“Roger Broke His Tooth. <i>However</i>, He Went to the Dentist”: Why Some Readers Struggle to Evaluate Wrong (and Right) Uses of Connectives

Zufferey, Sandrine; Gygax, Pascal

doi:10.1080/0163853x.2019.1607446

Cited by 20 publications

(52 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…In particular, in recent studies, Zufferey and Gygax (2020a,b) found adolescents and even adults to have difficulties in understanding connectives typical for the written register in comparison to those frequently used in everyday communication; the former ability was highly associated with exposure to print. In addition, in the adult sample, the ability to understand connectives typical for the written register was also associated with their general grammatical skills (Zufferey and Gygax, 2020b).…”

Section: Connectives: Definition and Characteristicsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Comprehension of Connectives: Development Across Primary School Age and Influencing Factors

Volodina

Weinert

2020

Front. Psychol.

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Language development is not completed when children enter primary school. As the comprehension of connectives (such as although, despite) is important for understanding and producing academic texts and, thus, relevant for school success, we investigated its development and influencing factors across primary school age on the basis of a newly developed and validated test instrument. Using a German sample of 627 students (n = 361 language minority learners) in primary school, results of growth curve models showed students' initial level of the comprehension of connectives to be negatively related to its growth rate. Additional analyses revealed this association to be mainly due to parental socioeconomic status (SES) rather than students' language background. In particular, parental SES and students' receptive grammar impacted initial level as well as growth rate of connective comprehension. Our results point to the necessity of a continuous and early sensitization for the register of academic language especially in the group of students from a low socioeconomic background.

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Section: Connectives: Definition and Characteristicsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Comprehension of Connectives: Development Across Primary School Age and Influencing Factors

Volodina

Weinert

2020

Front. Psychol.

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“…Although these effects have been found to be reliable, some studies have shown variations associated to the degree to which participants were exposed to print (Zufferey and Gygax 2020a). This exposure to print is particularly relevant in predicting correct processing of less frequent connectives.…”

Section: Factors Affecting First Language Acquisition Of Connectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We also hypothesized that more frequent connectives would be mastered better by learners than infrequent ones. Exposure to print, and grammatical knowledge, both important factors for native speakers (Zufferey and Gygax 2020a), can also be expected to be important for learners.…”

Section: The Present Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While only a handful of connectives are used with high frequency in speech, in writing a broader array of connectives are used, although less frequently (Crible and Cuenca 2017). As a result, many connectives are used mostly in writing and their mastery is linked to the degree of competence that speakers have with this mode, as measured by their degree of exposure to print (e.g., Zufferey and Gygax 2020a).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In sum, even though there is ample evidence in the literature that learners do not fully master connectives, experimental studies that have assessed the factors that complicate or even prevent the mastery of discourse connectives for non-native speakers are quite sparse. This article is an attempt to start filling this gap by assessing the role of frequency and the degree of cognitive complexity of the coherence relation for learners' ability to handle connectives in L2, as these factors have been found to be highly relevant both for children and teenagers acquiring their first language (Evers-Vermeul and Sanders 2009;Crosson et al 2008;Zufferey and Gygax 2020b) as well as adult native speakers (e.g., Canestrelli et al 2013;Zufferey and Gygax 2020a).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Second Language Acquisition and the Mastery of Discourse Connectives: Assessing the Factors That Hinder L2-Learners from Mastering French Connectives

2020

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Even though the mastery of discourse connectives represents an important step toward reaching high language proficiency, it remains highly difficult for L2-learners to master them. We conducted an experiment in which we tested the mastery of 12 monofunctional French connectives conveying six different coherence relations by 151 German-speaking learners of French, as well as a control group of 63 native French speakers. Our results show that the cognitive complexity of the coherence relation and connectives’ frequency, both found to be important factors for native speakers’ connective mastery, play a minor role for the mastery by non-native speakers. Instead, we argue that two specific factors, namely the connectives’ register and meaning transparency, seem to be more predictive variables. In addition, we found that a higher exposure to print in L1, correlates with a better mastery of the connectives in L2. We discuss the implications of our findings in the context of second language acquisition.

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References

2020

Introduction to Experimental Linguistics

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“Roger Broke His Tooth. However, He Went to the Dentist”: Why Some Readers Struggle to Evaluate Wrong (and Right) Uses of Connectives

Cited by 20 publications

References 31 publications

Comprehension of Connectives: Development Across Primary School Age and Influencing Factors

Comprehension of Connectives: Development Across Primary School Age and Influencing Factors

Second Language Acquisition and the Mastery of Discourse Connectives: Assessing the Factors That Hinder L2-Learners from Mastering French Connectives

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