Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Increased understanding of the ways in which multiple languages are represented in bilingual speakers' brains would undoubtedly advance several theoretical issues in areas such as language acquisition and performance theory. The... more
Increased understanding of the ways in which multiple languages are represented in bilingual speakers' brains would undoubtedly advance several theoretical issues in areas such as language acquisition and performance theory. The progress of science forces linguists to draw upon relevant data from neurolinguistics and opens a new avenue for SLA researchers. This literature review will examine neurolinguistic models that have been proposed as an explanation for the coexistence of multiple languages in a single brain and the mechanisms of linguistic segregation. An overview of the study of language localization will be presented, followed by a discussion of neurolinguistic studies investigating the cerebral representation of language in bilinguals. A particular area of focus will be factors affecting language representation in the bilingual brain.
Research Interests:
This study replicates Bitchener and Knoch (2010), which reported that written corrective feedback (WCF) targeting two single-rule English article functions (first mention a and subsequent mention the) is effective. The current replication... more
This study replicates Bitchener and Knoch (2010), which reported that written corrective feedback (WCF) targeting two single-rule English article functions (first mention a and subsequent mention the) is effective. The current replication study repeats the original study in most respects but adds to the assessment of the intervention's efficacy by recording the impact of focused WCF on all functional article uses, and not just on the two uses targeted by the WCF. The results of the replication study partially confirm Bitchener & Knoch's results and introduce some further differentiated findings. It is concluded that while the focused WCF leads to increased accuracy in the targeted functions of articles, the same WCF may negatively impact the remaining non-targeted article functions, especially for the group that received the most explicit WCF in the form of metalinguistic explanation.
Research Interests:
This study examined the second language (L2) acquisitional patterns of the English article system by adult ESL learners with two contrasting first languages: Spanish, a language which has an article system, and Korean which does not have... more
This study examined the second language (L2) acquisitional patterns of the English article system by adult ESL learners with two contrasting first languages: Spanish, a language which has an article system, and Korean which does not have articles or article-like morphemes. Data were collected from 43 participants via means of a fill-in-the-article test consisting of 46 items. Results revealed that the different semantic uses of a, the, and zero article presented different levels of difficulty for the two groups of learners, and that they did not appear to be acquired at the same time. The results also indicated that both groups of learners seemed to follow roughly the same path of acquisition regardless of the differences in their first language. This study concludes with a discussion of different theoretical explanations regarding the observed development of the English article system.
Research Interests:
Studies on focused written corrective feedback in L2 contexts report that such feedback is effective, even with learners’ use of English articles. They report that by narrowly targeting two single-rule-based functions—first-mention a/an... more
Studies on focused written corrective feedback in L2 contexts report that such feedback is effective, even with learners’ use of English articles. They report that by narrowly targeting two single-rule-based functions—first-mention a/an and second-mention the—learners acquire greater mastery and control over these forms. The effects of such selective corrective feedback on learners’ understanding of the complex and opaque English article system has not yet been considered in this strand of research. This classroom-based study investigates the impact of such focused corrective feedback on learners’ remaining functional article uses. The results indicate that while the focused corrective feedback leads to increased accuracy in the simple rule-based functions of articles, the same feedback may negatively impact the remaining article functions, especially for the group that received the most explicit feedback in the form of metalinguistic explanation.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Increased understanding of the ways in which multiple languages are represented in bilingual speakers' brains would undoubtedly advance several theoretical issues in areas such as language acquisition and performance theory. The... more
Increased understanding of the ways in which multiple languages are represented in bilingual speakers' brains would undoubtedly advance several theoretical issues in areas such as language acquisition and performance theory. The progress of science forces linguists to draw upon relevant data from neurolinguistics and opens a new avenue for SLA researchers. This literature review will examine neurolinguistic models that have been proposed as an explanation for the coexistence of multiple languages in a single brain and the mechanisms of linguistic segregation. An overview of the study of language localization will be presented, followed by a discussion of neurolinguistic studies investigating the cerebral representation of language in bilinguals. A particular area of focus will be factors affecting language representation in the bilingual brain.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Studies of L2 oral task performance report fluency as critical for functional adequacy, with pausing behaviors emerging as strong predictors of functionally adequate speech. The present study investigated the extent to which the type and... more
Studies of L2 oral task performance report fluency as critical for functional adequacy, with pausing behaviors emerging as strong predictors of functionally adequate speech. The present study investigated the extent to which the type and location of pausing is related to functional adequacy. Oral performances on two tasks by 40 L2 speakers of English at four proficiency levels were rated on a functional adequacy scale and analyzed for type of pausing, silent and filled at mid- or end-clause location. The study found significant relationships between functional adequacy and the frequency of end-clause pauses in L2 speech. We interpreted this finding as suggesting that breakdowns in message conceptualization play a role in how the functional adequacy of L2 speech is construed by the listeners.
Research Interests:
Increased understanding of the ways in which multiple languages are represented in bilingual speakers' brains would undoubtedly advance several theoretical issues in areas such as language acquisition and performance theory. The... more
Increased understanding of the ways in which multiple languages are represented in bilingual speakers' brains would undoubtedly advance several theoretical issues in areas such as language acquisition and performance theory. The progress of science forces linguists to draw upon relevant data from neurolinguistics and opens a new avenue for SLA researchers. This literature review will examine neurolinguistic models that have been proposed as an explanation for the coexistence of multiple languages in a single brain and the mechanisms of linguistic segregation. An overview of the study of language localization will be presented, followed by a discussion of neurolinguistic studies investigating the cerebral representation of language in bilinguals. A particular area of focus will be factors affecting language representation in the bilingual brain.
Current composition practice relies on a decades-old summary of research concluding that a focus on grammar in students’ writing is useless, or even harmful. Conversely, hundreds of recent studies from the fields of second-language... more
Current composition practice relies on a decades-old summary of research concluding that a focus on grammar in students’ writing is useless, or even harmful. Conversely, hundreds of recent studies from the fields of second-language writing and applied linguistics claim to provide evidence of the benefits to providing feedback on grammar in students’ writing. This article summarizes the arguments for and against such feedback and problematizes the results of previous research by describing a quasi-experimental study measuring the effects, both positive and negative, of providing students with grammar feedback on their writing. Results show that, while feedback on specific grammatical forms improved participants’ accuracy on those forms, it also led to decreased accuracy on other forms related to but not the focus of instruction. Furthermore, the control group’s accuracy equaled or surpassed that of the two feedback groups
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Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Editorial Board members Yoko Saito and Monika Ekiert recently had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Carol Chapelle, who was the guest speaker at the 2005 APPLE Lecture sponsored by the Programs in TESOL and Applied Linguistics at Teachers... more
Editorial Board members Yoko Saito and Monika Ekiert recently had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Carol Chapelle, who was the guest speaker at the 2005 APPLE Lecture sponsored by the Programs in TESOL and Applied Linguistics at Teachers College, Columbia University.
Teachers College, Columbia University Working Papers in TESOL & Applied Linguistics thanks the following people for one or more reviews of manuscripts for Issue 2, Volume 5 (2005).
Teachers College, Columbia University Working Papers in TESOL & Applied Linguistics thanks the following people for one or more reviews of manuscripts for Issue 1, Volume 6 (2006).
Research Interests:
The article system is a notorious source of difficulty for second language (L2) learners of English, largely because it is based on a complex set of abstract distinctions which are, to some extent, arbitrarily mapped onto surface forms (... more
The article system is a notorious source of difficulty for second language (L2) learners of English, largely because it is based on a complex set of abstract distinctions which are, to some extent, arbitrarily mapped onto surface forms ( a, the , and zero ). This difficulty is only compounded when learners’ first languages (L1s) do not share the same surface features and/or the same semantic conceptualizations with the target language (TL). This study is about the acquisition of grammatical marking of indefiniteness in L2 English as exemplified by a learner’s use of the indefinite article a. The ways in which L2 acquirers manage to make sense of English articles and even the cases when they do not offer fascinating insights into learners’ cognition (Young, 1996). The specific focus of this study is on whether differences in the grammatical treatment of indefiniteness in L1 and L2 correspond with detectable and systematic differences in interlanguage (Selinker, 1972).
Research Interests: Computer Science, Polish, English, Linguistics, Sla, and 5 moreQualitative, Grammar, Interlanguage, SLA, and Morpheme
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Increased understanding of the ways in which multiple languages are represented in bilingual speakers’ brains would undoubtedly advance several theoretical issues in areas such as language acquisition and performance theory. The progress... more
Increased understanding of the ways in which multiple languages are represented in bilingual speakers’ brains would undoubtedly advance several theoretical issues in areas such as language acquisition and performance theory. The progress of science forces linguists to draw upon relevant data from neurolinguistics and opens a new avenue for SLA researchers. This literature review will examine neurolinguistic models that have been proposed as an explanation for the coexistence of multiple languages in a single brain and the mechanisms of linguistic segregation. An overview of the study of language localization will be presented, followed by a discussion of neurolinguistic studies investigating the cerebral representation of language in bilinguals. A particular area of focus will be factors affecting language representation in the bilingual brain.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This study examined the second language (L2) acquisitional patterns of the English article system by adult ESL learners with two contrasting first languages: Spanish, a language which has an article system, and Korean which does not have... more
This study examined the second language (L2) acquisitional patterns of the English article system by adult ESL learners with two contrasting first languages: Spanish, a language which has an article system, and Korean which does not have articles or article-like morphemes. Data were collected from 43 participants via means of a fill-in-the-article test consisting of 46 items. Results revealed that the different semantic uses of a, the, and zero article presented different levels of difficulty for the two groups of learners, and that they did not appear to be acquired at the same time. The results also indicated that both groups of learners seemed to follow roughly the same path of acquisition regardless of the differences in their first language. This study concludes with a discussion of different theoretical explanations regarding the observed development of the English article system.
Research Interests:
Studies on focused written corrective feedback in L2 contexts report that such feedback is effective, even with learners’ use of English articles. They report that by narrowly targeting two single-rule-based functions—first-mention a/an... more
Studies on focused written corrective feedback in L2 contexts report that such feedback is effective, even with learners’ use of English articles. They report that by narrowly targeting two single-rule-based functions—first-mention a/an and second-mention the—learners acquire greater mastery and control over these forms. The effects of such selective corrective feedback on learners’ understanding of the complex and opaque English article system has not yet been considered in this strand of research. This classroom-based study investigates the impact of such focused corrective feedback on learners’ remaining functional article uses. The results indicate that while the focused corrective feedback leads to increased accuracy in the simple rule-based functions of articles, the same feedback may negatively impact the remaining article functions, especially for the group that received the most explicit feedback in the form of metalinguistic explanation.
Research Interests:
Teachers College, Columbia University Working Papers in TESOL & Applied Linguistics thanks the following people for one or more reviews of manuscripts for Issue 2, Volume 6 (2006).
Research Interests:
Conceived within the TBLT framework, the present study examined pedagogic tasks as vehicles for demonstrating L2 learners’ discourse appropriacy in oral production. Eighty ESL learners’ discourse appropriacy was measured using three... more
Conceived within the TBLT framework, the present study examined pedagogic tasks as vehicles for demonstrating L2 learners’ discourse appropriacy in oral production. Eighty ESL learners’ discourse appropriacy was measured using three pragmatically-oriented task types (complaint, refusal, and advice) across four different proficiency levels. The findings showed that, for all task types, as general proficiency increased, ratings of discourse appropriacy also increased. We found that there was a pronounced difference in discourse appropriacy between the intermediate and advanced proficiency levels, and that for learners at higher levels of proficiency, discourse appropriacy did not vary from task to task. In contrast, task type made a difference for less proficient learners in that the refusal task was particularly challenging compared with other tasks.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
... Research on the L2 acquisition of articles has been rather extensive (although often fragmentary), focusing on isolated features of the English article system (Chaudron & Parker, 1990; Goto Butler, 2002; Jarvis, 2002; Kharma,... more
... Research on the L2 acquisition of articles has been rather extensive (although often fragmentary), focusing on isolated features of the English article system (Chaudron & Parker, 1990; Goto Butler, 2002; Jarvis, 2002; Kharma, 1981; Liu & Gleason, 2002; Mizuno, 1999; Yamada ...
Research Interests:
This study replicates Bitchener and Knoch (2010), which reported that written corrective feedback (WCF) targeting two single-rule English article functions (first mention a and subsequent mention the) is effective. The current replication... more
This study replicates Bitchener and Knoch (2010), which reported that written corrective feedback (WCF) targeting two single-rule English article functions (first mention a and subsequent mention the) is effective. The current replication study repeats the original study in most respects but adds to the assessment of the…