Can you guess who I am?: An interactive task for young learners to practice yes/no question formation in English

Abstract

Although yes/no questions are one of the most frequently occurring question types in English, research on the development and production of yes/no questions-in particular in young English learners-is still very limited. For example, we know very little about potential errors young L2 learners make when they produce yes/no questions-an area that is crucial in order to provide useful feedback in different learning environments, including computer-based applications. This paper reports on an exploratory study conducted with Can you guess who I am?, an interactive, spoken-dialogue-based speaking activity that allows young English learners to practice yes/no questions. After introducing the SDS-based speaking activity, we present the findings from a systematic investigation of the output produced by 27 young English learners in Germany (ages 9-11) who engaged with the activity. A particular focus in the analysis was placed on the types of yes/no questions elicited and the types of errors made by the young learners. The findings provide further empirical support for a six-stage framework for the development of question formation in L2 learners [14]. Moreover, they offer insights into the types of errors young EFL learners make in forming polar interrogatives such as systematic confusion with regard to the auxiliaries "to be" and "to do". The findings are discussed in terms of (a) how they contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of young learner's speech and (b) how they will be used to inform further development of more targeted feedback options that can be implemented into the SDSbased speaking activity in order to harness its full potential for L2 learning.

Improvements to an Automated Content Scoring System for Spoken CALL Responses: the ETS Submission to the Second Spoken CALL Shared Task

“…Recently, several Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) systems have been developed in an attempt to provide language learners with opportunities to practice their speaking skills and receive automated feedback when an instructor is not present. While the automated feedback provided by these systems is typically restricted to pronunciation quality, some speech-based CALL systems also attempt to provide automated grammar feedback (e.g., [5,6,7,8,9,10,11]). Since this field of research is relatively new, and since few shared resources exist for comparing various error detection methodologies on a common data set, a shared task for spoken CALL was held at the Workshop on Speech and Language Technology in Education at Interspeech 2017.…”

Development and validation of spoken dialog system-based oral communication tasks in an ESP context

“…Also, as opposed to speaking with a human interlocutor, interacting with an SDS in interactive speaking tasks may reduce users' anxiety and increase their willingness to engage in oral interaction (Ayedoun et al, 2015;Timpe-Laughlin et al, 2020). While the research on SDS-based tasks yielded promising results with regards to improvement in L2 learners' speaking proficiency (Timpe-Laughlin et al, 2020), they have also been used to assess the interactive speech of L2 learners (e.g., Evanini et al, 2014;Gokturk Tuney, 2020;Litman et al, 2016;Ramanarayanan et al, 2015;Ramanarayanan et al, 2016;Ramanarayanan et al, 2017;Timpe-Laughlin et al, 2017;Timpe-Laughlin et al, 2022). Based on the design of the SDS, intended use, and target construct, these studies yielded both promising results and suggestions to improve the systems.…”

“…Although the problem with authenticity and naturalness of the interaction between an SDS and human was reported in a few studies (e.g., Litman et al, 2016;Ramanarayanan et al 2017;Timpe-Laughlin et al, 2017), test developers can integrate this technology into their assessments, specially designed for eliciting speech samples from constrained interactions such as reading aloud and elicited imitation (Litman et al, 2018). While the status of SDS technology today may not be useful for fully unconstrained tasks, because of the unlimited number of paths that test-takers can take to respond in such tasks (Ramanarayanan et al, 2020, p.188), they can be useful in scenario-guided, constrained conversations in specific domains (Litman, 2018), as in front desk talk between a receptionist and hotel guest simulated in the current dissertation study.…”