Modality and Attention to Meaning and Form in the Input

Abstract

VanPatten (1990) found that L2 learners of Spanish have difficulty simultaneously attending to meaning and form of aural input. This partial replication of VanPatten (1990) addresses the effect of modality on attention to meaning and form by including a written mode and by using a different L2, that is, English as a foreign language. Six tasks were used in this study: (a) listening to the passage for content only, (b) listening for content while attending to the content word inflation, (c) listening for content while attending to the definite article the, (d) reading the passage for content only, (e) reading the passage for content while attending to the content word inflation, and (f) reading for content while attending to the definite article the. Task results in the aural mode mirrored those of VanPatten's original study, but significant differences were not observed for tasks in the written mode. Furthermore, results revealed that listening was more difficult than reading, suggesting that modality is a variable that influences how learners process input. Avenues for future research are discussed.

Use orthography in L2 auditory word learning: Who benefits?

“…These studies generally found that simultaneous text presentation can aid novel word learning and result in better retention of phrasing and vocabulary (Bird & Williams, 2002). The facilitative effect of additional orthographic input has also been found in studies which investigated modality effect on L2 grammaticality judgment or L2 text comprehension (Lund, 1991;Murphy, 1997;Wong, 2001). Orthographic information is not only beneficial to the receptive linguistic tasks mentioned above but also beneficial to tasks that require speech production.…”

Replication in Second Language Research: Narrative and Systematic Reviews and Recommendations for the Field

“…On the other hand, even studies that fall into a narrower definition of replication (e.g., investigating the same research questions with a design and materials that are as similar as possible to an earlier study) may not label themselves as replications. To illustrate, of the four studies that were part of the replication sequence extended by Morgan-Short et al (2018), only one (Wong, 2001) turned up in our systematic review as a self-labeled replication. Given this subjectivity and inconsistency and, more importantly, given that we wanted in our systematic review to ascertain the extent to which the term replication has been used to label studies reported in journals, we used instead the self-identification of authors, that is, studies that self-labeled in the title or abstract as a replication study.…”

INFORMATION GAP TASKS: Their Multiple Roles and Contributions to Interaction Research Methodology

“…The teachers' earnest intentions and theoretical grounding were offset by several concerns that remained unaddressed in their classroom practice+ First, in terms of theory, the roles of output and form-focused feedback in SLA were not taken into account+ As argued in the output hypothesis~Swain, 1985hypothesis~Swain, , 1991hypothesis~Swain, , 2005!, meaningful input and communicative experiences need to be accompanied by opportunities for learners to produce and modify their output if they are to become more syntactically accurate+ Additionally, learners need questions and feedback on imprecisions of form+ Such signals challenge them to move beyond L2 development that is fluent and meaningful but filled with grammatical inaccuracies+ As research has shown, it is not easy for learners to both attend to formal features of language and acquire new information in a content area~e+g+, VanPatten, 1990;Wong, 2001!+ Second, in terms of classroom practice, the challenge of attending to formal linguistic features and acquiring new content knowledge can be especially acute when the content must be learned as a school requirement or is preferred for its inherent interest+ It cannot be assumed, therefore, that learners will somehow pick up new forms-especially if the forms are barely perceptible-as they attend to content meaning+ There is a need for activities, materials, and strategies that can be applied simultaneously to meet these needs+ Information gap tasks, in their fundamental structure and purpose, show great promise in these areas+…”