Judit Kormos

The role of individual and social variables in oral task performance

This paper reports on a data-based study in which we explored - as part of a larger-scale British-Hungarian research project - the effects of a number of affective and social variables on foreign language (L2) learners’ engagement in oral argumentative tasks. The assumption underlying the investigation was that students’ verbal behaviour in oral task situations is partly determined by a number of non-linguistic and non-cognitive factors whose examination may constitute a potentially fruitful extension of existing task-based research paradigms. The independent variables in the study included various aspects of L2 motivation and several factors characterizing the learner groups the participating students were members of (such as group cohesiveness and intermember relations), as well as the learners’ L2 proficiency and ‘willingness to communicate’ in their L1. The dependent variables involved objective measures of the students’ language output in two oral argumentative tasks (one in the learners’ L1, the other in their L2): the quantity of speech and the number of turns produced by the speakers. The results provide insights into the interrelationship of the multiple variables determining the learners’ task engagement, and suggest a multi-level construct whereby some independent variables only come into force when certain conditions have been met.

Monitoring and Self-Repair in L2.

The aim of this article is to review the psycholinguistic research on second language (L2) self-repair to date with particular attention to the relevance of this field for L2 production and acquisition. The article points out that W. J. M. Levelts (1989, 1993, 1992) and W. J. M. Levelt et al.s (in press) perceptual loop theory of monitoring can be adopted for monitoring in L2 speech as well. It is also argued, however, that this theory needs to be complemented with recent research on consciousness, attention, and noticing in order to account for mechanisms of error detection in L2.

The role of attention in monitoring second language speech production.

The study investigates the role of attention in monitoring second language speechproduction by means of analyzing the distribution and frequency of self-repairs and the correction rate of errors in the speech of 30 Hungarian learners of English at 3 levels of proficiency and of 10 native speakers of Hungarian. The results indicate that the amount of attention paid to the linguistic form of the utterance does not vary at different stages of L2 competence and that the distribution of attention in monitoring for errors is markedly different inL1 and L2. In the case of advanced L2 speakers, the extra attentional resources made available by the automaticity of certain encoding processes were used for checking the discourse-level aspects of their message.

Simulating conversations in oral-proficiency assessment: a conversation analysis of role plays and non-scripted interviews in language exams:

Several recent studies have investigated the nature of interaction in oral proficiency exams and have concluded that the interview format obscures differences in the conversational competence of the candidates. The present paper examines what opportunities test takers have to display their knowledge of managing conversations in the L2 in two types of tasks: non-scripted interviews and guided role-play activities. The data for the study consists of 30 interviews and 30 role-play activities between near-native examiners and intermediate learners used in language exams in Hungary. The interviews and role-plays have been analysed for the number of topics introduced and ratified by the examiner and the candidate respectively, as well as for the number of interruptions, openings and closings produced by the examiner and the candidate. The findings show that the conversational interaction is more symmetrical in the guided role-play activity with the candidates introducing and ratifying approximately the same number of topics as the examiners. In addition, the examinees have the opportunity to interrupt and hold the floor more effectively during the role-play activity and can demonstrate their knowledge of how to open and close a conversation. These findings suggest that guided role-play activities used in the study exhibit several characteristics of real-life conversations and therefore can be used for assessing the candidates’ conversational competence.

Revisiting problems with foreign language aptitude.

Abstract This study investigated three of the issues recently raised in connection with the traditional concept of foreign language aptitude: the relationship between foreign language aptitude and working memory and phonological short-term memory capacity, the role of foreign language aptitude in predicting success in the framework of focus-on-form foreign language instruction, and the stability of language aptitude and phonological short-term memory in the course of language learning. The participants of our research were 40 students of an English-Hungarian bilingual secondary school and 21 students in a regular Hungarian secondary school. Language aptitude was assessed both at the beginning and the end of the academic year. Our results support the existence of an effect of language learning experience on language aptitude. We also concluded that foreign language aptitude does not play a highly important role in communicative language teaching combined with focus-on-form instruction.

The Relationship of Intercultural Contact and Language Learning Motivation among Hungarian Students of English and German

Abstract In this paper we report the results of a questionnaire survey conducted with 1777 Hungarian primary school children aged between 13 and 14 studying English and German. In our research we investigated the differences in the motivational and intercultural contact measures as well as determinants of motivated behaviour between learners of English and German. Our results indicate that students of English have a more positive attitude towards the native speakers of the language they study than learners of German, and children who study English have higher levels of linguistic self-confidence, invest more energy into language learning and receive more support from their environment than students of German. Our findings also reveal that learners of English experience more frequent direct written contact and contact through media products than learners of German. For both groups of language learners the results indicate that students with high levels of motivational intensity engage in various types of intercultural contact more frequently than students who invest less energy into language learning. Our findings seem to suggest that it is motivational intensity rather than the language being studied that affects what factors predict how much energy students are willing to invest in language learning.

Pragmatic aspects of task-performance: the case of argumentation

The study reported in this paper investigated the pragmatic aspects of task-performance in a series of argumentation tasks that 24 Hungarian learners of English performed over a period of two years. The aim of our research project was to determine how task-repetition, the long-term development of language skills, and a short-term focused intervention influenced various pragmatic measures of task-performance such as the pragmalinguistic markers of argumentation, the number of claims, counterclaims, supports and counter-supports. We also analysed how these variables differed when the participants performed the same type of task in their mother tongue. The results showed that in the repeated version of the task, familiarity with the task structure helped learners pay more attention to the informational content of their message, which was reflected in the higher number of supportive moves they produced. Participants were found to have better argumentation skills in their mother tongue and used a wider variety of pragmalinguistic markers than in L2. The language development assumed to have taken place during one year and the argumentation training, however, did not result in better pragmatic and pragmalinguistic performance.

The timing of self-repairs in second language speech production.

The study explores the psycholinguistic processes underlying L2 self-repair behavior by means of analyzing the timing of various types of self-corrections found in the speech of 30 Hungarian speakers of English at three levels of proficiency (pre-intermediate, upperintermediate, and advanced). The paper discusses the relevance of timing data for the existing models of speech monitoring and examines how the level of proficiency of L2 learners affects the speed of error detection and the execution of correction. The results obtained indicate that the perceptual loop theory and the activation spreading theory of monitoring both rightly assume that monitoring involves the same mechanisms as speech comprehension. The analysis of the timing data reveals that corrections of pragmatically inappropriate lexical choice have detection times very similar to those of lexical errors. This may be regarded as indirect evidence for the claim that lexical entries in the mental lexicon also contain specifications concerning their pragmatic value. The results show that the level of proficiency of the participants affects the time necessary for the lexical, grammatical, and phonological encoding of the repair, which is caused by the difference in the degree of automaticity of these mechanisms at various stages of L2 development.

Language wants of English majors in a non-native context.

The main aim of our research was to investigate the language wants of English majors in Hungary. First a questionnaire was administered to 279 students at all the six universities of Hungary where there are students majoring in English language and literature combined with TESOL. The participants were mainly students in the last 2 years of their university studies and their number represented approximately 10% of the target population. The same questionnaire was also completed by 80 students who graduated from one of the universities in Hungary in the past 5 years. The design of the questionnaire was informed by the Common European Framework of Reference prepared by the Education Committee of the European Union (Council of Europe, 2001. Common European Framework of Reference for Teaching, Learning and Assessment. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge). The questionnaire was piloted and validated with think-aloud interviews and test–retest reliability analysis. The results suggest that students use English mainly for academic purposes during their university studies. The most important functions for English majors in their future occupation seem to be expressing their opinion, reading texts on the Internet, conversing with non-native speakers, writing e-mail messages, giving explanations and instructions, and translating oral and written English in a variety of occupations. No major differences between students in different years of study and at different universities in the country were found. The methods applied and the findings concerning the needs of English majors in Hungary might also be relevant for other countries with a similar educational system.

The effect of speaker variables on the self-correction behaviour of L2 learners

Abstract The paper aims to explore the effect of individual speaking style on the self-correction behaviour of L2 speakers. The project reported in the paper involved 30 Hungarian learners of English of varying levels of proficiency and made use of self-report data. The results obtained from the analysis of a wide range of variables did not support the assumptions of previous studies as the difference between accuracy- and fluency-centred speakers did not manifest itself in the global frequency of self-repairs. The two types of learners were found to differ in how frequently they produced rephrasing-repairs, which involve uncertainty about the correctness of their utterance, in the proportion of the errors they corrected, and in the speed with which they uttered their message. The findings suggest that accuracy-centred participants tended to pay more attention to monitoring at the expense of the other speech production processes, while fluency-centred learners allocated more attention to speedy production and focused less on intercepting errors. The paper also points out that L2 learners with differing speech habits may make conscious decisions not to correct an error with varying frequency.