Session 4G

Articles in L2 English ("a"/"the") are notoriously difficult to acquire, especially for learners with article-less, [-art], L1s (Murakami & Alexopoulou,2016). One possible explanation is that the inappropriate processing of articles in the input may hinder acquisition, according to the Input Processing (IP) theory (VanPatten,2015). The semantic contribution of articles is often opaque and the meaning can be recovered from the discourse/context. Thus, the IP theory predicts that learners will either not process articles at all (resulting in article omission in production) or will process them incorrectly linking articles to meanings that they do not encode in English, e.g. specificity (resulting in substituting one article for another). Indeed, the literature suggests learners might not distinguish between definiteness and specificity/referentiality (Ionin et al.,2004) or make inappropriate links between articles and number or count/mass distinction (Snape,2008).
To test these predictions, we designed a Processing Instruction Intervention containing online activities that force correct article processing (following VanPatten). For example, learners read "There is a sheaf on the table" with the low-frequency target noun "sheaf" and decided whether this could refer to one/more than one/part of a sheaf. Low-frequency words ensured learners could not infer this information from the word's meaning. Thus, it forced them to interpret the indefinite article "a" as an indicator that the following noun was countable and singular. We designed 360 practice items for both definite and indefinite contexts, which were balanced according to those nominal features known to play a role (number, countability, specificity, prenominal modification etc.). 
Seventy learners (most between A2–B2 CEFR levels, half [-art], e.g. Russian, half [+art], e.g. Spanish) participated in a three-week-long online intervention experiment with randomised control-group pre-test post-test design. The pre-test contained a timed grammaticality judgment task (GJT) and an elicited imitation (EI) task, where participants had to listen to and reproduce a long and complex sentence (to ensure inability to store it in phonological memory) containing a target definite/indefinite nominal. 
Mixed-effects regression modelling revealed a significant improvement in article accuracy on the timed GJT for the Experimental group but not for the Control group for both [-art] and [+art] L1s, which was maintained by the delayed post-test (3 months later). The results of the EI showed a similar trend of improvement for the Experimental group but not for the Control group, however the difference narrowly missed the 0.05 statistical significance threshold. We discuss the results in light of the IP theory and the interaction between nominal features (number, countability etc.) and processing. 
References
Ionin,T., Ko,H., & Wexler,K. (2004). Article semantics in L2 acquisition: The role of specificity. Language Acquisition,12(1),3–69.
Murakami,A., & Alexopoulou,T. (2016). L1 influence on the acquisition order of English grammatical morphemes: a learner corpus study. Studies in Second Language Acquisition,38,365–401. 
Snape,N. (2008). Resetting the Nominal Mapping Parameter in L2 English: Definite article use and the count–mass distinction. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition,11(01),63–79. 
VanPatten,B. (2015). Foundations of processing instruction. In IRAL - International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching (Vol.53,Issue 2,pp. 91–109).

It is generally assumed that prior knowledge, i.e. the status quo before a learning activity, is a key indicator for subsequent learning success (e.g. Rumlich i.pr.). This study examines whether prior L2 knowledge acquired in German-English bilingual preschools also has long lasting effects on elementary school children's success in learning the L2 English. In this context, we particularly focus on elementary schoolers' comprehension of English grammar and vocabulary over the course of four years.
We present longitudinal data obtained from 160 children in grades 1 to 4. The children either attended EFL lessons (two 45-minute lessons per week) or a bilingual program (where 50% of the teaching time is conducted in English). 30% of the children in each program were previously enrolled in a bilingual preschool for 2-3 years with 2-3 hours of daily exposure to English before entering the elementary school (e.g. Kersten et al. 2010). Receptive English lexical and grammatical competence were measured annually, employing the British Picture Vocabulary Scale II (Dunn & Dunn 1997) and the ELIAS grammar test (Kersten et al. 2012). Cognitive background variables were assessed with the Colored Progressive Matrices (Raven et al. 2002), and a parents' questionnaire revealed information about children's attendance of a bilingual preschool, their family language/s and the parents' socioeconomic background. 
The results of our study point to program-related differences regarding the effects of prior L2 knowledge from bilingual preschools: The elementary school children in the bilingual program with prior L2 knowledge obtained better scores than children without prior L2 knowledge until grade 2 for receptive L2 vocabulary and until grade 4 for receptive L2 grammar. In the EFL program students with prior L2 knowledge from preschool outperformed their peers without prior L2 knowledge until grade 3. Moreover, the targeted grammatical phenomena seem to be acquired in an order that is compatible with Processability Theory (e.g. Pienemann 1998), although the rate of development depends on prior knowledge und input intensity. In order to account for the different trajectories in the development of L2 grammatical and lexical comprehension during elementary school, we will discuss our results in the light of the children's social and cognitive background as well as in the light of teaching strategies used to accommodate children with different levels of L2 knowledge.


References
Dunn, L., Dunn, L., Whetton, C., Burley, J. (1997): The British Picture Vocabulary Scale II. Windsor: NFER-Nelson.
Kersten, K.; Rohde, A.; Schelletter, C. & Steinlen, A. (ed., 2010). Bilingual Preschools. Vol. I: Learning and Development. Trier: WVT.
Kersten, K.; Piske, T.; Rohde, A.; Steinlen, A.; Weitz, M, & Kurth, S (2012). ELIAS Grammar Test II. Universität Hildesheim: Manuscript.
Pienemann M. (1998) Language Processing and Second Language Development: Processability
Theory. Amsterdam: John Benjamins
Raven, J.C., Bulheller, S. & Häcker, H. (2002). Coloured Progressive Matrices. 3. Auflage. Göttingen: Hogrefe.
Rumlich, D. (i.pr.). Exploring the importance of prior knowledge and verbal cognitive abilities for foreign language learning. In: Piske, T. & Steinlen, Anja (ed.), Cognition and Second Language Acquisition. Tübingen: Narr.

Replicating an experimental design from Marsden et al. (2018), the present study investigates L1 German speaking EFL learners' implicit and explicit knowledge of the English existential quantifier any. Such knowledge is often explicitly addressed in EFL classroom instruction in terms of the distribution of the polarity items any versus some. 
Marsden et al. (2018) found that their Arabic EFL learners could draw on learnt knowledge about this existential quantifier and apparently had also acquired subtle linguistic constraints that had neither been taught nor are systematically represented in the L2 input. Moreover, their Arabic EFL learners did not appear to build both implicit and explicit knowledge around any in a parallel fashion. 
 The present study replicates and extends Marsden et al. (2018) with the aim of testing whether L1 German-speaking learners at intermediate to advanced proficiency can come to have knowledge of the distribution of any. Similarly to the Arabic-speaking learners in Marsden et al. (2018), such knowledge cannot be derived from the L1. Using both timed acceptability judgements and an extended rule elicitation task, behavioural data were elicited from 100 learners from intermediate to advanced L1 German-speaking learners in tertiary programmes in English. Test items elicited judgement of sentences reflecting taught pedagogical rules (1) and untaught distributional properties (2).

a. Do you want any cake? any in interrogative
b. *Jenny wants any cake. any in positive declarative
a. Jenny denies that she ate any cake. any in complement of negative verb
b. *Jenny thinks that she ate any cake. any in complement of factive verb
While the timed acceptability rating experiment tapped into the learners' implicit knowledge, the untimed rule-elicitation task investigated the extent of learners' conscious awareness of the standard pedagogical rules offered in instruction. By comparing performance on each task, we seek to consider to what extent learners can generalise from explicit input and/or acquire properties that are not clearly represented in the input and not explicitly taught. 
The results will be analysed using generalised linear mixed modelling, particularly suited to repeated-measure designs. The results will then be discussed in light of how explicit taught knowledge from instruction may constrain instructed learners' knowledge and in how this knowledge is extended by implicit acquisition despite poverty of the stimulus effects in the distribution of untaught properties of the existential quantifier. 



References
Marsden, H., Whong, M., & Gil, K-H. (2018). What's in the textbook and what's in the mind. Polarity item "any" in learner English. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 40(1), 91-118. doi: 10.1017/S0272263117000018.