Salience in Second Language Acquisition

Abstract

Learner interaction via written synchronous computer mediated communication (SCMC) in their second language (L2) may be facilitative of L2 development (Smith, 2012), as such interaction heightens the salience of specific aspects of the input learners receive, thus increasing the likelihood that aspects of this input are noticed (Schmidt, 2001). This heightened salience of input is afforded by the permanence of the written message on the screen, which allows learners more time for processing incoming messages and monitoring their own output. This exploratory study aims at establishing whether this heightened salience during SCMC supports lexical alignment. Using eye tracking technology, we explore what L2 users seem to notice, attend to and align with in the linguistic input from their L2 interlocutor. Six advanced L2 users of English (TESOL MA students) interacted in dyads via SCMC over six-weeks. They chatted each week with another student and discussed how to finish a partially completed academic abstract. Participants' task performances were screenrecorded and their eye movements captured. Corpus methods were used to analyze chat logs for lexical overlap of three or more consecutive words (n-grams). Potential sources for lexical alignment were then marked as areas of interest (AoI's) and various eye-gaze measures were calculated for these AoI's and for baseline text. Comparisons between eyegaze measures for potentially aligned text and baseline text were made to identify those n-grams that received more visual attention than baseline text (i.e., noticed text). Analysis revealed that a limited amount of potentially aligned received heightened overt visual attention. We argue that most instances of lexical overlap were likely attributable to processes other than strategic alignment. Qualitative explorations show that SCMC partners do make use of one another's input during task-based SCMC in a way that manifests in their written output. However, it is much less than chat transcripts may suggest.

Can variation in input explain variation in typical spoken target-language features during study abroad?

“…While classroom input has many advantages for L2 learning, it remains limited in scale and register. Research on the role of interaction in L2 learning suggests that input becomes particularly salient in conversation (Gass et al, 2018;Long, 1996), where the interlocutors have to process what is said and are expected to actively contribute. Interaction encourages the mobilization of attentional processes, and, through co-construction, it also enables negotiation of meaning and feedback which increase input comprehensibility.…”

Expectation Violation Enhances the Development of New Abstract Syntactic Representations: Evidence from an Artificial Language Learning Study

“…While findings like those of Stahl & Feigenson (2017) suggest that the effect of expectation violation on learning is not driven simply by a general raising of attention, it seems likely that surprisal has an effect on attention, albeit only to the relevant features (see for instance Greve et al, 2017, on possible mechanisms underlying oneshot declarative learning). In the context of associative learning, it has been suggested that surprisal may increase the salience of a stimulus, which in turn drives learning (N. Ellis, 2016Ellis, , 2017Cintrón-Valentín & N. Ellis, 2016). Increased attention may also lead to greater awareness, that is, explicit knowledge of the form-meaning connections being learned.…”

Near-Native Sociolinguistic Competence in French: Evidence from Variable Future-Time Expression

“…Moreover, Kanwit et al (2015), in their study of three variable morphosyntactic structures among study-abroad learners in Mexico and Spain, hypothesized that the level of consciousness with regard to whether variants carry stigma or prestige among NSs likely impacts the input learners receive, which in turn could influence acquisition. Although what is meant by "level of consciousness" remains to be operationalized clearly, this observation seems to suggest in part that the salience of a variant's formality may impact additional language development (see Gass, Spinner, & Behney, 2018, for recent research on salience, and Billieaz & Buson, 2013, for a discussion of perceived formality of different variable features in Hexagonal French).…”