No abstract

This longitudinal study explored the roles of item- and learner-related variables in L2 learners’ development of productive collocation knowledge (L1 = Dutch; L2 = German; NLearners= 50). Learners’ form recall knowledge of 35 target collocations was measured three times over a 3-year period. The item-related variables investigated were L1-L2 congruency, corpus frequency, association strength, and imageability. We also explored the learner-related variables L2 prior productive vocabulary knowledge and L2 immersion. Mixed-effects regression modeling indicated a significant effect of time, congruency, and prior productive vocabulary knowledge on learners’ collocation learning. While learners’ knowledge of congruent collocations remained relatively stable after year one, knowledge of incongruent collocations increased significantly. Learners’ prior productive vocabulary knowledge was clearly associated with growth of productive collocation knowledge, but besides overall growth there were instances of attrition.

This article reports on a classroom-based (quasi)-experiment with a pre-test post-test design that explored the effect of two types of activities on the productive recall of German formulaic sequences (FS): 1) attention-directing activities and 2) retrieval practice. Two intact classes of Dutch-speaking university students of German participated in the study. One class was randomly assigned to the attention-directing condition (n=18), the other one to the retrieval condition (n=11). Twenty-two target FS were selected as learning items. Each group processed the FS in a different condition. In the attention-directing condition, students had to 1) re-read a video transcript with the FS in bold typeface and 2) translate the targets into Dutch. In the retrieval condition, students had to 1) complete a transcript in which the FS were deleted and 2) translate the targets into German. Results indicate that the retrieval condition led to better productive phrase learning than the attention-directing condition.

This study examines how non-target-like formulaic expressions used by advanced second language (L2) speakers of German are perceived by first language (L1) German business professionals in an intercultural workplace setting. By using an experimental design, we explore how L1 business professionals (N = 84) perceive the appropriateness and acceptability of the non-target-like expressions as well as how they perceive the communicative competence of the writer in two conditions: one in which the writer is explicitly described as an L2 user of German (intercultural condition), and one in which the writer is not (German condition). Moreover, by first establishing recurrent unconventionalities when L2 users create their own formulaic expressions (i.e., misspellings, grammatical errors, pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic infelicities), we examine the effect of the type of unconventionality. Our experimental stimuli are based on authentic student responses to situations in an intercultural workplace setting which were elicited through a written discourse completion task. Our results indicate that in both conditions expressions containing a grammatical error are judged as least acceptable, followed by those with a pragmatic infelicity. Ratings were significantly higher in the intercultural condition, suggesting tolerance of the L1 professionals towards non-target-like expressions of L2 users.

No abstract