Associating meaning to form in advanced L2 speakers: An investigation into the acquisition of the English present simple and present progressive

Abstract

This paper investigates the L2 acquisition of the distributional and interpretational properties of the English present simple (e.g., She works at home) and present progressive (e.g., She is working at home). To test whether advanced L2 learners are successful in assigning target-like meanings to these forms, sixteen advanced L1 French-L2 English and thirteen L1 English informants participated in two oral tasks and a written gap-fill task. Results indicate that these L2 speakers use both forms productively, but show optionality in consistently producing the progressive in appropriate environments. The study considers a permanent L2 deficit arising from L1-L2 parametric differences as a potential source of difficulty in acquiring the target-like interpretations associated with the two forms.

Learned Attention Effects in L2 Temporal Reference: The First Hour and the Next Eight Semesters

“…In line with the laboratory findings, the classroom experiment showed that intermediate English‐Spanish and English monolinguals relied more on adverbs than verbs to resolve tense conflicts between cues, but Spanish monolinguals preferred verbal to adverbial cues. Although these findings could be due to a general L2 trend to rely on lexical cues, the Latin data and the numerous studies showing L1 influence on the comprehension of L2 tense/aspect (e.g., Hawkins et al, 2008; Liszka, 2009; Roberts & Liszka, 2010) lead us to conclude that cues learned early in the laboratory or the L1 block the acquisition of later experienced L2 cues. Our current work comparing learners of L2 Spanish whose L1 is morphologically null (Chinese), poor (English), or rich (e.g., Rumanian) will help us strengthen our argument.…”

Chapter 4. Generative approaches to the L2 acquisition of temporal-aspectual-mood systems

“…In Liszka (2009), the findings from a larger number of participants (n ¼ 16) showed very high accuracy scores on assigning target-like meanings to present simple forms (100%) and present progressive forms (92.7%) in the oral description task. In the video clip description tasks, whereas the accuracy scores for the present simple forms remained high (94.4%), the use of present progressive forms dropped to 52.8% of obligatory contexts which may not simply be a task e¤ect due the real-time processing pressure because a similar pattern was obtained for the contextualized dialogue task (94.2% for simple present and 54.8% for present progressive).…”

Aspectual contrasts in the Englishpresent tense revisited

“…Moreover, we would like to suggest that Liszka's (2009Liszka's ( , 2015 findings must be interpreted with caution, given the coding procedure used in this study. For example, in the video clip description task, the use of the Present Progressive was coded as appropriate with thematic verbs, and the production of the Present Simple with thematic verbs was only coded as appropriate when combined with an appropriate licensing adverbial expression, such as 'then, as soon as, etc.'.…”

“…In order to test the effects of L1 transfer on real-time oral production, we asked participants to complete a modified version of the video description task from Liszka's (2009Liszka's ( , 2015 study.…”

“…The existing studies provide evidence to suggest that the acquisition of aspectual contrasts only constitutes a source of residual difficulty at advanced stages of proficiency for certain learner groups. For example, some studies show that certain L1 groups do not experience persistent difficulties with aspectual contrasts in the English present tense (Slabakova, 2003 for Bulgarian; Gabriele and Canales, 2011 for Spanish and Japanese; Hawkins et al, 2008 for verb-raising languages; Al-Thubaiti, 2015 for Arabic), whereas other studies suggest otherwise (Hawkins et al, 2008 for Chinese and Japanese; Liszka, 2009. The role of L1 transfer, therefore, appears to play a deterministic role in the L2 acquisition of aspectual morphosyntax.…”