form and meaning facilitates the symbolic development in children. The current study, along with recent related studies, provided further evidence for an iconic advantage in symbol development in the domain of verb learning. A motivated form-meaning relationship can help children learn new words and store them long term in the mental lexicon.

Variability in L2 acquisition of formulaic sequences: A study of linguistic factors in the use and learning of phrasal verbs by non-native speakers

Author/s
 Rafael Alejo-GonzálezUniversidad de Extremadura, Spain
 
 ABSTRACT
 In this paper, the acquisition of phrasal verbs (PVs) by L2 learners is explored from the perspective provided by a usage-based approach to language. This involves looking at low scope or item-specific schemas, which in this article are identified as the actual particles, prepositions and PVs used by the learners, together with the more abstract syntactic or semantic schemas that emerge from their use. Given the labour intensive work required by this type of analysis, the focus is placed on the use of verb-out constructions made by L2 learners of the PVs as reflected in a corpus of learner language, i.e. the Spanish, Italian, Swedish, Dutch, Russian and Bulgarian subsections of the ICLE (1,287,517 words). More concretely, I analyse L2 use of out-PVs at different grain levels and provide an account of the factors influencing the acquisition of these linguistic units. The results obtained from the analysis show 1) that out is underused by learners, at the lowest level of constituency, the level of the word and its collocates and that this may be due its low cue answer contingency (it is a short form with many meanings); 2) that out-PVs, as other formulaic sequences, shows a pattern of overuse of a small number of frequent verbs and underuse of the rest; 3) that, at a morpho-syntactic level, out-PVs used by L2 learners are typically frozen with little variability in both the tenses and the syntactic patterns chosen; and 4) that at the semantic level, more prototypical and frequent meanings in the text type analysed, not necessarily literal uses, are used with greater frequency by NNS. All in all, the usage-based approach adopted has allowed us to reveal the complexity of factors involved in explaining the difficulty L2 learners have in acquiring phrasal verbs.

Novel noun and verb learning in mono- and multilingual children

This study investigates how mono- and multilingual German-learning first-graders learn nouns and verbs in a child-friendly computer game, testing perception and production of the new words. On the basis of previous research reporting cognitive advantages for multilingual children in cognitively complex situations, we expected multilingual children to outperform monolinguals when learning cognitively complex verbs, but not nouns. In the perception task, we indeed reveal a significant advantage for verbs in multilingual children. There were, however, no differences in production tasks. Thus, although overall word-learning skills are very similar in typically developing mono- and multilingual children, verb learning may be an area of relative strength for multilinguals.

GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES OF VERBS IN ENGLISH AND ALBANIAN

Working with English learners for many years, gives you the opportunity to encounter linguistic obstacles that they face while learning English language as a foreign language. Additionally, teaching for 13 years and observing the learning process, it enables you to recognize the students’ needs and at the same time, detect linguistic mistakes that they make, while practicing the target language. During my experience as a teacher, in terms of teaching and learning verbs in general and its grammatical categories in specific, it is noticed that Albanian learners find it relatively difficult the correct use of verbs in context and even more confusing the equivalent use of verbs in Albanian. Since verbs present an important part of speech, this study aims to investigate several differences and similarities between grammatical categories of verbs in English and Albanian. As a result, the Albanian learners of English language will be able to identify some of the major differences and similarities between the grammatical categories of verbs in English and Albanian; overcome the usual mistakes; gain the necessary knowledge regarding verbs and use them properly in English and Albanian.

GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES OF VERBS IN ENGLISH AND ALBANIAN

Working with English learners for many years, gives you the opportunity to encounter linguistic obstacles that they face while learning English language as a foreign language. Additionally, teaching for 13 years and observing the learning process, it enables you to recognize the students’ needs and at the same time, detect linguistic mistakes that they make, while practicing the target language. During my experience as a teacher, in terms of teaching and learning verbs in general and its grammatical categories in specific, it is noticed that Albanian learners find it relatively difficult the correct use of verbs in context and even more confusing the equivalent use of verbs in Albanian. Since verbs present an important part of speech, this study aims to investigate several differences and similarities between grammatical categories of verbs in English and Albanian. As a result, the Albanian learners of English language will be able to identify some of the major differences and similarities between the grammatical categories of verbs in English and Albanian; overcome the usual mistakes; gain the necessary knowledge regarding verbs and use them properly in English and Albanian.

The effects of task modality on L2 Chinese learners’ pragmatic development: Computer-mediated written chat vs. face-to-face oral chat

Recent studies in Task-based Language Teaching showed the unique benefits of computer-mediated communication (CMC) on task-based interaction such as providing visual saliency of text and extended processing time for modified output (e.g., Smith, 2004, 2005). However, it is not clear whether CMC is more conducive for task-based learning compared to traditional face-to-face (FTF) mode. This study directly compared the effects of the two task modalities (CMC and FTF) on the pragmatics learning of Chinese modal verbs. This study focused on task-based pragmatics learning because tasks are supposed to promote learners to use language for pragmatic purposes. Thirty learners of L2 Chinese (high-elementary to intermediate level) completed two decision-making tasks in pairs. Half of the participants completed the tasks in CMC (N = 16), while the other half completed the same tasks in FTF (N = 14). Production and recognition tests were used at pre, post and delayed post-test to measure the learning outcomes. Task-based interaction in both modalities was analyzed for the frequency and pattern of modal verb use. Resudlts showed that the FTF group outperformed the CMC group at the immediate and delayed post-test. The FTF group also produced modal verbs more frequently during the tasks. Contrary to the previous claims on the potential advantages of CMC, this study indicates that FTF might be more beneficial for task-based pragmatics learning. The efficacy and challenges of CMC-based learning thus deserves further investigation.

Capturing the world with verbs: Preschool science education beyond nouns and objects

This article seeks to contribute new perspectives to the ontology and epistemology of preschool science education by exploring the idea of using everyday verbs, rather than nouns, to discern possibilities for science learning in preschool. Herein, the author merges empirical examples from preschools with findings from research on children’s noun and verb learning and posthumanist perspectives on matter and concepts. What comes out of the exploration is a radical way of viewing and knowing the world. The verbs trigger a shift from an object-oriented view of the world to seeing action and non-tangible processes and phenomena in one’s surroundings. Further, the verbs highlight the potential science learning that emerges in action and in child–matter relations, opening up to preschool science pedagogies that go beyond subjective/objective and concrete/abstract binaries.

Acquisition of Verb Meaning From Syntactic Distribution in Preschoolers With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Our goal was to investigate whether preschool children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can begin to learn new word meanings by attending to the linguistic contexts in which they occur, even in the absence of visual or social context. We focused on verbs because of their importance for subsequent language development. Thirty-two children with ASD, ages 2;1-4;5 (years;months), participated in a verb-learning task. In a between-subjects design, they were randomly assigned to hear novel verbs in either transitive or intransitive syntactic frames while watching an unrelated silent animation or playing quietly with a toy. In an eye-tracking test, they viewed two video scenes, one depicting a causative event (e.g., boy spinning girl) and the other depicting synchronous events (e.g., boy and girl waving). They were prompted to find the referents of the novel verbs, and their eye gaze was measured. Like typically developing children in prior work, children with ASD who had heard the verbs in transitive syntactic frames preferred to look to the causative scene as compared to children who had heard intransitive frames. This finding replicates and extends prior work on verb learning in children with ASD by demonstrating that they can attend to a novel verb's syntactic distribution absent relevant visual or social context, and they can use this information to assign the novel verb an appropriate meaning. We discuss points for future research, including examining individual differences that may impact success and contrasting social and nonsocial word-learning tasks directly.

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) facilitates verb learning by altering effective connectivity in the healthy brain

Recent studies have shown that the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) plays a key role in language learning. Facilitatory stimulation over this region by means of anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) can modulate linguistic abilities in healthy individuals and improve language performance in patients with post-stroke aphasia. Neuroimaging studies in healthy participants have suggested that anodal tDCS decreases task-related activity at the stimulated site when applied during different language tasks, and changes resting-state connectivity in a larger network of areas associated with language processing. However, to date, the neural correlates of the potential beneficial effects of tDCS on verb learning remain unclear. The current study investigated how anodal tDCS during verb learning modulates task-related activity and effective connectivity in the healthy language network. To this end, we combined a verb learning paradigm during functional neuroimaging with simultaneous tDCS over the left IFG in healthy human volunteers. We found that, relative to sham stimulation, anodal tDCS significantly decreased task-related activity at the stimulated left IFG and in the right homologue. Effective connectivity analysis showed that anodal tDCS significantly decreased task-related functional coupling between the left IFG and the right insula. Importantly, the individual decrease in connectivity was significantly correlated with the individual behavioural improvement during anodal tDCS. These results demonstrate, for the first time, that the behavioural improvements induced by anodal tDCS might be related to an overall decrease in processing effort both with respect to task-related activity and effective connectivity within a large language network.

How dictogloss can facilitate collocation learning in ELT

This instructional intervention investigated the potential for the text reconstruction task dictogloss to facilitate the learning of English verb–noun collocations, for example ‘carry a risk’. Research has shown that learners have difficulties in using such collocations, but few useful instructional techniques are on offer. Participants in the study were 64 L1 Swedish adolescent learners of English. The effectiveness of two modified versions of the dictogloss was compared in a within-subjects design. This implied that participants in pairs co-reconstructed two texts containing target collocations, where each co-reconstruction was preceded by a specific priming activity to induce learners to process collocations as intact wholes. Results showed that having learners elaborate on the meaning of collocations in a pre-task activity outperformed a form-oriented pre-task activity on all measures, notably for productive knowledge on delayed post-tests. The findings are discussed in relation to previous research and their implications for ELT.

Rhyme and Word Placement in Storybooks Support High-Level Verb Mapping in 3- to 5-Year-Olds.

High-level verbs can be especially challenging for young children to initially map to meaning. This study manipulated the format of a storybook designed to support such verb learning from shared reading. We tested whether 3- to 5-year-olds (n = 38) could remember the referents of eight new verbs when presented as essential actions within a narrative story but with differences in placement. Children were randomly assigned to either a rhymed condition, in which target verbs were heard at the end of rhyming stanzas making them maximally appreciable, or a control condition, where the verbs were presented in the same story, but not in final position or within a rhymed stanza. After hearing the story, each child was given three sets of retention questions testing their identification, demonstration, and production of the target verbs. Children identified and successfully demonstrated more target verbs in the rhymed condition than the control condition, and only in the rhymed condition did children’s initial verb mappings exceed chance. No differences between conditions were found in children’s ability to produce the target verbs, in part because of how often they reverted to more generic terms to describe the actions in the story. Nonetheless, these findings support the hypothesis that giving children maximal support within a storybook reading context can facilitate an initial grasp on challenging verbs.

The effects of instructor language choice on second language vocabulary learning and listening comprehension

The present study examined the interaction effects between teachers’ choice of language in lexical explanation and second language (L2) learners’ proficiency level on the learning of phrasal verbs and listening comprehension in a meaning-focused listening activity. Undergraduate L2 learners with two different levels of proficiency (intermediate and advanced) were assigned to three different conditions. These conditions included (1) code-switching, in which teachers briefly switched to learners’ first language for vocabulary teaching purposes, (2) L2-only, in which teachers maintained L2 for overall instruction and vocabulary teaching, and (3) control condition, in which learners were not given instruction about target vocabulary. The results revealed that teachers’ instruction about target vocabulary brought about more gains in learning of phrasal verbs than lack thereof. In addition, teachers’ use of code-switching benefited intermediate-level learners most, who were able to gain similar levels of vocabulary learning and listening comprehension to advanced learners.

A contrastive analysis of the verb phrases in English and Vietnamese

Learning verb phrases plays an integral part in foreign language learning effectively in general or in English learning practically. Thus, it is absolutely necessary for those learning English as a foreign language to analyze and contrast similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese verb phrases. Referring to the collected books, we (three senior students under the supervisor in Van Hien University) examine this statement for our further understanding purpose. In this paper, some common features of the verb phrases in English and Vietnamese are pointed out, concepts about the verb phrases are noted together with the distinction between two languages are also in the light. It is recommended that EFL learners should acknowledge the variations of verb phrases to apply into language use in suitable contexts precisely.