The development of lexical proficiency in L2 speaking and writing tasks by Dutch-speaking learners of French in Brussels

1. TBLT 2009, Lancaster The development of lexical proficiency in L2 speaking and writing tasksby Dutch-speaking learners of French in Brussels Bram Bulté & Alex Housen ACQUILANG (Centre for Studies on Second Language Learning & Teaching)

2. Research background • Research project on the development of L2 proficiency in French, English and Dutch in different educational contexts. • Theoretical, conceptual and methodological issues and empirical research. • Empirical research: • Longitudinal • Learner background data • Spoken and written L2 production data.

3. Outline presentation • Comparison between the oral and written task modality. • Framework for the analysis of lexical L2 development. • Empirical study of the lexical development of Dutch-speaking learners of French.

4. Outline PART I: Comparison between the oral and written task modality

5. Oral and written modes • Influence of mode on lexical performance • Oral L2 production is considered to give evidence of the learner’s implicit knowledge (Towell et al., 1996); written production L2 allows for the use of explicit knowledge. • Writing is 5 to 8 times slower than speaking in the same individual (Fayol, 1997). • Difficult to separate effect of (esp. online) planning from effect of mode.

6. Oral and written modes • Lexical differences between speaking and writing: • Disfluency markers: lubricators, interjections, fillers, modifiers, … • Repetition and paraphrase, false starts. • Clause linking: small range of connectors. • Words with vague semantics. • Low lexical density.

7. Outline PART II: Framework for the analysis of lexicalL2 development

8. Lexical L2 competence • Word = ‘lexical entry’ (Jiang 2000). • Knowing vs. using a word -> ability to use the relevant lexical information in a wide range of contexts when the need arises (McCarthy, 1990). • Lexical competence = lexical knowledge and ability to apply that knowledge (procedural). • Lexical proficiency = the concrete manifestation of lexical competence

9. Measuring lexical L2 competence • What do we want to measure? Extent of lexical competence. • Lexical competence = lexical knowledge + procedural knowledge • Lexical knowledge can be characterized by its size, width and depth. • Size refers to the number of lexical entries in memory. • Width and depth refer to the quality and degree of elaboration of the knowledge of the lexical entries in memory. • Procedural knowledge is a matter of control / skill / ability.

10. Measuring lexical L2 competence • Different options: • Purpose-built tests vs. ‘free’ language production. • Subjective rating vs. ‘objective’ measures. • Methodological concerns: • Which quantitative measures should be used to assess lexical competence?

11. Measuring lexical L2 competence • Proposed quantitative measures: • Number of different (content) words or lemmas • => Lexical productivity • TTR and transformations (Guiraud, Uber, Herdan, D) • => Lexical diversity • Proportion of lexical / function words • => Lexical density • Frequency based measures (LFP, Advanced G) • => Lexical sophistication • Temporal measures (words / time unit) • => Lexical fluency • Error analysis • => Lexical accuracy

12. Measuring lexical L2 competence • What do we want the measures to measure? How do they relate to the theoretical view on lexical competence? • 3 levels of analysis: • Theoretical level of cognitive constructs • Observational level of behavioral constructs • Operational level of statistical constructs

13. Measuring lexical L2 competence • Relations between different levels of analysis

14. Outline PART III: Empirical study of the lexical development of Dutch-speaking learners of French

15. RESEARCH QUESTIONS • How does the oral and written lexical performance in the FFL production of Dutch-speaking L2 learners develop over time? • Is there a difference in scores for written and spoken tasks? (group comparison) • Are learners’ lexical proficiency scores similar for written and oral tasks? (intra-individual comparison) • Is the lexical development of learners comparable for oral and written tasks? (inter-individual comparison)

16. YU (2009) “Lexical Diversity in Writing and Speaking Task Performances” • “First study” comparinglexical diversity of spoken and written discourses produced by the same participants. • Lexical diversity (D) of writing and speaking performances approximately at the same level. • Lexical diversity (D) of compositions and interviews significantly correlated (r = 0.448).

17. RESEARCH DESIGN Subjects: • 15 pupils, Dutch native speakers, 15-17y old, 3rd-5th grade, Dutch-speaking schools in Brussels. Tasks: • 1 oral task: retelling of a wordless picture story (frog story) • 2 written tasks: • Complaint letter • Argument for or against a statement Data collection: • Longitudinal, 3 test times, 1y intervals – corpus-based.

18. PRODUCTIVE LANGUAGE CORPUS Data processing: • Recorded oral tasks and written tasks transcribed in CHAT-format. • Spelling mistakes in written tasks corrected. • Non-French words and interlanguage words tagged (@il). • Hesitations, self-correction and repetitions coded in oral transcriptions. • Excluded from analysis: interjections & recasts. • ‘Chunks’ treated as one word (parce+que, à+côté). • Words were lemmatized. • Lexical words tagged (|lex).

19. DATA ANALYSIS Quantitative measures: • Productivity: # tokens, # types, # lexical types. • Diversity: D, G and U (all words), G and U (lexical words). • Density: % of lexical words (lexical words / all words). • Sophistication: # ‘advanced’ types, ‘advanced’ G and U (advanced types / V all tokens), % of advanced types (advanced types / all types). • Combination: D, G Lex and G Advanced combined. Statistical analyses: • Correlations. • Repeated measures ANOVA, with pair-wise comparisons.

20. DATA ANALYSIS Combined measures: D, G Lex and G Adv. Rescaling scores: Average score = 100 => y1 = y * (100 / ȳ) Formula: (D*(100/AvgD)+Glex*(100/AvgGlex)+Gadv*(100/AvgGadv))/3

21. RESULTS

22. RESULTS

23. RESULTS

24. RESULTS

25. RESULTS Similar individual development on written and spoken tasks? • Gain scores for different measures and different modes. • Not 1 significant correlation found between the gain scores of learners on the same measures for the 2 different modes. • => Seems like progress on both modes is not related.

26. CONCLUSIONS Development of lexical proficiency: Written versus spoken tasks: Intra-learner task correlation: Similar development on ≠ tasks:

27. CLOSING REMARKS • Lexical proficiency in writing and speaking tasks. • Increase, both on written and spoken. • No parallel development on written and spoken tasks. • Higher scores for writing tasks. • Moderately high correlation between speaking and writing scores. • Limitations. • Directions for future research.

28. Thank you! bram.bulte@europarl.europa.eu Alex.Housen@vub.ac.be