Salience in Second Language Acquisition and Related Fields

Gass, Susan M.; Spinner, Patti; Behney, Jennifer

doi:10.4324/9781315399027-1

Cited by 13 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 1 publication

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“…Indeed, in the present study, we observed a significantly higher skipping rate under the unenhanced condition. Other factors that might have contributed to the more positive outcomes for textual enhancement in the captioning studies include prior knowledge (e.g., Han et al, 2008;Park, 2004) and the relative salience of the targeted grammatical constructions (Gass et al, 2017). Both Lee and Révész (2018) and the present experiment targeted a perceptually salient construction, of which learners had some prior knowledge.…”

Section: Captioning and Development In L2 Grammatical Knowledge (Rq1)mentioning

confidence: 88%

Promoting Grammatical Development Through Captions and Textual Enhancement in Multimodal Input-Based Tasks

Lee¹,

Révész

2020

Stud Second Lang Acquis

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This study assessed the extent to which captions, textually unenhanced and enhanced, can draw learners’ attention to and promote the acquisition of a second language (L2) grammatical construction. A pretest–posttest–delayed posttest experimental design was employed. Seventy-two Korean learners of English were randomly assigned to an enhanced captions group, an unenhanced captions group, and a no captions group. Each group completed a series of treatment tasks, during which they watched news clips under their respective captioning condition. The target L2 construction was the use of the present perfect versus the past simple in reporting news. For the enhanced captions group, the present perfect and past simple forms were typographically enhanced using a different color. Eye-movement indices were obtained to examine attentional allocation during the treatment, and oral and written productive tests and a fill-in-the-blank test were used to assess participants’ gains. A series of mixed-effects models found both captioning and textual enhancement effective in drawing learners’ attention to and facilitating development in the use of the target construction. In addition, positive links were identified between attention to captions and learners’ gains.

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Section: Captioning and Development In L2 Grammatical Knowledge (Rq1)mentioning

confidence: 88%

Promoting Grammatical Development Through Captions and Textual Enhancement in Multimodal Input-Based Tasks

Lee¹,

Révész

2020

Stud Second Lang Acquis

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“…In the L2 acquisition context, salience has been defined as “how noticeable or explicit a linguistic structure is in the input” (Loewen & Reinders, 2011, p. 152), with salience making items easy to perceive (Gass, Spinner, & Behney, 2018). The construct of salience has been approached from two main angles, perceptual salience and constructed salience (Gass et al., 2018). Perceptual salience refers to linguistic features that are intrinsically more noticeable.…”

Section: Background Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, longer morphological markers are more salient than shorter ones and are therefore easier to detect (Behney, Spinner, Gass, & Valmori, 2018). Constructed salience “occurs when some outside source creates a context for some feature to become prominent” and leads learners to notice and potentially process that particular feature (Gass et al., 2018, p. 7). Different methods to achieve constructed salience have been employed in vocabulary research, with the majority of studies focusing on the role of input enhancement (e.g., Barcroft, 2003; Kim, 2006) and input flooding (e.g., Webb, Newton, & Chang, 2013).…”

Section: Background Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

The Effect of Pre‐reading Instruction on Vocabulary Learning: An Investigation of L1 and L2 Readers’ Eye Movements

Pellicer‐Sánchez¹,

Conklin

2020

Language Learning

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This study examined the effect of pre‐reading vocabulary instruction on learners’ attention and vocabulary learning. We randomly assigned participants (L1 = 92; L2 = 88) to one of four conditions: pre‐reading instruction, where participants’ received explicit instruction on six novel items and read a text with the items repeated eight times; reading‐only, where participants simply read the same text with the novel items repeated eight times; reading‐baseline, where participants read the same text with the repeated items replaced by known (control) words; and instruction‐only, where participants received explicit instruction on the novel items and read an unrelated text. Eye‐tracking was used to measure amount of attention to the vocabulary during reading. We assessed knowledge of the target vocabulary in three immediate posttests (form recognition, meaning recall, and meaning recognition). Results showed that pre‐reading instruction (plus reading the text) led to both more vocabulary learning and a processing advantage. Cumulative reading times were a significant predictor of meaning recognition scores.

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“…The second implication of our findings that we wish to discuss is the fact that, if the ILH is defensible, we should expect to find learners with systems that have covert contrasts. The ILH makes the claim that all L2 learners internalize a system that enables them to speak and understand utterances in the TL, and that this system can be independent of both the learner’s NL and the TL (Gass, Behney & Plonsky, 2013; Tarone, (2006). An IL system with a covert contrast is independent of both the NL and TL in that it is not NL-like, because the NL lacks the contrast, and it is not TL like, because the contrast is implemented in a way that is not perceived by native speakers of the TL.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Overt and covert contrast in L2 phonology

Eckman

Iverson

Song

2015

JSLP

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This paper reports results on the acquisition of the English /p/ - /b/ contrast by native speakers of Arabic. This contrast does not exist in the participants’ native language (NL). The central finding of this study is that some of the research participants exhibited a covert contrast between these segments in their interlanguage productions. That is, two of the five Arabic-speaking participants who were transcribed as having no contrast between [p] and [b] did, in fact, produced a statistically reliable distinction in voice onset time lags between the two target segments. The existence of such an intermediate stage of covert contrast in the learning of L2 phonology is eminently plausible, in view of the progressive nature of phonological acquisition. Our results help bring the learning of second-language contrasts into conformity with findings of the same phenomenon in the areas of L1 acquisition and phonologically disordered speech.

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Salience in Second Language Acquisition and Related Fields

Cited by 13 publications

References 1 publication

Promoting Grammatical Development Through Captions and Textual Enhancement in Multimodal Input-Based Tasks

Promoting Grammatical Development Through Captions and Textual Enhancement in Multimodal Input-Based Tasks

The Effect of Pre‐reading Instruction on Vocabulary Learning: An Investigation of L1 and L2 Readers’ Eye Movements

Overt and covert contrast in L2 phonology

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