Studies in Second Language Acquisition最新文献

Morphological knowledge refers to the ability to recognize and use morphemes correctly in syntactic contexts and word formation. This is crucial for learning a morphologically rich language like Finnish, which features both agglutinative and fusional morphology. In Finnish, agglutination occurs in forms like aamu: aamu+lla (‘morning: in the morning’), where a suffix is transparently added. Fusional features, as seen in ilta: illa+lla (‘evening: in the evening’), involve allomorphic stem changes that reduce transparency. We investigated the challenges posed by stem allomorphy for word recognition in isolation and in context for L2 learners and L1 speakers of Finnish. In a lexical decision task, L2 speakers had longer response times and higher error rates for semitransparent inflections, while L1 speakers showed longer response times for both transparent and semitransparent inflection types. In sentence reading, L2 speakers exhibited longer fixation times for semitransparent forms, whereas L1 speakers showed no significant effects. The results suggest that the challenges in L2 inflectional processing are more related to fusional than agglutinative features of the Finnish language.

While our earlier report focused on the initial four months of the dataset (Saito et al., 2018, Language Learning), this study investigates the relationship between individual differences in motivation (Ideal Self and Ought–to Self), emotions (Enjoyment and Anxiety), and L2 speech learning among 121 Japanese English–as–a–Foreign–Language high school students over 1.5–years. Participants’ L2 speech proficiency consistently improved at each testing point (6 months, 10 months, and 1.5 years), while their motivation and emotions, measured through questionnaires, remained relatively stable. The results of structural equation modeling suggest that the relationship between motivation, emotions, and acquisition may evolve. Within the first 6-10 months, data indicated a correlational relationship, highlighting a mutual influence among motivation, emotions, and acquisition. However, as the study progressed beyond one year, after students had fully adapted to their educational settings, a clearer causal relationship emerged: Enhanced motivation and more positive emotions were linked to increased classroom practice, leading to significant gains in L2 speech proficiency. The predictive roles of Anxiety remained unclear in this longitudinal dataset.

Fluency, intelligibility, comprehensibility, and accentedness are important dimensions of second language (L2) pronunciation proficiency representing global, listener-based intuitions. This study meta-analyzed 49 reports from 1995 to 2023, examining 141 effect sizes (Pearson r) to understand their relationships and possible moderators. Three-level meta-analysis models showed weighted mean correlations of .82, .75, .62, .57, and .32 for fluency/comprehensibility, comprehensibility/accentedness, fluency/accentedness, intelligibility/comprehensibility, and intelligibility/accentedness, respectively. Task types moderated correlations for fluency/accentedness, intelligibility/comprehensibility, and intelligibility/accentedness, with controlled tasks leading to higher correlations. Ratings of multiple dimensions by the same listeners tended to result in weaker correlations for fluency/comprehensibility and comprehensibility/accentedness. The findings imply that having an accent does not mean being unintelligible and support prioritizing intelligible and comprehensible speech over accent reduction. The study also highlights an over-reliance on first language speaker norms in L2 pronunciation research and advocates for more transparent reporting.

Research on second language (L2) speech learning suggests that incidental perception training can lead to the establishment of non-native phonological categories. The present study contributes to this line of enquiry by investigating how this training is mediated by individual differences in working memory capacity and domain-general auditory processing abilities. In our study, 130 native British English speakers without prior knowledge of Portuguese were randomly assigned to trained or untrained conditions. All participants completed a visual digit span task and an auditory processing test battery. We observed improvements from pretest to post-test in production only, but since both groups improved, these gains cannot be attributed to the incidental perception training. The analysis of the ID measures further confirms the important role played by auditory processing abilities in L2 speech learning. However, more research is needed to better understand the role of incidental perception training and the mediating role of cognitive aptitudes.

Lexical proficiency is a multifaceted phenomenon that greatly impacts human judgments of writing quality. However, the importance of collocations’ contribution to proficiency assessment has received less attention than that of single words, despite collocations’ essential role in language production. This study, therefore, investigated how aspects of collocational proficiency affect the ratings that examiners give to English learner essays. To do so, collocational features related to sophistication and accuracy were manipulated in a set of argumentative essays. Examiners then rated the texts and provided rationales for their choices. The findings revealed that the use of lower-frequency words significantly and positively impacted the experts’ ratings. When used as part of collocations, such words then provided a small yet significant additional boost to ratings. Notably, there was no significant effect for increased collocational accuracy. These findings suggest that low-frequency words within collocations are particularly salient to examiners and deserving of pedagogic focus.

This paper explores how long-term bilingualism affects the production of intervocalic plosive consonants (/p t k b d ɡ/) in the speech of Afrikaans–Spanish bilinguals from Patagonia, Argentina. We performed sociolinguistic interviews with three speaker groups: L1-Afrikaans/L2-Spanish bilinguals (14 speakers, interviewed separately in Spanish and Afrikaans), L1-Spanish comparison speakers from Patagonia (10 speakers), and L1-Afrikaans comparison speakers from South Africa (11 speakers). We analyzed the speech data using three acoustic measures (constriction duration, relative intensity, and percent voicing) to examine the degree of lenition of the target plosives. The results demonstrate a complex interplay of factors that bring about cross-language influence, which varies based on the target phoneme and phonetic measure. Notably, the findings suggest that phenomena that are gradient phonetic processes in both languages of bilingual speakers (such as the lenition of voiceless plosives in Spanish and Afrikaans) pattern differently than phenomena that are phonological in one language but phonetic in the other (such as lenition of voiced plosives in Spanish versus Afrikaans).

Additional language speakers (ALSs) often experience anxiety due to challenges posed by their nonstandard pronunciation. Building on these insights, this paper introduces an instrument, the Accent Anxiety Scale (AAS), specifically designed to assess three sources of anxiety that are experienced by ALSs, including (a) apprehension about negative evaluations from other individuals due to their distinctive speech style, (b) concerns about rejection from the target language community because of their “foreign” pronunciation, and (c) anxieties over potential communication hurdles attributed to the intelligibility of their pronunciation. We evaluated the psychometric robustness of the AAS by analyzing data from a total of 474 immigrant and international student ALSs at a predominantly English-speaking Canadian university. Study 1 focused on immigrants (N = 203) and employed exploratory factor and correlational analyses to isolate a concise number of internally consistent and valid items for each subscale. Study 2 extended these analyses to international students (N = 153) and employed confirmatory factor and correlation analyses to further validate the AAS in this population. Study 3 examined international students (N = 118) at two time points to establish the AAS’s temporal stability. These studies yielded robust psychometric evidence for the factor structure, reliability, and validity of the AAS. The findings not only support the use of the AAS as a research instrument but also offer implications for pedagogical strategies aimed at alleviating ALSs’ accent anxiety.

This study investigated factors influencing the citations of highly cited applied linguistics research over two decades. With a pool of 302 of the top 1% most cited articles in the field, we identified 11 extrinsic factors that were independent of scientific merit but could significantly predict citation counts, including journal-related, author-related, and article-related features. Specifically, the results of multiple linear regression models showed that the time-normalized article citations were significantly predicted by the number of authors, subfield, methodology, title length, CiteScore, accessibility, and scholar h-index. The remaining factors did not exhibit any statistical significance, including the number of references, funding, internationality, and geographical origin. The combined predictive power of all these factors (R²=.208, p<.05) verifies the role of nonscientific factors contributing to high citations for applied linguistics research. These results encourage applied linguistics researchers and practitioners to recognize the underlying forces affecting research impact and highlight the need for a reward system that exclusively favors sound academic practices.

There is evidence that learning a second language (L2) can shift cognition toward that predicted for the L2 and that this effect might vary with L2 proficiency, age of acquisition, length of immersion, etc. Here we explore the previously neglected variable of language instructional conditions. Participants categorized motion events in a triads-matching task after being trained on two novel linguistic labels highlighting (in)transitivity through one of three instructional conditions. Participants who learned the relevant knowledge under a meaning-focused instructional condition (memorizing meanings of exemplar sentences) showed a higher likelihood of categorizing based on motion (in)transitivity immediately after training than a control group; those who learned under a required rule search instructional condition showed this effect only after additional practice; while those who learned through another type of form-focused instructional condition (direct metalinguistic explanation) did not show this effect even after such practice. These differences were obtained despite the fact that the three groups were matched on awareness of the target system at the level of understanding and near-perfect performance on a grammaticality judgment task. The findings are discussed in terms of the depth of processing in instructed SLA and models of language–cognition interactions.