CAN SECOND LANGUAGE GRAMMAR BE LEARNED THROUGH LISTENING?: An Experimental Study

Abstract

This study examines whether aural processing of input in a situation of implicit instruction can build a knowledge base that is available for both comprehension and production tasks. Fifty-five Dutch students learned a miniature linguistic system based on Spanish. Three training conditions were compared in which noun-adjective gender agreement was the learning target. The first group of participants received receptive training, the second group received receptive and productive training, and a third group served as a control. The control group received no training of the target structure and only read an explanation of the target structure rule. Receptive knowledge was assessed with a self-paced listening test, a match-mismatch test, and a grammaticality judgment task. Productive knowledge was tested with a picture description task in single-and dual-task conditions. A postexperimental questionnaire tested whether any explicit knowledge had been induced. Results suggest that the receptive and receptive + productive training programs succeeded in building a knowledge base that was used in comprehension but much less so in production. These results will be interpreted in light of processing and the distinction between implicit and explicit knowledge.Learners involved in instructed SLA traditionally are given a rule and then engage in comprehension and production tasks that employ the presented rule+ After a long period of practice and through devices such as error correction I would like to express my gratitude to Jan Hulstijn and Rob Schoonen from the University of Amsterdam for their supervision+ I would also like to thank the two anonymous SSLA reviewers for their comments and Nick Ellis for taking time to discuss this project with me+

Second Language Acquisition of Gender Agreement in Explicit and Implicit Training Conditions: An Event‐Related Potential Study

“…Even for learners at advanced levels of proficiency, errors in gender agreement appear to persist (Dewaele & Veronique, 2001; Franceschina, 2005). Although this issue has been addressed from multiple perspectives (Arteaga, Herschensohn, & Gess, 2003; Bartning, 2000; Benati, 2005; De Jong, 2005; Dewaele & Veronique, 2001; Franceschina, 2005; Gass & Alvarez Torres, 2005; Hawkins & Chan, 1997; Keating, 2009; Montrul, 2004; Montrul et al, 2008; White, Valenzuela, Kozlowska‐Macgregor, & Leung, 2004), neurocognitive research has only begun to consider the development, representation, and processing of L2 grammatical gender (Sabourin & Haverkort, 2003; Sabourin & Stowe, 2008; Tokowicz & MacWhinney, 2005). The current article aims to contribute to the neurocognitive evidence pertaining to the L2 acquisition and processing of grammatical gender by examining the online processing of noun‐phrase gender agreement on both articles and adjectives as affected by two different types of language training conditions—explicit (classroomlike) and implicit (immersionlike)—at both low and high proficiency.…”

Investigating Performance of the Third- Person Singular –S as a Learnt Property through Orally Repeated Practice Based on Krashen’s Monitor Conditions of Time and Form Focuses

“…Dekeyser concluded that declarative knowledge could be converted into an automatic one through proceduralization. Similarly, this end is supported by a study conducted by de Jong (2005) who proposed that the more aural comprehension his Spanish learners had the more speed they had gained in comprehension. But this stands in contrast to errors they made in terms of language production.…”

The Use of Consciousness-Raising Tasks in Learning and Teaching of Subject-Verb Agreement

“…Jong (2005) claims that production task requires more cognitive demands than comprehension task. SP tasks require the subjects to invest more effort and perform numerous skills of generating ideas, selecting vocabularies, structuring sentences and deciding on the correct use of the verb "be".…”

“…This can be attributed to the design of SP tasks that Group 1 (SP) was assigned with during the study. SP tasks are considered as production tasks that have higher demand than comprehension tasks (Jong, 2005) which leads them to pay more attention to the target form (Schmidt, 1990). Hence, learners in Group 1 (SP) were more aware of the correct form of SVA due to the level of attention they had devoted to that particular feature.…”

“…Group 1 (SP) had lower mean of responses on this skill. This can be due to the higher demand of a production task which pushes learners to notice their knowledge deficiency in using the target form correctly (Jong, 2005;Schmidt and Frota, 1986). Hence, learners in Group 1 (SP) were better aware of their actual competence in using SVA than learners in Group 2 (GJ).…”