Effect of visual support on the processing of multiclausal sentences

Abstract

Processing morphemic elements is one of the most difficult parts of second language acquisition (DeKeyser, 2005;Larsen-Freeman, 2010). This difficulty gains prominence when second language (L2) learners must perform under time pressure, and difficulties arise in using grammatical knowledge. To solve the problem, the current study used the tenets of multimedia learning theory (Mayer, 2005) to help L2 learners' reconstruct multiclausal sentences. This theory assumes that limitations in cognitive capacity are reduced when information is given to learners both visually and aurally. Given this assumption, the current study examined whether pictorial information helps L2 learners process morphemic elements in multiclausal sentences presented aurally. Thirty-two learners of Japanese engaged in elicited imitation both with and without pictorial support. The results revealed that the learners performed significantly better with pictorial support, lending support to multimedia learning theory for L2 learners' processing of morphemic elements. However, a limited effect of pictorial support was found for the processing of an element that the L2 learners had learned recently, and that was in sentence-final position, suggesting that these types of items are difficult to automatize regardless of cognitive support.

The trends and developments of L2 Japanese research in the 2010s

“…Such observations inspire L2 Japanese researchers to determine the degree of difficulty of the acquisition of specific morpho-syntactic features of Japanese in relation to learners’ L1 backgrounds, highlighting structural differences between Japanese and other languages (e.g., Takemura, 2011; Nakamata, 2013; Cheng, 2015; Nagai, 2015; Anubhuti, 2018). Another category of studies address a range of issues discussed in SLA research including acquisition paths (e.g., Grüter, Lieberman, & Gualmini, 2010; Kawaguchi & Di Biase, 2012; Yabuki-Soh, 2012; Iwasaki & Oliver, 2014; Matsumoto & Nakayama, 2014), instruction and corrective feedback (Nakaue, 2012; Usami, 2013; Sugo, 2014; Hagiwara, 2015), and L2 syntactic attrition as an emerging area of interest (e.g., Russell, 2012).…”

“…As far as instructional support for L2 Japanese syntactic development is concerned, support in accordance with learners’ cognitive processing capacities might be most effective. Hagiwara (2015), for example, demonstrated that JFL students processed aurally presented morphemic elements in multiclausal sentences significantly better with pictorial information than without visual support, as measured by accuracy in sentence repetition. The effect of pictorial support, however, was found only for newly learned elements or those in the sentence-final position.…”

English Phrase Learning With Multimodal Input

“…Although the majority of studies have demonstrated the advantages of multimodal input (e.g., Chen et al, 2012 ; Hagiwara, 2015 ; Peters, 2019 ), some researchers have reported that multimodal input did not lead to more efficacious L2 lexicon acquisition, and even had an adverse impact on L2 vocabulary acquisition (e.g., Lwo and Lin, 2012 ; Liu et al, 2018 ; Warren et al, 2018 ), which was theoretically consistent with CLT (Sweller, 2005 ). CLT posits that the amount of information that can be processed at one time in working memory is limited.…”