Innovations

CONFERENCE ON LANGUAGE, LEARNING, & CULTURE
Innovations
APRIL
11-12,
2014
at the Intersection of Language,
Learning, and Culture
11200 Waples Mill Road #360, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA
Tel: (703) 591-7042 Fax: (703) 537-0950 Email: info@viu.edu Web: www.viu.edu

ONLINE.VIU.EDU
TEST DRIVE A COURSE AT ONLINE.VIU.EDU
HAVE LIMITED
TIME TO STUDY?
GET YOUR DEGREE ONLINE.
STUDY ANYWHERE, ANYTIME!
FLEXIBLE
8-WEEK
SCHEDULE
AFFORDABLE
TUITION
SCHOLARSHIP
OPPORTUNITIES
MOST TEXTBOOKS
FOR NO ADDITIONAL
CHARGE
WEB: ONLINE.VIU.EDU
EMAIL:
PHONE: +1.800.514.6848

I want to express my heartfelt thanks to those of you who daily dedicate yourselves to improving
the lives of students by providing quality and innovative classroom experiences. Whether you
are on the delivery end of instruction, the research end, or both, you should know that your
daily actions promote classrooms and research topics that have the ability to impact lives and
promote positive social change. At our inaugural conference, we explored many topics and
issued related language, learning, and culture.
The conference theme and strands came about as a result of the need to highlight current
successes in the field and to begin a conversation about moving forward together. The 2014
theme, “Innovations at the Intersection of Language, Learning, and Culture,” framed educational
experiences as ideally meeting the needs of diverse students, their communities, and the various
stakeholders who can benefit from high-quality, socially responsive language training programs.
Many thanks to our speakers and presenters who speakers and presenters explored topics of
pedagogy and research with relevancy to the daily lives of teaching professionals and learners.
An additional thanks to those in the School of Education, the School of Language Studies, and
the larger VIU learning community who contributed to the success of CLLC 2014!
Very best regards,
Kevin J. Martin
Associate Dean, School of Education, Virginia International University

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Schedule at a Glance pg. 6
Conference Strands pg. 7
Conference Honorees pg. 8
Plenary Session #1 pg. 9
Schedule of Events pg. 10
Plenary Session #2 pg. 12
Plenary Session #3 pg. 13
Proceedings from CLLC 2014 pgs. 14 - 34
Speaker Contact Information pg. 35

SCHEDULE AT A GLANCE
6

CONFERENCE STRANDS
7

CONFERENCE HONOREES
8

MORNING PLENARY
9

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
10

MIDDAY PLENARY
12

EVENING PLENARY
13

PROCEEDINGS
FROM CLLC 2014
14

A CONTRASTIVE RHETORICAL STUDY OF ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAYS IN
ENGLISH BY TUNISIAN EFL STUDENTS AND AMERICAN STUDENTS
SALWA ENNEIFER
L’Institut Supérieur des Langues de Tunis « ISLT ». Tunisia.
salwa2083@hotmail.fr
TOPIC AREA
The present study intends to examine the rhetorical structure of argumentative essays written
by some American and Tunisian students in English. It seeks to investigate whether Tunisians, as
native Arabic speakers, write different essays from those written by American native speakers of
English in terms of rhetoric. The study also aims at identifying whether these differences, if they
exist, stem from Tunisian students’ first language. The researcher assumes that the transference of
Arabic rhetorical structures, if it exists, changes the quality of the argument in English.
It is motivated by the prevalence attributed to contrastive rhetoric (CR) as an ‘international’ project
aiming at building “an international databank available for other international researchers” (Connor,
1996: 173). It endeavors to test the validity of the contrastive rhetoric hypothesis; at least in the
Tunisian context.
CR was first introduced by Robert Kaplan (1966). CR hypothesis claimed that non-native speakers
of English write different texts than those produced by their native English speaking counterparts.
The mastery of syntactic structures, lexicon or spelling cannot by themselves make an EFL student
use English as a native English speaker does. The difference lies in the fact that non-native English
speaking learners have internalised the rhetorical structures of their mother tongues. Therefore CR, as
a theory, aims to study and identify these differences.
Some previous studies have dealt with the difficulties experienced by Arab EFL students when writing
essays in English, such as Ouaouicha (1986) or Ismail (2010). They showed the differences and/or
similarities between Arab students’ essays written in English and English native speakers’ essays. For
instance, Ouaouicha identified differences only in terms of audience awareness and emotional
appeals for persuasion. Americans used both aspects significantly more often than did Moroccans.
Ismail (2010) also suggests that no significant differences exist between US and Arab advanced
writers. He assumes that within- group variation is more important than between- group variation in
the rhetorical performance of his participants.
Nevertheless, there is still a gap in the studies involving Tunisians as a particular population. No
previous studies have studied Tunisians. Moreover, previous studies results cannot be generalised to
the whole Arab population. The current research endeavors to fill this gap.
This article, then, is an investigation of the structure of argumentative essays written by some
American and Tunisian students in English. It studies the rhetoric in essays by postgraduate Tunisian
students of English written in Arabic and in English, in order to find out whether there is interference
between the rhetorical structures of Arabic to English. Then, it compares the rhetoric of English
argumentative essays written by postgraduate Tunisian students of English with American native
speakers’ English argumentative essays to identify similarities and differences. The current article
starts by presenting the hypotheses tested, the methodology and approach used and it ends with
the results and implications of the study.
15

HYPOTHESES
The hypotheses to be tested are:
1. Analytic variables selected to study argumentative essays in this study, namely: argument
superstructure, reasoning, persuasive appeals and persuasive adaptiveness are valid, as they can
predict the holistic score.
The current study also hypothesized that, if the contrastive rhetoric claims presented first by
Kaplan (1966) are correct, the analysis of essays in the current study will confirm that:
2. Significant differences exist between argumentative essays written by postgraduate Tunisian
students of English and American native speaking students’ essays written in English, in terms of
selected analytic variables.
3. Postgraduate Tunisian students of English produce similar argumentative essays in English and
Arabic, in terms of selected analytic variables.
4. Differences between argumentative essays written by postgraduate Tunisian students of English
written in English and those written by American native speaking students in English are due to
Arabic language rhetoric transfer.
3. METHODOLOGY
3.1. CORPUS
The corpus for this study includes three sets of argumentative essays, thus: essays written in
English by American native English speakers (AEE); essays written in English by postgraduate Tunisian
students of English (TEE); and essays written in Arabic by postgraduate Tunisian students of English (TEA).
The researcher used the LOCNESS corpus for the American students’ essays. LOCNESS is one of
the available corpora of the ‘Centre for English Corpus Linguistics’ in the ‘Université Catholique de
Louvain’ by Sylvianne Granger. For this study, the researcher has selected only twenty seven essays,
all written at Indiana University in Indianapolis. The latter are timed argumentative essays written in
March 1995 by twenty seven English native speakers. The age of the writers ranged from 22 to 48. The
topics of the essays were:
1. Money is the root of all evil
2. Crime does not pay
3. A man/woman’s financial reward should be commensurate with their contribution to
the society in which they live
4. Feminists have done more harm to the cause of women than good
The Tunisian essays are written by Tunisian students who were studying English at first year Masters’
degree level at the ‘Faculty of Letters and Humanities of Kairouan’ in Tunisia during the academic
year 2011-12. Students at this particular level of education were chosen because it was assumed
that they have less linguistic difficulties; such as grammatical errors, than undergraduate students.
The essays were timed essays and the students answered one of the questions from the LOCNESS’
Indiana University topic list already presented. Each Tunisian student was required to answer one of
the four questions.
The choice of Indiana University essays among all the essays in LOCNESS is explained by the fact that
these essays were timed essays. Also, the age of the students was the closest to the age of first year
Masters’ degree students. The American and Tunisian essays needed to share a maximum number of

similarities in their characteristics in order to be comparable.The same assignments already presented
were translated into Arabic and administered to the same postgraduate Tunisian students of English.
Each was required to answer one of the four questions, in Arabic. In order to obtain an equally
distributed corpus, containing equal numbers of both Tunisian and American students’ essays, the
Tunisian students sample also includes twenty seven essays written in Arabic and twenty seven essays
written in English written by the same Tunisian students.
3.2. APPROACH
Ulla Connor (1990) presents a comprehensive model to assess persuasive writing. The model is multidimensional
because it considers both linguistic and discourse-level features of essays and assesses a
specific kind of discourse by developing analytical scales. In Connor’s article (1990: 70), six variables
are used to analyse persuasive student writing. Two variables are concerned with the study and
analysis of syntax and coherence in students’ argumentative essays. Both variables are not included
in the following study, as it is basically and only concerned with the rhetorical differences between
Tunisian and American students’ argumentative essays.
Four variables of argumentative/persuasive texts are used to evaluate persuasive features in the
sample essays, namely: the superstructure of the argument, the strength of logical reasoning
involved; the use of persuasive appeals; and the adaptation of the text to one’s audience. The
following table presents the independent variables and the scales used to describe them.
INDEPENDENT VARIABLES SCALES
Argument Superstructure Situation, problem, solution, evaluation
Reasoning Claim, data, and warrant scale (Connor & Lauer, 1988)
Persuasive appeals
Rational, affective, and credibility appeals scale
Persuasive adaptiveness Audience awareness and persuasive adaptiveness scale
Table 1: Independent variables and scales for analysing rhetoric in students’ argumentative essays
For more details concerning the independent variables used in this study and presented in the table
above, the reader can consult Connor (1990).
In addition to the independent variables presented in the above table, the corpus’ essays are also
holistically rated. The overall writing quality of each essay in this study is rated using a 0-5 point holistic
scale. The following section presents the analytical techniques.
3.3. TECHNIQUES USED IN CORPUS ANALYSIS
3.3.1. RATING ESSAYS
Both the holistic and analytic aspects of the corpus’ essays were scored in this research by two
independent raters. Once all the corpus’ essays were rated, the researcher performed statistical
tests in order to obtain quantitative results.
3.3.2. QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS
All statistical analyses in the current study were performed via SPSS 19. In order to study the
raters’ agreement, an intra-class correlation coefficient was calculated to measure if there was
an agreement between the scores each rater assigned to each essay, using each variable.
Furthermore, a multinomial logistical regression was performed in order to study the relationship
between the holistic score and analytic measures. The purpose of multinomial logistic regression
analysis is to check the validity of the selected variables used to study argumentative essays. If the
selected variables are valid, they can predict the overall writing quality and hence the holistic score.
If the analytic variables are valid, the focus will be on testing the contrastive rhetoric hypothesis; or

they can be used to identify whether significant rhetorical differences exist between postgraduate
Tunisian students of English argumentative essays and American native speaking students’ essays
written in English, using MANOVA as a statistical tool. If a difference was found, the researcher
investigated whether it stemmed from the Tunisian students native language; that is Arabic.
4. RESULTS
4.1. RESULTS OF INTRA- CLASS CORRELATION
The results of intra-class correlations revealed that there was a high level of agreement between
both raters. The results of intra class correlation are summarised in table 2.
VARIABLE
INTRA CLASS CORRELATION COEFFICIENT
Situation 1.00
Problem 1.00
Solution .96
Evaluation .81
Claim .70
Data .83
Warrant .83
Rational appeals .79
Credibility appeals .83
Affective appeals .83
Persuasive adaptiveness .86
Overall mark .84
Table 2: Interrater Agreement for all variables
As shown in the table the agreement rate between raters ranges from 70% to 100 % agreement.
Hence, the researcher was confident that the scores she would use for later statistical analyses would
reliably measure the rhetorical performance of the participants.
4.2. RESULTS OF MULTINOMIAL LOGISTIC REGRESSION
In order to identify predictors of overall score, a multinomial logistic regression was made. It included
four covariates or variables, namely: argument superstructure; added Toulmin; persuasive appeals;
and persuasive adaptiveness. It should be mentioned here that the researcher calculated the
mean of individual claim, data, and warrant scores to obtain only one score or; an added Toulmin‘s
informal reasoning score. The purpose is to facilitate later statistical analysis. The resulting added
Toulmin score for each participant was a potential value of one to three.
The researcher also included grouping factors in the multinomial logistic regression model. The results
of the regression analysis are summarized in table 3.
MODEL EFFECT(S) MODEL FITTING CRITERIA EFFECT SELECTION TESTS PSEUDO R-SQUARE
AIC -2 Log Chi df Sig Nagelkerke
likelihood Square
Step 0 Intercept 155.38 137.38
Group
Step 1 Added 108.78 84.78 52.60 3 .000
Toulmin
Step 2 Persuasive 95.09 65.09 19.69 3 .000
appeals
Step 3 Argument
superstructure
93.04 57.04 8.06 3 .045 .82

Table 3: Multinomial Logistic Regression
As shown in Table 3, multinomial logistic regression indicates that the predictor variables of the overall
writing scores were added Toulmin, persuasive appeals and argument superstructure. The pseudo
R-Square equals 82%, which means that the four previously identified variables together can predict
82% of the variance in the holistic scores. The regression excluded persuasive adaptiveness as a
predictor of overall scores.
Consequently, the added Toulmin score is the best predictor of the overall score. The second best
predictor of overall mark is the persuasive appeals variable, which includes credibility appeals and
affective appeals. The third predictor of the overall score is argument superstructure. It should be
noted here that persuasive adaptiveness was dismissed as a predictor variable; as the regression
excluded persuasive adaptiveness as a predictor of overall scores. Participants demonstrated a low
performance on the persuasive adaptiveness scale, therefore cross-cultural variations of the use of
persuasive adaptiveness in the corpus essays was insignificant for the current study.
When adding grouping factors into the model, the AIC improved. It reached 155.38 (Table 3) against
167.095 (Table 4). Therefore, grouping had an effect on the improvement of predictability of the
score range. As shown in Table 5, the final model explains score range variations with a significance
equaling p

OBSERVED
PREDICTED
[1,2[ [2,3[ [3,4[ [4,5[ PERCENT CORRECT
[1,2[ 3 2 0 0 60,0%
[2,3[ 2 33 4 0 84,6%
[3,4[ 0 8 22 1 71,0%
[4,5[ 0 0 2 4 66,7%
Overall Percentage 76,5%
Table 6: Classification of predicted overall score ranges
4.3. TESTING THE CONTRASTIVE RHETORIC HYPOTHESIS
The second part of the statistical analysis aimed to identify whether significant rhetorical differences
existed between argumentative essays written by postgraduate Tunisian students of English and essays
written in English by American native speaking students. Therefore, it aimed to test the contrastive rhetoric
hypothesis, and, in so doing, to answer research questions 2, 3 and 4, as previously presented.
In order to answer the following questions, MANOVA is used. MANOVA was conducted with holistic
and analytic measures as the dependent variables, and group membership as the independent
variable. The statistical comparative analysis began by checking whether either grouping essays, on
one hand, or the categorization of essays in terms of TEA, TEE and AEE, on the other, had an impact
on the analytic variables, namely: argument superstructure, added Toulmin, persuasive appeals and
persuasive adaptiveness, as well as overall score.
DEPENDENT VARIABLE (I) GROUPS (J) GROUPS MEAN DIFFERENCE (I-J) STD. ERROR SIG. a
Added Toulmin
Persuasive Appeals
Overall mark
TEA TEE -,086 ,116 ,459
AEE -,469* ,116 ,000
TEE TEA ,086 ,116 ,459
AEE -,383* ,116 ,001
AEE TEA ,469* ,116 ,000
TEE ,383* ,116 ,001
TEA TEE -,130 ,133 ,333
AEE -,296* ,133 ,029
TEE TEA ,130 ,133 ,333
AEE -,167 ,133 ,214
AEE TEA ,296* ,133 ,029
TEE ,167 ,133 ,214
TEA TEE ,093 ,155 ,551
AEE -,648* ,155 ,000
TEE TEA -,093 ,155 ,551
AEE -,741* ,155 ,000
AEE TEA ,648* ,155 ,000
TEE ,741* ,155 ,000

Based on estimated marginal means
a. Adjustment for multiple comparisons: Least Significant Difference (equivalent to no adjustments).
*. The mean difference is significant at the, 05 level.
Table 7: Pairwise comparisons
A significant difference is signaled between TEE and TEA, on one hand, and AEE, on the other, in
terms of added Toulmin. No significant difference exists between TEA and TEE in terms of added
Toulmin (p > 0.05).
AEE and TEA have a significant difference in terms of persuasive appeals. Still, no significant
differences exist between TEA and TEE (p > 0.05) or AEE and TEE (p > 0.05) in terms of persuasive
appeals.
A significant difference exists between TEE and AEE in terms of overall score; (p < 0.05). Also, as shown
in table 7, a significant difference exists between AEE and TEA (p < 0.001). However, no significant
difference exists between TEA and TEE in terms of overall mark: (p > 0.05).
Through the previously stated findings, hypotheses two, three and four for the current study are
validated. As a result, the current study assumes that:
(1) Significant differences exist between the argumentative essays of postgraduate Tunisian
students of English and American native speaking students’ essays written in English, in terms of
added Toulmin and overall score.
(2) Postgraduate Tunisian students of English produced similar argumentative essays in English
and Arabic in terms of added Toulmin, persuasive appeals and overall score.
(3) A significant difference existed between TEA and AEE essays in terms of added Toulmin,
persuasive appeals and overall score.
(4) Tunisian students of English produced similar argumentative essays in English and Arabic
in terms of added Toulmin and persuasive appeals, furthermore differences between
argumentative essays written by postgraduate Tunisian students of English and those written in
English by American native speaking students in English are also signalled in the use of added
Toulmin and persuasive appeals, the researcher claims that the latter differences stem from
Arabic language rhetoric transfer.
5. IMPLICATIONS
The implications for the field of contrastive rhetoric include the validity of the analytic model (Connor,
1990) selected to study rhetorical performance in argumentative essays. It is a valid tool of analysis
for the investigation of various rhetorical aspects of Tunisian and American rhetorical structures and
identifies their similarities and differences.
Furthermore, the current research found that both Tunisian and American groups displayed a
relatively low performance on persuasive adaptiveness measures. One implication of this study is to
enhance training on the effective use of persuasive adaptiveness.
The study revealed that no significant difference existed between TEE and AEE essays of the same
Tunisian students. The same rhetorical techniques were found in both groups. Hence, the writing
problems experienced by EFL Tunisian students are the byproduct of negative Arabic language

transfer. Therefore, the researcher claims that contrastive rhetoric is a valuable resource. It may
explain one of the reasons why ESL/EFL students produce different English texts in comparison to
native English speakers. It may also locate the differences. Hence, course designers and teachers
may use contrastive rhetoric results to improve their teaching methods and focus more on the
difficulties experienced by their students. That way, teaching will satisfy the special needs of each
population or discourse community.
REFERENCES
Connor, U. (1990). Linguistic/Rhetorical Measures for International
Persuasive Student Writing. Research in the Teaching of English, 24 (1), 67-87.
Connor, U. (1996). Contrastive Rhetoric: Cross-Cultural Aspects of
Second Language Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ismail, S. (2010). Arabic and English Persuasive Writing of Arabs
from a Contrastive Rhetoric Perspective. (Doctoral dissertation) Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
The School of Graduate Studies and Research. Department of English.
Kaplan, R. B. (1966). Cultural thought Patterns in Inter-Cultural
Education. Language Learning, 16, 1- 20.
Ouaouicha, D. (1986). Contrastive Rhetoric and the Structure of
Learner-Produced Argumentative Texts in Arabic and English. (Doctoral dissertation). The University of
Texas at Austin.

THE EFFECTS OF INCREASED EXPOSURE OF THIRD PERSON OBJECT
PRONOUNS ON THEIR AURAL COMPREHENSION IN SECOND
LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
OLIVIA AMZALLAG
University at Albany
Author Note
Olivia Amzallag, Department of Languages, Literatures & Cultures, University at Albany
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Olivia Amzallag
Contact:
obarone@albany.edu
oliviaamzallag@yahoo.com
P.O. Box 42
Chautauqua, NY 14722
518-495-6808
ABSTRACT
This semester-long study sought to understand the impact of increasing exposure to object pronouns
during instruction, on the aural detection of third person object pronouns, in learners of French by
observing two diverse groups of university students enrolled in a high-beginning level French course.
After personal observations on French language teaching and materials showed a tendency to
omit third person object pronouns examined in six current French textbooks commonly used in both
high schools and universities across the United States. This evaluation uncovered evident instances
of avoidance strategies, lowering the instances of naturally occurring pronouns in the instructional
input, and in some cases, modeling unnatural language patterns. Currently, the preliminary results of
this study indicate that the increased exposure to object pronouns appears to have a positive effect
on the aural comprehension of third person object pronouns. This study was designed to be useful in
developing instructional methods and specifically honing French language instruction. Subsequently,
there are several avenues open to future research in the fields of aural comprehension, third person
object pronouns, input frequency and subject retention.
This recent study sought to understand the impact of increased exposure to object pronouns on
the aural comprehension of third person object pronouns by increasing pronominal exposure, in the
hopes of facilitating the aural acquisition of third person object pronouns. The research questions
were twofold: First, what is the effect of increased exposure to object pronouns during instruction, on
the aural comprehension of third person object pronouns, prior to their being taught explicitly; and,
second, what is the effect of avoiding object pronouns during the beginning stages of instruction,
on third person object pronoun comprehension? Understanding the impact of increasing the exposure
to these particular forms during instruction, without bringing direct attention to them grammatically, is
valuable in developing means to facilitate object pronoun instruction and acquisition. Re-introducing
these grammatical forms in their natural settings would provide a more realistic model of language during
instruction, without inadvertently teaching object pronoun avoidance techniques.
This study is rooted in both the field of pedagogy and applied linguistics, specifically drawing upon
research on input frequency, object pronoun acquisition, and auditory comprehension in Second
Language Acquisition (SLA). Presently, very few studies exist involving all three of these aspects of
23

language learning. Furthermore, despite extensive research, no consensus is found regarding how
object pronouns are aurally acquired by second-language learners, although they are difficult
to detect by Anglophone learners. Hence, the research supports using a variety of instructional
practices in the field of SLA where object pronouns are concerned. A brief overview of the current
research reveals studies such as that of Erlam (2003), who measured the ability of high school
students to guess the meaning of pronouns based on their context, and Grüter (2005) who analyzed
the aural sensitivity to pronominal forms in six-year-old children. However, the present study largely
follows the findings of VanPatten (1984) in his study on the manner in which learners of Spanish
interpret pronouns, with a particular attention to word order. He concludes that in cases of low formmeaning
correlation, frequency plays an important role in acquisition. Yet, the study reported here
flows primarily from the work of Wust (2010), with the most recent research on the auditory acquisition
of pronouns. She studies high-intermediate learners of French in a university classroom, explaining
the manner in which learners of French understand and codify object pronouns. Following the
results, Wust suggests that lower-level learners would benefit from exposure to frequent occurrences
of object pronouns, and she makes a case for a need for explicit instruction in order to improve
the aural comprehension of these forms. Moreover, she states that it is precisely because object
pronouns are difficult to acquire that they are ideal targets for instruction and points out the scarcity
of research on this subject.
Personal observations on French language teaching and teaching materials showed a tendency to
omit third person object pronouns. This observation was confirmed by conducting an evaluation of
six current French textbooks commonly used in both high schools and universities across the United
States, which indeed revealed infrequent use of object pronouns prior to their explicit instruction, and
very little in context thereafter.
Additionally, this evaluation uncovered evident instances of avoidance strategies, lowering the
instances of naturally occurring pronouns in the instructional input, and in some cases, modeling
unnatural language patterns. For example one textbook reads “Les jeunes Américains aiment
beaucoup le lait. Mais, en général, les jeunes Français n’aiment pas le lait,” where the repetition
of the phrase “le lait” would not be natural for a French native speaker. In this example, a native
speaker would have most likely used the object pronoun l’. The same text presents a conversation
which reads: “ – Tu vas au restaurant? – Non, je ne vais pas au restaurant; je vais à la bibliothèque,”
in which the word restaurant is repeated in an unnatural way. In this example, a native speaker
would have most likely used the object pronoun y. Furthermore, of the 235 pages prior to the lesson
on object pronouns, this textbook only features seven examples of object pronouns in the third
person. In another similar textbook the same type of avoidance is noted. For example, this text reads
“– Tu aimes l’opéra? – Non, je déteste l’opéra. Et toi?” in which the word opera is repeated in an
unnatural way. In this example, a native speaker would have most likely used the object pronoun l’.
In this second textbook there is a clear lack of object pronoun use. Although there are 16 examples
of third person object pronouns, these instances are all found between pages 110 and 112, of 154
pages, and only in the passages taken from authentic texts such as Le Petit Prince. However, without
counting these instances, there are no object pronouns featured at all in the instructional materials.
Whether intentional or not, these examples clearly demonstrate a lack of modeling of frequently
used French forms in the current beginning-level language teaching materials. Yet, learners often
need to use these well before they have contact with them, and the consequences of this lack of
modeling may render object pronoun use even more difficult for students. Anglophone learners of
French have notable difficulty using third person object pronouns and have a tendency to avoid
them or replace them by another grammatically incorrect form due to their innate nature. French
third person object pronouns are truly renowned for their acquisition difficulty, and this is true for
several structural reasons: their position in a sentence differs than in English as French object pronouns
are usually pre-verbal, they must agree with the noun they are replacing while possessing masculine,
feminine and plural forms, they are short and often contain only one syllable or letter, they can
be contracted and subject to reduction, some forms are homophonic with other grammatical

morphemes as for example le, la, les can be definite articles, they are redundant as the pronoun
replaces a concept introduced prior in the communication, and they are often neglected in speech.
This difficulty creates a series of problems attributed to the usage of object pronouns such as an
overgeneralization of object pronouns into subject pronouns, errors in gender, person, and number,
more frequent comprehension of certain object pronouns and not others, errors in agreement
and verbal structure with the use of double object pronouns, and object pronoun omission or
misplacement, to name a few. Due of the multiplicity of these issues, it is desirable to facilitate object
pronoun acquisition and instruction, especially in the area of auditory sensitivity to these forms.
Therefore, the following study enabled us to better understand the impact of the reintroduction of
object pronouns where they would feature naturally in the instructional materials, to be able to study
the lack of modeling of object pronouns during instruction, and also study the learner techniques
used to avoid their use, anticipating that these results would facilitate the instruction and mastery of
these difficultly acquired forms.
This study sought to understand the impact of increasing exposure to object pronouns during
instruction, on the aural detection of third person object pronouns, in learners of French by observing
two groups of university students in all levels of study, freshmen through seniors, enrolled in a variety of
majors, in a semester-long, high-beginning level French course.
These participants consisted two groups—a 16 person experimental group, of whom 4 had declared
minors in French, and a 15 person control group, of whom 1 had declared a minor in French, and no
students majored in French. Both groups of French university students, statistically evenly distributed,
were studied under two classroom models and received the same quality, quantity and type of
instruction. However, the experimental group received increased exposure to object pronouns,
featured where they would naturally occur, both orally and in written instruction, for the first 10 weeks
of a 16-week course. Following the first 10 weeks of modified instruction, the two groups received an
instructional lesson on the subject of third person object pronouns, and then an identical curriculum
for the remaining six weeks of the course. All participants took a placement test, which was used as
a general benchmark for student ability level, and a way to administer the first auditory task in the
first week of classes. The placement test also assured that the participants enrolled in the two groups
were at the correct linguistic level for the course.
The teaching materials were taken from the textbook Chez Nous – Branché sur le monde
francophone, written by Valdman, Pons and Scullen (year) and published by Pearson. Teaching
methods followed a communicative approach based on textbook content, and were representative
of a standard curriculum taught in most universities and high schools. The experimental group met for
1 hour and 50 minutes twice a week, and the control group met for 55 minutes four times a week. All
instructional materials for the control group were taken from the course textbook, and throughout the
instruction in the experimental group all types of object pronouns were incorporated both orally and
in written materials for the first 10 weeks of a 16-week course.
The documents used in the experimental group as compared to those used in the control group
differed very little. For example, the textbook is rather repetitive and avoids using an object pronoun
in the following homework reading activity therefore it was modified to incorporate a pronoun where
it would naturally be featured: the control group receives the input “Ils achètent leurs sandwichs
surtout dans les chaines spécialisées et pas nécessairement dans des cafés,” while the experimental
group received the same information although featuring a pronoun: “Ils les achètent surtout dans
des chaînes spécialisées et pas nécessairement dans des cafés.” We also added a question at
the end of the reading to incite the student to think about the structure of the form in context: “Où
achetez-vous vos sandwichs d’habitude?” Another example is taken from a set of instructions,
demonstrating a postposition of the pronoun in the input; the control group sees: “Pour comprendre
son histoire, considérez les questions suivantes” as the textbook reads, and the experimental group
receives: “Lisez-le et répondez aux questions qui suivent,” changing neither the subject nor meaning

of the text, but slightly adjusting the structure and vocabulary to accommodate an object pronoun.
Following this type of input increase for 10 weeks, the two groups received explicit instruction on
object pronouns during the 11th week of the course, and ultimately identical instruction, without any
variance between the two groups, for the last six weeks of the course. Although this study focused
particularly on object pronouns of the third person, it must be noted that the input throughout the
course featured pronouns of all persons—first, second, and third of both the singular and the plural, of
both genders, for the experimental group, and could be found after the verb, as in this last example
in the imperative.
The testing tools throughout the study consisted of four aural comprehension tasks, embedded
into the coursework, identified as Tasks 1 through 4, conceived to evaluate the student’s aural
comprehension of object pronouns. Task 1 served as a benchmark in order to measure the rate
of improvement of individual participants and groups. The students listened to a text read by the
instructor, and based on their understanding of it, answered multiple-choice content questions.
Additional qualitative information was drawn from the departmental student questionnaire,
and collected in the form of a teacher’s journal. Observations were drawn from in-class student
interaction, homework, quizzes & assignments.
The statistical results of the testing portion of the research were analyzed using the Public/social/
private partnership (referred to generally as PSPP) free software application and all data collected
was analyzed for trends and variations in student performance. According to the average trends,
one observes that at the beginning of the study, in Task 1, the control group was definitively stronger
in aural comprehension, with a score of 17.79% higher than the experimental group. As well, although
the control group does not demonstrate much improvement from Task 1 to Task 2, their performance
increased by 13.33% in Task 3, following the lesson on object pronouns. Nevertheless, as the
experimental group began with generally weak aural comprehension, they show a notable increase
in comprehension between Task 1 and Task 2, with an improvement of 28.57%; although this group
did not improve significantly between Task 2 and Task 3 after having received the lesson on object
pronouns, with a simple increase in comprehension of 5.65%. Yet, these two groups improved at a
relatively equal rhythm following the lesson on object pronouns, as the variance between groups
between these two tasks is not statistically significant. Finally, the improvement was only maintained
in the experimental group, with a decrease of only 0.29% between Tasks 3 and 4, whereas the
control group shows a decrease of 5.71% between these same tasks, indicating a possible loss of
retention. Therefore, it is evident that the improvement between the first and last tasks is much more
pronounced in the experimental group, with more than double the scores of the control group,
with 33.93% improvement over 12.39% improvement overall. Consequently, having increased the
exposure to object pronouns seems to have had a statistically significant impact on the aural
comprehension of concepts requiring the understanding of a third person object pronoun.
Moreover, each listening task was followed by a question hoping to provide insight into participant
reactions to the tasks: “Please write a few sentences sharing your thoughts about this listening task
as a whole. Please share anything that comes to mind, how you felt, level of difficulty, particular
vocabulary or grammatical structures that you found challenging, etc.…” These comments were
sorted into three categories: negative outlooks were labeled difficult, the ambiguous comments
were labeled accordingly, and positive outlooks were labeled easy/fair based on the two dominant
terms used by students in these comments. From this classification, one observes that the increase
in positive comments in the experimental group coincides with the same period that the test scores
indicate an improvement in comprehension. Following Task 2 the experimental group touts 5
comments in the difficult category, 10 ambiguous, 1 easy/fair and 1 blank. This is in contrast to the
control group who shows 9 comments in the difficult category, 5 in the ambiguous, none in the easy/
fair category and 1 blank; thus highlighting the discrepancy in student comprehension. Additionally,
comments specific to object pronouns were only found among students in the control group:
“Favorite one so far. I like the use of lui,” and, “It was difficult for me to pick up the object nouns.”
There were no comments of this type found in those of the students in the experimental group, which
could indicate that these forms were more natural to them.

Currently, the preliminary results of this study indicate that the increased exposure to object pronouns
appears to have a positive effect on the aural comprehension of third person object pronouns.
Furthermore, there is evidence to suggest that the lack of contact with these pronominal forms
may indicate a loss of subject retention following instruction, although there is insufficient data to
be able to draw firm conclusions. The pending categorizing and trending the information noted
in the instructor journal, derived from student interactions, classwork and homework may uncover
additional information pertinent to these research questions and qualitative results will be discussed in
conjunction to the statistical results and converted into objective data sets when possible.
Thusly the results contribute to the larger body of research on the instruction and acquisition of the
French pronominal system, and may also prove applicable to other languages and/or grammatical
concepts. This study was designed to be useful in developing instructional methods and honing
specifically French language instruction, and subsequently, there are several avenues open to future
research in the fields of aural comprehension, third person object pronouns, input frequency and
subject retention.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Erlam, R. (2003). Evaluating the Relative Effectiveness of Structured-Input and Output-Based
Instruction in Foreign Language Learning: Results from an Experimental Study. Studies in Second
Language Acquisition 25(4): 559-82.
Erlam, R. (2003). The Effects of Deductive and Inductive Instruction on the Acquisition of Direct Object
Pronouns in French as a Second Language. The Modern Language Journal 87(2): 242–260.
Grüter, T. (2005). Comprehension and production of French object clitics by child second language
learners and children with specific language impairment. Applied Psycholinguistics, 26(3): 363-391.
Valdman, Pons and Scullen. (2010). Chez Nous – Branché sur le monde francophone. 4e
édition. Toronto, Canada: Pearson Canada Inc., 2010.
VanPatten, B. (1984). Learners’ comprehension of clitic pronouns: More evidence for a word order
strategy. Hispanic Linguistics, 1: 57-67.
Wust, Valerie A. (2009). A la recherche des clitiques perdus: The dictogloss as a measure of the
comprehension of y and en by L2 learners of French. The Canadian Modern Language Review, 65(3):
471-499.
Wust, Valerie. (2010). L2 French Learners’ Processing of Object Clitics: Data from the Classroom: L2
Journal 2(1): 45-72.
Wust, Valerie A. (2010). Pronominalization in French: Bridging the Gap between Research and
Practice. The Journal of Linguistics and Language Teaching, 1(1): 75-110.

INCOMPLETE ATTAINMENT IN L2 AND HERITAGE GRAMMARS:
AN ERROR ANALYSIS
TERESA LEE
University of Virginia
Email: teresa902lee@yahoo.com
INTRODUCTION
Many studies in heritage language acquisition have noted that heritage speakers exhibit nonnative-like
attainment of the heritage grammar, as second language (L2) learners do in their
L2 development (Lee, 2011; Montrul, 2008; Polinsky, 2008; to just name a few). In many cases,
linguistic deficits found in heritage speakers are not random and similar to those that are observed
with L2 learners (Montrul, 2005; Montrul & Ionin, 2012). Systematic deficits are observed in various
grammatical aspects (e.g., verbal and nominal agreement, use of reflexive pronouns, article use,
etc) and they are very prominent in complex syntactic structures including relative clauses (Kim,
2008; Kim, Montrul, & Yoon, 2010; Laleko & Polinsky, 2013; Montrul, 2004, 2005). In general, deficits
are manifested either in the form of conversion on the corresponding features of the dominant
language or in a hybrid form between the features of the heritage language and those of the
dominant language. The primary goal of this paper is to examine the similarities and differences in
the knowledge of L2 learners and heritage speakers of Korean in hopes to contribute to a better
understanding of the nature of linguistic deficits observed in L2 and heritage language acquisition.
PREVIOUS STUDIES
Korean relative clauses differ from their English counterparts in two major respects. One difference
has to do with the fact that Korean utilizes case markers to indicate grammatical relations. The other
difference involves the branching direction. English relative clauses are post-nominal and the relative
clause follows the head (the woman [RC who reads the book]). On the other hand, Korean relative
clauses are pre-nominal and the relative clause precedes the head ([RC chayk-ul ilk-nun] yeca ‘the
woman who reads a book’). This difference is important to note because it might cause trouble for
the learner if the branching direction of the L2 or heritage language is different from that of his or her
first language. As reported by several studies, the learner might rely on the properties of the first or
dominant language (i.e., English) when interpreting relative clauses in an L2 or heritage language,
(Kanno, 2007; Kim, 2008; Lee-Ellis, 2011; O’Grady, Lee, & Choo, 2003). In this regard, examining errors
(especially those involving incorrect word order) can provide useful insight into the nature of linguistic
deficits observed in L2 and heritage grammars.
Several studies on the acquisition of Korean (and Japanese) relative clauses have noted that
head errors reflect the influence from English (Kanno, 2007; Kim, 2008; O’Grady et al., 2003). Head
errors involve the erroneous selection of the first noun in a relative clause as the head, appropriate
for English, but not for Korean. Given this, head errors imply that the learner had trouble correctly
locating the relative clause and the head in Korean. In Korean, subject relatives have the structure
of [RC O V] S and direct object relatives have the structure of [RC S V] O. Lee-Ellis (2011) reported
that some of her participants relied on the English basic word order (SVO), producing deviant forms
that did not conform to the word order of Korean relative clauses. As noted earlier, this type of
error implies that the learner is affected by his or her knowledge of the dominant language in
producing Korean relative clauses.
Previous studies have also reported another error pattern that involves the Korean basic word order
(SOV) and the use of the bound noun kes, which is not required in the head external relative clauses
28

(those with a gap). In their oral production of L2 learners of Korean, Jeon and Kim (2007) reported a
high rate of this error type. Lee-Ellis (2011) also reported a similar type of word order error in her oral
production study with Korean heritage speakers. As in the case of Jeon and Kim’s (2007) study, this
error type was observed in non-target-like relative clauses involving the [RC S O V] kes pattern. In
other words, heritage speakers as well as L2 learners are prone to producing a hybrid form of some
sort, which do not conform to the word order of Korean relative clauses.
THE PRESENT STUDY
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
In general, L2 learners start to learn Korean in a classroom setting after puberty whereas heritage
speakers are exposed to Korean in the home since birth. Although heritage speakers are exposed to
Korean early in childhood, their dominant language subsequently switches to English once schooling
starts at around age 4 or 5 (Montrul, 2008). Then, the input that they receive in the heritage language
and its use tend to be limited to the home, which affects their knowledge of the heritage language
later in life, resulting in deficits (Montrul, 2004, 2005).
Previous studies have noted that linguistic deficits tend to be more evident with L2 and heritage
learners with low proficiency (Ionin & Montrul, 2010; Schwartz & Sprouse, 1996). Just as a look into
the role of proficiency level can be useful, examining the role of accuracy level can be as insightful
in probing further into the systematic differences that may exist between L2 and heritage learners.
The following hypotheses are formulated with respect to the acquisition of Korean relative clauses.
It is hypothesized that L2 learners may produce errors including word order errors more often than
heritage speakers if age of acquisition plays a role. Also, both L2 learners and heritage speakers
with low accuracy would produce word order errors more often than those with higher accuracy if
accuracy level is a factor.
PARTICIPANTS
The experiment included 26 L2 learners and 11 heritage speakers (early simultaneous bilinguals) of
Korean. Participants were enrolled in the second-semester Korean language class at a four-year
university on the East Coast of the United States at the time of testing, and all of them had completed
the first-semester beginning course. Their age ranged from 17 to 22 years old and the mean age was
19 years old. The L2 learners in the present study started to learn Korean in college whereas all early
simultaneous bilinguals were exposed to both English (from one parent) and Korean (from the other
parent) in the home during early childhood. Yet, all participants were English-dominant in proficiency
and use. Some of the early simultaneous bilinguals had prior knowledge of the Korean alphabet, but
most of them could barely write simple sentences in Korean and their oral skills were mostly limited to
simple greetings.
EXPERIMENTAL METHODS
The experiment employed two tasks involving written production and reading comprehension,
respectively. In the written production task, participants were asked to translate English sentences
containing relative clauses into Korean, and participants were asked to do the opposite in the
reading comprehension task. In both tasks, relative clauses were embedded in a full sentence and
modified the subject of the copular sentence. Each task included subject and direct object relatives
(e.g., The woman [RC who is eating dinner] is my sister & The cola [RC that my friend drinks] is very
delicious). It should be noted that the production task was administered prior to the comprehension
task in order to avoid a possibility of priming effects. Relative clauses were introduced at the outset of
the 2nd-semester beginning Korean course, and the experiment was conducted within several days
after the introduction of relative clauses in class.

DATA CODING
As for the comprehension (Korean-to-English translation) task, each sentence was checked for
completion and the accuracy of the relative clause. Each participant was given six test sentences,
and all participants were successful in translating all six of them, yielding a total of 222 relative
clauses. A sentence was assigned a score of 0 if it involved major errors that changed the structure
of the test sentence (e.g., the lunch that I ate for [RC cemsim-ul mek-nun] salam ‘the person who is
eating lunch’). Otherwise, a sentence was assigned a score of
1. Some sentences included lexical errors or minor grammatical errors including tense errors, but they
were considered acceptable.
The coding procedure for the production (English-to-Korean translation) task required a longer list
of coding categories, due to the fact that more types of errors were observed in this task. Each
participant was given six test sentences, and all participants were successful in translating all six
of them, yielding a total of 222 relative clauses. Each response was checked for completion, and
sentences with no relative clauses were considered inaccurate. Then, each relative clause was
examined for accuracy and coded for error types if any existed.
The most common type of error involved the production of incorrect word order in the relative
clause. In Korean, subject and direct object relatives have the structure of [RC O V] S and [RC S V]
O, respectively. Relative clauses which did not conform to these respective word order patterns were
coded as word order errors. An example is given in (1). 1
(1) Correct Incorrect
a. [RC yonghwa-lul po-nun] salam *[ RC salam-i yonghwa-lul po-nun]
movie-ACC watch-PRES person person-NOM movie-ACC watch-PRES
‘the person who is watching a movie’
Another common type of error involved the use of incorrect case markers on the noun (argument)
that appears inside the relative clause and the head noun. Errors in this category included the use
of a subject marker on the (direct object) argument inside the relative clause (e.g., [RC nolay-*ka/-
lul tut-nun] namca ‘the man who is listening to a song’) and use of a topic marker on the (subject)
argument inside the relative clause in place of a subject marker (e.g., [RC chinkwu-*nun/-ka masi-enun]
cola ‘the cola a friend drinks’).
Another error type involved repetition of the head, which alters the word order of the relative clause.
An example of a head repetition error is given in (2).
(2) *[ RC i yeca-ka newspaper ilk-nun] salam-un cey rwummeytu-yeyo.
this woman-NOM newspaper read-PRES person-TOPIC my roommate-sentence.ending
‘*the person who this woman is reading the newspaper.’
Other types of errors included missing arguments of the relative clause, repetition of the verb of
the relative clause, failure to mark the verb with a relativizer, and missing verbs. Relative clauses
were coded as acceptable if none of these errors were observed. Also, there were errors that were
not penalized: lexical errors (e.g., salam ‘person’ for yeca ‘woman’) and morphological errors in
case markers or adnominal verbal suffixes that carry the tense of an embedded clause and signal
relativization (e.g., ilk-*un (read-past) for ilk-nun (read-present).2

RESULTS
THE COMPREHENSION TASK
After coding was completed, data were quantified and statistical analysis was performed on the
number of target-like relative clauses. According to a two-way repeated measures ANOVA, there
was no main effect of Group and Sentence Type and no interaction effect between the two. The
results showed that the comprehension task was fairly easy for both the L2 and heritage learners,
which suggests that both groups had good receptive knowledge of Korean relative clauses. Figure 1
shows the accuracy rates of target-like relative clauses by group.
Figure 1. Comprehension accuracy rates of each group.
THE PRODUCTION TASK
After coding was completed, data were quantified and statistical analysis was performed on the
number of target-like relative clauses. 3 As for the between-group comparison, the L2 group was
more successful in producing target-like relative clauses than the early simultaneous bilinguals.
Figure 2 presents the accuracy rates of target-like relative clauses by group.
Figure 2. Production accuracy rates of each group.
A two-way repeated measures ANOVA was performed on the number of target-like relative
clauses with Group and Sentence Type as variables. There was a significant main effect of Group
(F(1,35)=16.447, p=0.00027), which suggests that the L2 learners performed differently from the early

simultaneous bilinguals, the former group being significantly more accurate at producing targetlike
relative clauses than the latter group. The main effect of Sentence Type was also significant
(F(1,35)=16.447, p=0.00027), but there was no interaction effect between the two variables
(F(1,35)=1.382, p=0.24732).
Turning now to errors produced by each group, major error types included production of incorrect
word order, repetition of the head, and use of incorrect case markers. Table 1 lists the total number of
errors by group in these three categories.
Table 1. Rates of major error types by group.
GROUP L2 LEARNERS (N=26) EARLY SIMULTANEOUS (N=11)
Total count 156 66
Incorrect word 19 (12.2%) 26 (39.4%)
order
Head repetition 3 (1.9%) 4 (6.1%)
Incorrect case
markers
13 (8.3%) 13 (19.7%)
The early simultaneous bilinguals (39%) produced relative clauses with incorrect word order more
frequently than the L2 learners (12%). Error rates indicate that the L2 learners also had trouble
producing relative clauses with appropriate word order, but not as much as the early simultaneous
bilinguals did. A similar trend was observed with errors involving repetition of the head and the use of
incorrect case markers.
In order to probe further into the differences in the linguistic deficits between L2 learners and heritage
speakers, each group was divided into three accuracy levels (high, intermediate, and low), based
on their individual accuracy test scores.4 No early simultaneous bilingual scored high enough to be
placed into the high accuracy level and statistical analysis was performed only on the intermediate
and low accuracy levels. Error rates at each accuracy level suggest that both the L2 and heritage
learners with low accuracy produced word order errors more often than those with intermediate
accuracy. Table 2 lists the number of word order errors by accuracy level.
Table 2. Word order error rates by accuracy level.
ACCURACY L2 LEARNERS (N=26) EARLY SIMULTANEOUS (N=11)
n Total Errors Mean SD n Totals Error Mean SD
High 1 8 1 n/a
Intermediate 14 84 5 0.36 0.63 3 18 4 1.33 1.53
Low 11 66 16 1.45 1.57 8 48 26 3.25 2.12
(SD: Standard Deviation)
A two-way repeated measures ANOVA was performed on the number of word order errors with
Group and Accuracy Level as variables. There was a significant main effect of Group (F(1,32)=5.991,
p=0.02005), which suggests that the performance of the L2 learners significantly differed from that of
the early simultaneous bilinguals. Given the difference in the error rates, this result suggests that the
L2 learners at both the intermediate and the low accuracy levels performed better than the early
simultaneous bilinguals, producing fewer errors. There was also a significant main effect of Accuracy
Level (F(1,32)=7.085, p=0.01206), which suggests that the learners at the intermediate and low
accuracy levels differed from each other, those with intermediate accuracy producing significantly
fewer word order errors than those with low accuracy. There was no interaction effect (F(1,32)=0.524,
p=0.47463).

DISCUSSION
The goal of the present study was to examine the similarities and differences in the knowledge of
L2 learners and heritage speakers of Korean. In particular, it aimed to see what type of systematic
difference might exist in the nature of linguistic deficits between L2 learners and early simultaneous
bilinguals. Given the differences in their acquisitional path, it was hypothesized that L2 learners might
exhibit a more severe degree of deficits than early simultaneous bilinguals if age of acquisition was a
factor.
The results of the production task were interesting in that the early simultaneous bilinguals did not
outperform the L2 learners, despite their early exposure to Korean. Rather, the results indicated
otherwise, disconfirming the role of age of acquisition. The L2 learners produced target-like relative
clauses 80 percent of the time whereas the early simultaneous bilinguals did so only 43 percent of the
time. Also, they produced significantly fewer word order errors, compared to the early simultaneous
bilinguals. The L2 learners made 22 errors of the 156 tokens total and the early simultaneous bilinguals
made 30 errors of the 66 tokens total.
These findings seem to suggest that the L2 learners exhibited a lesser degree of deficits in their
knowledge of Korean than the early simultaneous bilinguals. Yet, a close examination of word order
errors made by each group revealed that there was a slight difference in the nature of deficits
between the L2 learners and the early simultaneous bilinguals. The overall error analysis showed
that both groups produced Korean relative clauses, utilizing the English word order (SVO), as similar
observations were made by previous studies (Jeon & Kim, 2007; Lee-Ellis, 2011). In the present study,
interesting to note is that the L2 learners (six instances) made such errors slightly more often than the
early simultaneous bilinguals (three instances), which suggests that the L2 learners might be more
prone to relying on the features of the dominant language in producing Korean relative clauses.
In conclusion, the results of the production task showed that there was a negative correlation
between accuracy level and the degree of linguistic deficits. The L2 learners with low accuracy
exhibited a stronger degree of deficits than those with intermediate accuracy, producing word order
errors more often. The same was true for the heritage group, which suggests that linguistic deficits are
likely to be more prominent with learners at a lower accuracy level. This study has also shown that
both the L2 and heritage learners were influenced by their knowledge of the dominant language.
However, the results did not confirm the advantage of heritage speakers over L2 learners in that the
latter group produced target-like relative clauses more often than the former group. Although the
findings of the present study need to be corroborated with a larger sample size and more tokens of
test items, they provide useful insight into the nature of linguistic deficits that exist in L2 and heritage
grammars.
NOTES
1. The following abbreviations are used in this paper: NOM (nominative), ACC (accusative), TOPIC
(topic), and PRES (present).
2. Case markers in Korean involve allomorphic variations. There are two allomorphs (-i and -ka) for a
subject marker and two allomorphs (-ul and -lul) for an object marker. Allomorphic variations are also
found with some of the verbal suffixes (relativizers): -n/-un (past), -nun (present), and -ul/-lul (future or
unrealized).
3. Five adult native speakers of Korean (graduate students at the same institution) also participated
in this task, and they correctly produced target relative clauses all the time.
4. It was a listening test, which involved eight tokens of Korean relative clauses (e.g., the man who
sees the woman & the man the woman sees). The high accuracy level included the participants
who were accurate on at least seven tokens, and those at the intermediate accuracy level were
correct on six to four tokens. The low accuracy level included those who were accurate on three to
one token and those who failed to give any correct responses.

REFERENCES
Jeon, K.S., & Kim, H. (2007). Development of relativization in Korean as a foreign language. Studies in
Second Language Acquisition, 29, 253‒276.
Kanno, K. (2007). Factors affecting the processing of Japanese relative clauses by L2 learners. Studies
in Second Language Acquisition, 29, 197‒218.
Kim, H. (2008). Heritage and non-heritage learners of Korean: Sentence processing differences and
their pedagogical implications. In K. Kondo-Brown & Brown, J. (Eds.), Teaching Chinese, Japanese,
and Korean Heritage Students: Curriculum needs, Materials, and Assessment (pp.99‒134). Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates.
Kim, J., Montrul, S., & Yoon, J. (2010). Dominant language influence in acquisition and attrition of
binding: Interpretation of the Korean reflexive caki. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition,13, 73‒84.
Laleko, O., & Polinsky, M. (2013). Marking topic or marking case: A comparative investigation of
heritage Japanese and heritage Korean. The Heritage Language Journal, 10, 40‒64.
Lee, T. (2011). Grammatical knowledge of Korean heritage speakers: Early vs. late bilinguals. Linguistic
Approaches to Bilingualism, 1, 149‒174.
Lee-Ellis, S. (2011). The elicited production of Korean relative clauses by heritage speakers. Studies in
Second Language Acquisition, 33, 57‒89.
Ionin, T., & Montrul, S. (2010). The role of L1 transfer in the interpretation of articles with definite plurals
in L2 English. Language Learning, 60, 877‒925.
Montrul, S. (2004). Subject and object expression in Spanish heritage speakers: A case of morphosyntactic
convergence. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 7, 125‒142.
Montrul, S. (2005). Second language acquisition and first language loss in adult early bilinguals.
Exploring some differences and similarities. Second Language research, 21, 199‒249.
Montrul, S. (2008). Incomplete acquisition in bilingualism. Re-examining the age factor. Amsterdam:
John Benjamins.
Montrul, S., & Ionin, T. (2012). Dominant language transfer in Spanish heritage speakers and second
language learners in the interpretation of definite articles. The Modern Language Journal, 96, 70-91.
O’Grady, W., Lee, M., & Choo, M. (2003). A subject-object asymmetry in the acquisition of relative
clauses in Korean as a second language. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 25, 433‒448.
Polinsky, M. (2008). Russian gender under incomplete acquisition. The Heritage Language Journal, 6,
40‒71.
Schwartz, B., & Sprouse, R. (1996). L2 cognitive states and the full transfer/full access hypothesis.
Second Language Research, 12, 40‒72.

SPEAKER CONTACT INFORMATION
35

Introducing CLLC 2015!
“Next-Gen Assessment”
The School of Education atVirginia International University will be hosting
the Conference on Language, Learning, and Culture (CLLC) on April 10-11, 9-11, 2015,
with the goal of sharing best prac tices and emerging trends in assessment .

CONFERENCE ON LANGUAGE,
LEARNING, & CULTURE
THE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION OFFERS CONVENIENT STUDY OPTIONS TO FIT YOUR BUSY LIFESTYLE. STUDY WITH US EITHER ON-GROUND OR ONLINE!
Master of Science in Applied Linguistics | Master of Education | Master of Arts in TESOL