Language Awareness Noun, verb, or adjective? L2 learners ...

This article was downloaded by: [University of California, Santa Cruz]On: 13 July 2010Access details: Access Details: [subscription number 918976463]Publisher RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UKLanguage AwarenessPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t794297825Noun, verb, or adjective? L2 learners' sensitivity to cues to word classEve Zyzik aaLanguage Program, University of California, Santa Cruz, California, United StatesTo cite this Article Zyzik, Eve(2009) 'Noun, verb, or adjective? L2 learners' sensitivity to cues to word class', LanguageAwareness, 18: 2, 147 — 164To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/09658410902855847URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09658410902855847PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLEFull terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdfThis article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial orsystematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply ordistribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contentswill be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug dosesshould be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss,actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directlyor indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.

150 E. Zyzikintrospective data were gathered. To approach this question, it is useful to examine the cuesavailable to learners when distinguishing word classes.Downloaded By: [University of California, Santa Cruz] At: 17:54 13 July 2010Cues to word class assignmentThe categorisation of words into classes, such as noun, verb, and adjective is a complexprocess that involves parsing the input for morphological, syntactic, and semanticcues. 2 Morphological cues encompass both derivations and inflections; while derivationalmorphemes can change the lexical category of a base word (e.g. indicate – indication), inflectionalmorphemes serve to identify words as members of a particular class (e.g. Englishwords that are inflected with –ed and −s are necessarily verbs). Syntactic cues are also ofcritical importance to word class assignment; these are the co-occurrence properties of aword with adjacent lexical items, that is, the distribution of certain classes of words. Forexample, English verbs are often preceded by do-forms; this is one of the syntactic cuesthat distinguishes them from adjectives, which are typically preceded by a form of be orget (cf. Braine, 1987; Maratsos, 1988). Syntactic cues of this type are viewed as essentialto the categorisation of words into classes, as demonstrated by connectionist models(Finch & Chater, 1992, 1994), statistical networks of large language corpora (Redington& Chater, 1998), artificial language-learning studies (Mintz, 2002), and studies of childdirectedspeech (Cartwright & Brent, 1997; Mintz, 2003; Mintz et al., 2002; Redington,Chater, & Finch, 1998). Finally, word meaning may also be an indicator of word class.For L2 learners, using semantic information in assigning word class means finding theL1 equivalent. For example, upon learning the word libro in Spanish, an English-speakinglearner can simply rely on the L1 equivalent (‘book’) and correctly classify the new word asa noun. In this sense, positive transfer is expected to occur in the semantic domain becauseL1–L2 exact equivalents will belong to the same word class (Sunderman & Kroll, 2006).Viewed in this way, word class is not strictly a problem of vocabulary learning but ratherone of categorisation; the learner must attend to multiple linguistic cues (morphological,syntactic, and semantic) in order to arrive at the correct classification of lexical itemsin the input. In order to exploit syntactic cues to word class, the learner must alreadyknow something about the distributional regularities of the language. Crucially, this entireprocess is understood to be largely implicit. Ellis (2007, p. 21) defines implicit learning as the‘acquisition of knowledge about the underlying structure of a complex stimulus environmentby a process that takes place naturally, simply, and without conscious operations’. The factthat adult native speakers are often unable to verbalise their knowledge of word classesis strong evidence for the implicit mode of learning. The ability to label a word correctlyas a noun or a verb should not be confused with the tacit knowledge of using wordscorrectly according to the grammatical properties of their class. Although L2 learners maydisplay more robust explicit knowledge of word classes, categorising newly learned wordsis still a matter of abstracting the regularities from the L2 input and/or deriving word classinformation from the L1 (i.e. positive transfer). Accordingly, of interest to the current studyare the cues that L2 learners attend to when faced with a word class contrast, that is whetherthey notice the morphological and/or syntactic cues in the input, whether they rely onL1 equivalents, or whether they make use of other mechanisms such as perceived wordfrequency and familiarity with particular forms.Present studyIn the present study, concurrent and retrospective think-aloud data were gathered to examinethe following research questions:

Language Awareness 151(1) What kind of cues do L2 learners attend to when choosing between forms that belongto different word classes? Are certain cues used more frequently than others?(2) What is the relationship between the use of certain cues and success in choosingbetween semantically related forms?(3) Do word class errors in the receptive mode stem primarily from faulty classification oflexical items or incomplete knowledge of syntactic regularities?Downloaded By: [University of California, Santa Cruz] At: 17:54 13 July 2010MethodParticipantsThe learners (n = 35; 29 females, six males) were beginners enrolled in a third-semesterSpanish course at a large, public university in the United States. They ranged in age from18 to 29 years, with the average age being 19.7. All indicated English as their nativelanguage on a background questionnaire, but three learners also spoke another languageat home (Punjabi, Gujurati, and Polish). With the exception of four participants, all hadstudied Spanish in high school (3.2 years on average). As for exposure to other languagesin addition to Spanish, a small number had studied French (5), Tagalog (1), Mandarin (1),and Japanese (1).MaterialsThe task used was a shorter version of the forced-choice task (FCT) described in Zyzik andAzevedo (2009). It included 16 experimental sentences and 16 fillers. The fillers consistedof two types of items: (1) those in which the two forms did not radically differ fromone another (e.g. mood contrasts, such as escuches/escuchas ‘listen’), and (2) semanticcontrasts, such as saber/conocer ‘to know’ and ser/estar ‘to be’). The filler items werebalanced for response options: items in which both forms were possible, one form wascorrect, or neither was right. The 16 experimental sentences were those items that yieldedthe lowest mean scores in Zyzik and Azevedo (2009). These sentences are provided inAppendix 1.Think-aloud protocolsVerbal reports (e.g. think-aloud protocols and stimulated recall) have been established asan important data collection method in SLA research because they have the potential forcapturing learners’ cognitive processes as they process language. Many strands of SLAresearch have utilised some form of verbal reports, including studies of lexical inferencing(Cooper, 1999; Nassaji, 2003; Parabakht & Wesche, 1999), attention and awarenessstudies (Leow, 2001), and research on interactional feedback (Egi, 2004; Mackey, Gass,& McDonough, 2000; Nabei & Swain, 2002; Philp, 2003). Despite their applicability tovarious areas of SLA research, there have been some concerns about the internal validity ofverbal reports, and in particular, the issues of reactivity and veridicality (Russo, Johnson,& Stephans, 1989). Reactivity refers to the possibility that thinking aloud may alter thecognitive processes that learners engage in while performing a task. For example, the actof thinking aloud may prompt learners to notice forms that they would not have normallynoticed. The issue of veridicality refers to the quality of information in the verbal report.Specifically, participants may not report their thought processes accurately, or may forgetinformation during retrospective protocols.

152 E. ZyzikDownloaded By: [University of California, Santa Cruz] At: 17:54 13 July 2010Fortunately, research on think-aloud methodology has clarified some of these concerns.With respect to the potential problem of veridicality, it can be minimised by using concurrentreports (i.e. verbalisations gathered while a task is being performed). Leow (2000) discussedthe advantages of concurrent think-alouds over retrospective tasks because they involve‘online’ reporting of what learners are thinking while they interact with L2 input. As forreactivity, there are advantages in using non-metalinguistic verbal reports, that is, askingparticipants to simply verbalise their thoughts while they perform a task, rather than elicitingexplanations or reasons (cf. Bowles, 2008; Bowles & Leow, 2005; Leow & Morgan-Short,2004). Since no previous studies have utilised verbal reports to examine the problem ofword class distinctions, I decided to follow the data collection and analysis procedures usedin studies of lexical inferencing (e.g. Nassaji, 2003). In the present study, concurrent thinkaloudswere gathered while learners performed the FCT described earlier. Immediatelyafterwards, the researcher engaged the participants in retrospective reports in order togather additional information on certain items.ProcedureData collection took place in individual sessions in a private office. To ensure uniformity,the researcher conducted all of the data collection sessions. After filling out a languagebackground questionnaire and signing the consent form, the participants were presentedwith instructions pertaining to the FCT and one example to practice the think-aloud procedure.On occasion, the researcher intervened to remind participants to think aloud. Aftercompleting the 32-item task, the researcher asked participants to provide retrospective reportsof certain target sentences. The sessions, which generally lasted for 30 minutes, wereaudiotaped and transcribed.Data analysisThis study examines two facets of the word class problem: (1) the kinds of linguistic cuesthat learners attend to when making word class distinctions, and (2) the source of wordclass errors. In this study, cue is roughly synonymous with the term knowledge sourceused by Huckin and Bloch (1993) in reference to grammatical, morphological, and othertypes of information used by learners when inferring word meaning from context. Thecoding scheme was based partially on previous studies of lexical inferencing (Nassaji,2003) and incidental vocabulary learning (Paribakht & Wesche, 1999). However, some ofthe knowledge sources identified in those studies are not relevant to the problem of wordclass distinctions. Consequently, the coding scheme is a partial adaptation of categoriesfrom previous studies, but also derives from the data itself (i.e. data-driven).A total of 10 cues were identified and subsequently used to code the data. These fellinto three main groups: semantic cues, grammatical cues, and external cues. Learners usesemantic cues when they search for the meaning or L1 equivalent of the target words;grammatical cues encompass a variety of sentence-level cues, such as syntax, derivations,and inflections; external cues include looking beyond the sentence in order to arrive ananswer (e.g. perceived word frequency or familiarity with particular forms). The taxonomyof cues is presented with relevant examples in the results section.A secondary analysis was performed on the items that were answered incorrectly on theFCT in order to determine the source of learners’ word class confusions (research question3). As noted previously, an incorrect answer on the FCT may be the result of the learner’sinability to identify the syntactic slot as requiring a particular type of word. Henceforth,this problem stemming from incomplete syntactic knowledge is referred to as problem 1.

Language Awareness 153Downloaded By: [University of California, Santa Cruz] At: 17:54 13 July 2010A distinct problem involves learners’ misclassification of one or both of the target lexicalitems. This misclassification is referred to as problem 2. At times, there is evidence for bothproblems occurring simultaneously, which was coded as ‘combination’ error.There are three issues worthy of note regarding the coding of the think-aloud protocols.First, given the potential problem of veridicality associated with retrospective reports,the data analysis was based primarily on the concurrent think-alouds. The retrospectivereports were used only to verify certain details that may have been omitted during theconcurrent think-alouds. Likewise, the retrospective reports are more metalinguistic innature because participants were given the opportunity to elaborate on their responses,which often lead to explanations and reasoning. Second, participants often used more thanone cue per item, while for some items it was impossible to determine what cues, if any,the participant was attending to. For example, if a participant read the sentence aloud andimmediately circled one of the forms to complete it without any verbalisation of his/herthought process, this instance was coded as N/I, or not identifiable. Finally, the items on theFCT for which a participant marked ‘neither’ were discarded from the think-aloud analysis.This step was deemed necessary because the overwhelming majority of ‘neither’ responsesreflected the participants’ decision to ignore an item entirely. To ensure the reliability ofcoding the data for cues, a second rater coded 2/3 of the data set. The second rater wasan experienced language teacher who had prior experience with gathering and analysingthink-aloud protocols. Inter-rater agreement for that portion of the data was 88%, andsubsequent discussion of the discrepancies led to 100% agreement.ResultsAccuracy on the forced-choice taskAs in Zyzik and Azevedo (2009), the FCT was scored in a binary fashion: 1 point forchoosing the correct form and 0 points for choosing the wrong form, both forms, or checkingneither. The mean score for the group was 8.71 (maximum of 16) and the standard deviation(SD) was 2.3. The mean scores for each condition are presented in Table 1. Note that meanscores are out of 4 (there were four items in each condition).Table 1 reveals that condition 4, which contrasted adjective and noun forms, yielded thelowest mean score among the four conditions. A repeated measure ANOVA confirms that thedifferences between conditions are statistically significant (F(3, 102) = 9.13, p < 0.001).The partial eta squared (ηp 2 ) value (0.212) indicates that this was a relatively small effect.Next, a paired samples’ t-test was performed to determine where the differences haveoccurred. The Alpha level was set at 0.008 to avoid a type 1 error. The results of thistest indicate significant differences between conditions 1 and 3, conditions 1 and 4, andconditions 2 and 4 (p < 0.008 for all comparisons).An item analysis was conducted to determine if certain items on the FCT were more difficultthan others. Mean scores on individual items ranged from 0.23 for the noun/adjectiveTable 1.Mean scores on FCT.Condition Mean score Standard deviation (SD)Condition 1 (V → Adj) 2.69 1.0Condition 2 (V → N) 2.43 1.0Condition 3 (V → Inf) 1.94 1.0Condition 4 (Adj → N) 1.60 1.0

154 E. Zyzikcontrast in corte/corto (‘cut/short’) to 0.83 for the verb/noun contrast in sientes/sentimientos(‘feel/feelings’). Additional items that yielded scores at or below chance level werepasar/pasan (to spend/they spend), cariñosa/cariño (‘affectionate/affection’), tienen/tener(‘they have/to have’), and fuerte/fuerza (‘strong/strength’). The learners’ verbal reports,discussed later, will clarify why certain items were particularly problematic.Downloaded By: [University of California, Santa Cruz] At: 17:54 13 July 2010Cues used during think-aloud protocolsThirty-five participants completed a 16-item task, thus yielding an initial data set of 560items to be coded for cue use. However, some of the data had to be discarded from furtheranalysis (the cases of ‘neither’ and those that were not identifiable). The remaining data setconsists of 526 tokens of cue use, which were grouped into three main categories: semanticcues, grammatical cues, and external cues. Table 2 presents the raw tokens and the relativefrequency of each cue. Subsequently, I describe each cue and provide examples from bothconcurrent (CTA) and retrospective (RTA) think-aloud protocols.Semantic cues. This category reflects learners’ reliance on word meaning to make adecision between the two contrasting forms. As expected, word meaning is accessed throughthe participants’ native language, English. In their comments, participants often used thephrases ‘X means Y’ or ‘that’s the word for X’.(4) En otras situaciones mentir ayuda a la gente a ganar una posición de blank. De fuerzaor . . . well, wait. No. Fuerte. Fuerte is strength. (P13, CTA)(5) I picked cariño because, well . . . a lot of love and I guess like affection in a house. So,I guess I’ve just heard people refer to affection as cariño. (P13, RTA)In the above examples the participant chooses a form based on its assumed equivalentin English. Note that participant is attending to word meaning rather than sentence-levelsyntactic or morphological information. This led to the wrong choice in the case of fuerte(strong) and the correct response in the case of cariño (affection).Syntactic cues. This category reflects learners’ attention to sentence-level distributionalpatterns. For example, some learners focused on the distribution of finite forms or sequencesof words that they judged to be possible or not.(6) En otras situaciones mentir ayuda a la gente a ganar una posición de fuerte, fuerza.Insome situations lying can help people win a position. Fuerte. De fuerza. Fuerte doesn’twork. It would be un posición fuerte without de. It would be fuerza. (P1, CTA)Table 2.Frequency of cue use.Category Cue Tokens Frequency (%)Semantic cue (32%) L1 equivalents or cognates 170 32Grammatical cues (45%) Syntax 41 8Inflection (gender) 46 9Inflection (person/number) 68 13Derivation 26 5Word class knowledge 55 10External cues (21%) Rule 16 3Familiarity 60 11Intuition 35 7Other (2%) Other 9 2

Language Awareness 155In example (6) above, learner focuses on the presence of the preposition de ‘of’ andcorrectly judges the combination ‘de fuerte’ to be ungrammatical.Inflectional morphology. This category was further subdivided into gender marking andnumber/person marking. An example of using gender as a cue is provided in example (7)and number/person marking is illustrated in example (8).(7) Una familia feliz consiste en mucho amor y . . . I guess it’s cariñosa because it’s familia.They’re both feminine. (P27, CTA)(8) Es bueno para los abuelos, hijos, y tíos...pasan, because there’s more of them, Uds.or ellos. (P27, CTA)Downloaded By: [University of California, Santa Cruz] At: 17:54 13 July 2010Derivational morphology. The use of derivational morphology encompassed two cues:attending to derivational suffixes (e.g. –dad, –oso), or relating the target word(s) to a rootword. Some learners, albeit very infrequently, explicitly mentioned looking at derivationalsuffixes, as in example (9).(9) To have happiness. Feliz is happy, like estoy feliz, I’m happy. Felicidad seems like itwould be happiness, –dad I think implies –ness, maybe. (P32, RTA)Note that the above example involves using derivation as a cue in conjunction withsemantic cues: the participant accessed the meaning of the word via the L1.Word class knowledge. This cue was operationalised as the noticing of a word classcontrast between the two forms. Crucially, learners’ verbalisations do not always includemetalanguage, and furthermore, sometimes their metalanguage is inaccurate. Notionaldefinitions (i.e. the use of phrases like ‘it’s a thing/an object’, ‘it’s an action’, ‘it’s describing’,etc.) can reflect participants’ awareness of word classes. Examples are presented below inexamples (10) and (11).(10) Es un problema cuando hay mala intenta or intención. It’s a problem when there isbad intent. It’s a problem when there is . . . yeah. Well, mala is kind of the adjectivehere, and you’re looking for a noun. Intenta is more of an adjective than . . . Intenciónis a noun, so I’m going to go with intención. (P7, CTA)(11) Una persona miente sobre muchas cosas: su trabajo or trabaja, su familia, y supasado. A person lies about many things . . . their work, trabajo or trabaja . . . I thinktrabajo would be considered their job or their work. It’s talking about a thing, it’s nota verb in this sense. I think it’s trabajo. (P33, CTA)Note that the participant in example (11) does not use the term noun, but neverthelessnotices the contrast between trabajo as ‘a thing’ and trabaja as a verb.Explicit rule. At times, participants verbalised explicit rules concerning the use ofcertain forms or structures. Examples (12) and (13) illustrate this clearly with concurrentand retrospective data from the same participant on item 18.(12) Creo que. . . está mal. I believe that . . . is bad. I’m going with the subjunctive. So itwould be miente. (P7, CTA).(13) I knew that, creo que kind of sets up the subjunctive use for another verb. Mentiris the infinitive form, and if you’re talking about something that’s bad, um . . . I just

156 E. Zyzikwent with the subjunctive, although that’s not even subjunctive if mentir is the verb.It would be mienta. (P7, RTA)Familiarity. The use of this cue reflects participants’ choice of a form based on what haveheard more often or the form they are more familiar with, as in example (14).(14) You know, importante just seemed better. Definitely I’ve heard it more. I wasn’t realcomfortable with importa. I don’t really know if I’ve heard that. I’ve definitely heardimportante more. (P27, RTA)Downloaded By: [University of California, Santa Cruz] At: 17:54 13 July 2010Intuition. This category accounts for those cases in which participants essentially took aguess-based intuition or feel. The key phrases used by learners were ‘it sounds better’, ‘itseems to fit’, and ‘it flows’. This differs from the use of familiarity as a cue because theydon’t give any indication that they’ve heard one form more often than the other. Example(15) provides a case of this category.(15) It’s not necessary to live your, to live with the mom and dad to be happy. Um . . . tenerfelicidad, tener feliz. It does not sound good with feliz. Tener . . . So I would sayfelicidad. (P23, CTA)The learner in example (15) above seems to choose felicidad based on his/her intuitionregarding word collocation, that is which words ‘sound good’ together.Other. There were a small number of cases in which a participant picked a form based onan arbitrary factor totally unrelated to the task at hand. In the example below, the participantchooses cerrada because of a perceived similarity to the imperfect ending for –ar verbs.(16) I know you don’t want to eat in a restaurant with your mouth open, and I kindof guessed, −ada sounded, I don’t know, −ada sounded more habitual, because it’scloser to −aba. It’s not something you always want to do, so I chose cerrada. (P3, RTA)Relationship between cue use to successTo determine the relationship between success on the FCT and the use of particular cues,it was necessary to calculate the mean of success for each cue. For example, of the 55tokens of word class knowledge, 49 lead to the correct response on the FCT. Thus, themean success rate for word class is 89%. This tabulation was done for the nine main cuesused by the learners in this study (‘other’ was discarded at this point). These results aregiven in Table 3.As reflected in Table 3, word class knowledge had the highest mean of success of allthe cues (0.89), while gender, number, rule, and familiarity yielded the lowest means (allbelow 0.4). Results from a one-way analysis of variance indicate that the differences betweenmeans are significant (F(8, 508) = 8.125, p < 0.001). A post-hoc analysis using the Tukey-Kramer test reveals the following significant differences (p < 0.05): L1 had a significantlyhigher mean of success than gender, number, and familiarity, but significantly lower thanword class. Word class knowledge was significantly different from all the cues, with theexception of syntax and derivation. The other comparisons failed to reach significance. Ifthe cues are grouped into broader categories (semantic, grammatical, and external), theanalysis reveals that the external cues (rule, familiarity, and intuition) are significantly lesssuccessful than both semantic and grammatical cues.

Language Awareness 157Table 3.Cue use and success on FCT.Cue Tokens Mean of success SDL1 equivalents 170 0.64 0.48Syntax 41 0.63 0.49Gender 46 0.37 0.49Number 68 0.38 0.49Derivation 26 0.65 0.48Word class 55 0.89 0.32Rule 16 0.38 0.50Familiarity 60 0.35 0.48Intuition 35 0.54 0.50Downloaded By: [University of California, Santa Cruz] At: 17:54 13 July 2010Semantic cues, which are predicted to benefit learners in the case of exact L1–L2equivalents, did not always lead to success (M = 0.64). The reason for this is that learnersoften had imprecise links between L2 words and their equivalents. Examples (17) and (18)illustrate this tendency very clearly.(17) A position of strength . . . I just knew that fuerte was strength or strong. (P12, RTA)(18) It’s not necessary to live with my mom and my dad because, in order to have happiness.I think it could be both (P5, CTA). I knew that . . . I’ve heard both and I’ve heard themboth in reference to happiness and things like that. (P5, RTA)These participants tended to associate an L2 word with several L1 words, all of themrelated semantically. In example (17) the learner has learned the semantic concept offuerte, but there are two links to the L1 (‘strength or strong’). In example (18), the learnerunderstands the general semantic concept of the target words (‘happiness and things likethat’) but lacks the exact L1 equivalents.Pinpointing the source of word class errorsIn this section I explore in depth the specific problems that led learners to incorrect responseson the FCT. Each incorrect response was coded as stemming from problem 1(misidentification of syntactic slot), problem 2 (misclassification of the target word(s)),or a combination of the two. For some responses, there was insufficient information todetermine the source of the error; again, these responses were coded as N/I. There were atotal of 255 errors made by the 35 participants; Table 4 presents the distribution of theseerrors according to the categories described above.As seen in Table 4, problem 1 (M = 3.97) was more prevalent than problem 2 (M =1.71). A paired samples’ t-test confirms that this difference is statistically significant(t(34) = 6.6, p < 0.005). Thus, a majority of learners’ word class errors stem from theTable 4.Source of word class errors.Error source Tokens Mean SDProblem 1: Misidentification of syntactic slot 139 3.97 1.74Problem 2: Misclassification of target word(s) 60 1.71 1.25Combination of problems 1 and 2 18 0.51 0.65Not identifiable (N/I) 38 1.08 0.12

158 E. Zyzikinability to determine which type of word that can fill a given slot or frame. Example 19,in which the correct form is the adjective activos ‘active’, illustrates this problem.(19) Los hijos están activos, activan en deportes. Los hijos están . . . what are they doing?It’s gonna be plural, ‘an’ and ‘os’ and deportes. Jugar would be juegan. So I’m goingto say activan. (P3, CTA)Downloaded By: [University of California, Santa Cruz] At: 17:54 13 July 2010The learner in example (19) is clearly looking for a conjugated verb to agree with thesentential subject los hijos. He/she reports relying on another verb (jugar, juegan ‘to play,they play’) in order to arrive at the right conjugation. The problem here is syntactic; thelearner does not seem to know what type of word can appear to the right of a finite copularverb (están ‘they are’).A different type of problem stems from learners’ misclassification of one or both ofthe target words. In these cases, the learner appears to have solved problem 1 (i.e. he/sheknows what type of word can or cannot fill the slot), but does not recognise the options asbelonging to that category. The following example, in which the learner attempts to decodeitem 16, clearly illustrates this problem.(20) Las...de...there’sacausan in there which is already conjugated, so I’m gonna sayneither because it probably could be like a noun or something (P8, CTA). Becausecausan is in there, it looks like it’s already been conjugated, unless I’m wrong andit’s actually a word, and that has to be a noun in front, and neither of those look likenouns. Unless peleas is a noun. Which I’m not sure, I’ve never seen those wordsbefore. (RTA)This verbal report indicates that the learner knows he/she needs a noun to fill the slot,but doesn’t see either of the options as fitting that category. In fact, many learners did notrecognise peleas as a noun but rather as the tú form of the verb pelear ‘to fight’.A combination of problems 1 and 2 did occur in 18 cases, as illustrated in example (21)below.(21) En otras situaciones mentir ayuda a la gente a ganar una posición de fuerte, fuerza.I don’t think I’ve ever heard fuerza like that. De fuerte (P9, CTA). De fuerte. Fuerte.Fuerza. Fuerte sounds, fuerza I don’t think would fit there. I don’t know. It’s a verb.[Researcher: Which one is a verb?] Fuerza. Fuerte is describing it. (RTA)The learner in example (21) eliminates fuerza as an option after having categorised it asaverb. 3 Not recognising fuerza as a noun form is indicative of problem 2 (misclassification).However, the syntactic slot has also been misidentified; the learner seems to know that fuerteis an adjective (‘it’s describing it’), yet does not realise that only a noun can appear to theright of de (‘of’).In the discussion that follows, I examine these findings in relation to the researchquestions posed at the onset of the study.DiscussionThe first research question was exploratory in nature: What kinds of cues do L2 learnersattend to when presented with a word class contrast? The data gathered from concurrent andretrospective think-aloud protocols reveal nine main cues, which were grouped into three

Language Awareness 159Downloaded By: [University of California, Santa Cruz] At: 17:54 13 July 2010broad categories: semantic cues, grammatical cues, and external cues. Learners focusedon grammatical cues most frequently, with these accounting for 45% of the total data set(k = 526). The use of semantic cues (i.e. accessing word meaning via L1 equivalents andcognates) was frequent as well (32%). Within the larger category of grammatical cues,learners paid attention to inflectional morphology, syntax, and derivations. The noticing ofword class distinctions, either with or without metalanguage, occurred in only 10% of thecases.The frequency data reported in Table 3 demonstrate that, for these L2 learners, inflectionalmorphology (gender, person, and number marking) is a cue that takes precedence overother grammatical cues. Learners often ignored sentence structure and focused exclusivelyon whether the target item agreed with another item. Some of the cases of perceived agreement,particularly gender agreement, were unanticipated. For example, some participantstried to establish agreement between the object of a preposition and the sentential subject(item 10), or between coordinated nouns (item 14). Crucially, these were not isolated cases:a large majority of participants focused on gender when reading items 10 and 14. It seemsthat these learners were focused exclusively on the surface features of the words, and thus,a potential gender distinction. In the case of trabajo/trabaja, the problem is exacerbatedbecause the words differ only in the final vowel. However, in the case of cariñosa/cariño,the contrast in surface morphology is clearly marked. In both cases, by focusing on gender,learners were in essence distracted from the real task of noticing a word class contrast.Zyzik and Azevedo (2009) suggested that the explicit instructional focus on genderagreement in L2 Spanish classrooms may contribute to learners’ difficulty with wordclasses because −a and −o endings are not exclusive to nouns and adjectives. 4 In otherwords, −a and −o endings are ambiguous with respect to word class, unlike derivationalsuffixes such as –ción and –dad. The think-aloud data confirm that many learners attendedto gender agreement at the expense of other cues to word class. The unexpected focus ongender as a cue begs the question of how L1 English speakers conceptualise gender andwhat effect explicit instruction might have on their beliefs. Since classroom learners areroutinely taught, from the first weeks of study, to ‘make things agree’, it could be that somelearners extend this principle in unanticipated directions.With regard to external cues, such as intuition, familiarity, or explicit rules, the datashow that use of explicit rules was infrequent (3%) and limited to a few items, in particularitem 18 (miente/mentir). Familiarity effects were apparent throughout the data set, but mostnotably on items 20 (importa/importante) and 27 (fuerte/fuerza). This finding clarifies anissue raised in Zyzik and Azevedo (2009) regarding the potential impact of word frequency.In that study, there was an inconsistent relationship between word frequency and learners’performance on the FCT (i.e. learners often picked the less frequent of the two forms).The data presented here from the think-aloud protocols suggest that prior experience with aparticular form (familiarity) is more important than rank-order frequency as determined bycorpus analysis. Since the primary sources of input for these L2 learners are classroom talkand textbook-based readings, it is possible that the frequency of certain items is skewed,which might explain learners’ preference for certain forms.The second research question addressed the relationship between the use of certain cuesand success (i.e. accuracy) on the FCT (see Table 3). Surprisingly, the use of semantic cueswas not nearly as successful as predicted by theoretical models of vocabulary development.Recall that positive transfer is expected to occur with exact L1–L2 equivalents since thesewill necessarily belong to the same class (e.g. libro – book). However, the think-aloud dataclearly show that learners often have imprecise links between the target word and the L1equivalent (see examples 17 and 18). In other words, the learner may infer the general

160 E. ZyzikDownloaded By: [University of California, Santa Cruz] At: 17:54 13 July 2010semantic concept associated with the target word, but not the precise L1 equivalent (i.e. theword feliz could become linked to a number of L1 equivalents, such as happy, happiness,happily). 5 Although establishing a link between an L2 word and its L1 counterpart seemslike a straightforward matter, the link could be nebulous, as described above, or it could bemade to the wrong form within the correct word family (e.g. linking feliz with happiness).Thus, even if the L2 and L1 items coincide in word class, positive transfer is not guaranteedand word class confusions may still occur. The problem may have to do with quantity andquality of classroom input, which makes it ‘extremely difficult, if not impossible, for an L2learner to extract and create semantic, syntactic, and morphological specifications abouta word’ (Jiang, 2000, p. 49). Hearing or reading a word and inferring the meaning fromcontext may not be enough for the learner to categorise it appropriately.The finding that learners acquire some conceptual information (i.e. word meaning)before acquiring the grammatical class of the word is at odds with the studies of L2 lexicalinferencing. Recall that those studies (cf. Lee & Wolf, 1997; Watts, 2004) demonstratedthat learners generally perform better on tests of grammatical class than on tests of wordmeaning. This study, however, shows the opposite, i.e. learners often had established somesemantic representation of the target words but not their grammatical class. There is animportant difference between the studies that clarifies this apparent discrepancy. In thelexical inferencing studies reference here, the target words were nonsense words, whichwere, by definition, unknown to the participants. The present study deals with (partially)known words, with many of them being high-frequency items. As Watts (2004) explained,the learners in her study had very limited exposure to each nonsense word, which madeit difficult or impossible to establish a link between the form and its meaning. This hasimportant implications for vocabulary researchers because it suggests that the acquisitionof real words (with the benefit of repeated exposure) may be different from the simulatedacquisition of nonce words.The final research question probed learners’ inaccurate responses on the FCT, recognisingthat two distinct problems can lead to word class confusions. The data reveal thata significant proportion (55%) of learners’ word class errors stem from misidentificationof the syntactic slot. Misclassification of the target lexical items was also observed (24%),albeit less frequently. This finding is important because it challenges the view that wordclass is strictly a lexical problem or a matter of learning L2 derivational suffixes. Thisassumption has been made routinely in previous studies (e.g. Morin, 2003, 2006; Whitley,2004) that have focused on the acquisition of derivational morphology. For example, Morin(2003) recognises that ‘L2 learners fail to distinguish among nouns, verbs, and adjectives’,but suggests that the solution lies in having a more solid grasp of derivations: ‘With a betterunderstanding of L2 morphology, learners may be able to improve their written expressionin the L2 and avoid these all too common types of mistakes’ (p. 202). The data presentedin this study, however, suggest that the problem of word class in SLA also involves a lackof sensitivity to the distributional regularities of the target language. This does not implythat derivational morphology is not a valuable tool for expanding learners’ vocabularyknowledge and increasing awareness of interrelationships among words, as noted by Morin(2003, 2006) and Schmitt and Zimmerman (2002). The findings of the current study simplyunderscore that many so-called lexical errors (e.g. using the adjective feliz instead of thenoun felicidad) are symptomatic of weak syntactic knowledge.Conclusions and directions for future researchThe findings of the current study extend the line of research in Zyzik and Azevedo (2009) andprovide new insights into L2 learners’ difficulties with word class contrasts. The incidence

Language Awareness 161Downloaded By: [University of California, Santa Cruz] At: 17:54 13 July 2010of faulty L2–L1 equivalents suggests that word class information is not automaticallytransferred from the L1, and moreover, that words can exist in the L2 lexicon for sometime without specification of their category membership. The think-aloud data also yieldedsome unexpected findings, including learners’ preference for attending to gender when noagreement relationship was possible, often at the expense of more reliable cues to wordclass. Furthermore, the analysis of learners’ word class confusions indicate that a majorityof such errors are due to problems in identifying the syntactic slot rather than classifyingthe lexical items in question.Clearly, further research is necessary to explore some outstanding issues, especially howexplicit knowledge mediates the acquisition of word classes in SLA. This is an importantquestion given the routine assumption that the categorisation of words into form classestakes place via implicit learning. A follow-up study might test the effectiveness of apedagogical intervention to raise L2 learners’ awareness of these categories in the targetlanguage. The treatment should be designed to focus learners’ attention on word classcontrasts and the relevant syntactic and morphological cues in the target language. Crucially,the focus should not be on labelling words correctly as nouns, adjectives, verbs, etc., butrather on noticing the reliable morphological markers of certain word classes (e.g. allSpanish words ending in –dad and –ción are nouns) and the distributional regularities ofthe language. Relevant contrasts between the L1 and L2 might also raise learners’ awarenessof word classes, especially when the L1 equivalent has dual category membership (e.g. workis a noun or a verb).Finally, the choice of elicitation task is worthy of further consideration. Note that theforced-choice task used in this study only approximates the acquisition problem becauselearners were asked to choose from known or partially known words. In order to replicatethe acquisition problem, researchers might control for prior vocabulary knowledge by usingnonsense words (cf. Lee & Wolf, 1997), by creating artificial language stimuli (cf. Mintz,2002), or by tracking learners’ knowledge of words longitudinally (cf. Schmitt, 1998;Schmitt & Meara, 1997). Another promising direction would be to investigate how wordclass knowledge develops in sync with grammatical ability; this is an important questionif we assume that the problem of figuring out word class is closely related to, or dependenton, the development of syntactic knowledge in general.Notes1. All of the subsequent examples are taken from the current study and Zyzik and Azevedo (2009).2. For reasons of space, many details are necessarily omitted in this section. I refer the interestedreader to comprehensive reviews in LaBelle (2005) and Gerken (2001).3. Indeed, fuerza is the third-person subjunctive form of forzar (‘to force’). It could be argued, then,that the learner has not misclassified the target word. Nevertheless, the learner fails to recognisefuerza as a noun (problem 2) and fails to identify the slot as requiring a noun (problem 1).4. Harris (1991) pointed out that –o and –a are word markers rather than gender markers becausethey are not limited to lexical items that have gender.5. For a detailed discussion of how new words become established in the L2 lexicon, I refer thereader to theoretical models of lexical development, such as that of Jiang (2000), which I do notelaborate on for reasons of space.Note on contributorEve Zyzik is Assistant Professor of Spanish in the Language Program at the University of California,Santa Cruz. Her research focuses on the interface of vocabulary and syntax in SLA, primarily asapplied to Spanish. She has also published on language learning in content-based courses.

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Downloaded By: [University of California, Santa Cruz] At: 17:54 13 July 2010164 E. Zyzik8. Loshijosestán (activos/activan) en deportes. (V/Adj)10. Una familia feliz consiste en mucho amor y (cariñosa/cariño) en una casa. (Adj/N)12. Es aceptable mentir cuando no quieres afectar los (sientes/sentimientos) de una persona. (V/N)14. Una persona miente sobre muchas cosas: su (trabajo/trabaja), su familia, y su pasado. (V/N)16. Las (pelean/peleas) causan problemas dentro de la familia. (V/N)18. Creo que (miente/mentir) está mal. (V/Inf)20. No es (importa/importante) que los niños vivan con sus abuelos. (V/Adj)22. Yo creo que es importante para los hijos (tienen/tener) contacto con sus parientes. (V/Inf)24. Es un problema cuando hay mala (intenta/intención). (V/N)25. Cuando una amiga tiene un (corte/corto) de pelo muy feo es aceptable mentir. (Adj/N)27. En otras situaciones mentir ayuda a la gente a ganar una posición de (fuerte/fuerza). (Adj/N)29. A veces las mentiras pequeñas son (válidas/vale). (V/Adj)31. No es necesario vivir con la mamá yelpapáparatener(felicidad/feliz). (Adj/N)