Synchronous CMC, working memory, and L2 oral proficiency development

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Synchronous CMC, working memory, and L2 oral
proficiency development

• ENG 510 Adolfo A. Carrillo Cabello Iowa State
  University

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Agenda

• background
• Working memory
• Oral proficiency development
• iChat
• Final comments

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SCMC research background

• Emerging evidence - SCMC may indirectly develop
  L2 speaking ability (Abrams, 2003, Beauvois,
  1997, Payne White, 2002). experimental,
  quasi-experimental, longitudinal
• Strong resemblance between the types of
  utterances generated in a chatroom and what would
  be said in a spoken conversation, prompted
  speculations about transfer of language skills
  from SCMC to conversational L2
• Levelts (1989) model of language production
  utterances begin as pre-verbal conceptualizer.
  Messages then enter the formulator, where
  lexical, grammatical, phonological encoding
  occurs. Payne and Whitney (2002) argue that the
  only substantial difference between text-chat
  real conversation is in the articulator speech
  or monitor

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text to speech

• are there similarities?
• could oral proficiency be improved?
• find out!

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The study

• Establish the relationship between individual
  differences in working memory and oral
  proficiency development
• Language output modulated by individual
  differences in WM -as measured by the number of
  words, utterances, and turns generated per chat
  session
• Determine if individual differences in WM were a
  factor in the frequency of repetition or
  relexicalization in L2 SCMC
• Longitudinal changes in repetition or
  relexicalization

what did they want to investigate
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central concepts
reading span and nonword repetition were used to
measure WM
why did they want to investigate it

• WM The system or mechanism supporting the
  temporary maintenance of information during the
  performance of complex cognitive tasks such as SL
  comprehension or production
• Repetition
• example te gustan las manzanas?
• Relexicalization re-casting of of content
  with near-synonymous words
• example

in conversations, it is important to maintain a
flow of topic selection and turn-taking. WM
plays an important role in the retention/continuat
ion of the conversation. Repetition and
relexicalization are common phenomena that occur
in conversations as a way to recycle language and
reaffirm/continue
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measuring oral proficiency development
reading span measures individuals ability to
simultaneously process and store information from
ones immediat environment in memory

• Data
• transcripts for chat sessions -instances of
  repetition or relexicalization
• 2 working memory measures 1) non-word
  repetition, 2) reading span
• Non-word repetition delivered online, audio
• reading span 15 sets of sentences -estimate
  sentence sensibility
• ORAL proficiency two raters, 5 min speech

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findings

• Mean comparisons from 1st half to second half
  shows a consisten decline in the use of
  repetition and relexicalization for all groups
  frequency of repetition abd relexicalization is
  inversely related to proficiency -learners expand
  lexicon
• L2L may use repetition for very different reasons
  than has been documented in L1 corpus linguistic
  research
• Apparent difference in the chatting style of low
  PWM students -greater number f words per
  utterance on average than high span students
• Low-span sts were taking advantage of the reduced
  cognitive burden introduced by the chatroom to
  produce more extensive and alaborate
  constructions, something difficult in F2F

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iChat

• demo

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final words
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my lingo

• WU class,
• AFAIK, i need2 present this article.  If u
  WAN2TLK, use this space.  Feel F2T about any
  ideas u might have. KIT this WKND, KWIM?