This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Languages and Literatures at Schol... more This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Languages and Literatures at Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact
The role of immersion learning in the acquisition and processing of L2 gender agreement
Applied Linguistics Review
In this paper, we examine the effects of learning environment on second language (L2) gender agre... more In this paper, we examine the effects of learning environment on second language (L2) gender agreement. English speakers learning L2 Spanish participated in a self-paced reading task and a picture selection task prior to and after a short-term study abroad experience. The results from the self-paced reading task showed that their reliance on the masculine article as the default (e.g., McCarthy, Corrine. 2008. Morphological variability in the comprehension of agreement: An argument for representation over computation. Second Language Research 24(4). 459–486) was reduced over time abroad. Findings from the picture selection task showed that the learners did not attend to the gender of articles unless it was their only cue, but that after the study abroad experience they began to use gender as an anticipatory cue for lexical selection. We interpret these results as support for an adapted version of the Shallow Structures Hypothesis (Clahsen, Harald & Claudia Felser. 2006a. Grammatical ...
Minority Languages at Home and Abroad: Education and Acculturation
The Cambridge Handbook of Language Learning, 2019
Nearly all societies are bilingual (Appel & Muysken, 2006), a fact which places monolingu... more Nearly all societies are bilingual (Appel & Muysken, 2006), a fact which places monolingualism in the minority. Multilingual individuals who live within the same national borders use the official language of the country in addition to their own to survive socially and economically. Globally, the position of English as a lingua franca has compelled people to learn it (Ur, 2010), which might suggest that in most cases, bilingualism is really understood as proficiency in English plus another language. In immigration contexts, families have to learn the dominant language—normally the most prestigious language—to be integrated to the new community, usually suppressing their minority language. According to Ferreira et al. (2016), the learners’ attitude toward the more prestigious linguistic group might have a positive impact on learning the new language, but maintaining the heritage language and culture seems to be an arduous task, even though the maintenance of heritage culture has benefits for first language (L1) literacy skills in addition to cognitive-linguistic variables, favouring a bi-dimensional model of acculturation (Berry, 1990).
This study discusses a 5-week study abroad experience in which a group of English-speaking Canadi... more This study discusses a 5-week study abroad experience in which a group of English-speaking Canadian university students learning Spanish participated in a faculty-led study abroad experience in Spain. A mixed-methods approach combining quantitative measurement and qualitative inquiry was used to explore how often and with whom the second language (L2) learners used English and Spanish during their sojourn. At the conclusion of the study abroad program, the learners completed a Language Contact Profile and responded to open-ended questions that encouraged their meta-reflection on language contact, perceptions of culture, and personal outcomes. The findings show that learners relied on situations from their free time abroad to better understand the target culture rather than on required activities such as visits to museums or heritage sites. Students reported an appreciation for the L2 culture, mostly related to the relaxed and welcoming atmosphere and an increase in their L2 confiden...
This book investigates bilingual speech production and the underlying cognitive processes that fa... more This book investigates bilingual speech production and the underlying cognitive processes that facilitate target language selection, lexical access, and inhibitory control of cross-linguistic interference. In particular, it examines whether or not certain factors representing L2 proficiency such as linguistic background/bilingual type, age of acquisition, and verbal fluency modulate these processes. An exploratory study is presented in which language learners and heritage speakers participated in a variety of experimental tasks. A significant effect was found for L2 verbal fluency to the degree that less fluent bilinguals relied upon different cognitive mechanisms than their more fluent counterparts. The Selection by Proficiency Model is presented which illustrates the critical role of L2 verbal fluency on language selection, lexical access, and inhibitory control. This book discusses subsequent studies which have provided extensions to the model, particularly regarding the robustne...
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