Lexicalized Aspectual Usage in Oral Proficiency Interviews

Abstract

This study suggests that Intermediate High and Advanced speakers produce aspectually valid constructions in Oral Proficiency Interviews (OPIs) in large part because they are doing more than assigning aspect to lexical categories (Lexical aspect hypothesis), but because they are assigning lexicalized meaning to discrete verbs, for example govorit' (imperfective)-'to talk,' but skazat' (perfective)-'to say.' Analysis of the data from 55 OPIs conducted with second language (L2) Russian speakers ranging from Intermediate High to Superior confirms three hypotheses: (a) the proportion of aspectual utterances that owe their correctness to lexicalization decreases as proficiency increases; (b) aspectual competence as demonstrated by the greater number of aspectually non-lexicalized verbs in the speech of L2 Russian speakers rises with proficiency level; (c) a decrease in the proportion of lexicalized verbs in an examinee's speech correlates positively with an increase in the variety of verbs used. Other findings include a relative paucity of unprefixed verbs of motion in the corpus and a high ratio of lexicalized forms of skazat' 'to say,' and their distribution did not correlate with proficiency levels in either direction. The high ratio of aspectually lexicalized items in the corpus and the aspectual inaccuracies to which they lead have implications for teaching students who are approaching Intermediate High and Advanced levels of proficiency.

Narration and Narrative in L2 Speakers of Russian

“…This is not to say that L2 Russian speakers rated Advanced (Low, Mid, or High) do not demonstrate control of aspect in OPIs. Advanced speakers' aspectual accuracy has been found to be high—89% to 92% percent accurate across the Advanced range, as one would expect by reading the ACTFL Guidelines (Robin, in press). But Robin found that that apparent accuracy owes itself to the high degree of lexicalization of frequently occurring verbs (40.5% in Advanced Low and Mid; 37.5% in Advanced High).…”