Reineke's SLA Notebook

[reineke]

Individual differences in audio-vocal speech imitation aptitude in late bilinguals: functional neuro-imaging and brain morphology

An unanswered question in adult language learning or late bi and multilingualism is why individuals show marked differences in their ability to imitate foreign accents. While recent research acknowledges that more adults than previously assumed can still acquire a “native” foreign accent, very little is known about the neuro-cognitive correlates of this special ability. We investigated 140 German-speaking individuals displaying varying degrees of “mimicking” capacity, based on natural language text, sentence, and word imitations either in their second language English or in Hindi and Tamil, languages they had never been exposed to. The large subject pool was strictly controlled for previous language experience prior to magnetic resonance imaging. The late-onset (around 10 years) bilinguals showed significant individual differences as to how they employed their left-hemisphere speech areas: higher hemodynamic activation in a distinct fronto-parietal network accompanied low ability, while high ability paralleled enhanced gray matter volume in these areas concomitant with decreased hemodynamic responses. Finally and unexpectedly, males were found to be more talented foreign speech mimics.

Introduction
There are considerable individual differences when it comes to the pronunciation of a foreign language, especially if it is learned in adolescence. While some of the so-called “late learners” have excellent mimicking capacities and pass easily as a native speaker (e.g., Abrahamsson and Hyltenstam, 2008), others retain a heavy native accent (sometimes referred to as the “Joseph Conrad” phenomenon). Research in the field of second language (L2) learning ability/aptitude (Obler and Fein, 1988; Skehan, 2011) has established that individuals can either have what the authors call a “talent for accent” (phonetic/phonological domain) or a “talent for grammar” (syntactic–semantic domain, Nauchi and Sakai, 2009). Those who have a talent for accent can imitate foreign speech up to a native level, despite their late age of onset of learning (AOL). They seem not to be affected by a “critical/sensitive period” for learning pronunciation – contrary to the usual line of thinking (Birdsong, 2006). Various researchers acknowledge that the prevalence of this outstanding ability – which adopts Gaussian distribution – is rather low, amounting only to about 5% of adults (Selinker, 1972; Wells, 1985). However, as with all abilities, there is a continuum rather than a sharp demarcation, with individuals possessing varying degrees of a certain ability.

As far as the neuro-anatomical results of our study are concerned, it becomes increasingly clear that higher skills or ability are accompanied by increases in either white or GM density or volume and the reverse, i.e., decreased volume is reported to be a marker of lower abilities or even neurological disorders (either generally as well as specifically with respect to second language skills, Mechelli et al., 2004; Golestani and Pallier, 2007; Golestani et al., 2007; McAlonan et al., 2008; Richardson et al., 2010). Correlations between neuro-anatomical structures and higher performance skills in foreign languages have been reported. For example, an exceptional general language learning “talent,” as exemplified by a hyper polyglot (60 languages spoken) post mortem male brain was reported to show significantly diverse cytoarchitectural (cell) structures in Broca’s area as a signature of his outstanding foreign language skills (Amunts et al., 2004). More specifically increased GM/WM density or volume (especially within the inferior parietal areas) have been reported to reflect higher performance related to either increased proficiency levels in a second language (Mechelli et al., 2004) or capacity/success in perceiving (Golestani et al., 2002, 2007) or producing (Golestani and Pallier, 2007) foreign language speech sounds.

Discussion
The results of our study point to a distinct neuro-functional/neuro-anatomical signature of speech imitation ability (aptitude): “pronunciation/speech imitation talent” was found to be associated with less hemodynamic activation together with higher amounts of GMV within a left-hemisphere perisylvian network, including premotor cortex (Broca) and inferior parietal lobe.

At the neuro-functional level (fMRI), we observed a clear-cut difference between low and high ability speakers as a function of their imitation ability: low ability imitators showed significantly higher amounts of activation and more extended clusters during sentence and word imitation. These findings are in accord with previous studies suggesting increased ”cortical effort” in lower proficiency L2 speakers in terms of “neuro-functional compensation mechanisms” or “consumption of global workspace” (Just et al., 1996; Reiterer et al., 2005b; Moser et al., 2009). As a novel aspect, all languages tested (L1, L2, and L0) seem to be affected by this principle in similar ways with a gradual increase from the “easiest” (L1, German) to the most “difficult” language (L0, Tamil). Conceivably, thus, even the native tongue was neuro-functionally differently processed by the poor (Hindi) mimics, pointing to a general underlying articulation capacity less dependent on immediate training...

Since our behavioral speech imitation data showed a significant gender difference (higher scores for the male imitators), we would like to provide a few possible lines of explanation for this phenomenon. This result was unexpected since traditionally the literature attributed an advantage for second language learning to females (for critical reviews of this issue see Ullman et al., 2008; Chiarello et al., 2009; Wallentin, 2009). However, here we did not investigate language learning in all linguistic subsystems, but focused only on speech-sound audio–vocal imitation. The task essentially required a speech motor imitation skill which did not involve “language” planning (e.g., semantics, declarative memory). It was almost devoid of syntactic and semantic operations. When testing for pure motor skill learning, recent evidence (Dorfberger et al., 2009) could show that males have a significant advantage over females in motor skill learning.

Additionally, there is reported anecdotal superiority of males over females when rare and exceptional high talent in foreign language learning (including native-like accent) is concerned. So-called “hyper polyglots” (Erard, in press) who know between 10 and 50 languages fluently, or parodists, mimics, and impersonators are usually predominantly male. Hypothetically speaking, this phenomenon also reminds one of evolutionary Darwinian theories of speech origin, namely, sexual selection bearing a possible hidden driving force behind predominantly male song performance, as is the case in most songbird species (Fitch, 2005, 2010).

The gender bias, however, would be consistent with the emerging evidence in the field of giftedness research which shows that gender differences are observed to be larger and more pronounced in gifted (the upper end of the scale) than in average ability individuals (Preckel et al., 2008). This fits well with evolutionary theories which see males as more represented in the extremes of the normal distribution curve, whereas females form the main representation toward the mean (with respect to any kinds of abilities). Like male predominance in the upper end of the ability scale in gifted populations, but in the opposite direction, many developmental and acquired disorders, like, for example – disorders of the voice and tone-deafness – are more prevalent in males than in females (Howard and Angus, 1998).

Whether this discrepancy is still the effect of a bias of educational traditions in our societies or rooted in biology requires future clarification.

Conclusion

In this combined behavioral and brain imaging study we investigated the neuro-functional and neuro-anatomical correlates of individual differences in speech imitation/pronunciation ability.

Having excluded the confounding factors of age of onset of foreign language learning and exposure/linguistic experience as influencing variables by extensive pre hoc behavioral testing, we could pin down the neurological signatures related to individual differences in speech imitation talent to two areas in the brain on a functional as well as anatomical level. Lower amounts of activation, accompanied by increased volumes in GM in a left premotor cluster including Broca’s area (BA 44/6) and the left inferior parietal lobe (BA 40) characterized high ability in second language speech imitation.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10 ... 00271/full

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Processing Metrical Information in Silent Reading: An ERP Study

Listeners are sensitive to the metric structure of words, i.e., an alternating pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables, in auditory speech processing: Event-related potentials recorded as participants listen to a sequence of words with a consistent metrical pattern, e.g., a series of trochaic words, suggest that participants register words metrically incongruent with the preceding sequence. Here we examine whether the processing of individual words in silent reading is similarly impacted by rhythmic properties of the surrounding context.

The results provide evidence that comprehenders are sensitive to the prosodic properties of the context even in silent reading, such that this sensitivity impacts lexico-semantic processing of individual words.

Introduction
Metrical stress, patterns of alternations of strong and weak syllables in polysyllabic words, phrases, or sentences, is an important characteristic of spoken language. Metrical regularities in speech have been shown to play an important role in language acquisition and segmentation of words from continuous speech for both infants (Jusczyk et al., 1993; Thiessen and Saffran, 2007) and adults (Sanders et al., 2002). Regularity in metrical structures has also been shown to facilitate phonological (Pitt and Samuel, 1990), lexico-semantic (Rothermich et al., 2012) and syntactic processing (Roncaglia-Denissen et al., 2013).

Given the functional importance of metrical stress for speech processing, it is not surprising that listeners register metrical regularities and inconsistencies even without explicit instructions to do so.

The present study investigated whether participants are similarly sensitive to metrical structure during silent reading. A growing body of recent research has demonstrated that visual language processing covertly activates phonological representations at different levels: individual phonemes (Frost, 1998), sub-phonemic properties such as phonetic length (Abramson and Goldinger, 1997) and supra-segmental features such as prosodic phrase boundaries (Steinhauer and Friederici, 2001; Roll et al., 2012; Schremm et al., 2015). Word stress is likewise activated in silent reading (Ashby and Clifton, 2005), which manifests as interference with the orthographic and lexico-semantic processing of these words (Harris and Perfetti, 2016; Kriukova and Mani, 2016).

The results of the present study add to a body of previous findings suggesting activation of various types of phonological information in silent reading and demonstrate readers’ sensitivity to the metrical properties of written language.

We suggest that it is likely that there is distributed access to information from metrical and lexico-semantic levels leading to lexical activation, and that metrical information, like other more critical sources of information about the identity of the word is processed in parallel during lexical access.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10 ... 01432/full

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The Influence of the Pinyin and Zhuyin Writing Systems on the Acquisition of Mandarin Word Forms by Native English Speakers

Introduction
Adult second language (L2) learners can exploit the availability of orthographic input in learning the phonological forms of L2 words (e.g., Escudero et al., 2008). However, we have also seen that there are limits to the utility of orthographic input in supporting learners' target-like acquisition of words' forms—the literature provides cases where written input either had no beneficial effect (Simon et al., 2010; Hayes-Harb and Hacking, 2015; Showalter and Hayes-Harb, 2015) or in fact interfered with the target-like acquisition of L2 word forms (e.g., Hayes-Harb et al., 2010; Young-Scholten and Langer, 2015). Two factors that have emerged as possibly associated with whether or not orthographic input supports or interferes with word form learning are (i) whether the writing system is shared by the native language and the L2, and (ii) if the writing system is shared, whether the relevant grapheme-phoneme correspondences are also shared. The case of native English speakers learning Mandarin via the Zhuyin and Pinyin writing systems provides an ecologically valid opportunity to explore the relative impact of these two factors on L2 word form learning. Pinyin uses the Roman alphabet, shared with English, while Zhuyin uses an entirely different set of graphemes. Each writing system poses its own set of challenges to native English learners: Zhuyin requires learners to acquire an entirely novel grapheme set; Pinyin, on the other hand, involves only familiar graphemes, but learners must suppress a number of English grapheme-phoneme correspondences in favor of new ones...

Orthographic Input and L2 Word Form Learning
In cases where orthographic input facilitates L2 word form learning, learners may benefit from familiarity of the graphemes in addition to familiarity of the grapheme-phoneme correspondences. For example, native Dutch speakers who saw written forms during an English word learning task (e.g., < tandek> and < tenzer>) were more likely to have established lexical representations that distinguish between English /æ/ and /ɛ/ (corresponding to the letters < a> and < e>) than those who did not have access to written forms (Escudero et al., 2008). In this case, the L2 English graphemes were familiar to the native Dutch learners, and additionally, while the particular grapheme-vowel mappings differ between Dutch and English, the graphemes < a> and < e> capture a phonological contrast in both languages, presumably allowing participants to infer the English phonological contrast from the differential spellings.

More recent studies, however, have provided evidence of the limitations of written input in facilitating second language word learning. For example, a number of studies have found no effect of orthographic input in some cases where the graphemes and/or grapheme-phoneme correspondences are unfamiliar (e.g., Simon et al., 2010; Showalter and Hayes-Harb, 2013). Others have even found detrimental effects when the grapheme-phoneme correspondences of the L1 and L2 differ (Young-Scholten, 2002; Hayes-Harb et al., 2010; Hayes-Harb et al., submitted), or when the orthography is entirely unfamiliar (e.g., Mathieu, 2016). For example, Hayes-Harb et al. (2010) demonstrated that using a familiar orthography with unfamiliar grapheme-phoneme correspondences can lead learners to misremember the phonological forms of newly learned words...

The study of orthographic input in L2 phonological and word form acquisition has emerged only recently, and the present study represents an additional step in the direction of understanding the specific circumstances under which L2 learners' lexical development is helped or hindered by written input. Our aim was to investigate the influence of two factors that may moderate the influence of written input on L2 word form learning: (i) whether the writing system is shared by the native language and the L2, and (ii) if the writing system is shared, whether the relevant grapheme-phoneme correspondences are also shared. We did so via a series of experiments in which native English speakers were exposed to Mandarin words via auditory and visual (picture, written) input. Native speakers of English who had access to Pinyin (familiar writing system, some unfamiliar grapheme-phoneme correspondences) experienced difficulty learning the words' phonological forms due to interference from English grapheme-phoneme correspondences. Those who had access to Zhuyin (unfamiliar writing system) experienced no such interference, though they did initially take somewhat longer to learn the words' written forms.

In light of the fact that both Pinyin and Zhuyin are used in pedagogical settings to support Mandarin language acquisition, our findings can contribute to an understanding of the costs and benefits of each for this purpose. In particular, given that literate L2 learners are likely, especially in instructed settings, to be exposed to new words' phonological forms and their written forms more or less simultaneously, it is crucial that we understand the ways in which these two types of input impact the establishment and subsequent use of L2 lexical representations. Short laboratory-based studies like the one presented here differ importantly from real-world language acquisition; however, they do permit us to isolate and examine the factors that may contribute to L2 learning success or difficulty. One might next ask whether the patterns identified in the present study with respect to Pinyin's and Zhuyin's influence on L2 word form learning play out in actual native English-speaking learners of Mandarin, and whether Mandarin language experience (see Veivo and Jarvikivi, 2013) or other factors can moderate the effects of orthographic input.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10 ... 00785/full

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Imitated Prosodic Fluency Predicts Reading Comprehension Ability in Good and Poor High School Readers

Researchers have established a relationship between beginning readers' silent comprehension ability and their prosodic fluency, such that readers who read aloud with appropriate prosody tend to have higher scores on silent reading comprehension assessments. The current study was designed to investigate this relationship in two groups of high school readers...

These results demonstrate that the relationship between prosodic fluency and reading comprehension continues past the stage of early reading instruction. Moreover, they suggest that prosodically fluent speakers may also generate more fluent implicit prosodic representations during silent reading, leading to more effective comprehension.

Although fluency defined according to rate and accuracy measures has been shown to predict comprehension ability (Fuchs et al., 2001; Schilling et al., 2007), this definition fails to capture the importance of prosody to the perception of fluency in reading. Prosody, which describes variation in intonation, duration, rhythm, and intensity, is a critical component of perceived fluency in spoken language, as prosodic variation signals not only syntactic and semantic structure of sentences (e.g., Wagner and Watson, 2010), but also emotion (e.g., Cole, 2015). For example, Kuhn et al. (2010) note that, in addition to the role of rate and accuracy, prosodic fluency requires “appropriate expression or intonation coupled with phrasing that allows for the maintenance of meaning” (p. 233). Assessing this type of fluency is more difficult than assessing fluency according to rate and accuracy, however, as there are no simple methods for quantifying prosody. That is, although prosodic features like phrasing (i.e., cues to disjuncture) and stress (i.e., cues to prominence) are signaled through acoustic features like pitch, intensity, and duration, the relationship between the prosodic features and the acoustic measures is complex and variable (e.g., Wagner and Watson, 2010). Prosody researchers often deal with this complexity by relying on trained human annotators' perception of prosodic features...

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10 ... 01026/full

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Effects of the Native Language on the Learning of Fundamental Frequency in Second-Language Speech Segmentation

This study investigates whether the learning of prosodic cues to word boundaries in speech segmentation is more difficult if the native and second/foreign languages (L1 and L2) have similar (though non-identical) prosodies than if they have markedly different prosodies (Prosodic-Learning Interference Hypothesis)...The results...[suggest] that L1–L2 prosodic similarity can make the learning of an L2 segmentation cue difficult, in line with the proposed Prosodic-Learning Interference Hypothesis.


Introduction

The segmentation of continuous speech into individual words is a particularly challenging task for non-native listeners, in that cues to word boundaries differ across languages. The cues that may be useful for segmenting the native language (L1) are often inefficient or even misleading for segmenting a second/foreign language (L2). Whether or not non-native listeners can learn to use segmentation cues has been shown to depend in part on the similarity between the L1 and the L2...


https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10 ... 00985/full

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A psycholinguist walks into a classroom…:

A road-map for bridging research and practice in pronunciation teaching

“Language is sound”.

Pronunciation is indissociable from the rest of language behavior.

• To make the language come alive requires the behaviors related to listening, speaking, reading and writing.
• Phonological, lexical, and structural knowledge lie at the heart of the language

https://speechlab.utah.edu/Darcy%20PSLL ... eynote.pdf

“They sound the same, but I know they are different”

Dissociated mechanisms for phonetic and lexical learning in a second language

Spoken word recognition and
the L2 mental lexicon
– phonetic perception and lexical
encoding are related
– L2 learners differ from native
speakers in lexical behavior

• Experiment series 1: Merged L2 lexical representations?
• Experiment series 2: Fuzzy or not fuzzy? Two hypotheses about the form of words in the L2 lexicon

Segmental “deafness”

Good part : Don’t feel bad (and there is hope!)
Distressing part : Perceptual learning gives no guarantee

Bad part : We don‘t know what‘s going on
– Role of orthography (e.g. Showalter & Hayes-Harb, 2013; Escudero et al. 2008).
– Phonological licensing
Interesting part : What can we do about it?

The presentation
(You'll need to copy the link)
[url]http://www.iub.edu/~psyling/papers/Darcy_L2%20mental%20lexicon[Stuttgart_invited]2.pdf[/url]

Text-only PDF

"New sounds in a second language (L2) are often misperceived as instances of familiar
categories in the first language (L1), as suggested by the PAM-L2 (Best & Tyler, 2007): for
example French /y/ is often categorized as English /u/ because learners lack a specific phonetic
category for /y/. Previous research suggests that given the lack of a category for the new sound
(/y/), learners might confuse L2 words that differ minimally along this contrast (Pallier et al.,
2001): words such as “sourd” and “sure” (/sur/ vs. /syr/) are indeed often confused in production
and perception by L2 learners of French.
In this talk, I challenge the idea that the establishment of a new phonetic category is a
prerequisite to successfully establishing a lexical representation for L2 words using this contrast.
I report on a series of experiments probing phonetic categorization and lexical encoding of
French front-rounded vowels. A categorization experiment (ABX) reveals that advanced and
intermediate learners of French (L1 English) show a good discrimination of the high (/u/-/y/)
vowel contrast, but a poorer discrimination of the mid vowel contrast (/ø/-/o/). Surprisingly,
repetition priming data indicate that for intermediate learners, /u/-/y/ minimal pairs might share
the same phonological representation in the lexicon, despite good discrimination of the high
vowel contrast. The same learners did not experience merged phonological representations for
/ø/-/o/ minimal pairs, regardless of their poorer discrimination of the contrast. These results
suggest that the mechanisms involved in the acquisition of a new phonetic category are
dissociated from those involved in the formation of contrastive lexical representations in L2, and
I conclude that successful lexical contrast is possible independently of robust phonetic category
establishment.

However, having established a lexical contrast does not mean that lexical representations
are target-like. To dig further into the form of phonological representations in the lexicon, a
second series of experiments (ABX and lexical decision) was conducted, testing the same vowel
contrasts in L2 German with intermediate and advanced L2 learners, as well as native speaker
controls. Our results show that intermediate learners exhibit asymmetrical lexical decision
patterns (easier rejection of non-words that contain a familiar category than vice-versa) despite
very good phonetic discrimination. This indicates that their lexical representations are not fully
target-like: new categories are represented in a fuzzy way in the lexical representation of L2
words. Taken together, our data suggest that robust phonetic categories are neither a prerequisite
nor a guarantee for target-like lexical representations."

L2 lexical representations are hard to build


http://www.fsk.uni-stuttgart.de/aktuell ... ttgart.pdf

Fuzzy Nonnative Phonolexical Representations Lead to Fuzzy Form-to-Meaning Mappings

"The study provides evidence that fuzzy phonolexical representations result in unfaithful form-to-meaning mappings, which lead to retrieval of incorrect semantic content. The results of the study are in line with existing research in support of less detailed L2 phonolexical representations, and extend the findings to show that the fuzziness of phonolexical representations can arise even when confusable words are not differentiated by difficult phonological contrasts.

...a reduced ability for phonological categorization of nonnative sounds coupled with unfaithful nonnative phonological representations can lead to a breakdown in lexical access (Pallier et al., 1997, 2001; Cutler and Otake, 2004; Weber and Cutler, 2004; Cutler et al., 2006; Broersma, 2012; Diaz et al., 2012). Crucially, a nonnative deficit at the level of phonological representation is only part of the difficulty. Word recognition hinges upon a successful match between the auditory signal and the existing phonological representation of the stored word (Pisoni and Luce, 1987). Therefore, chances of a match are contingent, on the one hand, upon the listener's ability to decode the auditory signal, and, on the other, upon the quality of the phonolexical representation, or the phonological representation of the word as a whole (Luce et al., 2000; Chrabaszcz and Gor, 2014). Late L2 learners typically experience deficits in both aspects."

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10 ... 01345/full

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Viewing L2 captioned videos: what's in it for the listener?
ABSTRACT
Captioning is commonly used to scaffold video viewing for second language learners, with the captioning affording the learners access to authentic videos that would ordinarily be out of their reach. Ostensibly the videos are mainly shown to help improve the learners’ listening abilities. However, there is the view that the learners largely tend to just read the captions at the expense of listening to the speakers, thus doing little more than improving their reading skills. Consequently, this article examines a number of past studies to investigate whether this is the case or whether the learners’ listening may indeed benefit. A key approach to this investigation of the past research is to ascertain how the learners process the videos; there is obviously the need for the learners to listen, to some degree, for their listening abilities to develop. The investigation finds that less-proficient learners tend more to read texts than listen to them, while more-proficient learners generally utilize a wider range of cues (caption, speaker and visual), although various factors may mediate these trends. Based on these findings, pedagogical suggestions are made for classroom teachers’ use of captioned videos, along with suggestions for the future research of captioned viewing.

Speech segmentation in a second language: The role of bi-modal input

Abstract
A number of previous research studies into the effects of simultaneous presentation of speech and text (bi-modal input) on second language (L2) listening have lacked test construct validity, thus rendering the results of their experiments contentious. The aim of this study was to improve on previous research by employing a valid test specifically designed for investigating the effects of bi-modal input on L2 speech segmentation. In experiment 1, 10 international students at a UK university were tested on their speech segmentation skills in English using a shadowing task (Mitterer and McQueen, 2009). The results indicate that such L2 users miss approximately 30% of what they hear under controlled conditions. In experiment 2, 12 different students from the same population underwent a 4-week pretest-treatment-posttest experiment, wherein they watched a series of documentaries either with sound and subtitles, with sound but no subtitles, or with subtitles but without sound. The results of this month-long experiment reveal that participants in the bi-modal group improved more than the controls in their ability to segment speech. This included utterances from programmes and speakers to which they had not been exposed, thus suggesting the generalisation of learning.

Speech segmentation in a second language: The role of bi-modal input (PDF Download Available). Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... odal_input [accessed Dec 31 2017].

MULTIMODAL INPUT IN SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING
SYMPOSIUM PAPER ABSTRACTS 2016

"Findings so far suggest that bimodal input
exposure enhances the processing of subtitled text according to the rhythmic structure of the
presentation language and underscore the potential of intra-lingual subtitling for L2 pronunciation
development."

https://multimodalsymposium2016.weebly. ... tracts.pdf

‘Effects of’ and ‘effects with’ captions: How exactly does watching a TV programme with same-language subtitles make a difference to language learners?

Ever since Karen Price's ground-breaking work in 1983, we have known that same-language subtitles (captions) primarily intended for the deaf and hearing-impaired can provide access to foreign language films and TV programmes which would otherwise be virtually incomprehensible to non-native-speaker viewers. Since then, researchers have steadily built up our knowledge of how learners may make use of these when watching.

The question remains, however, whether, and to what extent, watching subtitled programmes over time helps develop learners’ language skills in various ways. Perhaps surprisingly, this question of long-term language development has still not been fully addressed in the research literature and we appear to be in a largely ‘confirmatory’ cycle. At an informal level, on the other hand, there are countless stories of learners who have been assisted in learning a foreign language by watching subtitled or captioned films and television.

I shall review the contributions of key research studies to build up a picture of the current state of our knowledge and go on to outline, first, the current gaps in research and, second, some encouraging new approaches to learning by autonomous ‘users’ of foreign-language Internet media and same-language subtitles across languages, now more widely available.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals ... EBE73BD68A

Captioned Media in Foreign Language Learning and Teaching: Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing as Tools for Language Learning.
By Robert Vanderplank

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LexTALE stands for Lexical Test for Advanced Learners of English. It is intended for cognitive researchers studying participants with an advanced level of English as a second language in an experimental setting.

What is it?

The LexTALE is a quick and practically feasible test of vocabulary knowledge for medium to highly proficient speakers of English as a second language. It consists of a simple un-speeded visual lexical decision task. In contrast to other vocabulary or proficiency tests, it has been designed to meet the needs of cognitive researchers. It is quick, easy to administer, and free, and yet it is a valid and standardized test of vocabulary knowledge. It has also been shown to give a fair indication of general English proficiency.

Participants can take the LexTALE test online. Choose the language you want to test and fill in your name and email address. After that, read the instructions and start the test.

Participants can take the LexTALE test online. First, click on the language you want to test. Second, fill in the participant's name (optional) and one or more email addresses (i.e., the researcher's and/or the participant's) that the score will be sent to (also optional).

Next, the instructions will appear on the screen, in the language of the test (i.e., either English, Dutch, or German).

After the experiment, the score will appear on the screen. There will also be another opportunity to fill in email addresses that the score should be sent to.

http://www.lextale.com/index.html


Lextale-Fr: A fast, free vocabulary test for French
Lemhöfer and Broersma (2012) published an English vocabulary test which turned out to be very useful in our research on bilingualism and native language processing. Because we wanted to have a similar test for French, we decided to develop one.
http://crr.ugent.be/archives/921

Lextale-Esp: A fast, free vocabulary test for Spanish

http://crr.ugent.be/archives/1168

Can Lextale-Esp discriminate between groups of highly proficient
Catalan–Spanish bilinguals with different language dominances?

Pilar Ferré1 & Marc Brysbaert2
# Psychonomic Society, Inc. 2016

Abstract Researchers have recently introduced various
LexTALE-type word recognition tests in order to assess vocabulary
size in a second language (L2) mastered by participants.
These tests correlate well with other measures of language
proficiency in unbalanced bilinguals whose second language
ability is well below the level of their native language.
In the present study, we investigated whether LexTALE-type
tests also discriminate at the high end of the proficiency range.
In several regions of Spain, people speak both the regional
language (e.g., Catalan or Basque) and Spanish to very high
degrees. Still, because of their living circumstances, some
consider themselves as either Spanish-dominant or regionallanguage
dominant.We showed that these two groups perform
differently on the recently published Spanish Lextale-Esp:
The Spanish-dominant group had significantly higher scores
than the Catalan-dominant group. We also showed that the
noncognate words of the test have the highest discrimination
power. This indicates that the existing Lextale-Esp can be used
to estimate proficiency differences in highly proficient bilinguals
with Spanish as an L2, and that a more sensitive test
could be built by replacing the cognates.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q ... Dae7Lhn_Tm

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Словарный запас носителей русского языка: влияние возраста и образования

dinamika-slovarnogo-zapasa-percentili.png

http://www.myvocab.info/articles/slovar ... razovaniya

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Word knowledge in the crowd: Measuring vocabulary size and
word prevalence in a massive online experiment


We use the results of a large online experiment on word knowledge in Dutch to investigate
variables influencing vocabulary size in a large population and to examine the effect of word
prevalence -the percentage of a population knowing a word- as a measure of word occurrence.
Nearly 300,000 participants were presented with about 70 word stimuli (selected from a list of
53,000 words) in an adapted lexical decision task. We identify age, education and
multilingualism as the most important factors influencing vocabulary size. The results suggest
that the accumulation of vocabulary throughout life and in multiple languages mirrors the
logarithmic growth of number of types with number of tokens observed in text corpora (Herdan's
law). Moreover, the vocabulary that multilinguals acquire in related languages seems to increase
their L1 vocabulary size and outweighs the loss caused by decreased exposure to L1. In addition,
we show that corpus word frequency and prevalence are complementary measures of word
occurrence covering a broad range of language experiences.

In this paper, we will use the results of a large-scale vocabulary test to address two issues.
First, what are the effects of age, gender, degree of multilingualism, second language (L2), L2 proficiency,
education, handedness, and location on vocabulary size in a very large population.
Second how can word prevalence be used as a measure of word occurrence.

Results

Education x L2 and Education x L2 proficiency. Education interacts both with L2 and
L2 proficiency. Figure 13 shows that the effect of having a specific L2 gets less pronounced with
increasing education. Figure 14 shows that L2 proficiency differentially affects scores by
education level: The lower the level of education, the larger the advantage of knowing more than
a few words in a second language.

L2 proficiency. L2 proficiency explained about 0.5% of the variance in vocabulary size
(η2=.0055). Figure 10 shows that increased L2 proficiency had a positive effect on L1
vocabulary size, but that at the second-to-highest level of proficiency no further gains were
made. Participants who indicated native L2 proficiency had a smaller L1 vocabulary size than
participants with an intermediate or high-but not native level of L2 proficiency.

Gender and Handedness. Our analysis shows that male participants score on average
about 0.5% higher than female participants, with a very small associated effect size (η2=.0004).
Handedness did not explain any variance in vocabulary size.

Age
Our results show that age is by far the most important variable in predicting vocabulary
size. From the point of view that every day lived represents an opportunity for acquisition of
vocabulary and that existing vocabulary is not forgotten a steadily increasing vocabulary is not
surprising.

Multilingualism
Our results show that indirect vocabulary acquisition greatly outweighs vocabulary loss
through decreased L1 exposure. First, vocabulary size increases with number of languages that a
participant reports to know. Second, participants who reported that their best L2 was English,
French, or German (languages that have the largest vocabulary in common with Dutch) had a
larger Dutch vocabulary than participants who reported to have another best L2. However,
although German has the largest shared vocabulary with Dutch, participants who reported French
and English as their L2 had a higher Dutch vocabulary size than participants with German as
their L2. A tentative explanation is that German and Dutch are so closely related that exposure to
German vocabulary rarely leads to new vocabulary in Dutch.

The number of foreign languages known accounted for under 1% of the variance in
vocabulary size (η2=.0073). Figure 8 shows that the estimated effect of knowing an extra
language translates to about 500 words per extra language, with slowly diminishing returns.

The fact that scores keep increasing up to 10 languages is surprising, as we first assumed
that choosing a very high number would be done jestingly by participants who were not very
serious about the test and thus would also be expected to score low.


http://crr.ugent.be/papers/Word_knowled ... ision2.pdf