Session 7D

The production effect (PE) is the positive effect of reading lexical items aloud on word learning, compared with reading silently (MacLeod et al., 2010). Contrasting assumptions have been proposed regarding the PE in adults. While some researchers propose that adults show a positive effect (better recall for words learned aloud, Icht and Mama, 2019), others show a reversed effect (better recall for words learned silently, Kaushanskaya & Yoo, 2011). Although positive and reversed PE has been supported by several studies using different methods, there are limited studies investigating the PE on children. This study tested the impact of production on the acquisition of nouns in child learners of Modern Standard Arabic (MSA).
In experiment 1, seventy-two English speaking children aged four to eleven with basic knowledge of Arabic participated in an online MSA word learning task under two conditions: listening only and listening then repeating, using a mixed-list design to learn twenty words in total. A forced-choice recognition test was used to assess word knowledge in terms of accuracy, and response time on three tests: immediate, 24-hour delayed, and nine-week follow-up. Results indicate similar recognition in both conditions. Accuracy was higher for the production (i.e., listen then repeat) condition than the listening-only condition in the immediate and delayed conditions, but there was no difference between the two conditions in the 9-week test. Further analyses showed a main effect of dominant language on response time, such that English-dominant speakers responded to the stimuli more slowly and with more errors than Arabic-dominant speakers. A reversed production effect for older children in the follow-up test was observed for response time, while no effect was shown for accuracy.

In experiment 2, fifty English speaking children aged four to six participated in a preferential looking paradigm using an Eyelink Portable Duo eye-tracker. In this study, children learned twenty-four words per condition in a blocked design. Immediately after completing learning under each condition, children were asked to recall learned words. There were three testing sessions: immediately after learning, after one week, then after two weeks to measure their recognition of learned items. Preliminary findings suggest that production may enhance word learning in younger children, particularly with blocked (as opposed to mixed) condition. It appears that production can be an efficient mnemonic for child learners especially in tasks that requires word-picture mapping, which is consistent with findings from previous PE studies conducted with early school-aged children and adults. 

References:
‌Icht, M., & Mama, Y. (2019). The effect of vocal production on vocabulary learning in a second language.Language Teaching Research, 136216881988389. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168819883894
Kaushanskaya, M., & Yoo, J. (2011). Rehearsal effects in adult word learning.Language and Cognitive Processes,26(1), 121–148. https://doi.org/10.1080/01690965.2010.486579
‌MacLeod, C. M., Gopie, N., Hourihan, K. L., Neary, K. R., & Ozubko, J. D. (2010). The production effect: delineation of a phenomenon. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 36(3), 671–685. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018785

Second language acquisition research has shown the benefits of out-of-school exposure to English, or extramural English (EE), for the language acquisition process of EFL learners (Hannibal Jensen, 2017; Sundqvist, 2019). An increasing number of studies have recently focused on children who are already exposed to EE before formal instruction. Those studies suggest that there is a positive relationship between the amount of EE learners engage with and their English language proficiency, in particular their vocabulary knowledge (De Wilde et al., 2020; Puimège & Peters, 2019). Further, research also indicates that young learners experience positive attitudes towards the language (Zenner et al., 2020). However, little is still known about the longitudinal development of young learners' engagement with EE, their attitudes towards EE, and their English vocabulary growth before formal instruction. 
This presentation will zoom in on the longitudinal development of different EE aspects and vocabulary knowledge in two cohorts of primary school children prior to English instruction (L1 = Dutch): n = 42 in Cohort 1 (age 10 -11) and n = 50 in Cohort 2 (age 11-12). In two measurement times, one year apart, we measured their vocabulary knowledge in a meaning recall test (an adapted version of the Picture Vocabulary Size Test, Anthony & Nation, 2017), and their EE engagement and attitudes towards EE in a Likert-scale questionnaire. Finally, we identified which learner-related variables predicted vocabulary knowledge at Time 2 and vocabulary development. 

A two-way repeated measures ANOVA indicated that young learners' vocabulary knowledge increased significantly over time (F(1, 90) = 343.98, p < .001, ηp2 = .79), more so in Cohort 1 than in Cohort 2. Engagement with EE slightly increased as well, albeit not significantly (F(1, 82) = 1.33, p = .253, ηp2 = .02). Learners in Cohort 1 especially gamed and browsed social media more at Time 2. The findings also showed that the children's attitudes towards EFL grew more positive over time. Finally, regression tree analyses indicated that, for both cohorts, only vocabulary knowledge at Time 1 predicted vocabulary knowledge at Time 2.



Anthony, L., & Nation, I. S. P. (2017). Picture Vocabulary Size Test (Version 1.2.0) [Computer software and measurement instrument]. Tokyo: Waseda University. Retrieved from http://www.laurenceanthony.net/software/pvst

De Wilde, V., Brysbaert, M., & Eyckmans, J. (2020). Learning English through out-of-school exposure: which levels of language proficiency are attained and which types of input are important? Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 23(1), 171–185. 
Hannibal Jensen, S. (2017). Gaming as an English language learning resource among young children in Denmark. CALICO Journal, 34(1), 1–19.
Puimège, E., & Peters, E. (2019). Learners' English vocabulary knowledge prior to formal instruction: The role of learner-related and word-related variables. Language Learning, 69(4), 943–977. 
Sundqvist, P. (2019). Commercial-off-the-shelf games in the digital wild and L2 learner vocabulary. Language Learning & Technology, 23(1), 87–113. 
Zenner, E., Rosseel, L., & Speelman, D. (2020). Starman or Sterrenman: An acquisitional perspective on the social meaning of English in Flanders. International Journal of Bilingualism, 25(3), 568–591.

This study analyses the impact of the L1 on processing of L2 verb-noun collocations among returnees and heritage speakers. As noted by Schmid and Köpke (2009), the most sensitive feature of the linguistic system is the lexicon. The available empirical research to date investigating attrition in lexical knowledge is scarce, particularly attrition in collocational knowledge (Schmitt, 2010). One of the few available studies (Kopotev, Kisselev, & Polinsky, 2020) suggests that heritage speakers (HSs) use transfer-based non-standard word combinations, and that analysing such combinations can throw new light on the role of input in HSs language development. Here we aim to contribute to this discussion in a study of English L2 verb-noun collocations in which we compare 30 child and 30 adult HSs and returnees (RTs) against monolingual users of English. Participants are 30 child and 30 adult RTs who had lived in the US for an extended period of time and returned to their country of origin, Saudi Arabia, either in early childhood or in adolescence. They are compared to 60 Saudi HSs living in the US, and a group of monolinguals. Receptive knowledge of English collocations was measured with a novel online lexical decision task (LDT) consisting of English collocations which were either congruent, such as 'have experience' or incongruent between Arabic and English, for example, 'do homework', or belonged to two types of unattested collocations, half of which were L1-based, such as 'grow fear' and the other half were unattested in either language, for instance, 'do mistakes'. Furthermore, a picture description task and an online gap-filling task focusing on verb-noun collocations were used to measure productive knowledge of collocations, and a range of baseline tests are administered to test vocabulary and grammar knowledge. It was predicted that HSs would achieve higher scores and experience less influence from Arabic on all productive and receptive tasks and would process English collocations faster than RTs, as the HSs are exposed to more and a richer input in English, whereas Saudi returnees are rarely exposed to English input. Preliminary results from 26 participants and a small control group of monolinguals reveal that RTs obtain lower scores than monolinguals on the LDT, whereas HSs perform at similar levels as monolinguals despite being younger and less experienced. In addition, there is a trend for RTs to be less good at identifying unattested transfer-based collocations with an Arabic equivalent than the HSs. Thus, the current study can throw new light on the role of input in collocational attrition among different groups of bilinguals.
References
Kopotev, M., Kisselev, O., & Polinsky, M. (2020). Collocations and near-native competence: Lexical strategies of heritage speakers of Russian. International Journal of Bilingualism.
Schmid, M. S., & Köpke, B. (2009). L1 attrition and the mental lexicon. In A. Pavlenko, The bilingual mental lexicon: Interdisciplinary approaches (pp. 209-238). Bristol, England: Multilingual Matters.

Schmitt, N. (2010). Researching vocabulary: A vocabulary research manual. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.