Development of Thinking for Speaking: What Role Does Language Socialization Play?

Abstract

It has been noted that Chinese shows both satellite‐ and verb‐framed properties (Beavers, Levin, & Tham, ; Slobin, ), a fact that offers the opportunity to explore the typological influence of learners’ dominant language because they can choose either option to describe the same motion events and be grammatically correct. This study comprehensively examined the impact of factors including the dominant language's thinking for speaking (TFS) (Slobin, , , ), as well as proficiency and degree of socialization with the target language. It examined oral narratives produced by 80 learners of Chinese representing two proficiency levels (low vs. high) and two linguistic backgrounds (heritage language vs. foreign language), as compared to two baseline groups of 40 Chinese native speakers (NSs) and 40 English NSs. Analysis of the motion verbs and motion constructions showed a limited role of the dominant TFS. While the more proficient learners were more capable of producing task‐relevant motion expressions regardless of their language background, only advanced heritage learners demonstrated target‐like TFS. Comparison of heritage and foreign language learners at the same proficiency level suggests that degree of language socialization plays a crucial role in facilitating development of TFS in the target language.

Listening for Imagery by Native Speakers and L2 Learners

“…Although the majority of the participants were from the high-proficiency groups, the L2 learners' online processes of listening-for-imagery seemed to indicate that they had not yet totally internalized the L2-specific deictic paths in their L2 TFS, even with advanced proficiency. While L2 learners were able to produce motion language following L2 TFS patterns in the mode of writing or speaking as reported in previous studies (e.g., [5,7,8]), scrutinization of the online automatic processing of the motion language in the mode of "listening for imagery" may reveal a different story. On the other hand, the results of this study were in agreement with findings reported in Yoshioka and Kellerman [45], Choi and Lantolf [46], and Stam [47], in which they also examined the co-speech gesture produced by the L2 learners and found no sign of switching to L2 TFS (cf.…”

“…Although English speakers naturally run mental simulations of objects moving toward them when processing motion sentences such as The car approached you, automatic activation of simulation in processing Chinese deictic paths lái 'hither' or qù 'thither' proved to be a domain of L2-specific TFS patterns for English-speaking learners that had not yet been salient enough to be noted when the learners were listening to the motion sentences. Echoing Wu [8,40], it was reported that L2 learners of both HLL and FLL backgrounds produced significantly less deictic paths when describing motion scenes, as compared to Chinese NSs.…”

“…The extent to which language influences thinking has been a focus of study for decades in the fields of anthropology, linguistics and first language (L1) acquisition, psychology, and recently in second and bilingual acquisition research. Focusing on the influence of language on online thinking, Slobin's thinking-for-speaking hypothesis (TFS) [1][2][3] has provided new insights into this topic and attracted substantial research that explores issues pertaining to conceptual changes in language learning (e.g., [4][5][6][7][8]). This hypothesis suggests that speakers are habitually attuned to aspects of an event that are readily codable in the language while they are formulating speech.…”

Crosslinguistic influence in the conceptualization of motion events: A synthesis study on L2 acquisition of Chinese motion expressions

“…Daller et al, 2011;Stam, 2010Stam, , 2015. Wu (2016) found that heritage language learners performed better in supplying target-like motion patterns than foreign language learners at the same proficiency level.…”

Effects of structural complexity and L1 experience on L2 acquisition of Chinese multiword sequences

“…Previous studies on L2 acquisition of Chinese DCs discovered that the difficulty of learning literal DCs comes from the syntactic complexity of their constructions (Qian, 1997;Wu, 2011;Yang, 2003) and the typological features of Chinese (Wu, 2011). Most of these studies examined learners' production of literal DCs by employing production tasks such as oral narrative (e.g., Wu, 2016). Little is known about learners' acquisition of figurative DCs and their comprehension of literal and figurative DCs.…”