How do absolute beginners learn inflectional morphology? (French learners of Polish) Rebekah Rast (American University of Paris & UMR-SFL, CNRS) Marzena Watorek (University Paris 8 & UMR-SFL, CNRS) Agnieszka Latos (Università Ca Foscari & UMR-SFL, CNRS) Classroom Oriented Research: Toward Effective Learning and Teaching Konin, 14 Oct. 2015 Outline Background and research question The VILLA project Today s study methodology and results Aural Grammaticality Judgment test (GJT) Oral production - Route Directions (RD) Thoughts for effective learning and teaching Conclusion 2 1
Building a new grammatical system: inflectional morphology Learning inflectional morphology is a vexing problem for second language (L2) learners (Larsen-Freeman 2010: 221). Patterns found in beginner L2 data: Learners attend to meaning over form (VanPatten 1996, 2004) Learners mark time through lexical forms; morphological markers come later (Bardovi-Harlig 1992; Starren 2000) Productions show little to no functional verbal morphology (Klein & Perdue 1997) 3 Research Questions General: How do beginners process the target language (TL) input to break into a new inflectional system, and how do they begin to use inflectional morphology productively? Specific: What helps French learners of Polish judge the grammaticality of Polish nominal morphology? How do French learners of Polish use the Polish input to begin to make productive use of nominal morphology? 4 2
The VILLA Project Varieties of Initial Learners in Language Acquisition: Controlled classroom input and elementary forms of linguistic organisation French Dutch Polish Italian German English L1s, learners, input conditions Input types/age/l1s Dutch English French German Italian adult learners, meaningbased (MB) input children (10-yr-olds), meaning-based (MB) input adult learners, form-based (FB) input university students N = 17 age 19-27 Same: TL (Polish), teacher, content (input scripts), amount & distribution of input, monolingual input, no meta-language, no grammar books/dictionaries (None of the participants had previously been exposed to Polish or another Slavic language) Different: L1s, age of learners, input conditions Dimroth et al. (2013) Eurosla Yearbook 6 3
Exposure and Testing - 14 hours of input over 2 weeks (10 days) - Audio and video recorded 1 +90 min 2 +90 min 3 +90 min 4 +90 min 5 +90 min 6 +90 min 7 +90 min 8 +90 min 9 +90 min 10 +30 min tests tests tests tests tests tests tests tests tests tests tests 25 language tests 11 tests of individual differences 7 Times and Tasks 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Phoneme Discrimination Lexical Decision Word Recognition Grammaticality Judgement I (case) X X Oral Question-Answer (case) Sentence Puzzle (word order) Picture Verification (morpho-syntax) Sentence Imitation (morpho-syntax) Gramm. Judgement II (verbal morph.) Cloze (Pronouns) Free Production (Discourse) X After 4.5h After 10.5h After 14h 8 4
Learners: classroom Learners: computerized tests 5
Polish Nominal Morphology Case masculine neuter feminine sg sg sg Nom Ø, -a -o -a, -o, -e, -ę, -um Gen -a, -u -a -a Dat -owi, -u -u -u Acc -a -o -o, -e, ę, -um Instr -em -em -ą, -em Loc -e, -u -ie, -e -e,-u Voc =Loc =Nom =Loc, Nom Nominal morphology in Polish and French Polish 7 cases, 3 genders French no case marking on nouns; 2 genders marked on some nouns, determiners and adjectives 12 6
Polish Nominal Morphology in Grammaticality Judgment test (GJT) Nom Inst Masc student-ø student-em Fem studentk-a studentk-ą Sample instructor s slides using these endings Classroom slides (On/Ona jest + Instr) 7
Variable: Frequency Frequency is based on the number of tokens in the input. For GJT, two categories: 0 tokens = absent from the input 20+ tokens = present in the input Variable: Transparency Transparency is independently measured: Native speakers of all source languages (not our learners!) took a translation task: Two categories: 0% = opaque (not transparent) 50%+ = transparent 8
Task 1: Grammaticality Judgments (GJT) (E-prime experiment) Instructions: - listen to a sentence (3 words) - press a button: yes or no, was the sentence correct? Stimuli: - 64 sentences with target items (32 grammatical/ 32 ungrammatical) (balanced: P/T, P/O, A/T, A/O) - 32 distractor sentences GJT - sample sentences All target items: professions and nationalities / feminine and masculine example masculine: Absent/Opaque Patryk jest lekarzem *Dawid jest lekarz David is doctor (médécin) 9
GJT - sample sentences example feminine: Absent/Opaque Maria jest piosenkarką *Karina jest piosenkarka Karina is singer (chanteuse) GJT - Results Overall accuracy grammatical vs ungrammatical sentences over time (Time 1 vs. Time 2) Frequency and transparency effects 20 10
GJT overall accuracy % Accuracy 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Time 1 Time 2 grammatical ungrammatical No significant difference between masculine and feminine items 21 GJT T1: Transparency and Frequency Effects % Accuracy on grammatical sentences 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 Transp Opaque 30 20 10 0 Present in input Absent from input 22 11
GJT T2: Transparency and Frequency Effects % Accuracy on grammatical sentences 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 Transp Opaque 30 20 10 0 Present in input Absent from input 23 GJT Results summary Learners showed sensitivity to nominal morphology after only 4.5 hours of exposure. Learner performance improved over time. Transparency and frequency effects found: Frequency helped performance. Transparency helped performance on absent items. In sum, access to lexical meaning appears to have helped learners judge nominal morphology. 24 12
Task 2: Route Directions (RD) Next, we attempted to measure the productive knowledge of Polish nominal morphology. The same task was used for: In-class teaching Oral production task final day of Polish course 25 Communication Task Route Directions (oral production task) Role play a conversation between a tourist (the investigator) and a local inhabitant of the town (the learner). Both are looking at a map. The investigator begins with a question Excuse me, how do I get to 4 Dobra Street? The task for the learner is to explain how to get from the current location to 4 Dobra Street. 26 13
Classroom Input - sample 1 Proszę iść prosto ulicą (INSTR FEM) Niską Please go straight street Niska 2. Proszę za szpitalem (INSTR MASC) skrȩcić w prawo w ulicȩ (ACC FEM) Juliusza Słowackiego Please behind hospital turn in right in street JS 3. Proszę iść prosto do sklepu (GEN MASC) ulicą (INSTR FEM) Juliusza Słowackiego Please go straight until store street JS 4. Za sklepem (INSTR MASC) skrȩcić w lewo w ulicȩ (ACC FEM) Dobrą Behind store turn in left in street Dobra 5. Dom numer cztery znajduje się na lewo House number four finds itself on left Frequency and variation of forms in the input sklep (store) 20 sklepu 24 sklepem 39 other 7 total 90 szpital (hospital) 23 szpitalu 21 szpitalem 26 other 16 total 86 ulica (street) 181 ulicę 36 ulicy 78 ulicą 33 total 328 14
Frequency of nouns in learner productions and in the classroom input Items Nb tokens of item in learner productions Nb of learners (tot=17) who produced items Frequency of items in the Input ulica (street) 52 16 328 sklep (store) 16 12 90 szpital (hospital) 15 14 86 teatr 9 9 130 numer 9 9 287 dom 8 7 161 szkoła 6 6 108 restauracja 6 6 43 uniwersytet 4 4 72 Results: ulica (street) Context of occurrence 1. To jest + ulica (NOM.) This is + street 2. Proszę iść prosto + ulicą (INST.) Please, go straight + street 3. Proszę skręcić w prawo/w lewo + w (PREP) ulicę (ACC.) Please, turn right/left + in street Different forms of the item in learner productions ulica ulica*, ulika*, ulice* na + ulica*, za + ulicza*, do + ulicy ulica*, ulika*, ulieca*, ulice*, ulicze* w + ulice, za + ulica*, na + ulica*/ulicza* * Incorrect (form and/or context) 30 15
Results: szpital (hospital) Context of occurrence 1. Obok (PREP) + szpitala (GEN.) Next to + hospital 2. Za (PREP) szpitalem (INST.) proszę skręcić w prawo Behind + hospital, please turn right Different forms of the item in learner productions obok + hospitalø */ szpitalu*/ hospitalu*/ spitalø*/ szpitalø*/ szpitalem* z + szpitalu* za + szpitalem/ hospitalem*/ szpitalu* * Incorrect (form and/or context) 31 Results: sklep (store) Context of occurrence 1. Obok (PREP) + sklepu (GEN.) Next to + store 2. Za (PREP) + sklepem (INST.) proszę kręcić w prawo Behind + store, please turn right Different forms of the item in learner productions obok+ sklepø*/ sklept*, sklepem* obuks*+ skleps* na + sklepts* za + sklepem/sklepu*/skleps* zu* + sklepu* Incorrect (form and/or context) Overall, 13.6% of nouns produced were correct (i.e. correct form in correct context). 32 16
RD final comments Prior research has shown that at the early stages of L2A, learners tend to use the base form in all contexts; however, on this challenging production task after only 14 hours of input we observed the emergence of different morphological forms of the same item. This suggests that some learners have taken in selected forms from the input and tried to reproduce them. 33 Thoughts for effective learning and teaching GJT - Repetitive exposure (frequency) in meaningful contexts seems to help learners incorporate forms into their grammars. GJT - VP s learners attend to meaning over form might be rephrased as knowing the meaning (transparency and/or frequency) can help learners attend to form. RD Learners worked more on the forms located in spatial regions that are crucial for the task (in our case szpital, sklep) than on other forms. This work gave them the opportunity to practice these forms in meaningfully discourse. 34 17
Thoughts for effective learning and teaching If we as language teachers want our students to work on form, we need to provide situations where target forms are required (not simply optional) for the task at hand. We need to identify these situations and forms and write teaching materials accordingly. 35 Conclusion We see in the data the complex work that learners did on the input in order to meet the challenge of the tasks. This work reveals not only the complexity, but also the creativity (Klein & Perdue 1997, Basic Variety) of their emerging systems, including form. Our role as teachers is to encourage and guide the use of these creative systems with tasks and input that push and challenge learners and that help them shape their new grammars. 36 18
Thanks to VILLA project members and funding ORA: ANR/DFG/NWO British Academy PRIN37 Dziękuję! Merci! 38 19
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