L2 French Learners’ Processing of Object Clitics: Data from the Classroom

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to assess whether the well-documented paucity of object clitics in L2 French production reflects difficulties learners have comprehending these forms in classroom input. To this end, an aural French-English translation task was used to determine the extent to which university-level L2 learners of French (N=152) were able to process and encode the meaning of the object clitics me, te, la, l', les, lui, leur, y and en. An analysis of the translations revealed variation in performance across clitic types (19-75% accuracy) and as a function of learners' proficiency level and educational background. There was a positive relationship between L2 proficiency and clitic processing. Post-French immersion learners were better able to process and encode clitics than their post-core French peers. As a group, the learners were only 54% accurate, with their mistranslations of object clitics indicating incomplete use of gender, number, animacy and case markings to link these forms to their co-referents. An under-reliance on animacy and agreement cues by these L2 learners suggests the need for explicit instruction on the importance of syntactic and discourse-pragmatic information in clitic comprehension.

Re-assembling objects: a new look at the L2 acquisition of pronominal clitics

“…Applied linguists, who conducted research on L2 acquisition of Romance clitics, have called for a more careful attention to the input characteristics in teaching the topic (Bruhn de Garavito, 2013;Erlam, 2003;Wust, 2010). Classroom-based intervention studies found that form-focused instruction is beneficial to L2 acquisition, including form-focused instruction of French object pronouns (Erlam, 2003).…”

“…However, several potentially important variables were conflated in Erlam's study, for example the [±Human] distinction of pronominal antecedents. Based on her cross-sectional study of L2 acquisition of French object clitics, Wust (2010) recommended providing students with ample possibilities in clitic detection and interpretation. This approach to teaching French clitics goes in line with the tenets of Processing Instruction (VanPatten, 2004, 2012), where foreign language teachers are encouraged to provide a variety of comprehension exercises to help learners pay attention and, ultimately, master L2 morphology.…”

L1–L2 differences in the L2 classroom: Anticipating Anglophone learners’ difficulties with French pronoun interpretation

“…The findings were not conclusive, however, with respect to the impact of the [±Human] feature on the accuracy of translation. Even though Wust (2010a) concludes that the participants were more accurate in translating clitics that referred to animate than inanimate objects, the experimental design conflated two variables: [±Human] and clitic type. All the direct object clitics used in the test were [+Human].…”

“…Several SLA researchers have pointed out that many L2 textbook explanations of Romance clitic lack comprehension exercises that would help learners eschew the erroneous mappings/interpretations predicted above and establish target-like interpretations of Romance object clitics. For instance, Wust (2010a) describes a ‘prototypical textbook sequence: presentation of the clitic paradigm, followed by opportunities for mechanical, meaningful and communicative practice activities’ (p. 65). She further stresses the importance of clitics comprehension over production for beginning L2 learners, which, according to her, is not the case in most textbook presentations of French clitics (Wust, 2010a, 2010b).…”

“…For instance, Wust (2010a) describes a ‘prototypical textbook sequence: presentation of the clitic paradigm, followed by opportunities for mechanical, meaningful and communicative practice activities’ (p. 65). She further stresses the importance of clitics comprehension over production for beginning L2 learners, which, according to her, is not the case in most textbook presentations of French clitics (Wust, 2010a, 2010b). She bases her assessment on a sample of ten introductory French textbooks from three different publishers (Wust, 2010b).…”