The relationship between brain reaction and English reading tests for non-native English speakers

2016 ◽  
Vol 1642 ◽  
pp. 384-388
Author(s):  
Pei-Wen Cheng ◽  
Yu-Jie Tian ◽  
Ting-Hua Kuo ◽  
Koun-Tem Sun
Keyword(s):  
Native English Speakers ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Reading Tests ◽  
English Reading ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Brain Reaction

scholarly journals Intonational effects on English scopally-ambiguous sentences

2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 13-36
Author(s):  
Mien-Jen Wu ◽  
Tania Ionin
Keyword(s):  
Native English Speakers ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Universal Quantifier ◽  
Sentential Negation ◽  
Prior Literature ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Acceptability Judgment

This paper examines the effect of intonation contour on two types of scopally ambiguous constructions in English: configurations with a universal quantifier in subject position and sentential negation (e.g., Every horse didn’t jump) and configurations with quantifiers in both subject and object positions (e.g., A girl saw every boy). There is much prior literature on the relationship between the fall-rise intonation and availability of inverse scope with quantifier-negation configurations. The present study has two objectives: (1) to examine whether the role of intonation in facilitating inverse scope is restricted to this configuration, or whether it extends to double-quantifier configurations as well; and (2) to examine whether fall-rise intonation fully disambiguates the sentence, or only facilitates inverse scope. These questions were investigated experimentally, via an auditory acceptability judgment task, in which native English speakers rated the acceptability of auditorily presented sentences in contexts matching surface-scope vs. inverse-scope readings. The results provide evidence that fall-rise intonation facilitates the inverse-scope readings of English quantifier-negation configurations (supporting findings from prior literature), but not those of double-quantifier configurations.

Direct (dis)agreement verbs

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-140
Author(s):  
Siaw-Fong Chung
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Social Interaction ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native English Speakers ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Semantic Approach ◽  
Future Studies ◽  
Societal Issues ◽  
Part Time ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract “*I am not agree with you” is an incorrect use of agree frequently seen in the writing of Taiwanese learners. Yet, not many studies have discussed the use of agree and disagree in the literature. Many studies are concerned more about the politeness of (dis)agreement, especially in detailing the relationship between speaker and hearer. We took a lexical semantic approach to compare the use of agree and disagree in essays written by native English speakers and Taiwanese learners in the ICNALE (International Corpus Network of Asian Learners of English). The essays were based on two topics concerning societal issues collected in the corpus – (a) whether smoking should be completely banned in restaurants and (b) whether college students should take a part-time job or not – the writers were asked to respond to each issue by agreeing or disagreeing. Our results showed that when given clear instructions to agree or disagree, both native and learners tended to state (dis)agreement in the very first sentence in their essays, but Taiwanese learners relied more on the uses of agree and disagree more often than the native speakers did. The errors committed by learners on the use of agree (not for disagree) were between 25–35% in our data. The results will bring significant comparisons of the lexical semantics of related verbs (verbs of social interaction) in future studies.

De Konstruktie Van Een Vokabulair Amsterdam in Tweede-Taalverwerving

1978 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 121-149
Author(s):  
Geert Jan Hartman
Keyword(s):  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Cognitive Structure ◽  
Random Order ◽  
Native English Speakers ◽  
Sorting Task ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
General Question ◽  
L2 Vocabulary ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Dutch Children

The general question to be answered in this study, and to be reported in this talk,reads: is there a transfer of cognitive structure from mother tongue to second language? As far as the construction of the vocabulary in a foreign language is concerned, the question means: does this process go just like the construction of the Ll-vocabulary (no transfer), or is the L2 vocabulary directly from the beginning onwards stored in a structure similar to the structure resulting from the process of aquiring the mother tongue (transfer)? If transfer takes place from the beginnings then simple English words have to be stored by speakers of Dutch, beginning to learn English, in the same way as by native English speakers, if and only if both groups have in their mother tongue the same cognitive structures at their disposal. In the experiment thirty Dutch children participated, 13-15 years of age, who had just started to learn English, and an equal number of English/Dutch bilingual children of similar age. There were two experimental tasks 1) the sorting task: based on similarity in meaning twenty cards (on every card a single word) had to be sorted in piles? 2} free recall: twenty words in random order were presented to the subject, after which he/she had to mention the words he could recall. The results were analysed in two separate ways; a) a"hierarchical clustering scheme" and b) an analysis of the degree to which the words were sorted together, res-pectively recalled as a function of the abstractness of the relationship that exists between those words. As predicted, the hypothesis that transfer does take place could not be falsified.

Listening with an attitude: A model of native-speaker comprehension of non-native speakers in the United States

2002 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 419-441 ◽  
Author(s):  
STEPHANIE LINDEMANN
Keyword(s):  
Direct Relationship ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Native English Speakers ◽  
The United States ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
English Speaker ◽  
Negative Attitudes ◽  
Poor Comprehension ◽  
The Relationship

This study investigates whether there is a relationship between negative attitudes toward non-native speakers and poor comprehension of those speakers. Twelve native English speakers whose attitudes toward Koreans had been assessed were asked to complete an interactional map task paired with native Korean speakers. In the task, some but not all of those who had been assessed as having negative attitudes toward Koreans were found to use either strategies that were described as problematizing their partners' utterances, or strategies that were described as avoidance. All participants completed the map task reasonably successfully except where the native English speaker used avoidance strategies, suggesting that the relationship between attitude and comprehension is mediated by the native speaker's choice of strategies. However, there appeared to be a direct relationship between attitude and perceived success of interactions, which may ultimately have the same consequences for interactants as if the relationship were between attitude and actual success.

scholarly journals “You don’t seem to know how to work”

Pragmatics ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 391-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Debbie G.E. Ho ◽  
Alex Henry ◽  
Sharifah N.H. Alkaff
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Native English Speakers ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Oral Discourse ◽  
Know How ◽  
Completion Task ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
The Relationship

This study aims firstly to compare the complaints of local native-Malay speakers and expatriate native-English speakers in Brunei in terms of move structure and levels of directness combined with the frequency of modality markers; and secondly, it attempts to address the relationship between polite behaviour and its effectiveness in eliciting the appropriate response from the hearer. Data from an oral discourse completion task show interesting similarities and differences in the complaint move structure between the two groups of speakers. Superficially, there appears to be no significant difference between the two sets of complaints in terms of levels of directness, but a detailed analysis shows each group employing different mitigating strategies to minimise the force of a complaint. Furthermore, responses from an acceptability judgement questionnaire indicate that being indirect, and therefore polite, may not be effective in eliciting the appropriate response to a request for action in a complaint speech act.

scholarly journals The Low Co-occurrence of Nominalization and Hedging in Scientific Papers Written by Chinese EFL Learners

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiao Liu
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Analysis ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Native English Speakers ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Scientific Journals ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Research Results ◽  
Scientific Papers ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Shed Light

This article hypothesizes that one of the reasons for Chinese EFL learners’ rigid use of nominalization and insufficient use of hedging in academic writing can be attributed to the unclear understanding of the relationship between these two expressions. The aim of the research is to first prove and then explain the possible co-occurrence of nominalization and hedging in scientific papers, with the intention of deepening Chinese EFL learners’ understanding of the reasons for their possible co-occurrence. After a corpus-assisted statistical analysis of sixty abstracts selected from leading scientific journals written by native English speakers, it’s been found that there is indeed a tendency for nominalization and hedge to co-occur both at the textual-level and clause-level. Besides, a tentative analysis is conducted to explain the pattern of their co-occurrence. It has been observed that the number of nominalized expressions in clauses is inversely correlated with the probability degree of hedging, and the position of nominalization in the clause (theme or rheme) influences the generalization level of hedging. The research results could shed light on the pedagogic approach in improving Chinese EFL learners’ academic writing by making evident that the elusive Grammatical Metaphor competence could be enhanced by deepening the understanding of the inter-relationship between seemingly different in-congruent expressions like nominalization and hedges.

scholarly journals The Low Co-occurrence of Nominalization and Hedging in Scientific Papers Written by Chinese EFL Learners

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 401-420
Author(s):  
Xiao Liu
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Analysis ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Native English Speakers ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Scientific Journals ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Research Results ◽  
Scientific Papers ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Shed Light

This article hypothesizes that one of the reasons for Chinese EFL learners’ rigid use of nominalization and insufficient use of hedging in academic writing can be attributed to the unclear understanding of the relationship between these two expressions. The aim of the research is to first prove and then explain the possible co-occurrence of nominalization and hedging in scientific papers, with the intention of deepening Chinese EFL learners’ understanding of the reasons for their possible co-occurrence. After a corpus-assisted statistical analysis of sixty abstracts selected from leading scientific journals written by native English speakers, it’s been found that there is indeed a tendency for nominalization and hedge to co-occur both at the textual-level and clause-level. Besides, a tentative analysis is conducted to explain the pattern of their co-occurrence. It has been observed that the number of nominalized expressions in clauses is inversely correlated with the probability degree of hedging, and the position of nominalization in the clause (theme or rheme) influences the generalization level of hedging. The research results could shed light on the pedagogic approach in improving Chinese EFL learners’ academic writing by making evident that the elusive Grammatical Metaphor competence could be enhanced by deepening the understanding of the inter-relationship between seemingly different in-congruent expressions like nominalization and hedges.

Situation-Bound Utterances and Formulaic Competence: The Case of Chinese Learners of English as a Foreign Language

2017 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gong Zhiqi ◽  
Jiang Hui
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Native English Speakers ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Low Degree ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Chinese Learners ◽  
Post Hoc ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Chinese Learners Of English

AbstractThis study investigated the relationship between situation-bound utterances (SBUs thereafter) and formulaic competence, focusing on the acquisition of three subcategories of SBUs among early intermediate and early advanced Chinese learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). A group of native English speakers also participated in this study to provide baseline data. One-way ANOVA analysis and post hoc tests confirmed that linguistic competence usually preceded formulaic competence for EFL learners. The findings also showed no statistically significant difference existing between the three groups of participants in the use of plain SBUs, and this could be attributed to the low degree of cultural-embeddedness and high semantic transparency of plain SBUs. It was further argued that a threshold has to be reached for EFL learners to go through a movement from rules to wholes.

scholarly journals The Investigation of Difference between PPT and CBT Results of EFL Learners in Iran: Computer Familiarity and Test Performance in CBT

2013 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 66-75
Author(s):  
Monirosadat Hosseini ◽  
Mohamad Jafre Zainol Abidin ◽  
Hamid Kamarzarrin ◽  
Mohamad Khaledian
Keyword(s):  
Test Performance ◽  
The Other ◽  
Test Results ◽  
Computer Experience ◽  
Testing Methods ◽  
Reading Tests ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
English Reading ◽  
Computer Based ◽  
The Relationship

The purpose of this study is to examine the score comparability of institutional English reading tests in two testing methods, i.e. paper-based and computer-based tests taken by Iranian EFL learners in four language institutes and their branches in Iran. In the present study, the researcher tried to examine whether there is any difference between computer-based test results (henceforth CBT) and paper-based test (PPT) results of a reading comprehension test as well as exploring the relationship between students' prior computer experience and their test performance in CBT. Two equivalent tests were administered to one group of EFL learners in two different occasions, one in paper-based format and the other in computer-based test. Utilizing t-test, the means of two modes have been compared and the results showed the priority of PPT over CBT with .01 degree of difference at p < 05. Using ANOVA, the findings revealed that computer experience had no significant influence on the students’ performance in computerized test.

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