Colloquium

Georgetown University GU-FLIRT Foreign Language Initiatives in Research and Teaching

Profiling the Advanced Instructed Learner: Initial Findings from a Crosslinguistic Research Project

Colloquium presented at: American Association of Applied Linguistics 1998 Conference Seattle, Washington -- Saturday, March 14,1998

Organizers: Heidi Byrnes, Jeff Connor-Linton, Renée Jourdenais, and Cristina Sanz

This colloquium presents findings from a major crosslinguistic research project in instructed SLA in nine languages undertaken by a recently-formed faculty-graduate student research group. Five studies which analyze different aspects of the linguistic performance of advanced instructed learners of five languages: Spanish, German, Korean, French, and Japanese will be presented. The subjects are language learners in an undergraduate foreign language program. They were drawn from two distinct levels of acquisition: "high intermediate" learners at the end of the language instructional sequence, and "advanced" learners just prior to graduation. Five performance samples were collected from each subject, using elicitation procedures modified from the ESF Project (Perdue, 1993): spoken and written narration tasks, a discussion with a peer, a written essay, and an ethnographic interview. A brief overview describes the overall goals, design, and methods of the research project, and allows the subsequent presentations to focus on results and interpretation. The Spanish contribution compares spoken and written narrations at the two levels of instruction and focuses on frequency, contexts, and avoidance of use of non-SVO structures. The German paper examines differences in clause structure and discourse functions across monologic and dialogic oral tasks in the "advanced" learner group. The third paper investigates the use of case-marking in relation to word order by advanced and intermediate learners of Korean in terms of functional needs. The fourth paper focuses on the interviews with the French learners, offering an ethnographic account of students' learning experiences, their systems of values and beliefs, and their patterns of behavior as second language learners. The last paper, using Japanese data, investigates differential use of evaluation devices at the two levels of proficiency in order to profile learners' development as narrators. Each of the six colloquium components is allocated 20 minutes for presentation and 10 minutes for discussion.

Word Order in Spanish L2 Production: Advanced Learners' Oral and Written Narratives

Cristina Sanz, Department of Spanish and Portuguese (sanzc@gusun.georgetown.edu)

Martha Bigelow, Department of Linguistics (bigelowm@gusun.georgetown.edu)

Although Spanish is typologically an SVO language, word orders other than SVO are extremely common in native varieties of Spanish, mainly due to focalization, and to the obligatory placement of clitics in preverbal position when accompanying a conjugated verb. L2 learners of Spanish, however, have great difficulties in both interpreting and producing non SVO structures (Andersen, 1990; LoCoco, 1987; Ocampo, 1990; Sanz, 1994; VanPatten & Cadierno, 1993; VanPatten & Sanz 1995). Classroom learners of Catalan (a Romance language with word order similar to Spanish) also show similar behavior (Sanz, 1997). These studies, however, are limited to the beginner / intermediate learner, and only Sanz (1997) compares oral and written production by the same subject. This evidence has been explained within the framework of Bates & MacWhinney's Competition Model (1989). The present study looks at the oral and written retell versions of the silent movie by Chaplin, "Modern Times", produced by two groups of Spanish learners who are at a level well beyond that of participants in previous studies. Results from a quantitative analysis (ANOVA with level (2), and mode (2) as independent variables), complemented by those from a qualitative analysis, should shed some light on the differences in the frequency of use, contexts of use, purposes of use, as well as strategies to avoid the use of orders other than the unmarked (SVO). NS baseline data will be used for comparison. We expect to find significant differences in: 1) the use of non-SVO structures in the advanced vs. non-advanced learners' production; 2) the use of non-SVO structures in the written vs. the oral versions of the stories of both advanced and non-advanced learners.

The Effect of Task on Clausal Structure in Advanced German L2 Oral Discourse

Heidi Byrnes, Department of German (byrnesh@gusun.georgetown.edu)

Deborah McGee Mifflin, Department of German (mifflind@gusun.georgetown.edu)

This paper presents the results of an analysis of clausal structure and function in the oral discourse of L2 advanced learners of German. It examines differential effects from two distinct oral tasks on types of clauses produced and their sequential arrangement. Both quantitative and qualitative measures are used to investigate the function of clausal structure within the sentence as well as within the larger discourse. Learners engaged in two tasks, monologic and dialogic, both with a primary focus on meaning. Both tasks involved an interlocutor, but whereas the first consisted of a one- way retelling of a story, the dialogic task required a two-way interaction between pairs of learners involving opinion-giving and argumentation. It is generally considered that tasks such as stating an opinion and making an argument are more difficult than tasks such as narration (Skehan 1996). The analysis presented here investigates this notion in relation to the number and type of clauses produced under different task demands, i.e., level of task, degree of interaction, and proficiency level of the interlocutors. Specifically, three sentential features are isolated: 1) the ratio of simple to complex clauses produced under varying task environments; 2) the range of complexity of clausal structure, from simple to subordinate to relative clauses; and 3) the sequence of clauses within complex sentences. Finally, features are related to the larger discoursal structure to explore how the advanced learner exploits gross syntax to meet task demands.

The Culture of Advancedness: A Qualitative Study of French Learners

Guy Spielmann, Department of French (spielmag@gusun.georgetown.edu)

The goal of this qualitative study is to complement the assessment of advanced learners' performance with an ethnographic account of their learning experience. What are their systems of values? Of beliefs? Their attitudes towards learning and towards the target language and culture? By investigating the mutually-influencing factors which shape their experience (linguistic ability being only one), we may develop a holistic understanding of "advancedness" as a cultural construct. The semi-structured interviews were coded and analyzed to bring out conceptual "core categories" which help to map the axiological structures undergirding the respondents' culture. Although this presentation will focus on students of French, the research framework is meant to be valid (i.e., adaptable) across all languages. A point of particular interest is the students' self-perceptions as learners, and their own explicit and implicit criteria for what constitutes a good learning experience. Earned grades or demonstrable proficiency are not always felt to be relevant indicators of "advancedness" by the learners themselves. On the other hand, we also must investigate how certain values and beliefs (founded or not) which are conveyed in the French language academic tradition are embraced, ignored or rejected by students in their perception of their learning experience. Finally, by analyzing respondents' suggestions to a new student (or their idea of what they would do if they were to start again), we can better assess how self-perception affects their attitude towards the learning process and how satisfied they feel about the proficiency level they have achieved.

Narratives and Evaluation in Elicited Interviews by Japanese Learners

Hiroko Furo, Department of Linguistics (furoh@gusun.georgetown.edu)

According to Labov (1972), evaluation is one of the most important elements in narratives since it justifies the narrative as worthy of being reported. The present study examines the use of 'evaluation devices' in elicited interviews of intermediate and advanced learners. In particular, it aims at identifying what kind of evaluation devices are used, where in the narrative they occur, and how frequently they are used. A comparison of the two levels of learners contributes to exploring the question: at what stages and how do learners acquire the ability to tell narratives effectively? The data for this study are based on interviews elicited from intermediate and advanced learners of Japanese. After watching a segment of a silent movie (Charlie Chaplin), the study participants were asked to retell what happened in the movie. The interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed. The distribution of internal and external evaluation devices was examined. Qualitative and quantitative analysis investigated the relationship between the process of language learning, specifically as regards the ability to narrate, and the use of evaluation devices. These analyses reveal the following: (1) advanced learners of Japanese use more evaluation devices than do intermediate learners; (2) advanced learners use various kinds of evaluation devices, including both external and internal evaluation; (3) a correlation between progress of language learning and effective use of evaluation devices in narratives. Although advanced learners' use of evaluation devices is not native-like, they do adopt various kinds of evaluation devices which make their narratives more interesting.

Case-marking and Word Order in Korean: Profiles of 'Proficient' and'Less Proficient' L2 Learners.

Euen Hyuk (Sarah) Jung, Department of Linguistics (junge@gusun.georgetown.edu)

This paper compares the use of case-marking and word order by advanced English learners of Korean with that of intermediate learners. First language acquisition studies of Korean (Cho, 1982; Chung, 1995) and of Japanese (Clancy, 1985; Hakuta, 1982) have shown that nominative case markers are acquired prior to accusative case markers. This study confirms the same developmental pattern in L2 acquisition of Korean and discusses its pedagogical implications. In these data, the advanced learners demonstrated a more accurate command of case-marking in Korean (i.e., both nominative 'ka/i' and accusative 'lul' case-markings), and produced complex sentences more frequently. Most of the intermediate learners used nominative markers properly, but tended to omit accusative markers in preverbal positions in simple sentence, since they were able to resort to the canonical word order strategy in Korean (SOV) to convey meaning; however, this strategy is no longer available in complex sentences. This behavior can be explained by positing that L2 learners acquire a case-marking system when word order is no longer a sufficient means to meet their increasing functional needs (cf., Clahsen, 1984, on L1 acquisition). These findings also support Pinker's (1981) claim that learners use the dominant word order as a grammatical cue in their languages before acquiring linguistic morphology.