摘要:

Two basic approaches characterize classroom research on second language learning: interaction analysis and anthropological observation. Within each approach several methods are available for data collection and analysis. Procedures described are the use of behavioral observation systems, discourse analysis, ethnography, constitutive ethnography, and diary studies. Strengths and limitations of these methods and of both basic approaches are considered, and suggestions are made for the design of future research. This work needs to include a classroom observational component in which language acquisition as well as classroom process variables are treated. In this way it will be possible to test a theory of second language acquisition with the aid of formal instruction.

ISSN:0023-8333    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-1770.1980.tb00149.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1980

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

This study applies structuralist insights into the mechanisms of contact‐induced language change to an examination of the selectivity of L1 influence on L2 acquisition. The principle of selectivity refers to formal properties that make L2 structures immune or receptive to L1 influence as well as L2 developmental stages that activate L1 transfer along a time axis. Basic to the approach set forth is the structuralist assumption that a language will accept only those external influences that correspond to its own structural tendencies and systemic biases. It is proposed that areas of an L2 potentially susceptible to L1 influence can be identified through an examination of that L2's learner‐language. This entity refers to developmental aspects of the acquisition of that L2 both as a first and as a second language.The paper examines in some detail the formal parameters that govern the selectivity of L1 transfer. The proposed approach is capable of accounting in a principled way for conflicting findings reported in L2 research on the occurrence and non‐occurrence of structural tra

ISSN:0023-8333    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-1770.1980.tb00150.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1980

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

A frequent assumption of proficiency tests for nonnative speakers of a language is that they measure something that native speakers are able to do uniformly well. The cloze procedure is increasingly used to construct proficiency tests for administration to nonnative speakers of English. However, little evidence is available on the question of whether cloze tests are capable of making fine distinctions between native and nonnative speakers. The paper reports on a study comparing the performances of native speakers of English with those of nonnative speakers, on a number of cloze tests constructed by manipulating variables in cloze test design. It is shown that native and nonnative speakers perform similarly on cloze tests with respect to these variables. The results are related to the claim that clozetests(as distinct from clozeitems) measure essentially lower‐order language skills, and it is suggested that the notion of language proficiency needs to be revised. This has major implications for the construction and validation of language test

ISSN:0023-8333    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-1770.1980.tb00151.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1980

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

This study lays the theoretical groundwork for a psycholinguistic understanding of drama in second language (L2) learning. That dramatic activities help L2 learners improve communicative competence was assumed for this study. An investigation into the use of drama in language education, psychotherapy, and speech therapy was then undertaken with the goal of discovering commonly shared assumptions which would provide insight into the psychological processes behind its use in L2 learning. The investigation led to the hypothesis that drama encourages the operation of certain psychological factors in the participant which facilitate communication: heightened self‐esteem, motivation, and spontaneity; increased capacity for empathy; and lowered sensitivity to rejection. An exploratory study was undertaken on an informal basis. It consisted of administering a questionnaire to 24 nonnative English speakers enrolled in three ESL classes at UCLA who had participated in the same dramatic activities, and administering open‐ended questions about the use of drama from the teacher's perspective to the instructors of these classes. The results of the exploratory study supported the hypothe

ISSN:0023-8333    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-1770.1980.tb00152.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1980

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

The French oral reading errors of two groups of seventh‐grade English‐speaking students with intermediate and advanced competence in French as a second language were analyzed and compared to the errors of native French‐speaking students. It was found that the intermediate students made a significantly lower proportion of deletion and insertion errors than did the advanced and nativespeaker students and a significantly higher proportion of substitution errors that graphically resembled the text than did the native speakers. Also, the intermediate students made a significantly higher proportion of errors that did not conform to the syntactic, semantic, or discourse constraints of the text than did the advanced and native‐speaker students. It was concluded that both native French‐speaking students and students with advanced competence in French as a second language appeared to use an interactive strategy of drawing on both graphic and contextual information in reading French. In contrast, students with less competence in French did not use contextual information to the same extent and instead employed a more “bottom‐up” strategy of relying primarily on grap

ISSN:0023-8333    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-1770.1980.tb00153.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1980

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

This instrumental study of the phonetic contrast between English /ptk/ and /bdg/ produced by Saudi Arabians reveals that native‐language phonetic norms may carry over to production of target‐language sounds. Despite the existence of phonetic interference, however, the present cross‐sectional study suggests that Saudi learners gradually approximate the phonetic norms of English, at least insofar as several temporal acoustic correlates of stop voicing are concerned. The Saudis' English speech, although not typically Arabic or English in phonetic terms, seems to be the product of a fairly stable interlanguage phonetic system which admits the possibility of phonetic strategies by individual spe

ISSN:0023-8333    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-1770.1980.tb00154.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1980

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

A counterbalanced experimental design was used to investigate the construct validity of four 10‐point scales of oral proficiency aimed at grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and fluency. Interviews with 10 foreign students were tape recorded and evaluated by 15 native speakers of English. Under condition 1, on four of five consecutive hearings, the raters evaluated the performances on only one of the four scales. Under condition 2, on the remaining occasion, they rated each interview on all four scales at one hearing. Construct validity was assessed by contrasting the amount of agreement across raters across scales with the amount of agreement within scales. A single general factor accounted for 96% to 113% of the estimated reliable variance in each scale. There was great fluctuation in specificity estimates which by the least biased method averaged between ‐12% and +3%. This result seems to indicate that there is no unique reliable variance (i.e., specificity) which can be attributed to the separate constructs of grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and fluency. The contrast between agreement and indexes for scales rated on the same occasion versus scales rated on different occasions revealed a halo effect which tends to reduce the reliable variance in scales rated at a single hearing by about 3%. Agreement across raters within and across scales tended to increase with repeated listenings. The global proficiency factor is sustained and no consistent specificity is found in the four scales stud

ISSN:0023-8333    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-1770.1980.tb00155.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1980

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

A comparative investigation of semantic structure among adult native English speakers and speakers of English as a second language and the suggested course of semantic development among children support a hypothesis for semantic development in a second language.Second language learners are seen to conceptualize semantic relations in the domain of address terms with respect to salient perceptually‐based dimensions and less salient abstract dimensions relevant to their native cultural orientation rather than the orientation of the second language. Among children too, the progression from perceptual to abstract representation is suggested to occur as a function of the learner's growing knowledge and experience of the world. Since semantic development occurs as a continuing process through adulthood, especially for adult second language learners, second language semantic development is hypothesized to occur as a process of transition from native to second language semantic structures and a function of the changing cultural orientation of the learner. The transition is initially marked by the learners' salient reliance upon perceptually‐based dimensions and later by increasingly salient reliance upon abstract culturally relative dimensions in the second langu

ISSN:0023-8333    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-1770.1980.tb00156.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1980

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Second language learners can make judgments as to the acceptability of verbal sequences in a target language text. However, such judgments are often different from judgments of the same text by native speakers of the target language. These differences can be interpreted as a gauge of differences between the learners' transitional competence and the competence of native speakers. Similarly, changes in learner judgments may indicate changes in transitional competence. The latter part of this paper reports a study in which learner judgments are used to test a model of change in learner competence proposed by S. Pit Corder (1971) and an extension of that model proposed by Jacquelyn Schachter, Adele F. Tyson, and Frank J. Diffley (1976).

ISSN:0023-8333    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-1770.1980.tb00157.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1980

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

It has generally been accepted that L2 errors can give us information about the L2 acquisition process and its developmental stages. But dealing with interlanguage (IL) phenomena in terms of errors against target language norms can be regarded as problematic in several respects. Moreover, it does not seem adequate either to study rule‐governed IL utterances without explicitly formulating the rules in terms of the underlying psychological processes that characterize the learning. Without considering these processes, we are left merely interpreting our data, not being able to explain what causes them.In order to avoid these shortcomings, empirical research should be done into the psychological reality of the rules that underlie IL behavior. These rules should be studied as part of the mechanisms and strategies of the IL production process. The proper procedure should be to formulate hypotheses about underlying rules and, subsequently, to test the predictions that can be derived from these hypotheses.Hyltenstam's description (1977) of the developmental route of negative (NEG) placement in Swedish as an L2 will be used as an example of how empirical research on the acquisition of grammatical structures can be evaluated. Using Hyltenstam's data, I will propose an alternative that provides an adequate explanation of the route of acquisition of NEG placement in Swedish as a result of underlying principles which are located in the domain of a psychology of L2 learnin

ISSN:0023-8333    

DOI:10.1111/j.1467-1770.1980.tb00158.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1980

数据来源: WILEY