Tran, Mai Ngoc (2019) Scrutinizing the effects of the 4/3/2 activity: repetition, increasing time pressure, accuracy enhancement and cognitive individual differences. Doctoral thesis, Birkbeck, University of London.
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Abstract
A number of scholars have examined the pedagogical potential and theoretical relevance of adding time pressure to task repetition (i.e., the 4/3/2 activity). However, such fluency enhancement can impact on fluency but not necessarily accuracy aspects of L2 speech (e.g., Thai & Boers, 2016). To help L2 learners improve both fluency and accuracy, the present study examined the effects of task repetition, fluency enhancement and accuracy enhancement on the development of L2 fluency and accuracy. Furthermore, the study explored the extent to which such gains could be ascribed to learners’ cognitive individual differences, operationalized as four different constructs of foreign language aptitude: (a) associative memory, (b) phonemic coding, (c) language analytic ability and (d) sound sequence recognition. A total of 48 university-level students participated in three 20-minute dyadic sessions. They were randomly divided into four groups: (a) Control; (b) fluency enhancement (FE); (c) accuracy enhancement (AE) and (d) fluency enhancement + accuracy enhancement (FE+AE). Whereas those in the FE and FE+AE groups repeated a monologue task with increasing time pressure (4 → 3 → 2 minutes), those in the AE and FE+AE groups received corrective feedback from the researcher (i.e., accuracy enhancement). After the end of the treatment, all the participants took the LLAMA test (Meara, 2005). According to the results of statistical analyses, those who engaged in both FE and AE attained significantly more fluent and accurate L2 speech after the treatment at a broad level. However, when AE is introduced to elicit L2 learners’ focus on form, certain aspects of their fluency and accuracy development, especially those related to linguistic encoding (reduction in pauses between clauses and regular past tense forms), remain unchanged. Finally, the results of the language aptitude test scores suggest the complex relationship between cognitive individual differences, task conditions and L2 fluency and accuracy development.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Thesis |
|---|---|
| Additional Information: | Originally submitted to the Department of Applied Linguistics and Communication, School of Social Sciences, History and Philosophy. |
| Copyright Holders: | The copyright of this thesis rests with the author, who asserts his/her right to be known as such according to the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. No dealing with the thesis contrary to the copyright or moral rights of the author is permitted. |
| Depositing User: | Acquisitions And Metadata |
| Date Deposited: | 07 Oct 2019 13:15 |
| Last Modified: | 01 Nov 2023 14:09 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/40440 |
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.18743/PUB.00040440 |
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