Languages, Literatures, & Cultures
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Item SECOND LANGUAGE LEXICAL REPRESENTATION AND PROCESSING OF MANDARIN CHINESE TONES(2018) Pelzl, Eric; DeKeyser, Robert; Second Language Acquisition and Application; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation investigates second language (L2) speech learning challenges by testing advanced L2 Mandarin Chinese learners’ tone and word knowledge. We consider L2 speech learning under the scope of three general hypotheses. (1) The Tone Perception Hypothesis: Tones may be difficult for L2 listeners to perceive auditorily. (2) The Tone Representation Hypothesis: Tones may be difficult for L2 listeners to represent effectively. (3) The Tone Processing Hypothesis: Tones may be difficult for L2 listeners to process efficiently. Experiments 1 and 2 test tone perception and representation using tone identification tasks with monosyllabic and disyllabic stimuli with L1 and advanced L2 Mandarin listeners. Results suggest that both groups are highly accurate in identification of tones on isolated monosyllables; however, L2 learners have some difficulty in disyllabic contexts. This suggests that low-level auditory perception of tones presents L2 learners with persistent long-term challenges. Results also shed light on tone representations, showing that both L1 and L2 listeners are able to form abstract representations of third tone allotones. Experiments 3 and 4 test tone representation and processing through the use of online (behavioral and ERP) and offline measures of tone word recognition. Offline results suggest weaknesses in L2 learners’ long-term memory of tones for specific vocabulary. However, even when we consider only trials for which learners had correct and confident explicit knowledge of tones and words, we still see significant differences in accuracy for rejection of tone compared to vowel nonwords in lexical recognition tasks. Using a lexical decision task, ERP measures in Experiment 3 reveal consistent L1 sensitivity to tones and vowels in isolated word recognition, and individual differences among L2 listeners. While some are sensitive to both tone and vowel mismatches, others are only sensitive to vowels or not at all. Experiment 4 utilized picture cues to test neural responses tied directly to tone and vowel mismatches. Results suggest strong L1 sensitivity to vowel mismatches. No other significant results were found. The final chapter considers how the three hypotheses shed light on the results as a whole, and how they relate to the broader context of L2 speech learning.Item Comparison of an Integrative Inductive Approach, Presentation-and-Practice Approach, and Two Hybrid Approaches to Instruction of English Prepositions(2012) Mueller, Charles Mark; DeKeyser, Robert M; Second Language Acquisition and Application; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Certain semantic categories, such as the polysemous senses of English prepositions, present specific problems for adult second language (L2) learners, whether they attempt to acquire these meanings through implicit learning mechanisms or through explicit mechanisms associated with incidental learning or instruction. This study examined research on categorization and practice, along with results of learner corpus analyses, to arrive at a characterization of the learning problem posed by English prepositions. An experiment then assessed the effectiveness of a novel pedagogical intervention called semantic highlighting (SH), which employed an inductive, integrative approach to the acquisition of procedural knowledge while accounting for some of the distinctive features of the learning problem posed by polysemy and semantic complexity. A between-subject comparison examined the performance of a control group and four treatment groups. One treatment group (D-P) received explicit explanations of the senses of various prepositions, followed by practice with immediate feedback. Another group (SH) received only a practice session in which cues, referred to here as "semantic highlighting" (SH), were used to draw participants' attention to concrete form-meaning mapping as it applied to the target sentences. The other two treatment groups received hybrid instruction with explicit explanations preceding SH practice (D-SH) or with SH practice preceding explicit explanations (SH-D). Acquisition was measured using a fill-in-the-blanks (FB) test and a written sentence-elicitation (SE) test that was scored using a target-language use analysis (Pica, 1984). Two ANCOVAs, using pretest scores as a covariate, showed significant differences between groups on the FB measure (p < .001) and SE measure (p < .001) at an alpha level of .025. On the FB test, results indicated an advantage for the SH (p < .001) group relative to the SH-D group. On the SE measure, the SH group outperformed the D-P (p = .010), SH-D (p = .013), and D-SH (p = .002) groups. The results suggested that the SH treatment, and possibly the D-SH treatment, as well, constitute viable alternatives to a conventional presentation-and-practice approach when teaching complex semantic targets. The results were further discussed in terms of implications for theoretical accounts of explicit instruction and categorization.