Session 5H

Current evidence points to the usefulness of mastering multiword items in enhancing second language learners' (L2) target language proficiency. However, research on classroom activities that foster productive knowledge of FSs remains rather scarce. This presentation reports a quasi-experimental study which compared the effectiveness for multiword item learning of three listening-based activities: dictation, dictogloss, and answering text comprehension questions. In a dictation, students write down segments of text immediately after listening to them, whereas in dictogloss students try to reconstruct the text from memory. Chinese learners of English as a foreign language (N = 142) first engaged in one of the three listening activities, were then given the transcript and used a different colour to make corrections to what they had written down during their respective listening tasks. The learners were given an unannounced immediate and a two-week delayed posttest concerning 10 expressions from the text. Multilevel modeling was used to analyze the results. Both dictation and dictogloss led to better scores than answering comprehension questions in the immediate posttest but this advantage diminished in the delayed test. Dictation and dictogloss generated similar learning outcomes overall, but items that were successfully retrieved during the dictogloss activity rather than rectified afterwards with the aid of the transcript stood the best chance of being recalled. This indicates the benefits of retrieval and suggests that dictogloss can be comparatively effective provided it is implemented in a way that promotes accurate retrieval at the text-reconstruction stage.

The ability to learn new words is associated with the ability to repeat phonological forms (for a review: Gathercole, 2006). However, teaching of L2 vocabulary rarely involves an explicit or an implicit focus on phonological representations. Based on the hypothesis that teaching the phonological forms enhances the learning of L2 receptive vocabulary, we compare what effects a phonological form-focused teaching and a communicative method have on L2 receptive vocabulary learning.
Our participants are 127 Swiss German teenagers (mean age 12;6) learning French as a foreign language at the mandatory school. These low proficiency learners (level A1-A2) were taught either following a phonological form-focused explicit method or a communicative method. The learning objectives were similar in terms of phonemes, vocabulary and recruited skills. In each class, participants were randomly assigned to two groups that followed one or the other teaching method for six weeks (total lasting of instruction 4 hours).
The two teaching methods aimed at enhancing pronunciation, discrimination, knowledge of phoneme­-grapheme correspondences and orthography of words containing two French phonemes. These two phonemes, the nasal vowel /ɔ̃/ and the voiced fricative /ʒ/, are known to be difficult to learn (Ruellot, 2014). The effects of the two teaching methods were evaluated in a pre­-, immediate post- and delayed post-test design.
Five tasks were repeatedly administered: Receptive vocabulary was assessed by a Yes/No task, pronunciation by a repetition task, discrimination by an AX task, grapheme-phoneme correspondences by an identification task of written form corresponding aural nonwords, and maintaining in working memory by a nonword repetition task. Linear mixed models were fitted to the data to test for differences across treatments and target phonemes.
Overall, the results indicate that participants made significant progress in all five tasks, with no significant difference between the two teaching methods. However, differences between the teaching methods were observed depending on the interaction between the task and the phoneme at play. For /ɔ̃/, communicative teaching led to a significantly greater improvement in discrimination. For /ʒ/, the phonological form-focused teaching led to a significantly greater improvement in discrimination, pronunciation, and phoneme-grapheme correspondences. For receptive vocabulary, no significant difference was observed between the two teaching methods.
The similar increase in receptive vocabulary regardless of teaching method is in line with the assumption that knowledge of phonological forms is essential for vocabulary learning by low proficiency learners of a foreign language. Participants explicitly instructed on the phonological forms are able to identify the words as well as participants instructed on word meaning. Teaching L2 phonological forms when teaching vocabulary seems to contribute to new word learning, especially for items containing contrastively difficult phonemes. We conclude by discussing the meaning of our results for vocabulary learning in young learners in a school context.
Gathercole, S.E. (2006). Nonword repetition and word learning: The nature of the relationship. Applied Psycholinguistics, 27, 513‑543.
Ruellot, V. (2014). Introducing French nasal vowels at the beginner level: A demystification. Pronunciation in second language learning and teaching, 151‑155.

Preference for one direction of binomials (black and white) over the other (white and black) is assumed to have historical and cognitive bases (Goldberg & Lee, 2021). When it comes to acquisition, Conklin and Carrol (2021) showed that first-language (L1) users can extract such direction preferences for novel (invented) binomials after as few as four encounters. But what about second-language (L2) speakers who might not process lexical patterns as easily as L1 users (Christiansen & Arnon, 2017)? No research to date has addressed this question. The present study aims to fill this gap by recording L2 speakers' eye-movements as they process novel binomials in context.

Thirty-nine L2 speakers of English (L1 Arabic) read three short stories seeded with 12 existing binomials (black and white) and 20 novel binomials (bags and coats). The existing binomials appeared once in their forward (conventional) form and once in their reversed form. The novel binomials appeared in their experimentally defined forward form in different frequency conditions (two versus four encounters). After all encounters with the forward form, the novel binomial was presented in its reversed form to examine sensitivity to direction. We analyzed first-pass reading times and total reading times for whole binomials and individual words using mixed-effects modelling in R. 

Results showed no advantage for existing binomials (black and white) over their reversed forms (white and black) for our L2 speakers (cf. Siyanova-Chanturia et al., 2011). As for the novel binomials, L2 speakers read subsequent encounters significantly faster than initial ones for both frequency conditions. More importantly, the final reversed form also led to a processing advantage; suggesting that L2 speakers process the reversed form of a novel binomial as another encounter, ignoring the direction preference. We discuss the results in terms of usage-based models of language acquisition and consider their implications for L2 learners of formulaic language.



References
Christiansen, M. H., & Arnon, I. (2017). More than words: The role of multiword sequences in language learning and use. Topics in Cognitive Science, 9(3), 542-551.
Conklin, K., & Carrol, G. (2021). Words go together like 'bread and butter': The rapid, automatic acquisition of lexical patterns. Applied Linguistics, 42(3), 492-513.
Goldberg, A. E., & Lee, C. (2021). Accessibility and historical change: An emergent cluster led uncles and aunts to become aunts and uncles. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 1418.
Siyanova-Chanturia, A., Conklin, K., & Van Heuven, W. J. (2011). Seeing a phrase "time and again" matters: The role of phrasal frequency in the processing of multiword sequences. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 37(3), 776.