摘要:

Two experiments were conducted which were designed to assess adult 1.2 learners’ production and comprehension of English conditional sentences. The analyses provided lend support to the explanatory power of markedness theory in explaining 1.2 acquisition. Different relative orders of difficulty emerged in the production and comprehension, respectively, of three conditional types, suggesting that form and function may be acquired at different times in the 1.2 acquisition of syntax. Of real, unreal, and past unreal conditions, the real conditions were the easiest to produce but the most difficult to comprehend. These relative orders of difficulty and other developmental differences that emerged between proficiency levels are explained in terms of the nature of the distinctive features assigned indifferent domains of grammar Learners’ responses to markedness values in the interacting contexts of morphology. syntax, semantics, presupposition, and discourse provide a more accurate picture of the acquisition proc

ISSN:0023-8333    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-1770.1985.tb01082.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1985

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

It has been claimed that as second langue learners perform different tasks at a single point in time, their production of some grammatical, morphological, and phonological forms will vary in a predictable manner. This article reports a study on the English language use of native speakers of Arabic and Japanese in three task conditions: completing a written grammar test, participating in an oral interview, and narrating a story to a listener Results of the study provide evidence in support of the hypothesis that the utterances of second language learners show systematic variability in some morphological and grammatical forms, a variability related to task. The study shows that the performance of second language learners on a written grammar test varies from their performance when attempting to communicate orally, in some cases, grammatical accuracy is muchbetterin spontaneous oral communication than in scores on a written grammar test The study shows that more than two styles arc evidenced when learners perform more than two tasks, and that when those tasks are ordered in terms of degree of attention to language form required, the styles produced by learners in response to those tasks may be ranged along a continuous dimension.

ISSN:0023-8333    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-1770.1985.tb01083.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1985

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Tarone (1980) attempted to show that some syllable structure errors in the interlanguage (IL) speech of learners of English from various language backgrounds were not attributable to language transfer and might provide evidence of a universal tendency to produce open (CV) syllables, an interlanguage process which she argued operates independently of language transfer The case study presented here follows essentially the same method of investigation that Tarone followed to gather evidence for the hypothesized universal preference for the open syllable, but uses speakers from a different language group (Polish) as subjects Since Polish features man) of the same complex syllable structures that English does, modification of these same complex syllable in the interlanguage would not appear to be attributable to transfer The next question would be whether the modifications found showed movement toward an open syllable.The results obtained here are less categorical than those obtained by Tarone Although a number of modifications were found which could not readily be attributed to transfer, only about half of these could be sad to show clear modification toward an open (CV) syllable pattern Although it IS possible that the preference for the open CV syllable operates as a variable rule in interlanguage phonology, with the native‐language (NL) background of the learner influencing the extent to which the rule is applied, it is suggested that the patterns of modification found here might best be analyzed not in terms of processes unique to IL phonology, but rather in terms of universal patterns of glottalization and epenthesis found in the speech of persons experiencing stress, whether they are speaking in their native language or in a second languag

ISSN:0023-8333    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-1770.1985.tb01084.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1985

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

The intersentential sensitivity of the rational deletion cloze procedure was examined in this investigation. A total of 84 college‐level students of German participated in the study. One group of subjects completed a sequential cloze task, and a second group completed a scrambled cloze task. The results revealed no significant differences between cloxe test scores in the exact word or the acceptable word synonyms allowed) scoring conditions. It is suggested that the cloze procedure may not yield a valid and reliable assessment of global comprehension in the second language contex

ISSN:0023-8333    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-1770.1985.tb01085.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1985

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

This paper presents the results of an experiment which examined the temporal characteristics of voiceless plosives in American English. Arabic, and Arabic‐accented English. Results showed that the temporal implementation of closure duration and Voice Onset Time delay was different for each of the three groups. surprisingly, however. Arabic‐accented English fell not between the norms established by Arabic and English proper, but rather departed from the target language goal (shorter closures, longer VOT delays) with longer closures and shorter VOT delays than is characteristic of Arabic itself This unusual interlanguage phenomenon can be explained in terms ot the Arabic speakers having learned that English displays a constant voiceless interval (Weismer 1980) among all places of articulation, but having mislearned that the distribution internal to this interval varies according to positional fact

ISSN:0023-8333    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-1770.1985.tb01086.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1985

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

An important skill which the language learner uses in the listening task is knowledge of the syntax of the target language. This study empirically examines the effect of one aspect of surface structure, word order, on the listening comprehension and pattern retention of native English speakers learning Spanish The factors of sentence length and position of a sentence in a given context are also analyzed As the basis for the experiment, a brief discussion is presented of theoretical implications of word order processing and memory in listening. A comparative analysis of Spanish and English word order patterns follows, which identifies three principal word order patterns of Spanish. subject‐verb‐object, verb‐subject‐object, and object‐verb‐subject Results are reported of the experiment which tested the abilities of native English‐speaking students of Spanish and native Spanish speakers to comprehend an oral passage and remember the word order of certain sentences. The findings indicate that word order significantly affected the degree of comprehension of the English speakers In addition, for both groups of participants, sentences which were both longer and in final position in a context were comprehended most effectively Word order and sentence position significantly affected surface retention of both groups Further, there is indirect evidence to lend additional support to transformational grammar theory indicating that native speakers and foreign language learners may utilize an aural processing strategy of converting patterns to the basic SVO word order Implications of this investigation for Spanish foreign‐language pedagogy as well as suggestions for further resear

ISSN:0023-8333    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-1770.1985.tb01087.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1985

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

In this study of the performance of a group of adult Japanese ESI learners on a listening test, an attempt is made to discover the relationship between correctness in answering and accuracy in judging the correctness incorrectness of answers chosen. Each time the learners chose an answer, they had to indicate on a 5‐point scale how confident they were of the correctness of the answer. While average ratings for correct answers were higher than for wrong answers, two other patterns of “nonconfident correct answering” and “very confident wrong answering” were found. In order to investigate these phenomena in terms of the individual learner's performance, some analytic procedures from the Theory of Signal Detection were applied. An explanation and exemplification of those procedures are presented. The results show that there can be substantial differences in individual performances, despite identical test scores. These differences in terms of self‐monitoring ability and confidence arc demonstrated and discussed. The study shows that the analytic procedures described can yield a number of important insights into learner performance and that the assumption of a straightforward relationship between accuracy and confidence in answering test items

ISSN:0023-8333    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-1770.1985.tb01088.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1985

数据来源: WILEY

ISSN:0023-8333    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-1770.1985.tb01089.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1985

数据来源: WILEY

ISSN:0023-8333    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-1770.1985.tb01090.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1985

数据来源: WILEY