Allocation Of Attention To Second Language Form And Meaning

Abstract

The aims of the present study were twofold. The study addressed the issues of simultaneous attention to form and meaning in second language (L2) written input and reactivity of think-alouds. Specifically, the study examined the comprehension of L2 learners of Spanish who either attended to lexical or grammatical forms while reading for meaning or read for meaning alone. Learners completed these tasks while either thinking aloud or not. Results indicated only a minimal effect for thinking aloud that did not appear to compromise the internal validity of the study. Additionally, results showed that attending to grammatical or lexical form while reading for meaning did not affect comprehension. Indeed, learners who processed these forms more deeply evidenced greater comprehension. These findings are considered in light of methodological issues and the larger issue of simultaneous attention to form and meaning in a L2.

The Differential Effect of Attentional Condition on Subsequent Vocabulary Development

“…Therefore, from a theoretical perspective, the findings of Leow et al (2008) did not support or refute VanPatten's (2004) Primacy of Meaning Principle due to the low level of processing reported. Morgan-Short et al (2012) replicated the findings of Leow et al (2008), and found that simultaneous attention to the grammatical or lexical form while reading for meaning does not interfere with comprehension when the form is processed in a meaningful manner which in fact lead to increased comprehension. Therefore, the way depth of processing and level of awareness may affect comprehension when L2 learners pay attention to both form and meaning simultaneously is an open question.…”

“…Nevertheless, Leow et al (2008) found that participants who processed the target form deeper did not have lower comprehension than those who did not. To further complicating the matter, Morgan-Short et al (2012) found a positive relationship between level of processing and comprehension, the deeper the learner's level of processing, the better comprehension score of the written text. Additional studies need to further address this possible relationship between depth of processing and vocabulary development while processing for comprehension.…”

“…Since concurrent verbal reports are able to show learner's cognitive processes while interacting with the L2 (Bowles, 2010), the verbalizations of think-aloud have been used to investigate different levels of several cognitive concepts such as awareness (Leow, 1997(Leow, , 2000Rosa & Leow, 2004;Rosa & O'Neill, 1999;Sachs & Suh, 2007). Levels of processing were also to be investigated through verbalization of concurrent think-aloud which are defined as the amount of attention, cognitive effort, or elaborating on the target item in the input, and/or noticing induced by different types of experimental tasks (Leow et al, 2008;Morgan-Short et al, 2012) Leow et al, 2008) Any discussion of think-aloud protocols needs to consider the possibility of reactivity; that is, for some tasks, think-aloud may actually alter the cognitive processes involved in the task. Bowles' (2010) meta-analysis showed that overall thinking aloud while performing a verbal task has a small effect on post-task performance: positive reactivity was found on receptive learning, negative reactivity was documented from written production, and there appears to be a small positive effect for comprehension tasks.…”

“…VanPatten's model processing based on making form-meaning/function connections during real time comprehension and an online phenomenon that takes place in working memory. Empirical studies paint a different picture or refute Van Patten's (2004) principal of primacy of meaning on the issue of simultaneous attention to form and meaning in L2 learning that attention to form and meaning simultaneously have difficulty in processing and do not have any effect on comprehension (Leow et al, 2008;Morgan-Short et al, 2012).…”

Proceedings of the 12th Workshop on Innovative Use of NLP for Building Educational Applications

“…Their results did not show any statistically significant differences in comprehension between different intervention groups. Finally, a study by Morgan-Short et al (2012) demonstrated that learners who attended to and processed linguistic forms while reading for meaning scored higher on comprehension than those only reading for meaning.…”