Some Input on the Easy/Difficult Grammar Question: An Empirical Study

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine whether it is possible to distinguish between "difficult" and "easy" constructions for second language (L2) learners by examining characteristics of the structures as they occur in aural input. In a multidimensional analysis of 3 English structures with different acquisition profiles-the simple past, possessive determiners his/her , and the progressive aspect-we examined the phonological, morphosyntactic, and lexicosemantic characteristics of the forms as they occurred in a 110,000-word corpus of instructional talk to L2 learners. We analyzed the type/token distributions of the forms, their lexical properties, and their perceptual salience. Our findings revealed key input factors that distinguished between the early-acquired progressive, on the one hand, and the later-acquired past and his/her determiners, on the other hand. These results lend support to theoretical accounts of the input-acquisition relationship and also generate hypotheses for manipulating instructional input to increase the salience of opaque constructions. WHAT CONTRIBUTES TO MAKINGA LINguistic structure easy or difficult to acquire? More The Modern Language Journal, 93, iii, (2009) 0026-7902/09/336-353 $1.50/0 C 2009 The Modern Language Journalspecifically, what can a close examination of the spoken input to which learners are exposed tell us about this easy/difficult conundrum? To address this issue, we took a multidimensional approach to the analysis of a 110,000-word corpus of teacher talk to second language (L2) learners, in contexts where the classroom constituted the

More evidence concerning the Aspect Hypothesis: The acquisition of English progressive aspect by Catalan-Spanish instructed learners

“…In addition, further research in this context should look at how the input learners are exposed to may shape the associations students make (e.g., -ing with activities in spontaneous use of English in the classroom), which may reveal the existence of a bias in the distribution of input as suggested by Shirai & Andersen (1995), and Rhode (1996), among others. Further studies on the input learners are exposed to (as in Collins et al 2009) will certainly enrich and complete the picture of how progressive marking develops in these tutored learners of English.…”

“…As they advance in their mal learning settings, in which the distortions and the scarcity of the input may change the order of the emergence of other morphemes (Muñoz 2006). A recent study of teacher talk to L2 learners (Collins et al 2009) has identified three factors that appear to make the progressive more available and accessible in the input than other forms such as the simple past: type frequency, semantic scope and perceptual salience. Secondly, not many researchers look at initial stages of L2 learning and there is a general gap in the SLA literature that adds interest to studies that include data from beginner learners.…”

An Investigation Into the Gap Between Korean University Students’ Grammatical Awareness and Perception

“…In accounting for grammatical difficulties in relation to L2 learning, and Green and Hetch (1992) proposed the concept of easy rules and hard rules, and described that easy rules tend to be acquired early while hard rules are likely to be acquired late. Collins et al (2009) examined grammatical difficulty from the perspectives of L2 learners and discovered that English progressives belonged to easy rules, whereas the simple past verb tense was categorized as a hard rule. Along this line, Berent (1985) and DeKeyser and Sokalski (1996) discussed grammatical difficulty in terms of comprehension and production, and explained that some grammatical features are easy to comprehend, but difficult to produce, and vice versa.…”

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“…This type of input manipulation has been recognized as important in second language teaching (e.g. Juffs 1998, Collins et al 2009. That is, providing extra input on a feature whose saliency in the target language is not strong will facilitate acquisition of that feature.…”

“…Another multi-dimensional study of salience was carried out by Collins et al (2009). They examined an aural corpus of teacher talk in a classroom to French speakers of L2 English, focusing on three forms: past tense marker, the possessive form and the progressive marker.…”