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Word usage of L2 learners in performing narrative tasks: An analysis of task types and learner proficiencies

Word usage of L2 learners in performing narrative tasks: An analysis of task types and learner proficiencies. 2007 TBLT Conference, Honolulu Hung-Tzu Huang (University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa). TBLT 2007. Theoretical Framework.

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Word usage of L2 learners in performing narrative tasks: An analysis of task types and learner proficiencies

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  1. Word usage of L2 learners in performing narrative tasks:An analysis of task types and learner proficiencies 2007 TBLT Conference, Honolulu Hung-Tzu Huang (University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa)

  2. TBLT 2007 Theoretical Framework • Researchon task complexity and difficulty has outlined various indices in describing tasks for sequencing purposes • Little research has documented learner production while interacting with tasks

  3. TBLT 2007 Comparability of lexical indices • Most of the research looking into task properties included lexical richness as one of the index for complexity measures • Lexical richness measures used in task related studies: • Counts of type/token ratio (Crookes, 1989; Ortega, 1995;1999; Robinson, 2001) • Lexical/grammaticalwords ratio (Ortega, 1995; Robinson, 1995) • Accurate use in specific lexical element (Foster & Skehan, 1996) • Holistic ratings of vocabulary complexity (Elder et al., 2002) Lack of overlap or consistency in the measures used

  4. TBLT 2007 Popular lexical richness measures • the measures are sensitive to text length

  5. TBLT 2007 The Present Study Goal: What features of learner language, specifically vocabulary, are elicited through different tasks. Participants: 38 adult ESL learners (L1: Japanese) High-intermediate: N=18 (TOFEL mean=493 SD=8.22) Low-intermediate: N=20 (TOFEL mean=403 SD= 11.65) Narrative tasks: Task 1: Story retelling based on picture plus L1 audio input Task 2: Story telling based on a video clip Task 3: Story telling based on staged pictures

  6. Task 1

  7. TBLT 2007 • Task 2: Storytelling based on a video clip • Charlie Chaplin silent movie ‘Alone and Hungry’ • 5 minutes

  8. Task 3-1

  9. Task 3-2

  10. Task 3-3

  11. TBLT 2007 Research Questions • How will learners’ use of lexis differ across the three narrative tasks? 2) How will learners’ use of lexis differ across proficiency levels?

  12. TBLT 2007 Lexical Frequency Profile (LFP) by Laufer and Nation • LFP shows the percentage of words a learner uses at different • vocabulary frequency levels There are two boys. And they are playing soccer in front of a stranger's house. And one boy kicked the ball into there. And they want to take the ball out. So he push a interphone and ask a woman to take the ball out. There are birthday party. And there are a lot of boys and girls. At first two boys looks very nervous. But gradually they can be friendly with other child. Child of the party go outside to take the ball.And two boys play with them. They looks very happy. And they enjoy the time with other children. And then they leave the house. (108 tokens)

  13. TBLT 2007 Lexical Frequency Profile (LFP) by Laufer and Nation • LFP shows the percentage of words a learner uses at different • vocabulary frequency levels There are two boys. And they are playing soccer in front of a stranger's house. And one boy kicked the ball into there. And they want to take the ball out. So hepusha interphone and ask a woman to take the ball out. There are birthday party. And there are a lot of boys and girls. At first two boys looks very nervous. But gradually they can be friendly with other child. Child of the party go outside to take the ball.And two boys play with them. They looks very happy. And they enjoy the time with other children. And then they leave the house.

  14. TBLT 2007 Lexical Frequency Profile (LFP) by Laufer and Nation • LFP shows the percentage of words a learner uses at different • vocabulary frequency levels There are two boys. And they are playing soccer in front of a stranger's house. And one boy kicked the ball into there. And they want to take the ball out. So he push a interphone and ask a woman to take the ball out. There are birthday party. And there are a lot of boys and girls. At first two boys looks very nervous. But gradually they can be friendly with other child. Child of the party go outside to take the ball.And two boys play with them. They looks very happy. And they enjoy the time with other children. And then they leave the house.

  15. TBLT 2007 Lexical Frequency Profile (LFP) by Laufer and Nation • LFP shows the percentage of words a learner uses at different • vocabulary frequency levels There are two boys. And they are playing soccer in front of a stranger's house. And one boy kicked the ball into there. And they want to take the ball out. So he push a interphone and ask a woman to take the ball out. There are birthday party. And there are a lot of boys and girls. At first two boys looks very nervous. But gradually they can be friendly with other child. Child of the party go outside to take the ball.And two boys play with them. They looks very happy. And they enjoy the time with other children. And then they leave the house.

  16. TBLT 2007 Malvern and Richards’s D values • Random sampling of 35 tokens (N=35) 100 trialsAverage TTR of N=35Random sampling of 36 tokens (N=35)100 trials Average TTR of N=36…….Average TTR of N=50

  17. TBLT 2007 Procedures of data analysis • Learner production on the narrative tasks were recorded, transcribed, and pruned. • Lexical Frequency Profile (LFP) analysis • http://www.lextutor.ca/vp/ • D value analysis using CHILDES (MacWhinney, 2000) • http://childes.psy.cmu.edu/ • vocd commend

  18. TBLT 2007 Descriptive statistics for the corpus • The corpus consisted of 26, 559 words.

  19. TBLT 2007 Lexical richness demonstrated by LFP

  20. TBLT 2007 Descriptive Statistics for D values ANOVA showed that the two groups of learners performed significantly different in Task 3, but not Task 1 and Task 2. Learners from both groups produced higher D values in Task 3.

  21. TBLT 2007 D values compared to L1 data High Task 1: Mean D=39.09 Task 2: Mean D=35.90 Task 3: Mean D=51.40 Task 3-H Task 3-L Mean D=53.12 Low Task 1: Mean D=32.29 Task 2: Mean D=32.71 Task 3: Mean D=44.47 Task 2-H Task 2-L Mean D=41.53 Mean D=47.83 Task 1-L Task 1-H Mean D=41.53 Means and sub-ranges (10th and 90th percentiles) of D of various cohorts

  22. TBLT 2007 Findings (based on LFP) • Based on the LFP percentage, both groups displayed similar distribution of words used in different frequency bands. • About 75%-80% of the learner production is from the 1st 1000 frequent words. • Task 1 has the highest percentage of 1st frequent 1000 words. Task 3 has the lowest percentage 1st frequent 1000 words. • Words in the off-list: sofa, TV, cigars, café, t-shirts, photo, pizza…etc. • Different word lists could be utilized.

  23. TBLT 2007 Findings (based on D values) • Learners’ D values are similar to the L1 D values produced from age 30 months-42months. • For both groups, higher D values were produced in Task 3. • There is a significant difference between performance from the two groups in Task 3.

  24. TBLT 2007 Findings • RQ: How will learners’ use of lexis differ across the three narrative tasks? • From LFP and the D values, learners produced more frequent and easier words in Task 1 and more difficult words in Task 3. Task 3 pushed greater lexical diversity from learners. • RQ: How will learners’ use of lexis differ across proficiency levels? • From percentage of LFP only, learners’ proficiency levels could not be distinguished. • Greater difference in proficiency levels • Qualitative analysis into what words were used? • Based on the results of D values, Task 3 is more able to distinguish learners of different proficiency levels.

  25. TBLT 2007 Implicatoin and future research • Different task conditions elicited different lexical richness performance from learners. • Task 3: more abstract, required the learners to form hypothesis and be creative. • The study focused only on lexical richness, which is only one aspect to depict learner production. • Qualitative analysis examining the words that learners used will complement the current findings.

  26. Word usage of L2 learners in performing narrative tasks: An analysis of task types and learner proficiencies Mahalo! Hung-Tzu Huang: hungtsu@hawaii.edu

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