document resume institution - ericdocument resume. ed 427 515 fl 025 687. author carpenter, mark,...

DOCUMENT RESUME

ED 427 515 FL 025 687

AUTHOR Carpenter, Mark, Ed.; Koike, Dale April, Ed.TITLE Linguistic Perspectives from Spanish Second Language

Acquisition.INSTITUTION Texas Univ., Austin. Foreign Language Education Program.ISSN ISSN-0898-8471PUB DATE 1998-00-00NOTE 177p.; For individual articles, see FL 025 688-696.PUB TYPE Collected Works Serials (022)JOURNAL CIT Texas Papers in Foreign Language Education; v3 n3 Fall 1998EDRS PRICE MF01/PC08 Plus Postage.DESCRIPTORS Adult Students; Auditory Perception; Bilingual Education;

Bilingual Teachers; Determiners (Languages); DiscourseAnalysis; *Grammar; Language Patterns; *LanguageProficiency; Language Research; Language Tests; LanguageUsage; Multimedia Instruction; Oral Language; *Phonology;Second Language Learning; *Second Languages; *Spanish;Student Evaluation; Teacher Qualifications; Testing; *TimeFactors (Learning); Verbs

ABSTRACTPapers reporting research on Spanish second language

learning include: "Discourse Features of Spanish Oral Production at theNovice Level" (Rebecca Jo Bearden); "A Discourse Approach to the Assessmentof Foreign Language Oral Proficiency" (Dale April Koike, Fanny Hinojosa);"Acquisition of Spanish Definite Articleo by English-Speaking Learners ofSpanish" (Maria Ramirez-Mayberry); "The Spanish Psych Verb Construction:Beginning and Intermediate Learners' Patterns of Usage" (Christopher D.Gascon); "The Relationship between the Production and Perception of L2Spanish Stops" (Mary Zampini); "An Acoustic Description of the LongitudinalAcquisition of Spanish Phonological Features by English Speaking AdultLearners" (Jeffrey Reeder); "Prochievement Testing: Matching InstructorExpectations, Student Level, and Task Levels" (Barbara Gonzalez Pino);"Current Issues in the Spanish Language Proficiency of Bilingual EducationTeachers" (Michael Guerrero); and "Multiple Challenges of Multimedia:Development, Implementation, and Evaluation in Second Semester Spanish"(Margaret Ann Kassen). (MSE)

********************************************************************************

Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be madefrom the original document.

********************************************************************************

PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE ANDDISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS

BEEN GRANTED BY

6)riltit IC( ISSN # 0898-8471LT-1

f7"

Texas Papers in

Foreign LanguageEducation

1

TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCESINFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)

U S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUC ATIONOfti of Educational R se h ncl Improvement

EDUCATIONAL R E SOL RaCE S INFORMATIONCENTER (ERIC)

eThis document has been reproduced asreceived from the person or organizationoriginating it.

Minor changes have been made toimprove reproduction quality.

Points of view or opinions stated in thisdocument do not necessarily representofficial OERI position or policy.

SPECIAL ISSUE: LINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVES FROMSPANISH SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Volume 3 Number 3 Fall 1998

1 REBECCA JO BEARDEN Discourse Features of Spanish OralProduction at the Novice Level

33 DALE APRIL KOIKE and FANNY HINOJOSA A Discourse Approachto the Assessment of Foreign Language Oral Proficiency

51 MARiA RAMiREZ-MAYBERRY Acquisition of Spanish DefiniteArticles by English-Speaking Learners of Spanish

69 CHRISTOPHER D. GASCON The Spanish Psych Verb Construction:Beginning and Intermediate Learners' Patterns of Usage

85 MARY ZAMPINI The Relationship Between the Production andPerception of Second Language Spanish Stops

101 JEFFREY REEDER An Acoustic Description of the LongitudinalAcquisition of Spanish Phonological Features by English SpeakingAdult Learners

119 BARBARA GONZALEZ PINO Prochievement Testing: MatchingInstructor Expectations, Student Level, and Task Levels

135 MICHAEL GUERRERO Current Issues in the Spanish LanguageProficiency of Bilingual Education Teachers

151 MARGARET ANN KASSEN Multiple Challenges of Multimedia:Development, Implementation, and Evaluation in Second SemesterSpanish

0...

Foreign Language Education ProgramThe University of Texas at Austin

13ESU COPY AVAILABLE

Texas Papers in Foreign Language Education(TPFLE)

Guest Editor:Dale April Koike

Editor:Mark Carpenter

Editorial Advisory Board:Zena Moore, Sherry Marx, Charles Nelson

Faculty Advisor:Zena T. Moore

TPFLE is the official journal of the Foreign Language Education Programof the University of Texas at Austin.

Publication of TPFLE has been made possible by a grant fromthe RGK Corporation


3

Texas Papers inForeign Language

Education

Contemporary Issues inForeign and Second Language

Learning and Teaching

SPECIAL ISSUE: LINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVES FROMSPANISH SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Volume 3 Number 3 Fall 1998


4

Contributors:

REBECCA JO BEARDEN earned her M.A. in Hispanic Linguistics with a focus on Spanishsecond language acquisition from the University of Texas at Austin in 1997. She is currentlyworking on her Ph.D., also at University of Texas, in the same areas.

CHRISTOPHER D. GASCON is a doctoral candidate in Spanish literature at the University ofTexas at Austin. He is currently writing his dissertation on the role of desire in the GoldenAge drama of Spain.

BARBARA GONZALEZ PINO, Associate Professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio,is Coordinator of Lower Division Spanish and Foreign Language Education. She has focusedextensively on classroom and proficiency testing of speaking in her publications,presentations, and training activities.

MICHAEL GUERRERO is an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Austin in theDepartment of Curriculum & Instruction. His research interests center on the preparation ofbilingual education teachers and related language development and testing issues.

FANNY HINOJOSA recently received her undergraduate degree at the Universidad Autónomade Nuevo Le 6n in Monterrey, Mexico. She is currently an M.A. exchange student at McGillUniversity in Montreal, where she is studing language pedagogy.

MARGARET ANN KASSEN received her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin and isnow Associate Professor in the Department of Modern Languages at The CatholicUniversity of America. With interests in technology-enhanced language teaching andforeign language writing, she coordinates the language program, works with graduate andundergraduate teacher preparation, and teaches language courses.

DALE APRIL KOIKE is Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese Linguistics at theUniversity of Texas at Austin. Her research interests include pragmatics, discourseanalysis, testing, and second language acquisition.

MARIA RAMIREZ-MAYBERRY is a Master's candidate in the Spanish and PortugueseDepartment at the University of Texas at Austin. Her interests are second languageacquisition and interlanguage development processes in the classroom environment.

JEFFREY REEDER teaches Spanish language and foreign language teaching methodologycourses in the Department of Foreign Languages, Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park,California. His research interests include the acquisition of L2 speech, acoustic phonetics,and technology-enhanced language learning.

MARY ZAMPINI is Assistant Professor of Spanish Linguistics at the University of Arizona.Her interests include second language Spanish speech production and perception.

JII

FROM THE EDITORS:

Dear Reader,

We are proud to dedicate the pages.of this issue to the

outstanding scholarship presented at the First UT Spanish

Second Language Acquisition Symposium (SSLAS) held on

October 3 and 4, 1997, at the University of Texas at Austin.

Sponsored by UT's College of Liberal Arts and Department of

Spanish and Portuguese, with additional support from McGraw-

Hill Publishers and the Centro Bilingiie-Multicultural of

Cuernavaca, Mexico, the Symposium drew large audiences to hear

key speakers Susan Gass (Michigan State University), Judith

Liskin-Gasparro (University of Iowa), James Lee (Indiana

University), and Bill VanPatten (University of Illinois). Other

invited speakers were Barbara Gonzcilez-Pino (University of Texas

at San Antonio), Margaret Ann Kassen (Catholic University of

America), Michael Thomas (University of Mary Hardin Baylor),

and Dolly Young (University of Tennessee at Knoxville). All of

these presenters, with the exception of Susan Gass, are alumni of

UT-Austin.

The articles included in this special issue exemplify the four

major strands of research presented at the Symposium: discourse

analysis of learner production, acquisition of syntax and

phonological features, testing, and multimedia applications. In

the area of discourse analysis, Rebecca Jo Bearden rDiscourse

Features of Oral Production at the Novice Level" investigates

Novice-Level oral production, a proficiency level that has received

little attention in the past and is insufficiently described in the

ACTFL Guidelines. She examines the salient discourse features of

this level and proposes oral production tasks that are most

appropriate for eliciting samples that best reveal Novice learners'

performance. The second article of this group is that of Dale Koike

and Fanny Hinojosa (A Discourse Approach to the Assessment of

Foreign Language Oral Proficiency', who propose a global

discourse approach to classroom assessment of oral proficiency for

the advanced levels. According to this approach, the assessor

compares actual learner production for a given task to the

discourse pattern of a model, which in turn reflects the top-down

organization used by most Advanced-level learners and native

speakers for that task. After describing what learners of the

Intermediate and Advanced levels say for a particular stimulus

and comparing their responses to the pattern in the model, the

authors propose a set of descriptors for varying levels of

production.

The next four articles address the acquisition of particular

Spanish grammatical morphemes and phonological features.

Those dealing with grammar include a study by Maria Ramirez-

7iv

Mayberry ("Acquisition of Spanish Definite Articles by Native

English-Speaking Learners of Spanish', who examines written

samples from beginning Spanish learners and analyzes, both

quantitatively and qualitatively, the stages by which the learners

acquire Spanish definite articles. She accounts for the stages of

acquisition in terms of simplification, communicative value, and

frequency of input (VanPatten, 1987). The other article concerning

morphemes is that of Christopher GascOn (The Spanish Psych

Verb Construction: Beginners' and Intermediate Learners' Patterns

of Usage"), who examines the use of Spanish psychological verbs

(for example, gustar 'to like') by learners of four semester levels of

Spanish language study. He discerns apparent stages of psych

verb acquisition and draws support for his analysis from the work

on interlanguage by Corder (1978) and Selinker (1972).

Two articles focus on the acquisition of phonological features.

Mary Zampini ("The Relationship Between the Production and

Perception of Second Language Spanish Stops') investigates the

acquisition of Spanish voiced and voiceless stop consonants by

advanced native English speakers. Her data suggest that there is

not a strong correlation between learners' ability to perceive

Spanish stops and their ability to produce them. The study by

Jeffrey Reeder ("An Acoustic Description of the Longitudinal

Acquisition of Spanish Phonological Features by English

v 8

Speaking Adult Learners") addresses the acquisition of the

Spanish vowels, a number of consonants, and other phonemic

features by four levels of learners. He compares the data from those

learners with data from of a group of native Spanish speakers.

The results reveal stages in which learners progress to a more

Spanish-like production.

The third group of articles deals with aspects of testing. The

paper by Barbara Gonthlez-Pino ("Prochievement Testing:

Matching Instructor Expectations, Student Level, and Task

Levels") looks at the role of instructors' assumptions regarding oral

tests and identifies areas of discrepancy between testing and

rating practices. She confirms the need for instructors to delineate

their specific expectations with respect to learner levels and the

various features tested. Michael Guerrero's article ("Current Issues

in the Spanish Language Proficiency of Bilingual Education

Teachers') critically examines the context in which bilingual

education teachers develop Spanish language proficiency, and he

finds that the context insufficiently supports their efforts to attain

the expected high level. He also finds problematic the current

measures used to gauge proficiency.

The final article of the collection is that of Margaret Ann

Kassen ("Multiple Challenges of Multimedia: Development,

Implementation, and Evaluation in Second Semester Spanish"),

who gives an overview of the development, implementation, and

evaluation of multimedia lessons to enhance second language

listening comprehension. In addition to proposing guidelines for

the use of multimedia, she describes the Libra authoring system.

All of these studies represent valuable advances in the field of

Spanish second language acquisition, and all open new

perspectives to language acquisition in general. It is our hope that,

by bringing the work of these Spanish language practitioners and

researchers together in this single issue, we can encourage you, our

readers, to explore the questions they have raised and to add your

vision to the search for answers.

References:

Corder, P. (1978). Language-learner language. In J. Richards (Ed.),Understanding second and foreign language learning (71-93). Rowley, MA,Newbury House.

Se linker, L. (1972). Inter language. International Review of Applied Linguistics,10 (3), 209-230.

VanPatten, B. (1987). Classroom learners' acquisition of ser and estar. In B.VanPatten, T. Dvorak, & J. Lee (Eds.) Foreign language learning: Aresearch perspective (pp. 61-75). Cambridge: Newbury House.

Discourse Features of Spanish Oral Production at the Novice Level

REBECCA JO BEARDEN, The University of Texas at Austin

Despite the recent emphasis in second language acquisition research o ncommunicative ability, little analysis or description of Novice-Levelspeech has been produced. This paper examines this topic and has twoprimary purposes: first, to describe some of the distinguishing discoursefeatures of Spanish oral production at the Novice Level, and second, todiscuss the methodological implications of these findings. The data con-sist of six Oral Proficiency Interviews all rated at the Novice Level by twoseparate interviewer/raters trained by the American Council on theTeaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). The data were analyzed for thepresence of common discourse features, including cohesive devices, useof the first language, negotiation, and scaffolding. Methodological impli-cations of the findings are discussed, and finally a revision of the N ov-ice-Level ACTFL proficiency guidelines that incorporates the findings o fthe current study is suggested. It is hoped that this investigation willhelp establish a more complete understanding of oral production at thelower levels of proficiency and thereby encourage the development o fteaching and testing procedures designed to fit the needs and skills of thestudents in our foreign language classrooms.

INTRODUCTIONOral proficiency has recently become the subject of much research on

second language acquisition. Development of oral proficiency testing, begunin the early 1950s by the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), was subsequently ap-plied to the academic setting with the American Council on the Teaching ofForeign Languages (ACTFL) Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI). The result was asurge of interest in this innovative method that has brought about a pro-found change in the goals and attitudes towards the teaching of foreign lan-guages. The current trend is to teach students to create with the language andto use the language to fulfill a variety of functions. This trend is a dramaticdeparture from the traditional methods of foreign language instruction,which were described in an editorial published in a major newspaper as "rotedrill in quirky idioms and irregular verbs" plus "cultural appreciation'thesampling of tacos, quiche or sauerbraten" (cited in Heilenman and Kaplan,1985, p. 71).

The reality, however, is that even with this newfound emphasis oncommunicative ability, the vast majority of students enrolled in college levelforeign language classes will probably never progress beyond the ACTFL Nov-ice-Level rating. Despite this fact, the majority of research and study involv-ing oral proficiency is concerned with the more advanced levels; very littleanalysis or description of Novice-Level speech has been produced. Further-more, studies investigating the discourse features of Novice-Level speech are

I

2 Texas Papers in Foreign Language Education

virtually nonexistent. Much re-search in recent years has shown thecritical role that discourse plays inthe acquisition of a second language.It is, therefore, the intention of thisstudy to examine some discoursefeatures of Spanish OPIs rated at theNovice Level. The study has twopurposes: first, to describe some ofthe distinguishing discourse featuresof oral production at the NoviceLevel, and second, to discuss themethodological implications ofthese findings. It is hoped that theinvestigation of these two topics willhelp advance our understanding oforal production at the lower levelsof proficiency and thereby encouragethe development of teaching andtesting procedures designed to fit theneeds and skills of the majority ofthe students in our foreign languageclassrooms.

BACKGROUND LITERATUREThe movement towards profi-

ciency-based teaching and testingtechniques can be considered to haveoriginated in the early 1950s as a re-sult of an initiative by the FSI to de-velop meaningful verbal descrip-tions of various skill levels in orderto find a more accurate measure ofthe ability of foreign service officersto function in their overseas as-signments. The FSI scale that wasdeveloped identified five proficiencylevels, ranging from Level 1, Ele-mentary Proficiency: Able to satisfyroutine travel needs and minimumcourtesy requirements, to Level 5,Native or Bilingual Proficiency:Speaking proficiency equivalent tothat of an educated native speaker.In an effort to make these descrip-

tions more applicable and useful inan academic setting, ACTFL subse-quently revised the FSI scale to in-clude more and finer-tuned levels atthe lower end. Recognizing thatmost students of foreign languagenever reach proficiencies above aLevel 3 on the FSI scale, the ACTFLscale acknowledged that more levelswere needed to characterize andevaluate the oral proficiency of highschool and college-level foreign lan-guage students. For this reason, theACTFL scale does not include cate-gories above the Level 3 on the FSIscale.

The implementation of profi-ciency-based learning has been gain-ing popularity in academic settingsever since the development of theACTFL scale. Heilenman andKaplan (1985) explain that, in themore traditional approaches, "theassumption seems to have been thatlearning a foreign language equalslearning that language's structure,along with a generous amount ofvocabulary, all carefully sequencedand spooned out in judicious doses.Enough of these doses, successfullyswallowed, presumably result infunctional language knowledge. Itsounds nice. It sounds logical. Itsounds as if it should work. But itdoesn't" (p. 58). They contend thatproficiency-based curriculum designand testing is an idea whose timehas come. As they explain,"Proficiency is seen as a superordi-nate goal that represents more thanthe sum total of all discrete itemslearned and that attempts to balanceaccuracy with fluency and learningabout a language with providing the

12

Oral Production at the Novice Level 3

opportunity to learn a language byusing it" (p. 59).

Despite the growing enthusi-asm for proficiency-oriented testingand instruction in academic settings,there is a paucity of studies investi-gating the lowest proficiency levels.This lack of research is even morestriking in light of Heilenman andKaplan's statement that 80% of for-

eign language students currently en-rolled in college-level foreign lan-guage courses will not likely prog-ress beyond the Novice Level (p. 70).The most detailed information to befound about Novice-Level oral pro-duction is the generic descriptions ofthe 1986 ACTFL proficiency guide-lines themselves, which are repro-duced below.

Novice Novice level is characterized by an ability to communicateminimally with learned material.

Novice-Low Oral production consists of isolated words and perhaps afew high-frequency phrases. Essentially no functionalcommunicative ability.

Novice-Mid Oral production continues to consist of isolated words andlearned phrases within very predictable areas of need, al-though quantity is increased. Vocabulary is sufficient onlyfor handling simple, elementary needs and expressing ba-sic courtesies. Utterances rarely consist of more than twoor three words and show frequent long pauses and repeti-tion of interlocutor's words. Speaker may have some diffi-culty producing even the simplest utterances. Some Nov-ice-Mid speakers will be understood only with great diffi-culty.

Novice-High Able to satisfy partially the requirements of basic commu-nicative exchanges by relying heavily on learned utter-ances but occasionally expanding these through simple re-combinations of their elements. Can ask questions ormake statements involving learned material. Shows signsof spontaneity, although this falls short of real autonomyof expression. Speech continues to consist of learned ut-terances rather than of personalized, situationally adaptedones. Vocabulary centers on areas such as basic objects,places, and most common kinship terms. Pronunciationmay still be strongly influenced by first language. Errorsare frequent and, in spite of repetition, some Novice-Highspeakers will have difficulty being understood even bysympathetic interlocutors.

1 3


Other researchers have madevery limited observations as to thenature of Novice-Level speech.These observations, like the ACTFLdescriptions themselves, usuallycharacterize oral production interms of the components of Higgsand Clifford's (1982) Functional Tri-section. This measurement identi-fies three components of languageuse that constitute the global ratingat each proficiency level: function,which refers to the linguistic tasksthe learner is able to complete suc-cessfully; content, which describesthe setting in which those tasks areperformed; and accuracy, which re-fers to the grammar, pronunciation,and syntax of the text.

With regard to function,Heilenman and Kaplan (1985) statethat "learners [at the Novice Level]are more accurately characterized bywhat they are incapable of doingthan by what they succeed in doing"(p. 58). Bragger (1985) concurs that"Novice-Level speakers have practi-cally no functional ability, althoughthey can communicate very simplywith memorized material" (p. 97).Furthermore, the OPI training man-ual (Buck, 1989) explains that

Novice Level speakers have ac-quired some of the buildingblocks necessary for creatingtheir own utterances, but theycannot access and manipulate in-dividual elements of learned ma-terial and thus can't adapt themto express unique, personalized,or situation-specific messages.Thus the Novice Level speaker isessentially limited to reacting tothe conversational partner inhighly predictable cornmcndaily settings and is only mar-

14

ginally able to initiate communi-cation. (pp. 2-7)

Finally Valdman and Phillips(1977) describe the effect of the Nov-ice-Level speaker's limited func-tional ability on the development ofthe interlanguage, stating,

In initial stages of second lan-guage learning, the target lan-guage serves only a narrowlycommunicative function; as a con-sequence, it is acquired in ahighly deviant form that exhib-its all the characteristic featuresof pidginization: emphasis mcontent words, invariable wordorder, elimination of functors,etc. As the target language'srange of function increases, thelearner's interlanguage progres-sively expands and complexifies.(p. 22)

With regard to content, Omag-gio (1986) identifies ten subject areasthat Novice speakers generally con-trol sufficiently to be able to list vo-cabulary associated with the subjectsor ask and answer simple questions.These include names of basic objects,family members, colors, articles ofclothing, weather expressions, daysof the week, months, dates, andtime. She states that these ten topicsare known as the "ten desperatequestions" because they "will oftenelicit some sample of speech whenall other attempts at conversationfail" (p. 16). Omaggio explains thatspeakers at the Novice Level cannotcreate or paraphrase with the lan-guage, nor are they adept at handlingconversation topics that they havenot rehearsed before. She furtherstates that they are not able to handle


a survival topic such as checkinginto a hotel or ordering a meal in arestaurant. She points out that con-trol of these skills is the requirementfor an Intermediate-Level rating.

Finally, with regard to accuracy,Bragger states that, "at the NoviceLevel, accuracy is defined primarilyas intelligibility because few if anygrammar structures exist in thespeech to warrant discussion of theprecision of the message conveyed"(pp. 97-98).

Omaggio (1986) explains that ac-cording to the Relative ContributionModel proposed by the InteragencyLanguage Roundtable, different as-pects of language use will play vary-ing roles of importance in the globalrating of oral interviews, dependingon the proficiency level. Thus, at theNovice Level, vocabulary is themost important element in thespeaker's attempts to communicate,while pronunciation, grammar, flu-ency, and sociolinguistic appropri-ateness are considered to a lesser de-gree in the global rating at this level.

Omaggio sums up the nature ofNovice-Level speech by stating,"Essentially, the Novice-Level in-terview is like an oral achievementtest, since the learner can producelittle more than what he or she haslearned in the course of his exposureto the target language" (p. 340).

DATA COLLECTIONThe current study analyzed six

OPIs conducted by an ACTFL-certified interviewer. The data con-sisted of two interviews rated at theNovice-Low (NL) level, two rated atNovice-Mid (NM), and two at Nov-ice-High (NH). Each interview wasevaluated by two raters, and agree-

ment on the rating was reached ineach case. The oral interviewsranged from 5 to 15 minutes andwere taped and later transcribed bythe researcher.

The NL-level interviews werethe shortest. Both began with a seriesof personal questions such as"Where are you from?", "Where doyou live now?", "Do you like ithere?", and "What classes are youtaking?" The second task in the NL-level interviews required the learn-ers to name various objects indicatedby the interviewer. At the NM-levelthe first task was the same, but theinitial personal questions were oftenfollowed by additional questions re-quiring the learners to elaborate ontheir answers. In one of the NM in-terviews the second task was also arather extended naming of objects,but in the other NM interview thesecond task required the learner topose questions to the interviewer.The NH-level interviews again be-gan with personal questions thatwere usually followed by additionalquestions requiring the learners toelaborate on their responses. Thesecond task at this level was a roleplay situation, and the third task re-quired the learners to pose questionsto the interviewer.

The data were analyzed forcommon discourse features thatcould be used to characterize Nov-ice-Level speech. The features thatwere considered were the use of co-hesive devices, switching into thefirst language (L1), the use of scaf-folding, and interactional devicesused in negotiation. Finally, somemethodological implications ofthese findings were derived.


RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

1. Cohesive DevicesLooking at the data, we find

some interesting discourse patternsemerging already at the NoviceLevel. The utilization of cohesivedevices serves as a good initial ex-ample. As Pavlou (1994) explains,"When we are dealing with the co-hesion of a text we are investigatingthe linguistic means which enable atext to function as a single meaning-

ful unit" (p. 4). He goes on to iden-tify three major categories of cohe-sive devices: referential, conjunc-tional, and lexical. We find examplesof all three types of cohesive devicein the data. By "referential cohesivedevice," Pavlou refers to the use ofpronouns. Observe Robin, for in-stance, as she talks about her room-mate in Example 1. [Note: utterancesby the learner are in the right col-umn, while those by the interviewerare in the left.]

Example 1. Robin (NH): Referential Cohesion

1

23 Um hum45 zY y cómo es fisicamente cOnno es?

'And what is she like physically,what is she like?'

67

Oh uh Nancy es muy *amidable. 'Nancy is veryfriendly'*Amidable? 'Friendly?'

elSi? 'Yes?'

Oh urn pequena. Uh ella tiene urn . . . blonde hair.Uh ella es linda. 'Oh urn small. Uh she has um . . .

blonde hair.Uh she is pretty.'

In Line 1 Robin uses herroommate's name to establish thereference, but in Lines 6 and 7 shechooses the pronoun ella 'she.' Thisusage gives the discourse cohesionin that the interlocutor infers topiccontinuity from the discourse.

The occurrence of referentialcohesion in the data is shown in Ta-ble 1. The data suggest that the use ofreferential cohesive devices greatlyincreases as proficiency increases. Atthe NL level the two learners usedno pronouns at all, and at the NMlevel the two learners used a total ofthree pronouns. At the NH level we

16

find a dramatic increase in the use ofpronouns; the two learners use a to-tal of 31 pronouns. The data, there-fore, demonstrate that pronouns areused for greater cohesion in the dis-course at the higher levels.

An interesting parallel findingconcerns the use of the pro-drop fea-ture across the three proficiency lev-els. It seems that, since Spanish is apro-drop language, we must con-sider the absence of subject pro-nouns as another referential cohe-sive device. With the pro-drop fea-ture, as with the use of pronouns,the interlocutor must make refer-

Oral Production at Novice Level 7

Table 1Use of Pronouns and Pro-Drop by Learner and Level

Learner & Level # of Pronouns Instances of Pro-dropLeslie - NL 0 1

Chin - NL 0 1

Frank - NM 1 5Marissa - NM 2 6Vince - NH 18 4Robin - NH 13 3

ence to a previous utterance in orderto understand fully the relationshipsbetween themes in the current mes-

sage. Consider Example 2, in whichMarissa talks about her brother:

Example 2. Marissa (NM): Use of Pro-drop

1 Ah Nueva York. zY qué hace2 ahora Eric? zEsta. trabajando?

'Ah New York And what does Eric donow? Is he working?'

34

Si um vive en Bangor, Maine uhtrabajando uh youth pastor.'Yes um he lives in Bangor, Maine uhworking uh youth pastor'

5 Oh ah hah. Y . . . y tu hermano6 Andy, icómo es? 'And . . . and your brother

Andy, what is he like?'7 Es um . urn *mediocre

'He is um . .. um (invents word)'8 Ah ha9

10 Uh huh.11

En height. Uh pelo es . . . (oh) brown'In height. Uh hair is . . . '

Uh es veinte y uno alios.'Uh he is twenty-one years.'

12 Um hurn.13 Um es um uh (indo) uh going um a14 la universidad en Bangor Maine

'Um he is urn uh (ing) uh going urn tothe university in Bangor Maine'

15 Uh huh.16 Uh vive con Eric. 'Uh he lives with Eric'


We see consistently throughout thisexample that Marissa provides n oovert subject for her statements.

Table 1 shows that at the NLlevel each learner used the pro-dropfeature once, while at the NH levelthe two learners used pro-drop a to-tal of seven times. Thus, we alsofind greater use of this cohesive de-vice at the higher levels of profi-ciency. A somewhat contradictoryfinding, however, is that the NMlevel is characterized by the greatestuse of pro-drop. We find that thetwo learners used this feature a totalof 11 times. The other NM learnerdemonstrates a similar grasp of thepro-drop aspect of Spanish. It is in-teresting to note that, in this regard,the learners do not show evidence oftransfer of their Ll rules that requirepronouns, but appear to haveadopted quite early the second lan-guage (L2) norm and are able to ex-ploit verbal morphology to a greateror lesser degree to maintain cohe-sive discourse across successiveturns.

The question arises, then, whywe see a reversal of this tendency atthe NH level, where the learners be-gin supplying overwhelminglymore pronouns and use the pro-drop feature less frequently. Thereseem to be several plausible answersto this question. First, the NH levelis the stage at which the learnersstart developing their syntactic sys-tems and are producing longerstrings of words. It could be that theyare still uncomfortable with theircommand of word-order rules andtheir ability to exploit verbal mor-phology accurately; thus, they supplymore pronouns in an attempt to en-sure their meaning is understood. A

is

second possible explanation is that,at the NL and NM levels, we seemuch more imitation of the inter-viewer's speech, which does notgenerally include pronouns. Perhapsat the NH level, as the learners startto rely less on memorized materialand to construct their own sen-tences, they fall back on their L1rules and include pronouns in theirutterances. The result is that the dis-course at this level often seemsmore redundant and less native-likethan the discourse at the NM levelwith regard to the referential aspectof cohesion.

Pavlou identifies the use ofconjunctions as another feature ofcohesive discourse. In Table 2 we seea gradual increase in the frequencyof conjunctions as proficiency in-creases. Table 2 shows that the learn-ers at the NL level use no conjunc-tions. This finding is not surprisinggiven that their utterances are rarelylonger than a single word. The onlyconjunction used at the NM level isy 'and.' Again, however, the learnersat this level do not produce utter-ances longer than a single clause andtherefore their speech rarely requiresthe use of conjunctions. At the NHlevel, on the other hand, we see amuch wider variety of conjunctions,and they are used more frequently.Vince in particular uses conjunc-tions productively and, in additionto y 'and,' his repertoire includes o'or,' pero 'but,' and porque 'because.'He produces utterances of muchmore complexity than we see at theNL and NM levels, and he achievesa considerable degree of cohesion bythe inclusion of these conjunctions,as evidenced in Example 3, where heexplained why he studies Spanish.


Table 2Use of Conjunctions

Learner & Level No. of ConjunctionsLeslie - NLChin - NLFrank - NMMarissa NMVince NHRobin - NH

23

163

Example 3. Vince (NH): Use of Conjunctions

1

2 zAh si? 'Oh yes?'34567

Oh, es necesario tener dos anos de espaiiol.'It is necessary to have two years of Spanish.'

Si, si. Muy importante porque uh enJacksonville uh ellos no hablan espaiiol uhmuchas pero uh urn va a sur de Jacksonville,uh en Orlando, Miami habla espaiiol muybie . . . uh muchas.'Yes, yes. Very important because uh in Jacksonville uhthey don't speak Spanish uh many but uh urn go to southof Jacksonville, uh in Orlando, Miami speak Spanishvery we . . . uh many.'

Robin (NH) used only two con-junctions during her interview, yand pero, and she was not able tocreate the same degree of cohesionin her discourse as Vince demon-strated in Example 3.

The third feature of cohesivediscourse identified by Pavlou islexical devices. The only examples ofthese in the current data are pro-vided by Vince (NI-I) when he em-ploys the word también 'also' onseveral occasions to link successiveutterances. Again, although he dis-

plays a lack of variation in his use ofcohesive devices, the learner's use ofthese lexical elements gives his dis-course a fluidity that is not seen inthe less proficient samples.

2. Use of LlAt all three proficiency levels in thedata, the learners often revert back tothe use of the Ll while attempting toconverse in the U. In these in-stances, the use of the Ll appears toserve a variety of purposes. Thelearners often use the L1 to supply a


vocabulary word that is unknown inthe L2. Sometimes the learners so-licit a translation of the Ll word,while in other cases they use a word

in the Ll to fulfill a communicativeneed. Example 4 contrasts these twouses of words in the Ll.

Example 4. Vince (NH): Contrasting Uses of Ll

1 zEs, cómo, es similar a Middlebury2 o es diferente?

'Is it, how, is it similar to Middleburyor is it different?'

3

4 zanno, qué diferencias hay?'How? What differences are there?'

5678

9 Si, es de dos arios.'Yes, it is for two years.'

10

Uh es no muy diferente, si uh. . . .

'Uh it is not very different, yes uh . . .

Um es un urn universidad de urncommunity colegio uh que no es unurn ... es un uh como se dice upperlevel uh . . . .

'Urn it is a urn community college university umthat is not a um . . . it is a uh . . . how do you say"upper level" uh . . .

Uh, si si si. Dos arios.'Uh, yes,yes,yes. Two years.'

In Line 6, Vince uses the wordcommunity without a rise in intona-tion or explicitly asking for a transla-tion, and he continues speakingwithout hesitation. In Lines 7 and 8,however, he requests a translation ofthe Ll word.

Throughout the data the learn-ers appear to use the Ll in times ofL2 linguistic breakdown when thecommunicative pressure of thesituation is great and they do notwant to interrupt their message byhaving to solicit translations, as inExample 5.

Example 5. Marissa (NM): Use of Ll When L2 Breakdown Is Experienced

1 ,Estudias mucho? zEstudias?'Do you study a lot? Do you study?'

23 Uh huh.45 (Laughs) Ok. Y cloade vives aqui6 en Middlebury?

20

zAqui? 'Here?'

Uh um no as mucho 'much' urn... as I should.


'And where do you live here in Middlebury?'7 En Batel North dormitorio.

'In Batel North dormitory'8 Urn hum, 2,Te gusta Batel?

'Um hum, Do you like Batel?'9 Uh si es muy um uh energy

'Uh yes it is very urn . . . uh energy'

In Example 5, Marissa uses theLI. in Lines 4 and 9 when she lacksthe language structures to commu-nicate her thoughts, but she alsochooses not to ask for a translationof the word in Line 9, even thoughshe knows the phrase Cómo se dice'How do you say,' as evidenced laterin the interview. This avoidance,too, could be a function of the rela-tionship that has been establishedwith the interviewer. In severalprevious instances during the inter-view, Marissa used a word in Eng-

lish with rising intonation to requesta translation and the interviewer didnot oblige. It could be that, by thispoint in the interview, Marissa hadgiven up trying to negotiate at timesof linguistic breakdown and justused the Ll in these situations.

Another instance in which wefind frequent use of the Ll in thedata is when the learner is attempt-ing to clarify or repair a previous ut-terance in the L2. Take the followingfrom Frank (Example 6):

Example 6. Frank (NM): Use of L/ to Clarifiy or Repair

1

2Um hum. Muy bien, muy bien. Y e en SouthDakota, hace mucho calor?'Um hum. Very good, very good. And in SouthDakota, is it very hot?'

3 Si mucho calor. Muy, muy.'Yes very hot. Very, very.'

4 zSi? zSiempre? 'Yes? Always?'5 Si uh en . v . *viemo es .. .

'Yes uh in . . . w . . . winter is...'6 that's Spring right?7 En invierrno hace frio, irio?

'In winter it's cold, right?'8 Ok that's what I thought.9 En inviemo es muy frio,10 muy . ' In winter is very cold, very .11 zPero te gusta South Dakota?

'But do you like South Dakota?'12 Si, me gusta South Dakota.

'Yes, I like South Dakota.'13 I don't know why.14 (Laughs)15 But I do.


Frank uses the L1 in Line 6 toverify that he has correctly expressedwhat he intended to say in Line 5,and again in Line 13 he uses the Llto clarify and elaborate on his state-ment in Line 12. This tendency touse the L1 to clarify and elaborateprevious utterances in the L2 iscommon in the data at all three lev-els of proficiency.

3. Whispering to SelfYet another use of the L1 in the

data serves a very different function.Platt and Brooks (1994) found intheir analysis of two beginninglearners of English that their subjectsfrequently whispered comments tothemselves in the L1. These corn-

ments appeared to be directed prin-cipally at the learners themselvesand not at the interlocutor. They ex-plain that this whispering to self"serves important mediational pur-poses for individuals for completingcognitively demanding tasks and fororienting themselves and their in-terlocutors to the task and to thelanguage that is used to construct thetask" (p. 507). We find examples ofsuch behavior in the present data aswell (Example 7).

Additionally, there are manyexamples of the learners whisperingto themselves all or part of a state-ment that the interviewer just di-rected at them (Example 8).

Example 7. Robin (NH): Whispering to Self in Ll

1 iQue hacen Uds. uh cuando cuando no2 van a Burlington y cuando no estudian,3 qué hacen Uds.?

'What do you do uh when when you don'tgo to Burlington and when you don't study,what do you do?'

456 Uh huh ,y está cerca? 'and is it nearby?'7

Urn . . . (let's see) vamos a la 'we go to the'Fithess Center?

Si. 'Yes.'

Example 8. Marissa (NH): Whispered Repetition of Interviewer

1 Uh, y qué trabajo hace tu padre?'Uh, and what work does your father do?'

2 Real estate.3 Uh huh, no sabes. 'Uh huh, you don't know.'4 (No sabes)5 No sabes. Urn pues mira, um zdóride6 vives aqui en Middlebury?

'You don't know. Urn well look, urn wheredo you live here in Middlebury?'

7 Yo vivo en uh Stuart.'I live in uh Stuart.'

8 ;Es una residencia? 'Is it a dormitory?'

22

Oral Production at the Novice Level

Si. 'Yes'

(Compailera?)

910 Si. zY tienes companera de cuarto?

'Yes. And do you have a roommate?'11

12 Compailera de cuarto. Otra persona en13 el cuarto

'Roommate. Another person in the room'14 Oh companera si, si.

'Oh roommate yes, yes'

13

Examples 7 and 8 appear to beinstances in which the learners try tograpple with utterances that werenot understood and to access infor-mation stored cognitively. The factthat the learners whisper makes itdoubtful that they are addressing theinterlocutor; thus, these examplesshould not be considered a requestfor clarification or a comprehensioncheck, even though the interviewersometimes responds to it as such.

4. Discourse StrategiesPerdue and Klein (1992), in

their study of two beginning learnersof English, report that their subjectsrelied heavily on scaffolding with

their interlocutor to express them-selves (p. 268). The data gathered inthe present study support this find-ing. The learners at the NL and NMlevels rarely give more than a one-clause answer before pausing andwaiting for a response from the in-structor. At all three levels of profi-ciency the learners make few at-tempts to initiate topics. At the NLlevel the learners never take controlof the conversation. Frank does ini-tiate an interaction when he is in-structed to ask the interviewer aquestion, but he is uncomfortable inthis role and he quickly throws theresponsibility back to the inter-viewer (Example 9):

Example 9. Frank (NM): Avoiding Topic Initiation

1 LTienes tü alguna pregunta para mi?'Do you have a question for me?'

2 Uh, zun profesor? zTtl un profesor?Ikt, a professor? You a professor?'

3 Aqui en Middlebury no.'Here at Middlebury, no.'

4 zNo? 'No?'5 Estoy tres dias aqui con las entrevistas.

'I am here three days with the interviews.'6 No ah otra preguntas.

'No ah another questions.'

At the NH level there are ex-amples of several hesitant attempts

to take control of the interaction, es-pecially in the role-play situation.

0 I:10


The success of these exchanges,however, is still dependent on helpfrom the interlocutor to supply keyvocabulary words, as in Example 10from Vince.

Further evidence for the impor-tance of scaffolding is found in the

frequent occurrence of several inter-actional features identified by Ellis(1985). The features that are mostcommon in the current data includeclarification requests, comprehen-sion checks, repetitions, and expan-sions. The learners rely on these fea-

Example 10. Vince (NH): Interlocutor to Supply Key Vocabulary

1 zY cdal es tu trabajo?'And what is your work?'

23

456

Ah si? 'Oh yeah?'

7 Clientes. 'Customers'8

9 Clientes. 'Customers'10

Ah yo trabajo con la compancompania de telefono AT&T.'Ah I work with the telephone compancompany AT&T.'

Si, uh tenemos muchos um ... urn .. .zcOmo se dice customers?'Yes, uh we have many urn .. . how do you saycustomers?'

Ah, ok. Tenernos muchos *quientes ...'Ah, ok. We have many (mispronounces)'

Clientes que hablan espaiiol.'Customers who speak Spanish.'

tures to build vertical constructionsthat enable an exchange of meaning.

A clarification request occurswhen the learner does not under-stand part of the interlocutor's utter-ance and solicits help. The learnersin the data used a wide variety ofphrases to request clarification, in-cluding no entiendo 'I don't under-

stand,' iperdón? 'pardon?' repita'repeat,' i cómo? 'what?' and i que?'what?' An even more commontechnique, however, was the repeti-tion of the misunderstood part ofthe utterance with rising intonation,as in Example 11, where Frank hasjust responded to the question,"Where are you from?":

Example 11. Frank (NM): Clarification Requests

1 i,En South Dakota? Ah muy lejos.'In South Dakota? Oh very far.'

7

Muchas millas. 'Many miles.'

2,Muy lejos? Ah ... zqué lejos?'Very far? Ah . . . what far?'

zMuchas millas? No, no um . . . .


'Many miles? No, no um . .

5 zy tienes familia en South Dakota?'And do you have family in South Dakota?'

In this example, Frank indicates inLine 2 that he does not understandthe word lejos and he asks for clarifi-cation. The interviewer respondswith circumlocution, but in Line 4we see that understanding is still notachieved, because Frank again re-peats the interviewer's words with

rising intonation. So in Line 5, theinterviewer switches the topic.

We find additional examples ofrepetition of part of the inter-viewer's utterance with rising into-nation from Frank later in the in-terview (Example 12):

Example 12. Frank (NM): Comprehension Checks

1 Ah ha. Um, zCuando cuando2 empiezan las clases?

'Ah ha. Um, When do classes begin?'34 Si 'Yes'5

678910

11

zA las ocho? 'At eight?'

zLa una? 'One?'

Urn hum. iTodos los dias?'Un hum. Every day?'

12 zQue dias tienes clase?'What days do you have class?'

1314

i,Cuando empiezan? 'When do they begin?'

Uh mi clases uh um es ... a la ocho'IJh my classes uh urn is . . . at eight'

Uh to um son las uno. 'Uh to urn it is one.'

La una 'One'

Jodos los dias? Si uh all cinco dias.'Every day? Yes uh all five days.'

,Que dias? Uh lunes, martes, miercoles, jueves,viernes. 'What days? Uh Monday, Tuesday,Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.'

In Example 12, however, therepetition with rising intonationserves a different purpose. Here wehave instances of comprehensionchecks. In Lines 3, 6, 8, 11, and 13, thespeaker wants to ensure that he hascorrectly understood the inter-viewer's meaning; thus, he repeatsall or part of the previous utterance

in an attempt to confirm what hehas heard.

Repetition is an interactionaldevice that serves several purposesin the data. In addition to the exam-ples of repetition described above,there are also frequent examples ofother repetitions where the speakerrepeats all or part of the interlocu-

2 5


tor's previous utterance without therising intonation that would signal acomprehension check or a clarifica-tion request and thus require a re-

sponse from the interlocutor. InLine 8 of Example 13 we find an oc-currence of this feature on the partof the interviewer:

Example 13. Leslie (NL): Self-Repetition

1

2Uh huh, zY tienes una compafiera decuarto? Una amiga que vive contigo?'Uh huh, And do you have a roommate?A friend that lives with you?'

3 Si. 'Yes.'4 LY cómo se llama? 'And what is her name?'5 Leslie.6 No tti te llamas Leslie, ipero tu amiga?

'No your name is Leslie, but your friend?'7 Oh, Amanda.8 Amanda. zY cOmo es Amanda? Quiero9 información sobre Amanda.

'Amanda. And what is Amanda like? I wantinformation about Amanda.'

Also evident in Example 13 isthe use of self-repetition. We findmany instances of self-repetition inthe data where the interviewer re-peats or rephrases all or part of theprevious utterance, as in Lines 1 and2, and Lines 8 and 9 above.

A fourth interactional deviceprevalent throughout the data is ex-

pansion. This device appears whenthe learner rephrases the interlocu-tor's previous utterance and addsgrammatical and/or semantic in-formation, thus creating a morecomplete and complex thought. Ob-serve Example 14.

Example 14. Frank (NM): Expansion

1 Jienes hermanos? 'Do you have siblings?'2 Si un hermano uh es Benjamin uh3 en Germany. 'Yes one brother uh he is

Benjamin uh in Germany.'4 Oh, está en Alemania. iY cuantos ailos5 tiene Benjamin?

'Oh, he is in Germany. And how old is Benjamin?'

2 6


Here the interviewer uses theinformation provided by the learnerin Line 3 to form a complete andgrammatically accurate sentence inLine 4. Again, the restatement of theinformation provided in Line 3 can-not be understood as a confirmationcheck because there is no rising in-tonation. Hatch (1978) also arguesthat such examples should not beconsidered repairs, because the rules

of polite conversation would allowfor a repair only if the learner hadsolicited one by using rising intona-tion in the difficult part of his utter-ance, as in Example 15. There we seethat in Line 2 Vince is unsure of theword bilote so he solicits a repairwith the use of rising intonation.When the difficulty is still unre-solved, he tries again to get help byrepeating the problematic word, and

Example 15. Vince (NH):

1

2

3 zBiblioteca? 'Library?'45

6 Bicicleta. 'Bicycle.'7 Si. 'Yes.'

Learner Solicits a Repair

Te gusta um la biblio uh bi um*biote? Um um. . . biblio. . .

'Do you like um the libra uh II um(invents word)? Urn um . . . libra . '

No, no biblioteca. (Laughs) Uh urn*biota? Urn bicycle?'No, not library. (Laughs) Uh um(invents word)? Um bicycle?'

Bicicleta, bicicleta. Si, si,si, si.'Bicycle, Bicycle. Yes, yes, yes, yes.'

8 Para mi la bicicleta es tTansporte,9 no es uh diversiOn.

'For me the bicycle is transportation, not diversion.'

finally gives up and uses the word inEnglish. Hatch proposes that the typeof expansion found in the previousexample from Frank, therefore, isnot a repair, but rather serves to re-assure the learner that he has beenunderstood (p. 427).

Ellis (1985) found that the pat-terns of occurrence of several inter-actional features vary at differentlevels of proficiency and that thisvariance is often the result of thespeaker's attempts to achieve com-prehensible input. As he explains,"Because comprehensible input is a

2

negotiated rather than an absolutephenomenon, dependent on thelearner's developing c ommunic ative proficiency. . . different featuresmay aid development at differenttimes" (p. 82). The data in the pres-ent study support this finding. Ta-bles 3 and 4 show the occurrence ofinteractional features at each level ofproficiency and for each learner. Ta-ble 3 shows that self-repetitions andother repetitions are common acrossall three levels of proficiency, but, asin the Ellis study, self-repetitions de-crease as proficiency increases. At the


Table 3Interactional Features by Proficiency Level

Interactional Feature NL NM NH

Clarification requests 0 10 6

Comprehension Checks 0 9 6

Self-repetitions 16 8 8

Other repetitions 5 7 5

Expansions 6 2 5

Table 4Use of Interactional Features by Learner

Learner & LevelClar. Re-quests

Comp.Checks

Self- Otherrepetition repetition Expansion

Leslie - NL 10 2 3Chin - NL 6 3 3Frank - NM 4 7 3 5 2Marissa - NM 6 2 5 2 0Vince NH 5 5 4 2 3Robin - NH 1 1 4 3 2

NL level there are a total of sixteenself-repetitions, while at the NHlevel there are only eight. Unlike theEllis study, the current data show n osignificant change in the number ofexpansions from the NL to the NHlevel, but the increase noted by Ellisin comprehension checks as profi-ciency increases is found in the cur-rent data as well. Comprehensionchecks, however, were most com-

2 8

mon at the NM level, with a totaloccurrence of nine for the two NMlearners, while at the NH level therewas a total of six. The occurrence ofclarification requests similarly wasgreatest at the NM level, with a totalof ten occurrences versus six occur-rences at the NH level. In the pres-ent data there were no instances ofclarification requests or comprehen-sion checks at the NL level.


Due to the limited scope of boththe present and the Ellis studies, it isdifficult to draw any firm conclu-sions about the relationship betweenproficiency and the frequency of oc-currence of these interactional fea-tures. Ellis cautions that the interac-tional styles of the participants willprobably be equally if not more in-fluential than the proficiency levelsin determining use of these features(p. 76). Thus, at the NH level, for ex-ample, five clarification requests andfive comprehension checks wereused in Vince's interview, whileonly one instance of each featurewas found in the data from Robin.

What is confirmed in the Ellisstudy, however, is the role these in-

teractional features play in secondlanguage acquisition. In a seminalarticle discussing the role of dis-course analysis in second languageresearch, Hatch (1978) questioned thewell entrenched position that theability to converse was a direct resultof having acquired a sufficientamount of language. She proposedconversely that language acquisitiongrew out of conversation (pp. 406-7).She explains, citing Scollon, that in-teractions called "vertical structures"form the basis for syntactic construc-tions that Scollon calls "horizontalstructures" later on. We find an ex-ample in the current data from Chin(Example 16):

Example 16. Chin (NL): Vertical Structures That

1 Xi:5mo se llama tu profesor de matematicas?'What is your math professor's name?'

23 Uh huh. zEs hombre o es mujer? zHombre o mujer?

'Uh huh. Is that a man or a woman? Man or woman?'45 Uh huh. Es senor Peterson.

'Uh huh. He is Mr. Peterson.'67 Uh huh. LY tu profesor urn ... hi profesor de espanol,8 es senor o senora?

'Uh huh. And your professor um... your Spanishprofessor is Mr. or Mrs.?'

9

10 Mejilla1112 Uh huh13

Lead to Horizontal Structures

Urn Peterson.

Hombre. 'Man.'

Senor Peterson. 'Mr. Peterson.'

Senor um Gustavo Mia'Mr. urn Gustavo Mia'

Mejilla

Senor Mejilla 'Mr. Mejilla'

Here we find the intervieweruses expansion and repetition toprovide the building blocks with

'2 9

which Chin is able to produce aproper title in Spanish in Line 13.


5. NegotiationPica (1987) also suggests that ne-

gotiated interactions are crucial tohelp the learner reach higher levelsof proficiency. As she explains,

What enables learners to movebeyond their current interlan-guage receptive and expressivecapacities when they need to un-derstand unfamiliar linguisticinput or when required to producea comprehensible message areopportunities to modify and re-

structure their interaction withtheir interlocutor until mutualcomprehension is reached. (p. 8)

Pica (1994) points out, however,that this type of negotiation does notappear to help the learners developaccuracy. A particularly striking ex-ample to support this conclusion canbe found in data from a previousstudy by Bearden (1997) (see Example17).

Example 17. Learner #1: Failure to Improve Accuracy

1

2 Tii tienes esposo? 'You have a husband?'34 Tiene 'Has'56

7 Urn hum...ztil tienes? 'you have?'8

9 Uh huh1011

12 No, itti tienes dos afios?'No, you are two years old?'

1314 El 'He'1516 Tiene 'Has'17

18 Ok1920

21 Ok

Tengo un esposo. ' I have a husband.'

No, ella tenga. . . 'No, she have . .

tiene un esposo . uh se llamo Ricky tengo un . uh . nem.'has a husband . . . uh his name is Rickand I have a . uh . . . boy.'

No ella . . . ella tienes un'No she . . . she have a boy.'

Se llama . uh . . . Nick ... uh . tengo dosanos. 'His name is . uh ... Nick . uh . I amtwo years old.'

*Ello tienes '(invents pronoun) have'

El ten . . . tengo ' He ha . . . I have'

Tiene dos ems ' He has two years = He is twoyears old'

Urn . .. soy. . ella mi herrnana soymuy simpatico.'Urn .. . I am . . . she my sister I am very nice.'

In Line 1 the learner intends torefer to his sister, but states Tengo

un esposo 'I have a husband.' Theinstructor initiates a repair in Line 2


that prompts the learner to attemptto correct his statement in Line 3.His new statement is still incorrectwith regard to mood, but is now in-flected properly for person. In Line 4,the instructor supplies the correctform that the learner repeats in Line5, but later in the same utterance, hereverts back to the incorrect form ofthe verb he originally used in Line 1.The whole process is repeated twomore times in Lines 7 through 17.This example makes a clear case forthe learner's inability to process theform of his utterance or the correc-tions that the instructor is makingwhile -under the immediate pressureof trying to communicate specific in-formation.

A study by Gass and Varonis(1994), however, suggests that thesenegotiated interactions may im-prove accuracy in subsequent con-versations by focusing the learners'attention on the problematic part ofthe utterance and thus enablingthem to correct the problem. Theauthors state,

What we claim is that interac-tional input provides a forum forlearners to readily detect a dis-crepancy between their learnerlanguage and the target languageand that the awareness of themismatch serves the function oftriggering a modification of ex-isting second language knowl-edge, the results of which mayshow up at some later point intime. (p. 299)

Another explanation for thelack of improvement with regard toaccuracy may be that grammar israrely the topic of negotiation in anatural conversational setting. Infact, the OPI Training Manual (Buck,

1989) specifically prohibits inter-viewers from correcting grammarduring the interview. There are noinstances of negotiation concerningaccuracy in the data from the presentstudy. Hatch (1978) argues that thebiggest challenge facing adult learn-ers of a second language is identify-ing the topic and that topic nomina-tion, rather than grammatical accu-racy, is the purpose of most negotia-tion involving language learners.She explains that, with children,there is a greatly reduced set of topicsthe learner can be expected to com-ment on, usually concrete things oron-going actions, so the topics ofconversation are naturally limited.With adults, however, there is amuch greater variety of possible top-ics and time references, whichmakes topic identification a majordifficulty. Hatch explains, "Since thetopics in adult discourse are muchmore varied and more abstract, it ismuch more difficult for the adult toidentify conversation topics unlesshe knows the necessary vocabularyfor that topic" (p. 431). According toHatch, the purpose of negotiation atthe beginning levels is soliciting andclarifying vocabulary purely in anattempt to establish the topic.

There is ample evidence tosupport this position in the currentdata. At the NL, where self-repetition is the greatest, we findthat the interviewer uses the tech-nique of stating and then immedi-ately paraphrasing a question as ameans of providing a wide range ofvocabulary clues to signal the topic.A good example is found in the datafrom Leslie (Example 18):

22 Texas Paper in Foreign Language Education

Example 18 Leslie (NL): Interviewer States and Paraphrases

1

2Um, zdóride vives aqui en Middlebury?zEn qué residencia vives?'Urn, where do you live here in Middlebury?In what dormitory do you live?'

3 (Silence)4 zVives en en Painter o en Star?

'Do you live in Painter or in Star?'5 Oh, urn Stuart?6 En Stuart uh huh. Y tu cuarto,7 es bueno o es malo?

'In Stuart uh huh. And your room,is it good or is it bad?'

8 Bueno. 'Good.'9 Uh huh, y tienes una compariera de10 cuarto? Una amiga que vive contigo?

'Uh huh, And do you have a roommate?A friend that lives with you?'

11 Si. 'Yes.'

The interviewer asks Leslie aquestion in Line 1 and immediatelyparaphrases in Line 2. When Lesliedoes not respond, the interviewergives more vocabulary clues by nam-ing several possible dorms in whichthe learner might live. The learneris thus able to make the necessaryassociations and answer the ques-tion. Again, in Lines 9 and 10 wefind another instance of self-repetition. This technique of self-repetition by the interviewer is used

10 out of 18 times when a new topicis introduced in the interview withLeslie.

As already noted, as proficiencyincreases, self-repetitions decrease,but even at the higher levels nego-tiation still seems to deal primarilywith vocabulary. Thus, at the NMand NH levels, the comprehensionchecks and clarification requests areprincipally concerned with specificwords, as we see in the following ex-ample (Example 19):

Example 19. Marissa (NM): Negotiation of Vocabulary

1 Si. LCórno es tu cuarto? zQué tienes en2 tu cuarto?

'Yes. What is your room like? What doyou have in your room?'

34 i,En tu cuarto, en tu habitaciOn?

'In your room, in your room?'5

zPerción? 'Pardon?'

Um hum.

6 zOtimo es? 'What is it like?'78 Ah ha.


Uh es pequefio. 'Uh it's small.'

In Line 3 Marissa asks for clari-fication of the interviewer's ques-tion. We cannot know for certainwhat part of the utterance Marissadid not understand, but the inter-viewer appears to assume that it wasthe vocabulary word for "room,"since the interviewer repeats andthen supplies a synonym for thisword. Thus, Marissa's clarificationrequest enabled her to get the impor-tant content word "room," whichconsequently allows her to correctlyidentify the topic.

Hatch summarizes as follows:

It is tempting . . . to hypothesizethat the adult focus in second

language learning is cn vocabu-lary . . . but, instead, it appearsthat the learner is only askingfor enough vocabulary to allowhim to nominate topics and par-ticipate in conversational dis-course. Perhaps once the pressureof needing a particular word inorder to take his turn in the con-versation is gone, the vocabularyis also "forgotten." (p. 430)

The interview with Vince gives astriking example to support Hatch'ssuggestion that vocabulary is onlyretained long enough to establishthe topic (Example 20):

Example 20. Vince (NH): Learner Does Not Retain Negotiated Vocabulary

1 Si, y el nifio, zle gusta leer, le gustan2 los deportes? 'Yes, and the boy, does

he like to read, does he like sports?'34

5 zUna pelota? zDe béisbol?'A ball? For baseball?'

67 Si, si si si. Si. 'Yes, yes,yes,yes. Yes.'89

10 Ah, bueno, tenemos perdón, de dos11 precios; tenemos una pelota grande12 que se usa para el softbol....

'Oh well, we have pardon two prices; wehave a large ball that is used for softball'

13141516

que cuesta ocho dólares y tenemos unapelota mas pequefia para el béisbol quecuesta diez.'that costs eight dollars and we have a

Si uh tiene un uh . . . uh uh bi*bilote? *Bilota?'Yes uh he has a uh .. . uh uh (invents words)'

Si, si. 'Yes, yes.'

Urn ... y um ... cuantos uh ... no urnque es la uh *pricio? 'Um . .. and um ... howmany uh..no um what is the uh price?'

Si, si 'Yes, yes'


smaller ball for baseball that costs ten.'17181920

21 Si, si si si. 'Yes, yes yes yes.'

Ah...uh muy bien. Uh yo *quiera urn uh*pilote uh diez &dares pero puede . . . puede . . .

um puede ... tiene un uh *caje para urn uh el*pilote?'Ah . . . uh very good. Uh I want urn uh(invents word) uh ten dollars but canyou . .. can you . .. um can you ... do you have auh box for urn uh the (invents word)?'

In Lines 3 and 4 Vince makesseveral attempts at producing thecorrect word for "ball" and requests arepair using rising intonation. Theinterviewer responds by supplyingthe correct form of the word that en-ables the conversation to continue,but as we see in Lines 18 and 20,

Vince has modified his initial at-tempt at the word by adopting thecorrect initial consonant. He stilldoes not use the correct word, how-ever. An interesting parallel to thisexample comes later in the same in-terview when he is asking the inter-viewer a question (Example 21):

Example 21. Vince (NH):1

2

Use of Invented Word to Solicit Key VocabulanyTe gusta urn la biblio uh bi urn* bilote? Urn urn . . . biblio. . .1'Do you like urn the libra uh li um(invents word)? Urn urn . libra

3 iBiblioteca? 'Library?'4 No, no biblioteca. (Laughs) Uh urn5 *bilota? Urn bicycle?

'No, not library. (Laughs) Uh urn(invents word)? Um bicycle?'

6 Bicicleta. 'Bicycle.'7 Si. 'Yes.' Bicicleta, bicicleta. Si, si,si, si.

'Bicycle, Bicycle. Yes, yes, yes, yes.'

We find in this example thatVince uses the same word in an at-tempt to express "bicycle" as he usedin Example 20 when he was attempt-ing to express "ball." This usage isnoteworthy because "bicycle" in Eng-lish and Spanish are cognates, butinstead of trying a cognate, which isoften a natural reaction when nego-tiating for vocabulary between thetwo languages, Vince uses the word

3 4

bilote. Except for the initial conso-nant, this word bears no resem-blance to bicicleta. Thus, it seems, atleast in these two examples, thatVince employs the word bilote onoccasions when he is unsure of thecorrect vocabulary word in an at-tempt to solicit the proper wordfrom his interlocutor, a tactic thatwas successful in both of the previ-ous examples.


Hatch underscores the impor-tance of negotiation for topic identi-fication, stating, "Once the topic isrecognized, [the learner] can furtheruse his knowledge of the world andof discourse in his own language topredict the possible questions, theconcerns which might be expressedin questions about that topic" (p.423). Thus, without the ability tosuccessfully identify the topicthrough negotiation, no conversa-tion can take place. We find manyinstances where this happens in thedata from all three levels of profi-

ciency. At the NL level the learnerfrequently opts out of the conversa-tion by remaining silent. We see thisstrategy in an example from Leslie(Example 22).

In Line 5, Leslie's silence causesthe interlocutor to abandon the topicand to pose a new question. In Line9, however, Leslie's silence does notimpede the conversation to thesame degree, because she has a sym-pathetic interlocutor who continuesthe process of negotiation evenwhen Leslie tries to opt out.

Example 22. Leslie (NL): Learner Remains Silent

1

2En comparaci6n. Ah ha, I, y um te gustaMiddlebury? zEstás contenta en Middlebury?'In comparison. Ah ha, and do you likeMiddlebury? Are you content at Middlebury?

3 Si. 'Yes'4 Y por qué te gusta? 'And why do you like it?'5 (Silence)6 Urn, zcórno son las clases para ti?

'Urn, how are the classes for you?'7 Muy bien? 'Very good?'8 Um hum. zY qué clases tienes?

'Urn hum. And what classes do you have?9 (Silence)10 Espanol 'Spanish'11 Um, geography

At the higher levels of profi-ciency, however, it is often the in-terviewer who does not participate

in the negotiation, thus bringing thetopic to an abrupt end as in Example23:

Example 23. Marissa (NM): Interviewer Does Not Negotiate

1 zQué, dime qué llevas. zQue ropa llevas?2 iQué es esto?

'What, tell me what you are wearing. Whatclothes are you wearing? What is this?'

3

26

3

Texas Papers in Foreign Language Education

Uh blue jeans, uh camisas'Uh blue jeans, uh shirts'

4 Um hum. iy eso? 'And that?'5 Urn . . . sneakers6 Pero esos no son sneakers.

'But those aren't sneakers.'7 Um pero como se dice uh8 shoes? 'Urn but how do you say shoes?'9 Ok, sabes los colores, zQué color es éste?

'Ok, you know the colors, What color is this?'10 Sue, suete 'Swea, sweate'11 Urn hum, zy el color? 'And the color?'12 Si . . . uh es éste? 'Yes . . . uh is it this?'13 Uh huh14 Es . . . rojo? 'It is . . . red?'

In Lines 7 and 8 Marissa at-tempts to negotiate for the word"shoe," which she does not know,and thus tries to keep the conversa-tion going. The interviewer does notrespond to her request, however,and instead changes the topic in Line9. The learner, who is expecting a re-sponse to her request, is unpreparedfor the topic change and, in Line 10,she continues to respond to the in-terviewer's original topic of identify-ing the items of clothing.

6. Interviewer's RoleExamples such as the previous

raise the question of the inter-viewer's role in negotiation duringthe interview. The OPI TrainingManual (Buck, 1989) states that theOPI is "intended to replicate naturalconversational behavior" (p. 5-15)and instructs interviewers to"perform negotiative moves whencommunication is not totally suc-cessful" (p. 5-2). These two stipula-tions would obligate the interviewerin Example 23 to respond to the

3 6

learner's request for an unknownvocabulary word. Yet the manualalso instructs interviewers not tofurnish vocabulary and to assumethe role of a monolingual speaker ofthe target language during the inter-view. These directions would pro-hibit the interviewer from respond-ing to the learner's request in theabove example. Thus, the inter-viewers find themselves in a some-what contradictory position, whichpartially explains the wide variety ofresponses to this situation found inthe data. There is variation evenwithin the same interview as to howthe interviewer responds when con-fronted with this type of request, andacross the data it is obvious that cer-tain interviewers are much morewilling to supply the vocabulary thatis being solicited. It is noteworthythat the interviews in which suchrequests are fulfilled resulted inmuch more authentic conversationand much smoother topic transi-fions, as can be seen in Example 24:


Example 24. Vince (NH): Interviewer Provides Requested Vocabulary1 Uh, zEs es por eso que estudias2 espafiol?

'Uh, Is is that why you study Spanish?34

567

Necesario. 'Necessary.'

8 zAh si? 'Oh yeah?'91011

1213

Um, si, si. Uh en en Florida es urnuh . zcómo se dice mandatory?'Urn, yes,yes. Uh in in Florida it is um uh . . .

how do you say mandatory?'

Oh, es necesario tener dos &Los deespafiol. 'Oh, it is necessary to have twoyears of Spanish.'

Si, si. Muy importante porque uh enJacksonville uh ellos no hablan espatiol uhmuchas pero uh um va a sur de Jacksonville, uhen Orlando, Miami habla espaiiol muy bie..uhmuchas.'Yes, yes. Very important because uh inJacksonville uh they don't speak Spanish uhmany but uh urn go to south of Jacksonville, uhin Orlando, Miami speak Spanish very we . . . uhmany.'

14 Urn hum. Si, si. Bueno eso es interesante.'Um hum. Yes, yes. Well that is interesting.'

We see in this example that theinterviewer's response to Vince's re-quest for the word "mandatory" inLine 4 enables him to continue theconversation and express, althoughsomewhat awkwardly, a long andcomplex utterance in Lines 9through 13. On the contrary, if theinterviewer had denied Vince's re-quest and switched the topic as inExample 23, the conversation wouldhave come to a halt and Vincewould not have had the opportunityto demonstrate the knowledge hedoes in Example 24.

It seems, therefore, that if theintention of the OPI is to replicategenuine conversation as nearly aspossible, interviewers are obliged by

rules of polite conversation to re-spond to such requests. In the OPIsetting, the learners are aware thatthe interviewer speaks both the tar-get language and the L1. Thus, as thepressure to communicate increases,the learners can be expected to takerecourse to any and all tools at theirdisposal to keep the conversationmoving, and they will expect the in-terviewer to do the same. Any reluc-tance on the part of the interviewerto cooperate in achieving mutualunderstanding will be seen as a vio-lation of the rules of interaction andwill thus detract from the sense ofthe interview as a genuine conversa-tional exchange. Byrnes (1987) arguesthat this cooperation is crucial if the

37


interview is to be an accurate meas-ure of the learner's pragmatic com-petence. As she explains,

With a keen awareness m thepart of the tester of what consti-tutes natural conversational be-havior, including natural listen-ing behavior, curbing it only in sofar as it would preclude an opti-mal and efficient sampling ofspeech m the part of the candi-date, I have observed over andover again how the dynamics ofmessage transmission become sopowerful in themselves that thecandidate can present an amaz-ingly multi-faceted performance,even at the lower level of lan-guage use. . . . Conversely, whenthe tester does not bring to thetask that level of interpersonalinvolvement and willingness tobecome a true conversationalpartner within the constraints ofthe event, then little of thekinds of evidence for pragmaticcompetence I have mentioned cansurface. (pp. 174-75)

Furthermore, even in instancesin which the learner is truly interact-ing with a monolingual speaker ofthe target language, offering key vo-cabulary in the Ll if the learner doesnot know the necessary word in thetarget language is a valid strategythat can often lead to a successful in-teraction if the interlocutor can un-derstand the word from the contextor recognize it as a cognate.

CONCLUSIONThis study has examined sev-

eral aspects of Novice-Level dis-course in an attempt to describesome of the distinguishing patternsand to gain a better understanding ofthe language being produced by the

3 8

majority of students in foreign lan-guage classrooms today. A look atthe cohesive devices used by theselearners shows that, despite limitedlinguistic resources, Novice-Levelspeakers do attempt to produce co-hesive discourse, and, as proficiencyincreases, so does the use of cohesivedevices. At the NL level, for exam-ple, referential cohesive deviceswere not used at all, while at the NHlevel there were 32 instances of pro-noun usage. The data also showedthat learners did not readily transfertheir Li rules regarding pronoun us-age, but, from an early stage, theywere able to exploit the pro-drop as-pect of Spanish to create cohesivediscourse through topic continuity.The NM level was characterized bythe greatest use of pro-drop. Thischaracteristic is seen perhaps be-cause, at the NH level, learners arebeginning to construct and imple-ment their L2 syntactic systems andare more likely to supply pronounsfor clarification, or because they areusing less imitative or memorizedspeech, and they fall back on Ll rulesto help them construct original ut-terances in the L2.

The data also show that, as pro-ficiency increases, learners achievegreater cohesion in their discourseby attempting to use more conjunc-tions and other lexical items such astambién 'also.' Again, the use ofthese devices was most evident atthe NH level because learners at thelower levels of proficiency rarelyproduced utterances of sufficientcomplexity to include conjunctionsor other lexical devices. Even at theNH level, however, the discoursewas often redundant because begin-ning learners have limited linguistic


tools at their disposal to create cohe-sion. Well-timed instructional em-phasis at the NH level on a widervariety of features that learnersmight incorporate into their oralproduction could be effective inhelping learners achieve greater co-hesion in their discourse.

Scaffolding and negotiationwere found to be two important as-pects of Novice-Level discourse.Only at the NM and NH levels didthe learners make any attempts toinitiate the topic or take control ofthe dialogue, and on the few occa-sions when this did occur, the learn-ers were hesitant and uncomfortablein this role. It would be valuable toimplement tasks in the foreign lan-guage classroom that would forcelearners to direct the conversation sothat they could gain practice in thisimportant discourse skill as well.

The four interactional featuresthat were examined in the studywere clarification requests, compre-hension checks, repetition, and ex-pansions. The data support Ellis'finding that the occurrence of thesefeatures varies with level of profi-ciency. Thus, self-repetitions de-creased as proficiency increased,while clarification requests andcomprehension checks increasedwith proficiency. The data show thatthe use of these features at the Nov-ice level is crucial to building thevertical constructions that allow for

exchanges of meaning. Conse-quently, negotiation at the Novicelevel is principally concerned notwith issues of grammar, but ratherwith the vocabulary necessary to es-tablish the topic.

There are times in the data,however, where negotiation fails tooccur. Often this happens becausethe learner uses the Ll or opts out ofthe conversation by remaining si-lent. Classroom discussion concern-ing the importance of negotiationand explicit instruction in variousnegotiation techniques could helplearners become more adept at man-aging situations in which they en-counter L2 breakdown and improvetheir chances for successful commu-nication. The interviewer's willing-ness to direct the dialogue and helpout when problems arise was alsofound to be crucial to successful in-teraction. When the interviewer isnot willing to cooperate in the nego-tiation, the possibility of creatinggenuine conversation is limited, andthe learners are less able to demon-strate their full potential in the tar-get language.

From these findings, it is nowpossible to revise the Novice-LevelACTFL proficiency guidelines to in-clude discourse features. I wouldpropose that the following descrip-tions be added to the ACTFL guide-lines:

Proposed Additions to ACTFL Novice Oral Guidelines

Novice-Low: Learner does not attempt to initiate topic or control con-versation and frequently opts out of conversation by re-maining silent. Discourse rarely includes cohesive de-vices. Interaction at this level is characterized by much


self-repetition and repetition of the other and the rare useof clarification requests or comprehension checks. The L1is used frequently to repair and elaborate and in times ofL2 breakdown.

Novice-Mid: Learner makes occasional hesitant attempts to initiatetopic. Negotiation is primarily concerned with vocabulary.Clarification requests and comprehension checks arecommon. Few referential and conjunctional cohesive de-vices are used, but learner demonstrates a good under-standing of pro-drop.

Novice-High: Learner makes more attempts to control dialogue andnominate topic, but negotiation for key vocabulary is criti-cal for success. Interaction is characterized by fewer repeti-tions and many clarification requests and comprehensionchecks. Referential, conjunctional, and a few lexical cohe-sive devices are used more frequently, but the learner'srepertoire is limited. Pronouns are frequently included.

This study has focused primar-ily on discourse aspects of Novice-Level oral production. While de-scriptions of these discourse featuresare an important first step, there isstill a need for additional studiesthat examine other aspects of Nov-ice-Level speech, such as grammar,phonology, and syntax. Such studiesare crucial if we are to develop level-appropriate testing and teachingtechniques. This endeavor should bea priority in the research on oral pro-ficiency so that we can better servethe needs and abilities of all foreignlanguage learners.

REFERENCESAmerican Council on the Teaching

of Foreign Languages. (1986).ACTFL proficiency guidelines. InH. Byrnes & M. Cana le (Eds.), De-fining and developing profi-ciency: Guidelines, implementa-

4 0

tions and concepts (pp. 123-124).The ACTFL Foreign LanguageEducation Series. Lincolnwood,IL: National Textbook Co.

Bearden, R. (1997). Discourse fea-tures of beginning learners' oralproduction: What can we expect?Unpublished manuscript, Uni-versity of Texas at Austin.

Buck, K. (Ed.). (1989). ACTFL oralproficiency tester training man-ual. Yonkers, NY: AmericanCouncil on the Teaching of For-eign Languages.

Bragger, J. (1985). Materials devel-opment for the proficiency-oriented classroom. In C. James(Ed.), Foreign language profi-ciency in the classroom and be-yond (pp. 79-122). The ACTFLForeign Language Education Se-ries. Lincolnwood, IL: NationalTextbook Co.


Byrnes, H. (1987). Features of prag-matic and sociolinguistic compe-tence in the oral proficiency in-terview. In A. Valdman (Ed.),Proceedings of the Symposiumon the Evaluation of ForeignLanguage Proficiency (pp. 167-177). Bloomington, IN: Univer-sity of Indiana.

Ellis, R. (1985). Teacher-pupil inter-action in second language devel-opment. In S. Gass & C. Madden(Eds.), Input in second languageacquisition (pp. 69-85). Cam-bridge, MA: Newbury House.

Gass, S., & Varonis, E. (1994). Input,interaction and second languageproduction. Studies in SecondLanguage Acquisition, 16 (3), 283-302.

Hatch, E. (1978). Discourse analysisand second language acquisition.In E. Marcussen Hatch (Ed.), Sec-ond language acquisition: A bookof readings (pp. 401-436). Rowley,MA: Newbury House.

Heilenman, L., & Kaplan, I. (1985).Proficiency in practice: The for-eign language curriculum. In C.James (Ed.), Foreign languageproficiency in the classroom andbeyond (pp. 55-78). The ACTFLForeign Language Education Se-ries. Lincolnwood, IL: NationalTextbook Co.

Higgs, T., & Clifford, R. (1982). Thepush toward communication. InT. Higgs (Ed.), Curriculum, com-petence, and the foreign language

4

teacher (pp. 57-80). Skokie, IL: Na-tional Textbook Co.

Omaggio, A. (1986). Teaching lan-guages in context. Boston: Heinle& Heinle.

Pavlou, P. (1994). The role of cohe-sion in communicative compe-tence as exemplified in oral profi-ciency testing. Paper presented atthe Language Testing ResearchColloquium, Washington, D.C.

Perdue, C., & Klein, W. (1992). Whydoes the production of somelearners not grammaticalize?Studies in Second Language Ac-quisition, 14 (3), 259-272.

Pica, T. (1987). Second language ac-quisition, social interaction, andthe classroom, Applied Linguis-tics, 8 (1), 3-21.

Pica, T. (1994). Research on negotia-tion: What does it reveal aboutsecond language learning condi-tions, processes, and outcomes?Language Learning, 44 (3), 493-527.

Platt, E., & Brooks, F. (1994). The"acquisition-rich environment"revisited. Modern LanguageJournal, 78 (4), 497-511.

Valdman, A., & Phillips, J. (1977).Pidginization, creolization, andelaboration of learner systems.Studies in Second Language Ac-quisition, 1 (1), 21-40.

A Discourse Approach to the Assessment of Foreign Language OralProficiency

DALE APRIL KOIKE, The University of Texas at AustinFANNY HINOJOSA, Universidad AutOnoma de Nuevo Leon, Monterrey

This study examines the varying degrees to which learners of Spanish atthe Intermediate and Advanced levels use paragraph-like structure intheir answers during a simulated oral proficiency examination. W ecompare the structure of the data to a model template that reflects theorganization of most Advanced-level learners for this task. An analysisreveals that the Advanced learners in the study provide more proposi-tions and supporting statements to complete the paradigm, closely fol-lowing the proposed model. The Intermediate testees provide fewerpropositions and supporting statements and either do not complete theparadigm or begin to diverge from their original intent. The less profi-cient speakers usually work at the level of the single proposition withsingle supporting statement, and they use other strategies to attempt tocompensate for their deficiencies. We propose that the template ap-proach be used in the assessment of foreign language oral proficiency inthe classroom, since it can reveal more of the global expression of ideas,as opposed to the evaluation of discrete items such as verb conjugationand agreement errors.

INTRODUCTIONThe focus on communicative activities in the foreign language class-

room that allow learners to use the target language in meaningful, interac-tive, and engaging ways has made a profound impact on the way classes aretaught, on expectations on the part of teachers and learners, on the contentand format of textbooks, and on the organization of class time and environ-ment. It has inspired a change in the way we assess language proficiency in aglobal sense, seen for example in the American Council on the Teaching ofForeign Languages (ACTFL) Oral Proficiency Interview. What is still lackingis a reliable, valid, and time- and cost-efficient form of testing that can be usedin the foreign language classroom and that truly reflects the communicativegoals that are set out for the learners.

A proficiency test is not particularly useful for course assessment becauseit is not bound to the curriculum and does not "cover a pre-established bodyof content assigned beforehand" (Higgs, 1987, p. 284). Its purpose is to measurea testee's performance against what a native speaker might be expected to sayin the same situation. Higgs states that the proficiency test is not an appropri-ate tool for rank ordering a group of students, since the ratings representranges of performance and cannot be used productively to make fine distinc-tions seen in grading systems in this country. The interviewer notes patternsof strengths and weaknesses instead of individual right or wrong answers.


This type of test format is not in-tended to examine discrete points,but rather integrative efforts to ex-press a meaningful whole message.

Teachers can also use anachievement test, which covers anexplicit, finite amount of contentand is intended to rank the studentswho take the exam. The typicalachievement test tends to target dis-crete points of grammar and vocabu-lary, but the problem, as Higgs states,is that "the emphasis in achieve-ment tests is almost always exclu-sively on form rather than function,on being correct rather than havingsomething interesting, important, ortrue to say" (p. 283). Certainly it isthe goal of the classroom test tocover what is taught. In a skill-focused class such as an advancedconversation course, what is taughtis a number of ways in which learn-ers can improve their fluency in thespeaking skill, whether the im-provement be in terms of vocabu-lary, grammar, organization, or sim-ply increased opportunity to speak inthe target language. The ultimategoal is an increase in overall profi-ciency, which is difficult to pinpointin terms of an achievement test.

Another option is the"prochievement test," a hybrid testthat elicits discrete points of gram-mar and vocabulary within the con-text of some kind of oral interviewformat. It is our belief that such atest, as currently defined, is not theanswer for the conversation course.The prochievement test, at least asdescribed by Hendrickson (1992), isstill achievement oriented in that itis not aimed at assessing a body ofdiscourse in a holistic way, since thefocus is still on whether or not a tes-

tee uses a given set of items in re-sponding to a stimulus.

We will describe in this study amethod of assessment of ongoingdevelopment for the upper-levelSpanish conversation course, acourse in which the focus is the or-ganization of learner's discourse. Wewill show that, by looking at thestructure of the discourse, one cansee the learner's production in amore constructive, top-down, per-formance-based way, and the morediscrete points of grammar are con-textualized in meaningful commu-nication.

To this end, we present our re-search questions, data from varioustestees at the Intermediate and Ad-vanced levels, and an analysis ofthese data. We conclude with somesuggestions for oral proficiency as-sessment in the advanced conversa-tion class.

RESEARCH QUESTIONSThe questions addressed in this

study are the following:

1. What differences are seen in dis-course structure produced byvarious learners at Intermediateand Advanced levels of Spanishproficiency on a simulated oralproficiency exam?

2. What is the applicability of astructure-focused oral proficiencyexam for classroom purposes?

METHODOLOGY OF DATACOLLECTION

To answer these questions, datawere collected from an oral profi-ciency test used in an advancedSpanish conversation course. The

4,9

Discourse Approach

following is a description of the testinstrument, the testees, and the datacollection and analysis procedure.

The Test InstrumentThe data for this study are

drawn from a practice simulated oralproficiency exam administered in alanguage laboratory at the end of asemester-long advanced Spanishconversation course aimed at pre-paring potential Spanish languageteachers of the elementary and highschool levels to take the SpanishTexas Oral Proficiency Test (TOPT).This test is required of all prospec-tive elementary and secondary Span-ish and bilingual education teachersin the state of Texas, and they mustbe rated according to their perform-ance on the test at the Advancedlevel to pass and receive certificationto teach. The practice tests, given inthe Spanish-American variety ofSpanish, were created to simulate asclosely as possible the content, func-tions, and format of the TOPT(Stansfield, 1993; Stansfield & Ken-yon, 1992). A difference between thepractice and live TOPT that shouldbe noted is that, on the practice tests,testees are usually given 2 minutesto answer each question, approxi-mately 30 seconds more than on thetypical Advanced-level question.

This study focuses on onestimulus that presumably requiresmore linguistic skill than others andis considered to be of the Advancedlevel: specifically, that of comparingadvantages and disadvantages. Suc-cessful performance on this task isconsidered to be indicative of theAdvanced level of proficiency ac-cording to the ACTFL Guidelines.

to Oral Proficiency Assessment 35

The actual stimulus used is givenbelow:

Stimulus:While talking with some of yourfriends in Mexico, one of themsays that people should use bicy-cles as their major means oftransportation, while anotherfriend says that motorcycleswould solve many problems.Then the others present turn toyou. Present your position logi-cally by comparing advantagesand disadvantages of the bicy-cle/motorcycle issue. (20-secondpause) (Prompt: iY iQuecrees? 'And what do you think?')

As in the original version ofthe TOPT, testees heard the teststimuli in English over a headset inindividual language laboratorybooths and recorded their answers inSpanish onto individual audio cas-sette tapes. The tapes were graded bythe instructor for features such asfluency, grammar, vocabulary, andappropriateness of language, butmainly for organization, as part ofthe final grade for the course.

TesteesSince the 24 testees were stu-

dents enrolled in a course designedto prepare them to take the TOPT,one can assume that, at the point inthe course at which data were col-lected, these testees were moreskilled at taking this kind of testthan the average testee. All the tes-tees in this study were estimated tobe at least at the Intermediate levelof oral proficiency, according to theACTFL Guidelines (1997). Each

4 4,


learner was screened for an ap-proximate proficiency level andother background factors (for exam-ple, true intent to take the TOPT) bythe instructor before being allowedto register for the course. The groupincluded six Hispanic Americans,two of whom were estimated to be atthe Advanced level.

The course these learners wereenrolled in focused on helping themprepare for the TOPT by working onrhetorical structure and organiza-tional skills, and, most of all, by prac-ticing the language functions andthe format of the test. The learnerstypically were very motivated towork hard in the class and took thetesting procedures seriously sincethey needed to pass the TOPT in or-der to qualify for a teaching job.

Data Collection and AnalysisIn order to look at the organiza-

tion of the discourse produced by thetestees, we compared their responsesto two models of how a logical, top-down organizational structure ofpropositions and supporting state-ments might appear in the task ofcomparing advantages and disad-vantages. These models were com-piled from our overall impression ofwhat many native speakers of Span-ish do to complete this task, andwhat most Advanced and AdvancedHigh speakers appear to be attempt-ing to do when they answer underthese test conditions.

Table 1 illustrates both of thetwo models. Table 1A shows a listingstrategy, by which the testee listsseveral advantages and disadvan-tages of a given referent before doingthe same for the second referent.The supportive statements in paren-

theses indicate possible examplesand other elaboration for thosepoints. Table 1B provides a contrast-ing strategy, by which the testeegives the advantages of a referentand follows with a contrastivestatement of the disadvantages ofthe other referent. Then the testeegives the advantages of the secondreferent and follows with anothercontrastive statement of the disad-vantages of the first referent. In bothmodels the paradigm of giving bothadvantages and disadvantages iscompleted, followed by a statementof the testee's opinion as to whichreferent is perceived as better. Onecan assume that the more the testeescomplete the paradigm in a logicalprogression, give points of compari-son or contrast, and support thosepoints with examples and otherelaboration, the more complete andwell presented the discourse will be.One can also assume that the abilityto do this is linked to proficiency inthe target language.

The transcription of each tes-tee's response was analyzed with re-spect to the presentation of a topicsentence, advantages and disadvan-tages with supporting statements,and other elaboration, as well as anyconcluding remarks. Each of the in-vestigators completed her ownanalysis of the data, which was thencompared to the other's. Discrepan-cies were discussed after all datawere analyzed.

RESULTSWe begin our presentation of

the results with sample replies fromthree testees who illustrate differentlevels of responses, followed by abrief discussion of what we found in

45

Discourse Approach to Oral Proficiency Assessment 37

Table 1Models of Propositional Organization for Comparing

Advantages and Disadvantages

Model 1A - Listing Strategy

Topic sentence: Being a woman has advantages and disadvantages over beinga man

Advantage 1 of X: Women are more intelligentAdvantage 2 of X: Women are more sensitive

Disadvantage 1 of X: Women are not as physically strong(Support: You don't see as many women in professions requiring

physical strength)Disadvantage 2 of X:

Advantage 1 of Y: Men are strong and tend to be more assertive.Advantage 2 of Y: Men are more independent.

(Support: They get to do more because they don't feel so dependent onothers to act)

Disadvantage 1 of Y: Men are not as intelligent.Disadvantage 2 of Y:

Conclusion: It is more advantageous to be a woman.

Model 1B - Contrastive Strategy

Topic sentence: Being a woman has advantages and disadvantages over beinga man

Advantage 1 of X: Women are more intelligentAdvantage 2 of X: Women are more sensitive

Disadvantage 1 of Y: Men are insensitiveDisadvantage 2 of Y: Men think they know everything

Advantage 1 of Y: Men are physically stronger(Support: Men can lift heavy things)

Advantage 2 of Y: Men are more independent

Disadvantage 1 of X: Women are not as physically strongDisadvantage 2 of X: Women take too long to get ready in the morning

Conclusion: Still, it's more advantageous to be a woman than a man.


them as compared to our models.We then discuss categories seen inthe corpus as a whole and concludewith some implications for class-room use.

According to the structuralquality of responses to the rather dif-ficult test item, the testees were di-

vided into three general groups:very complete answers, fairly com-plete, and skeletal, with discrepan-cies noted within each of the groups.An example of a very complete an-swer is that of Grace, as shown inExample 1:

Example 1. Grace's Reply: Comparing Advantages and Disadvantages [2]:

1 Grace: Pienso que, usando una bicicleta o una motocicleta los dos tienen, aventajas y desventajas.

2 Una mayor, aventaja para la bicicleta pienso es que, la bicicleta es muy bien para el ambiente.

3 El bicicleta no, no sale, no: saca humo ni nada y es, eso es muy bien. Y pienso que también la bici-

4 cleta es bien para, para hacer ejercicios0. ( Uh, una: aventaja para la motocicleta, sera., seria

5 que, ((sniff)) es muy pequena, y no, neceno: (0.5) tiene, no es tan grande como tin carro. Pero una

6 desventaja de: la motocicleta es que no es bien para el ambiente. Y las motocicletas hacen mucho

7 ruido. Pienso yo que, la mejor idea seria usar una bicicleta porque, la bicideta >pienso que

8 tiene< mas, aventajas, que la, que la motocicleta.>La bicicleta te puede dar< ejercicios, (0.5) te

9 puede Ilevar a muchos lugares una, una desventaja de la bicicleta a lo mejor seria que, el tiempo.

10 Que en una moticicleta llegarias en tin lugar como en diez minutos, pero por bicicleta a lo mejor,

11 (0.5) necesvas a necesitar más tiempo, para llegar adonde necesitas llegar y, a lo mejor si hace

12 mucho calor afuera, vas a sudar y, a lo mejor eso no es, no es una manera de, de, transportacion

13 para Ud. So: pienso que a lo mejor la motocicleta sera, una: (0.3) tengtenga una aventaja para

14 las personas que necesitan llegar a lugares, con aprisa o no, o no necesita-o no tienen que, no

15 tienen el tiempo para, para gastar en una bicicleta.

'I think that, using a bicycle or a motorcycle the two have, advantages and dis-advantages. A greater, advantage for the bicycle I think is that, the bicycle isvery fine for the environment. The bicycle doesn't, doesn't leave, doesn't letout smoke or anything and it is, that is very fine. I think that also the bicycleis fine for, for doing exercise. Uh, an, advantage for the motorcycle, will be,would be, is it's very small, and doesn't nee-doesn't have, isn't as big as a car.But a disadvantage of, the motorcycle is that it isn't fine for the environment.

4 rit


And motorcycles make a lot of noise. I think that, the best idea would be touse a bicycle because, the bicycle I think that it has more, advantages, than the,than the motorcycle. The bicycle can give you exercises, can take you to manyplaces a, a disadvantage of the bicycle probably would be that, the time. Thaton a motorcycle you would arrive to a place like in ten minutes, but by bicycleprobably, you neeyou are going to need more time, to arrive where youneed to arrive and, probably if it's very hot outside, you're going to sweat and,probably that isn't, isn't a means of of transportation for you. So, I think thatprobably the motorcycle will be, a, maymay have an advantage for the peo-ple who need to get to places, hurriedly or not, or don't neeor don't have to,don't have the time to, to waste on a bicycle.' [3]

Table 2 shows a structuralanalysis of Grace's response. Num-bers represent the order in which themain 'propositions appeared, whilethe words in parentheses representelaborations or supporting state-ments. Grace gave a general, organ-izing statement at the beginning ofher reply, stated several advantagesand disadvantages for both bicycles

and motorcycles, contrasting posi-tive and negative points, and pro-vided several supporting statements.She was also able to make a summa-rizing statement in her final sen-tence (Lines 13-15). Grace's discourseapproximates the model given inTable 1B (Contrastive Strategy) forcomparing advantages and disad-vantages.

Table 2Grace's Propositional Organization for Comparing


Topic sentence: Los dos tienen aventajas y desventajas 'Both have advantagesand disadvantages'

Advantage 1 of bicycles: No saca humo 'It doesn't let off smoke'

Advantage 2 of bicycles: Es bien para hacer ejercicios 'It's fine for doing ex-ercise'

Advantage 1 of motorcycles: Es muy pequeria (No es tan grande como uncarro) 'It's very small (It isn't as big as a car)'

Disadvantage 1 of motorcycles: No es bien para el ambiente 'It is not finefor the environment'

Disadvantage 2 of motorcycles: Hacen mucho ruido. 'They make a lot ofnoise'

(Continued)

4 S


Table 2 (Continued)

Topic sentence 2: La bicicleta tiene más aventajas que la motocicleta 'The bicy-cle has more advantages than the motorcycle'

Advantage 3 of bicycles: Te puede llevar a muchos lugares 'It can take youto many places'

Disadvantage 1 of bicycles: E/ tiempo. (Vas a necesitar más tiempo) 'Thetime (You are going to need more time)'

Disadvantage 2 of bicycles: Vas a sudar. 'You're going to sweat'

Conclusion: Motocicleta tenga una aventaja para las personas que necesitanllegar a lugares con aprisa 'Motorcycle has an advantage for the peoplewho need to get to places in a hurry'

Let's look now at Example 2, the tive of the "fairly complete" group,response by a student named Mary but one not as tightly structured aswho provided a good reply, reflec- that of Grace's:

Example 2. Mary's Reply for Comparing Advantages and Disadvantages:

1 Mary: Ento:nces, uh, >mis arnigos<, creo que, uh, la bicicleta es, es la solución, uh, mejor, para el

2 problema de viajar. Porque, uh, creo que la bicicleta? Uh, no da, uh más palus, polución, a la

3 ciudad, en Mexico, y, urn el, la, motocicleta, si, urn da, la, polucion, urn, el. Aunque la bila mo-

4 tocicleta es, es mis rápido, urn, para viajar, la (bicicleta (no requiere, uh, no requiere tiempo o

5 dinero, o demasiado tiempo o dinero para arreglar y para segurar que, uh, esti funcionada, uh,

6 todo el tiempo. Urn (0.5) uh, (0.5) ra-me gusta la bicicleta más, uh, >creo que< la bicicleta uh, es,

7 la, uh, es la selecciOn, uh, mejor para una ciudad como ésa? Uh. Y, urn, (2 sec.) Y uh, necesitamos

8 pensar en que, uh, en que más razones para eso. Urn, ((laugh)) uh, la polución y la arreglacion,

9 urn, y uh. También la bicicleta da mis ejercicio, urn, a la persona que rnonta? Que lo monta? La

10 monta. Um, y la motocicleta no da, uh, ejercicio porque en la motocicleta, uh, solarnente uh, so-

11 larnente: una persona se sienta, en eso.

4 9


'So, uh, my friends, I think that, uh, the bicycle is, is the, uh, better, solution,for the problem of traveling. Because, uh, I think that the bicycle? Uh, doesn'tgive, uh, more pollupollution, to the city, in Mexico, and um the, the mo-torcycle, does, um, give, the, pollution, urn, the. Although the bithe motor-cycle is, is faster, urn, for traveling, the bicycle, doesn't require, uh, doesn't re-quire time or money, or too much time or money to fix and to be sure that,uh, it is working, uh, all the time. Urn, uh, II like the bicycle more, uh, Ithink that, the bicycle uh, is, the, uh, is the best, uh, option for a city like thisone? Uh. And urn. And uh, we need to think about, uh, about more reasonsfor this. Urn, (laughter), uh, the pollution and the fixing, um, and uh. Alsothe bicycle gives more exercise, urn, to the person who rides? Who rides it?Rides it. Urn, and the motorcycle doesn't give, uh, exercise because on themotorcycle, uh, just, uh, a person just sits, on it.'

Mary's sample, formulatedmore in terms of stating and sup-porting an opinion than listing ad-vantages and disadvantages, showsmuch repetition, very little elabora-tion, no disadvantages for bicycles,and no concluding statement. Thelack of a concluding statement, how-ever, was not uncommon in the re-sponses. Because the testees had only2 minutes to speak and were cut offwhen the time limit was reached,and because most were not watchinga clock while speaking, but insteadwere concentrating on their re-sponses, few actually produced acomplete "paragraph" in terms ofhaving a beginning and an end.

If one looks at the way in whichMary changed the task to that of giv-ing and supporting an opinion,however, it is evident that she wasaware that she needed to support heropinion with reasons (Lines 7-11). Inother words, she demonstrated herknowledge of an organizationalstructure, albeit for a different task,but had trouble filling it in. Thus,Mary's paradigm is not that of ourproposed model for comparing ad-vantages and disadvantages. Sheperformed well in the organiza-tional structure of her points, but ac-cording to a different model with adifferent function, that of stating andsupporting an opinion, as shown inTable 3.

Table 3Mary's Propositional Organization for Comparing


Topic sentence: La bicicleta es la solución mejor para el problema de viajar'The bicycle is the best solution for the problem of traveling'

(Continued)


Table 3 (Continued)

Advantage 1 of bicycle: La bicicleta no da más polución 'The bicycle doesn'tgive more pollution'

Disadvantage 1 of motorcycle: La motocicleta si da la polución 'The motor-cycle does give pollution'

Advantage 1 of motorcycle: La motocicleta es más rcipido 'The motorcycleis faster'

Advantage 2 of bicycle: La bicicleta no requiere tiempo o dinero 'The bicy-cle doesn't require time or money'

Conclusion (?): Me gusta la bicicleta más 'I like the bicycle more'

--Necesitamos más razones 'We need more reasons'

Advantage 3 of bicycle: La bicicleta da más ejercicio 'The bicycle gives moreexercise'

Disadvantage 2 of motorcycle: La motocicleta no da ejercicio 'The motorcy-cle doesn't give exercise'(Una persona solamente se sienta) ('A personjust sits')

Conclusion: --

The response from Deb (Ex-ample 3), who is a much less profi-cient speaker than the other two, il-lustrates a much more fragmentedand less cohesive structure, typical ofthe "skeletal group," as seen in Table4.

Deb's reply for comparing ad-vantages and disadvantages beginswith two general statements thatwere probably intended to contrastwith each other, but do not do so(Lines 1-3). They seemingly organize

Example 3. Deb's Reply for Comparing Advantages and Disadvantages

1 Deb: Bueno (1.0). Hay dos, dos cosas. Uno es que, que la gente debe montar, a una: bicicleta, para:

2 para: transla transportat-ción,0 uh, y: otro es, los motocicletas son mejores, o mejor manera,

3 una mejor, una mejora manera, de, de, de (0.5) transporte, de transportacion. Y, y creo que,


4 que, los, las bicicletas son más sanas para el ambiente. Y, y: no hacen, humo, ni nada en en el

5 aire. Y, eso es una, buen caracteristica porque: estamos en Mejen la ciudad de Mexico, donde: el

6 humo y todo de: de la industria es, (0.5) uh, malisima. Y: los motocicletas, uh, tienen, tienen,

7 ventajas? Y desventajas también. Las ventajas son que: que es una: (0.2) un, un tipo, una tipa de

8 transportación más rápida, y toda la gente puede: puede uh, (0.5) movar o, o, (0.5) si, más

9 rápida. Más rápido. Y, la, la otra cosa es que: la gente no suda, cuando, cuando monta una moto-

10 cicleta. En, en una bicicleta si, todos sudan. Y ésa es una, una, buen, buena aventaja, para todos

11 los que trabajen.

'Well. There are two, two things. One is that, that people should ride, a bicy-cle, for, for, transtransportation, uh, and, the other is, motorcycles are bet-ter, or a better means, a better, a better means, of, of, of, transport, of transpor-tation. And, and I think that, that, the, the bicycles are healthier for the envi-ronment. And, and, they don't make, smoke, or anything in the air. And, thatis a, good characteristic because, we are in Mex-, in Mexico City, where, thesmoke and all of, of the industry is, uh, really bad. And, the motorcycles, uh,have, have, advantages? And disadvantages too. The advantages are that, thatit is a, a type, a type of faster transportation, and all the people can, can uh,move or, or, yes, more quickly. More quickly. And the, the other thing is that,people don't sweat, when, when they ride a motorcycle. On, on a bicycle yes,everyone sweats. And that is a, a good, good advantage, for all of those whowork.'

Table 4Deb's Propositional Organization for Comparing


Topic sentence: Hay dos cosas: (a) la gente debe montar una bicicleta paratransportación; (b) los motocicletas son mejor manera de transportación'There are two things: (a) people should ride a bicycle for transportation;(b) motorcycles are a better means of transportation'

Advantage 1 of bicycles: Son más sanas para el ambiente 'They are health-ier for the environment'(No hacen humo) ('They don't make smoke')(Es una buen caracteristica porque estamos en la ciudad de Mexico) ('It

is a good characteristic because we are in Mexico City')(Continued)


Table 4 (Continued)

Topic sentence 2: Los motocicletas tienen ventajas y desventajas también.'Motorcycles have advantages and disadvantages also'

Advantage 1 of motorcycles: Una tipa de transportación más rcipida. 'Akind of faster transportation'(La gente puede movar mfis rtipida) ('People can move more quickly')(La gente no suda) ('People don't sweat')

Disadvantage 1 of bicycles: Todos sudan 'Everyone sweats'

[Referring to Advantage 1 of motorcyles above] Esa una buena aventajapara todos los que trabajen. 'It is a good advantage for all those whowork'

Conclusion: ----

the answer by stating the two pointsshe wants to elaborate. She does givedetails on why people should ridebicycles (Lines 3-6), but instead ofelaborating on why motorcycles are abetter means of transportation, shegoes on to say that they have advan-tages and disadvantages (Lines 6-7).She only states the advantages, how-ever. She shows a notion of struc-ture in her reply, but the content ofher answer, what she actually says interms of propositions, interfereswith the unity of the sample, mak-ing it difficult to follow. In additionto her structural problems, she re-veals a definite lack of key vocabu-lary and shows problems withagreement, which she self-corrects.All of these problems contribute toher difficulty in expressing manypropositions and supporting state-ments (see Table 4).

Thus, the three examples reflectdistinct levels of structural quality ofanswers in our data: complete, fairly

5 3

complete, and skeletal. The groupsare especially distinguishable whenmatched against an ideal model thatrepresents a complete and coherentreply and a top-down organization,as seen in Tables 1A and 1B.

After analyzing each responsefor the various elements of a topicsentence, propositions of advantagesand disadvantages, and supportingelaboration, as well as checking for achange of the task from that of com-paring advantages and disadvan-tages to that of giving and support-ing an opinion, we grouped samplesaccording to patterns that emerged.What we found was a continuum ofstructural differences that could becharacterized as shown in Table 5.These descriptions, still in variousstages of development, are based onthe models 1A and 1B we proposedearlier, and show where learners di-verge from them. We should notethat these categories should not beseen as tied to the ACTFL Guide-


lines. We have grouped them intothree classes, labeled High, Mid, andLow, with three subcategories withineach. On one end of the continuumwe see a very complete response, in-cluding topic sentence, advantagesand disadvantages of both referents,and a conclusion, all presented in alogical manner and approximatingone of our two models. Then, at theHigh- level we see a topic sentencebut fewer propositions than in theHigh+ and High-Mid levels. The tes-tee may also have changed the topicsentence from a statement that thereare advantages and disadvantages toa statement of an opinion aboutwhich one is better (for example,Hay muchas ventajas y desventajas,pero yo creo que la bicicleta es mej orpor varias razones 'There are manyadvantages and disadvantages, but Ithink that the bicycle is better for

various reasons'). The response,however, includes advantages anddisadvantages of both referents.

In the next two levels the tes-tees commonly change the task fromthat of comparing advantages anddisadvantages to that of giving andsupporting an opinion. This changein task is understandable if one con-siders that, by stating a preference forone referent, such as bicycles, the tes-tee can avoid having to account forthe advantages and disadvantages ofboth referents, thus simplifying thetask. In the Mid+ level, the task ischanged and the testees state propo-sitions actually supporting only oneside of an opinion. The Mid-Mid tes-tees give fewer advantages and dis-advantages, or only present eitheradvantages or disadvantages. Thereis a notable lack of development inthe ideas, so that the testee seems to

Table 5Characteristics of the Three Proficiency Levels and Their Sub-categories for Comparing Advantages and Disadvantages

High (More Complete)

High+ Has topic sentence, both advantages and disadvantages of eachreferent, and a conclusion, in a coherent and cohesive organiza-tion, closely following and completing an organizational model(as in 1A or 1B).

High-Mid Has topic sentence and several advantages and disadvantages, ina coherent presentation of ideas, following a partially completeorganizational model.

High- Has topic sentence and some advantages and disadvantages aregiven. One or two propositions may not fit tightly in a coherent

(Continued)

44-


Table 5 (Continued)

presentation of ideas. Possible change of task from comparison ofadvantages and disadvantages to stating and supporting an opin-ion.

Mid (Fairly Complete)

Mid+ Has topic sentence, but changes task to that of stating and sup-porting an opinion. Several propositions are given that reallysupport only one side of the argument.

Mid-Mid Has topic sentence, but changes task to that of supporting anopinion. Response not complete, either with too few proposi-tions expressing advantages and disadvantages or only a present-ing a few advantages or disadvantages. Lacks development of re-sponse either because of too much elaboration on only one ortwo points or extraneous material inserted that does not directlysupport the reply.

Mid- Has topic sentence but changes task to an opinion, with someadvantages and disadvantages that are not logical or consistentin their support of the opinion.

Low (More Skeletal)

Low+ Has topic sentence, but there are some incoherencies in the sam-ple, either in the statements of the advantages and disadvantagesor in the development of the response.

Low-Mid Has topic sentence, but answer is incomplete, with few advan-tages and disadvantages. Some statements are incoherent anddifficult to follow in logic. Language difficulties in vocabularyand grammar notably affect the ability to answer.

Low- May or may not have topic sentence. Answer is incomplete dueto difficulties in vocabulary and grammar, with perhaps onlyone advantage and/or disadvantage.

be simply listing. The Mid- levelgives some advantages and/or dis-advantages that do not support thetopic sentence well, so one sees here

55

the beginning of some problems oflogic and consistency.

Problems of logic and consis-tency are seen notably in the Lowlevel of testees. Difficulties with the

Discourse Approach

vocabulary and grammar definitelyaffect the testees' ability to answerthe stimuli at all. Some statementsare incoherent, and the logic of thepropositions is difficult to follow. Atthe low end of the continuum, theresponse may or may not have atopic sentence, and perhaps only oneor two propositions are stated in the2 minutes allotted.

Of the 24 included in this study,the testees were divided as shown inTable 6. Most of the testees placed inthe Mid level, and relatively few inthe Low level.

IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHINGGrading oral production is a

problem for all levels of foreign lan-guage teachers, especially at the


more advanced levels, where we of-ten encounter learners who havedifferent backgrounds and prior ex-periences with the target language.In a conversation course, the teacherfaces the problem of grading thelearners' achievement for thatcourse and not their level of profi-ciency, although the ultimate goal,which is not always attainable in asingle semester, is to see some gainin proficiency. If one grades oral pro-ficiency alone, then those studentswho have a relatively high level ofproficiency prior to taking thecoursefrom having traveledabroad or by heritage, for examplewill almost always demonstrate ahigher level of proficiency thanthose without such a background,

Table 6Divisions of the 24 Testees According to the Grading Criteria

High Mid Low

Level No. ofTestees

Level No. ofTestees

Level No. ofTestees

High+ 2 Mid+ 3 Low+ 2

High-Mid 4 Mid-Mid 6 Low-Mid 1

High- 2 Mid- 3 Low- 1

and they may not have to study forthe course at all. On the other hand,if one grades only on the attainmentof particular knowledge of thecourse content, then the teachercannot grade the test results in a ho-

listic manner. Often, this focus onparticular knowledge means that theteacher downplays the importance ofwhat the learners are actually sayingin their responses.


What we propose is that theadvanced conversation teacher gradefor both proficiency and achieve-ment. In some respects, we are pro-posing a new kind of prochievementtest, but not in the sense that thelearner must show knowledge ofdiscrete items. Instead, the learnermust demonstrate proficiency inperforming given functions, such ascomparing advantages and disad-vantages, in a cohesive, coherent,and organized manner. It follows,then, that, since course tests mustreflect what is taught, a large part ofthe learner's achievement should bemastery of organizational structure.This focus then implies that an im-portant component of the advancedconversation course be teachinggood organizational templates forthe tasks targeted at the Advancedand higher levels, such as those seenin the models of Tables 1A and 1B. Iflearners can be given a set of dis-course templates that they can relyon to fill in propositions and ifteachers listen for their skill in ap-plying those templates, then we be-lieve the learners will have betterguidance in producing top-downand, hopefully, fairly complete an-swers.

These templates can be easilylearned. In our course there was ade-emphasis of vocabulary specific toa given topic, since the TOPT con-fronts the learner with any topic re-lated in any general way to whatSpanish teachers in the U.S. wouldneed to know or say in their teach-ing. In a typical (non-TOPT) ad-vanced conversation course, how-ever, the teacher could also teachand test for specific vocabulary, suchas connective adverbials. We would

5 ri

hope, nevertheless, that discoursestructure be considered one of themost, if not the most, importantelement to be mastered in thecourse.

One may argue that these tem-plates are the same as those used inEnglish and, therefore, we are notteaching the learners anything new.Experience, as well as our data, how-ever, has shown that learners do notfollow these frameworks underpressure in the target language.Learning how to express a topic sen-tence in a foreign language is a chal-lenge, especially one that is clear andto the point of the question and thatpresents a good proposition for de-velopment.

Finally, we are proposing tomove the basis of testing for theconversation class to the level of thediscourse itself, thereby contextualiz-ing the vocabulary and discretegrammar points. Learners can pro-duce more coherent speech, andthose who already have a fairly goodoral proficiency upon entering thecourse can sound even more pol-ished and articulate. Our recom-mendation for a top-down struc-tured approach to discourse assess-ment is based on our encourage-ment of a top-down approach to thefour skills of listening comprehen-sion, reading, writing, and, as wehave discussed here, speaking.

NOTES1 One could argue that the logical

conclusion to a response compar-ing advantages and disadvan-tages is an opinion and, in fact,that is how the model answersconclude in 1A and 1B. The ques-tion in the stimulus itself ("What

Discourse Approach

do you think?") may also seem toelicit an opinion, despite the em-phasis on comparing advantagesand disadvantages. In such a per-spective, the organization wouldseem to be bottom-up, ratherthan top-down, with the opinionstated at the end. We point out,however, that an opinion is notthe objective of the task, and thatthis task is answered most suc-cessfully with a topic sentence atthe very beginning that guidesthe construction of the rest of theresponse. Moreover, testeesrarely have time to give a conclu-sion at the end of their response,a fact that would also argueagainst a bottom-up analysis.

2 The notations used in the tran-scriptions are those found inAtkinson and Heritage (1984).

3 These translations do not showerrors such as vocabulary oragreement errors.


REFERENCESAmerican Council on the Teaching

of Foreign Languages. (1997).ACTFL provisional revisedspeaking guidelines. Yonkers,NY: ACTFL.

Atkinson, M., & Heritage, J. (1989).Structures of social action. Cam-bridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.

Higgs, T. (1987). Oral proficiency test-ing and its significance for prac-tice. Theory into Practice, 26 (4),282-287.

Hendrickson, J. (1992). Creating lis-tening and speaking prochieve-ment tests. Hispania, 75 (5), 1326-1331.

Stansfield, C. (1993). An approach toperformance testing of oral lan-guage proficiency for bilingualeducation teacher certification.Proceedings of the Third Na-tional Research Symposium o nLimited English Proficiency Stu-dent Issues: Focus on middle andhigh school issues. Vol. 1. 187-215.

Stansfield, C., & Kenyon, D. (1992).Research on the comparabilityof the SOPI and the On Sys-tem, 20, 347-364.

5°

Acquisition of Spanish Definite Articles by English-SpeakingLearners of Spanish

MARiA RAMiREZ-MAYBERRY, The University of Texas at Austin

This study examines the stages of acquisition of Spanish definite articlesby two groups of English-speaking learners enrolled in their first semes-ter of Spanish. The approach taken was to analyze writing samples pro-duced by the groups at different times in the semester in order to acquirethe basis for a pseudo-longitudinal analysis of article usage. The maingoal was to expose the variability in their interlanguage system and topropose early developmental stages of acquisition of the articles by learn-ers of an introductory course. The results supported studies that postu-late a natural order of acquisition. The results also showed a relativelysignificant incidence of first-language (L1) transfer consistent with theweak form of the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis. The Ll interference,therefore, seems to be only one of many factors in the acquisition. Van-Patten's ideas on a natural order of acquisition and Ellis's InterlanguageTheory provided a frame for analyzing the results. The interaction ofseveral factors (simplification, communicative value, frequency of input,and first language transfer) proposed by VanPatten were useful in ac-counting for some of the stages of acquisition suggested in this study.

INTRODUCTIONResearch in the past two decades has supported claims of natural stages

in second language acquisition. These studies have provided evidence againstthe Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis, which states that all errors in a secondlanguage can be predicted by identifying the differences between the learner'snative language and the target language (Ellis, 1990). Morpheme studies of the1970s asserted that learners follow a certain order of acquisition regardless oflanguage background, age (Ellis, 1990), method, text, teacher, or even errorcorrection (VanPatten, 1987). More recent studies have illustrated moreclearly the developmental stages that learners pass through in their acquisi-tion of target grammatical structures. These studies have revealed patterns ofacquisition of morphemes such as the copulas ser/estar and the prepositionspor/para (VanPatten, 1987; Guntermann, 1992a and b; Ryan and Lafford, 1992;Lafford and Ryan, 1995). Other explanations, such as markedness (Rutherford,1982; VanPatten, 1987; Guntermann, 1992a and b; Perdue and Klein, 1992) andcognitive theories (Gass, 1988, 1994; VanPatten, 1989; Tomlin and Villa, 1994;Bialystok, 1994), have sought to explain what is known as the Natural Orderof Acquisition (VanPatten, 1987). One area that has been neglected, however,is the acquisition of Spanish definite articles by English-speaking learners.


The purpose of this study is toexamine the acquisition of Spanishdefinite articles by two groups ofEnglish-speaking learners, with par-ticular regard to the variability intheir interlanguage systems. Themain goal is to propose early devel-opmental stages of acquisition of thedefinite article by the learners. W eanalyze these acquisition patternsbased on Bickerton's (1975) "dynamicparadigm," a notion that "seeks todescribe exactly what learners do intheir developing interlanguage sys-tems rather than how closely theyapproximate the target" (Master,1988, P. 5). As Van Patten (1987, p.102) pointed out 10 years ago, "thereis a dearth of research detailing theacquisition or development of anyone particular syntactic or morpho-logical feature."

In light of these objectives, thisanalysis proposes to answer the fol-lowing questions:

1. What stages of acquisition ofSpanish definite articles can beperceived in the writing samplesof learners in their first semesterof Spanish study?

2. Does first language transfer in-fluence these developmental pat-terns?

3. If first language transfer does notoccur, what other factors may ac-count for these stages of acquisi-tion?

DATA COLLECTION [1]The data for answering these

questions were collected as describedbelow.

GO

SubjectsThe subjects consisted of two

groups of English-speaking learners:Group A included nine learners;Group B included ten. All learnerswere randomly chosen from a first-semester Spanish class.

InstrumentWriting samples of the two

groups were gathered in order toprovide the basis for a pseudo-longitudinal analysis of article usage.The writing samples were obtainedas follows:

1. Group A (9): Writing was col-lected after 5 weeks of classes.

2. Group B (10): Writing was col-lected after 15 weeks of classes(Final Exam).

It was not possible to obtaindata from the final exam of GroupA. For this reason, we collected thewriting samples from the final examof a different group, Group B. It isrecognized that this is a flaw in thedesign of the experiment. The re-sults, therefore, are intended as anindication of what one can expect tofind at this time period.

The writing assignment forGroup A has five parts. The firstfour parts consist of oral compre-hension exercises from which thelearners gather information to usein the fifth part, the actual writingassignment. For this part, the learnerwrites a letter home of about 100words. The writing assignment forGroup B is a letter of at least 120words in which the learners followthe description and instructions

Acquisition of Spanish Definite Articles 53

provided. This composition is partof the final exam, and there are n opreparatory exercises. See AppendixA for a more detailed description ofthe writing assignments for eachgroup of learners.

Each learner from each groupwas assigned a number from 1 to 10.A list of noun phrases was createdfor each learner. Each entry includedthe following information:

1. Time of data collection (5 weeksor Final)

2. The noun phrase being analyzedplus minimal context

3. The article used

4. The article required

This study analyzed only theusage of the definite articles(singular forms: el, la; plural forms:los, las). Therefore, all the phrasesproduced by the learners where theuse of a definite article is obligatoryin Spanish (T) were counted, andthose phrases in which the learnersincorrectly used definite articles (I)were included also. The expressionsthat contained a correct definite arti-cle were marked as "C." It should benoted that for the purpose of thisstudy, any form of the definite article(el, la, los, las) was counted as correcteven if it was used with the wrongnoun (for example, * el casa 'thehouse'). This decision was reachedbecause we are interested in thelearner's selection of definite articleover indefinite or zero article andnot whether the learner has learnedthe gender notion in the Spanishnoun phrase system. The total defi-

nite articles used, regardless ofwhether they were correctly or in-correctly provided (C + I), was la-beled "U." Phrases requiring a defi-nite article in which the learnersused a zero article instead were la-beled as "N."

Quantitative AnalysisThe method of analysis used in

this study was adapted from Mas-ter's (1988) study. The following no-tions were derived:

1. Correct in Obligatory Context(COC). To measure accuracybased on Master's proposed con-cept of "Supplied in ObligatoryContext," this figure indicates thenumber of correct definite articlesused (C), divided by the numberof correct obligatory contexts inwhich the article should be used(T).

2. Used in Obligatory Context(UOC). To analyze learner usage,as the "dynamic paradigm" sug-gests, we divide the number oftotal definite articles used (U) bythe number of obligatory contexts(T).

3. Incorrect in Nonobligatory Con-text (INOC). To obtain a com-plete picture of the usage of arti-cles by learners, we added this no-tion, which is the number of in-correctly supplied definite articles(I) divided by the total number ofdefinite articles used (U).

4. Needed in Obligatory Context(NOC). This value is the numberof definite articles needed (N) di-

6


vided by the number of correctobligatory contexts (T).

As Master (1988, P. 9) pointsout, these notions are necessary toshow how often definite articles arebeing used, regardless of accuracy,and with what degree of target-likeuse. Table 1 shows the variables andconcepts used in this study.

Qualitative AnalysisThis study analyzes the article

production from the point of viewof the relationship between formand function in discourse. We are

trying to reveal any hidden systema-tization (Ellis, 1990, p. 50) in whatseems an apparent variation of arti-cle production by learners. As men-tioned before, we follow Master's(1988) approach and analyze the datain terms of learner usage (dynamicparadigm) and target language accu-racy.

In our analysis, like that ofHuebner (1983), we omitted propernouns, idioms, and common expres-sions such as en verano/en el ver-ano 'in summer /in the summer',and en agosto 'in August,' which, heobserves, may be learned as formu-

COC

UOC

INOC

NOC

Table 1Definition of Terms

[Adopted from Master's (1988)]

Number of articles correctly used

Number of articles incorrectly used

Number of articles needed but not used

Total number of articles required (C + N)

Number of articles used (C + I)

Percentage of correct articles used (C/T * 100)

Percentage of total articles used (U/T * 100)

Percentage of incorrect articles used (I/U * 100)

Percentage of articles needed (N/T * 100)

Measures:Needed Not Needed

Used C INot Used N

6 2


lae. We included phrases such asen/por la mariana 'in the morning'and regresar a casa/regresar a la casa'come back home,' however, eventhough these expressions are alsolearned as formulae, because wefound some learners omitted the re-quired articles in these nounphrases, and we wanted to seek thepattern behind this usage.

RESULTSAnalysis of Data

We begin our analysis by calcu-lating the results per group. Tables2A and 2B present a summary of the

quantitative results. For Group A,we tallied a total of 104 obligatorycontexts. The accuracy registered was83%, with 86 articles correctly sup-plied and 18 places where the articleswere required but not provided (17%NOC). The group, however, sup-plied 19 extra articles not required(18% INOC). Group B had a total of90 correct obligatory contexts andprovided 92 definite articles (102%UOC, which is the same percentagefor Group A). The group's accuracy(COC) was 80%, a little lower thanthat of Group A. They supplied,however, more unnecessary definite

Table 2Distribution of Definite Article Usage

A. Group A

LEV STU T U C I N COC UOC INO-C

NOC

% % % %

Swk 1 5 2 2 0 3 40 40 0 60

2 18 21 17 4 1 94 117 19 6

3 3 1 1 0 2 33 33 0 67

4 8 6 6 0 2 75 75 0 25

5 22 22 19 3 3 86 100 14 14

6 13 14 12 2 1 92 108 14 8

7 13 12 10 2 3 77 92 17 23

8 10 10 9 0 1 90 100 0 10

9 12 18 10 8 2 83 150 44 17

104 106 86 19 18 83 102 18 17

6 3


Table 2Distribution of Definite Article Usage (Continued)

B. Group B

LEV STU T U C I N COC UOC INO-C

NOC

% % % %

Fin 1 3 3 2 1 1 67 100 33 33

2 13 12 11 1 2 85 92 8 15

3 5 6 5 1 0 100 120 17 0

4 7 10 7 3 0 100 143 30 0

5 4 4 2 2 1 50 100 50 25

6 9 16 9 7 0 100 177 44 0

7 12 10 7 3 5 58 83 30 42

8 15 11 11 0 4 73 73 0 27

9 10 7 6 1 4 60 70 14 40

10 12 13 12 1 0 100 108 8 0

90 92 72 20 17 80 102 22 19

articles (22% INOC) than Group A(18%); also, the number of definitearticles needed but not supplied pro-duced a slightly higher percentage inGroup B (19% NOC) than Group A(17% NOC).

Although the difference be-tween the results of Group A and Bdoes not seem to be significant, in-dividual results are revealing andsupportive of the tendencies ob-served in the general results. InGroup A, as we already have pointed

1 '

out, learners used fewer incorrectarticles in non-obligatory contextsthan Group B. It is interesting to seethat out of the nine learners fromGroup A, four of them did not sup-ply any extra incorrect articles (I),which means they have less overuseof articles than learners from GroupB. Among the other five, the num-ber of incorrect articles in non-obligatory contexts for all but onewas less than 20%. Only one learnerhad a higher percentage (44%). The


results from Group B are also reveal-ing. As noticed before, their numberof incorrect articles in non-obligatorycontexts as a group was slightlyhigher (22%). Their individual per-formances confirm these data: allbut one learner supplied extra arti-cles (I) not required, and five of thelearners showed percentages of 30%or more.

The results shown by the num-ber of articles required but not sup-plied support the tendencies noticedso far. Even though, as a group,learners from Group B seem to lackmore needed articles than do learn-ers from Group A (Group A had a17% NOC versus 19% from GroupB), a look at the individual tenden-cies shows a different picture: 4 outof 10 learners from Group B did notuse articles at all. The rest of thelearners of this group showed per-centages of 40% or less. The datafrom Group A learners show that allwere lacking articles that wereobligatory. Two of these learners, inparticular, showed underuse of arti-cles in obligatory contexts over 50%.

In general, then, the errors de-tected in the two groups seem to berelated to the difference of data col-lection times. The writing samplesof Group A show that learners, after5 weeks of dasses, tended to omit re-quired articles; meanwhile, the datacollected from Group B show a dif-ferent error after 15 weeks of classes,that of the overuse of articles, possi-bly due to the learners having en-tered a stage of experimentation afterthe longer exposure to Spanish.

Stages of AcquisitionThe analysis of the data suggests

that learners go through certain

stages in the acquisition of articles inSpanish. We propose the followingstages of acquisition shown in Ap-pendix B, although the stages andsuggested order are tentative. A truelongitudinal study must be done be-fore arriving at definite conclusions.

Stage 1. Omission of the Defi-nite Article. This stage is demon-strated by the omission of articleseven in formulaic expressions suchas en/por la mariana 'irt the morn-ing,' los sfibados 'on Saturdays,' etc.,regardless of the fact that similar ex-pressions are found in English (forexample, *Limpio el apartamentotodos dias maiiana 'I clean theapartment every day in the morn-ings').

This stage is supported by thefollowing observations: All learnersfrom Group A wrote sentences lack-ing a required article. Two of thoselearners failed to use required arti-cles more than 50% of the time. Incontrast, four learners from Group Bdid not have this problem at all (0%NOC), which means that they didnot produce sentences like *todosdias 'everyday' or *no me gustatrabajo 'I don't like my job.' Also, forno Group B learner did the percent-age of sentences that lacked requiredarticles exceed 42%.

Stage 2. Overuse of Articles(The los-Stage). In this stage, learnersuse definite articles in n on-obligatory contexts. This stage seemsto reflect an increased awareness ofarticles, because learners start tooveruse them.

Observations that support thisstage are the following: Group B had22% of incorrect articles in non-

6 5


obligatory contexts. All learnersfrom this group, with one exception,produced unnecessary articles (e.g.,*El estudiante necesite traer los bluejeans, los pantalones, las camisas, ylas camisetas. También necesite traerlos zapatos, las botas, y suéteres 'Thestudent needs to bring blue jeans,pants, shirts, and T-shirts. He alsoneeds to bring shoes, boots, andsweaters').

Group A had 18% of incorrectarticles in non-obligatory contexts.Four learners from this group didnot make this error (0% INOC). Allthis may be evidence that there is adirect correlation between the over-use of definite articles and the timeof data collection. Thus, as men-tioned before, as the learner is ex-posed to more Spanish, the inci-dence of overusing the articles in-creases, and learners supply articleseven in a context where English maynot require them (e.g., The learnerneeds to bring _blue jeans, _pants,etc.).

An additional observation isthat learners from both groupstended to overuse articles whenfaced with a string of nouns. Sixlearners from Group A producedstrings of nouns (list of classes or ofclothing), and five of them overusedthe definite article. All the learnersfrom Group B produced strings ofnouns, with six of them havingmore than one string. In particular,learners 4, 5, and 6, who producedtwo sets of strings each, had one setin which the definite articles wereoverused and one set in which otherarticles or a combination of definite,indefinite, and zero articles wasused. Learner 6, for example, wrote*El estudiante necesite traer los blue

6 6

jeans, los pantalones, las camisas, ylas camisetas. También necesite loszapatos, las botas y los suéteres 'Thestudent needs to bring blue jeans,pants, shirts and T-shirts. He alsoneeds to bring shoes, boots, andsweaters' but he also wrote: Los es-tudiante y yo jugamos 0 futbolAmericano, 0 beisbol, 0 tenis, y 0 fut-bol 'The students and I play football,baseball, tennis, and soccer.' It seemsthat learners from Group B began touse all of the articles more thanlearners from Group A in the sameenvironment of listing elements,which brings us to the next stage [2].

Stage 3. Vacillation. After over-using articles, learners seem to gothrough a period of inconsistency intheir selection of articles, called herea stage of experimentation. At first,they appear to choose articles(definite, indefinite, or zero article)at random; however, we noticed asubtle, systematic use of articles.Learners seem to make their ownrules of usage based on number, andonce they have made a rule, theyseem to follow it consistently in anygiven string. As with the previousstage, it is important to notice thatthis rule seems to apply when thelearners see a string of nouns.

The following are some of thepatterns detected:

1. Three learners of Group B useddefinite articles with pluralnouns and indefinite articleswith singular nouns. For exam-ple,

*. . . también el estudiante ne-cesita llevar los suéteres y unabrigo.


. also, the student needs tobring sweaters and a coat.'

2. One learner from Group Ashowed this tendency to usedefinite articles with pluralnouns as well, although he usedthe zero article with the singular.For example,

*Tomo 0 espariol, y 0 clase d enirios developmental, y lasmatimaticas, y las ciencias.'I am taking Spanish, child de-velopment, math, and sciences.'

3. One learner from Group B pre-ferred the zero article with plu-rals and definite with singulars.For example,

*Necesite dos pars de blujeans, 0 za-patos de tenis, la chaqueta, 0 bo-tas, y 0 suéteres, 0 faldas.'(She) needs two pairs of bluejeans, tennis shoes, a jacket,boots, sweaters, and skirts.'

4. One learner from Group B usedthe indefinite article for pluralsand singulars. For example,

Diga al estudiante traer unos pan-talones cortos y unas camisetaspara llevar en verano y otorio, yunos blue jeans y una chaquetapara Ilevar en invierno.'Tell the student to bring someshorts and some T-shirts to wearin summer and fall, and someblue jeans and a jacket to wear inwinter.'

Stage 4. Grammatical Stage.Learners in this stage show correctusage of articles (definite, indefinite,

and zero articles). The accuracyseems to increase as the learner isexposed to more Spanish. This leveldoes not seem to be a consistentstage among beginning learners,however. It should be rememberedthat both groups of learners are be-ginners. The same learner couldwrite a good sentence at one point ofthe assignment (e.g., diga al estudi-ante traer unos pantalones, 0 sue-teres, y un abrigo 'tell the learner tobring some pants, sweaters, and acoat') and an incorrect one in thesame assignment (e.g.,*Hola directorde los estudiantes extranjeros 'Hello,director of foreign students').

Some observations follow:Only one learner from Group Aproduced this kind of string withgrammatical phrases, compared tofour learners from Group B. Fourlearners from Group B had an accu-racy rate of 100%. The highest accu-racy rate in Group A was 94%. Thelowest accuracy rate in Group B was58%, compared to the two lowest of33% and 40% in Group A. Again, allthis suggests a correlation with thedifference of data collection time be-tween the two groups. The accuracyrate was lower in the writing sam-ples collected after 5 weeks (GroupA) than the accuracy rate observed inthe data gathered after 15 weeks ofclasses (Group B).

DISCUSSIONThese findings are not consis-

tent with the strong form of theContrastive Analysis Hypothesis,which assumes that interference oc-curs as a result of Ll transfer andstates that "errors could be predictedby identifying the linguistic differ-ences between the learners' Ll and

r I0


the target language" (Ellis, 1990, p.29). In the compilation of occur-rences due to Ll transfer, we foundboth groups have similar results.Out of the 47 sentences with errorsproduced by Group A, 16 (34%) wereidentified as due to L1 transfer (e.g.,*En lunes miramos un hombre tocala guitarra. . . 'On Mondays, wewatch a man playing the guitar. . .').Learners from Group B included intheir writings 37 sentences with er-rors, 13 of which (35%) were due toL1 transfer (e.g., *Lago Travis es muybonito 'Lake Travis is pretty'). Thisrelatively significant incidence of Lltransfer agrees more with the weakform of the Contrastive AnalysisHypothesis, which states that Ll in-terference may explain some errors,but it is only one of many factors inthe acquisition and cannot "betreated as a major source of error"(Ellis, 1990, p. 29). Moreover, asshown by our results, the Contras-tive Analysis Hypothesis does notseem to explain the variability of er-rors observed in the usage of definitearticles.

Results from our study suggestsupport of the Inter language Theorypremise outlined by Ellis (1990) thatsuggests that learners construct a sys-tem of transitional linguistic ruleswith which they are continually ex-perimenting in their approximationtoward the target language. This hy-pothesis is supported by the fact thatlearners in the vacillation stageseem to develop a rule for article us-age based on the plural or singularsuffix of the noun. As Master (1988)suggests, the variation reflects cer-tain strategies of interlanguage de-velopment, which can be seen in thelearners' actual use of morphemes at

6 8

different interlanguage levels [3]. Inthis way, as proposed by Corder(1967), their interlanguage systemcan be seen as a restructuring or re-creating continuum.

Moreover, VanPatten's (1987)ideas on a natural order of acquisi-tion may explain our results. Heproposes the interaction of four fac-tors to explain the order of acquisi-tion. At the beginning, learners mayfail to perceive the communicativevalue in articles and omit them(Stage 1, Omission) even in phrasesthat have similar constructions inEnglish (e.g., in the morning, etc.)When learners discover that Span-ish articles occur more frequentlythan in English (frequency of input),they simplify the rules of usage,thinking that Spanish articles areused in every context, and start us-ing the articles indiscriminately(Stage 2, Overuse and Stage 3, Vacil-lation). First language transfer, asproposed by Andersen (1983), mayalso be responsible for the Vacilla-tion Stage. When the learners entera period of experimentation in theirinterlanguage development, theymistakenly perceive a similarity be-tween the usage of Spanish and Eng-lish articles. The role of Ll, however,is limited "to those stages whenthere is convergence between Llstructure/function and developinginterlanguage" (VanPatten, 1987, p.111). VanPatten adds, "The interac-tion between Ll interference and in-terlanguage cannot violate the natu-ral processes of acquisition that arein progress."

Another explanation for someof the stages proposed in this study,particularly the overuse of the defi-nite articles, may be found in the sys-


tern used to learn vocabulary. Thetextbook used at this university,Puntos de Partida (Dorwick et al.,1993) presents a list of nouns withtheir corresponding definite articlesin order to help the learners in theacquisition of the Spanish gender.As Van Patten (1989) cautions, how-ever, learners at this early stage ofacquisition may have difficulty at-tending to form in the input, be-cause at the same time they arestruggling to understand the mean-ing. Tomlin and Vila (1984), on theother hand, suggest that the learningof grammar can be enhanced whenthe learner somehow attends toform. This issue needs further studyin order to isolate the causes for theoveruse of definite articles.

CONCLUSIONSBesides supporting previous

studies that postulate a Natural Or-der of Acquisition, this study shedslight in an area of second languageacquisition that has been neglected:the acquisition of Spanish articles byEnglish-speakers. Several stages ofacquisition were proposed in re-sponse to Research Question 1, basedon what was observed in the writingsamples of two groups of an intro-ductory Spanish course. These stagesare tentative since more research isneeded to test these findings. Al-though we analyzed the writing as-signments of two different groups atdifferent times during the semester,both groups are still considered be-ginners.

Again, we stress the need fortrue longitudinal studies of the ac-quisition of definite articles as wellas indefinite and zero articles. Thesestudies are needed for comparison

purposes in order to develop a morecomplete picture of the acquisitionof these morphemes. Also requiredare studies that test the oral profi-ciency of learners with respect todefinite articles. In general, as Par-rish and Tarone (1988) have done,multitask research is needed in or-der to observe any task-related varia-tion in the acquisition stages.

We found interesting results inresponse to the second and third re-search questions. Some Ll transfererrors were observed, and the per-centages of L1 interference were verysimilar in both groups. Li interfer-ence, however, seems to be one offour factors that interact as part ofthe interlanguage development thatlearners go through in their naturalprocess of acquisition, as proposed byVan Patten (1987). These factors (L1transfer, simplification, communica-tive value, and frequency of input)were useful in accounting for thestages of acquisition proposed in thisstudy. The interlanguage issues out-lined by Ellis (1990) were other fac-tors in agreement with our resultsthat could account for the variabilityobserved in the learners' usage ofdefinite articles.

NOTES1 For this study I have a small cor-

pus of data; therefore, any resultsobtained should still be consid-ered tentative. This is a pilotstudy, and I would like to sharemy observations based on thedata collected. These findingsmay serve as the foundation foruestions that can be looked at in

the future.2 The analysis of the use of the

other articles is beyond the scope


of this study; however, we no-ticed that when faced with astring of nouns, Group B learnerstended to overuse all the articles(including the indefinite), whilelearners from Group A used onlydefinite and zero articles.

3 In his study, Master (1988) estab-lished the interlanguage level ofhis subjects by their use of thenegation morpheme (p. 10).

REFERENCESAndersen, R. (1983). Transfer to

somewhere. In S. Gass & L.Se linker (Eds.), Language transferin language learning (pp. 177-201). Rowley, MA: NewburyHouse.

Bialystok, E. (1994). Analysis andcontrol in the development ofsecond language proficiency.Studies in Second Language Ac-quisition, 16 (2), 157-168.

Bickerton, D. (1975). Creolization,linguistic universals, natural se-mantics and the brain. Paper pre-sented at the International Con-ference on Pidgins and Creoles(University of Hawaii, January 6-11, 1975).

Corder, P. (1967). The significance oflearners' errors. InternationalReview of Applied Linguistics, 5,161-169.

Ellis, R. (1990). Instructed secondlanguage acquisition: Learning inthe classroom. Oxford: BasilBlackwell.

Gass, S. (1988). Integrating researchareas: A framework for secondlanguage studies. Applied Lin-guistics, 8 (2), 198-217.

Guntermann, G. (1992). An analysisof interlanguage development

over time: Part I, por and para.Hispania, 75 (1), 177-187.

Guntermann, G. (1992. An analysisof interlanguage developmentover time: Part II, ser and estar.Hispania, 75 (5), 1294-1303.

Huebner, T. (1983). A longitudinalanalysis of the acquisition of Eng-lish. Ann Arbor: Karoma.

Lafford, B., & Ryan. J. (1995). The ac-quisition of lexical meaning in astudy abroad context: The Span-ish prepositions por and para.Hispania, 78 (3), 528-547.

Master, P. (1988). Acquiring the Eng-lish article system: A cross-linguistic interlanguage analysis.Paper presented at the 22nd An-nual Meeting of the Teachers ofEnglish to Speakers of Other Lan-guages (Chicago, IL, March 8-13,1988).

Parrish, B., & Tarone, E. (1988). Task-related variation in interlan-guage: The case of articles. Lan-guage Learning, 38 (1), 21-44.

Perdue, C., & Klein, W. (1992). Whydoes the production of somelearners not grammaticalize?Studies in Second Language Ac-quisition, (14), 259-272.

Rutherford, W. (1982). Markednessin L2 acquisition. LanguageLearning ,32 (1), 85-108.

Ryan, J., & Lafford, B. (1992). Acquisi-tion of lexical meaning in a studyabroad environment: Ser andestar and the Granada experience.Hispania 175 (3), 714-722.

Tomlin, R., & Villa, V. (1994). Atten-tion in cognitive science and sec-ond language acquisition. S tu diesin Second Language Acquisition,16 (2), 183-203.

VanPatten, B. (1987). Classroomlearners' acquisition of ser and

70


estar. In B. Van Patten, T. Dvorak,& J. Lee (Eds.) Foreign languagelearning: A research perspective(pp. 61-75). Cambridge: NewburyHouse.

Van Patten, B. (1989). Can learnersattend to form and content whileprocessing input? Hispania, 72(2), 409-417.

APPENDIX AWRITING ASSIGNMENTS

WRITING ASSIGNMENT FOR GROUP A. There are five parts to this writ-ing assignment. Parts 1 and 2 are done the first day. Part 3 and Part 4 are givenas homework for the second day. The third day, the students do the actualwriting assignment in the computer lab.

Parte 1: Lectura `Reading' (This reading was read by the instructor in class. Hewrote some of the main points in the blackboard:)

La Universidad de Texas, fundada en 1883, es un lugar muy atrac-tivo para los estudiantes extranjeros. Más de 3500 estudiantes d emás de 100 !lases asisten a UT. Esta universidad tiene unas biblio-tecas extraordinarias, incluida la Nettie Benson Latin AmericanCollection, una de las mejores colecciones de libros sobre Lati-noamérica en el mundo.

Ademds de su fama académica, UT estri situada en una ciudad pre-ciosa. A los estudiantes extranjeros les gusta la vida cultural (losconciertos de müsica clásica, los museos, las conferencias), elclima, los parques, y los lagos de Austin. También les gustan lasatracciones turisticas como el capitolio, la biblioteca presidencial deLBJ, la famosa Calle Seis, y los murcielagos que viven debajo delpuente de la Calle Congress.

Para los estudiantes que necesitan perfeccionar su ingles antes d ematricularse en UT, hay un programa excelente llamado Texas In-tensive English Program en Dexter Hall en la Calle 24 cerca delcampus. A veces estos estudiantes vienen a las clases de espailolpara hablar con los estudiantes americanos sobre sus paises de ori-gen.

'The University of Texas, founded in 1883, is a very attractive placefor foreign students. More than 3500 students from more than 100countries attend UT. This university has great libraries, includingthe Nettie Benson Latin American Collection, one of the best col-lections of books on Latin America in the world.

7


'Besides its academic fame, UT is situated in a beautiful city. For-eign learners like Austin's cultural life (classical music concerts,museums, conferences), its weather, its parks, and its lakes. Theyalso like its tourist attractions like the Capitol, the LBJ Library, thefamous Sixth Street, and the bats that live under the bridge onCongress Street.

'For students who need to improve their English before enrollingat UT, there is an excellent program called Texas Intensive EnglishProgram at Dexter Hall on 24th Street, near campus. Sometimesthese students come to Spanish classes to talk with American stu-dents about their countries.'

Parte 2: Comprensión oral 'Listening comprehension' (The students do notsee the script. The instructor reads this to them and then asks the four follow-up questions.)

Pepe Ramos es un estudiante extranjero que estudia quirnica en laUniversidad de Texas. Es de Litwin, Costa Rica. Es la primera vezque vive lejos de su familia. Ahora vive en la residencia Jester consu compatiero de cuarto que se llama Joe Weaver. Joe es de Lubbock.Pepe tiene sus momentos tristes, pero le gustan sus clases y su corn-patiero de cuarto. No le gusta la comida de Jester por eso va a viviren un apartarnento el semestre que viene.

'Pepe Ramos is a foreign student who studies chemistry at the Uni-versity of Texas. He is from Limón, Costa Rica. It is the first time heis away from his family. Now he lives at Jester with his roommateJoe Weaver. Joe is from Lubbock. Pepe has his sad moments, but helikes his classes and his roommate. He does not like the food atJester, that is why he is going to live in an apartment next semester.'

Parte 3. Preguntas 'Questions':

De d6nde es Pepe? 'Where is Pepe from?'IQué estudia Pepe? 'What does Pepe study?'iPor qué tiene sus momentos tristes? 'Why does he have sad mo-ments?'

Qué desea hacer el semestre que viene? 'What does he want to do nextsemester?'

Parte 4: Prtictica oral 'Oral practice.' The instructor has students put the sen-tences on the board as they come in before class starts the following day. Theinstructor corrects them as a class.

7 2


Parte 5: Escritura 'Writing.' After the above four parts have been completed,students write the writing assignment, which is a letter written home by Pepe,the student from Costa Rica, or by Yoly, the Peruvian student. The lettershould be about 100 words. They are given the Querida Mama 'Dear mom'and different ways to sign Abrazos 'hugs' or Besos 'kisses.' They do this as-signment in the Computer Lab.

WRITING ASSIGNMENT FOR GROUP B. The following are the instructionsfor a composition that students write as part of their final exam.

Composición 'Composition.' Write a composition of at least 120 words fol-lowing the description provided. Remember to include at least three com-mand forms in your composition.

Your family will be hosting a Costa Rican student. You are the only onewho speaks Spanish in your family. Your parents have asked you to write aletter to the director of the program to give him the following information:

- Greet the director and introduce yourself and your family.- Since the exchange student is coming from August to January, tell the

director what kind of weather to expect and what kind of clothing aperson needs to bring.Compare Austin to other cities in Texas.

- Then tell him that you have studied Spanish this year and that you aregoing to help the student in Austin.

- Describe some of the forms of entertainment in the Austin area.- Tell what interesting things you did this year.- Tell him to write back with any question he might have.

APPENDIX BSAMPLE SENTENCES OF THE PROPOSED STAGES AND L1INTERFERENCE

1. Omission of Definite Articles.

Example: *Limpio el apartmento todos 0 dias 0 mariana.'I clean the apartment every day in the morning.'

The los-stage.

Example: *Las clases llevo la geologia,la matématica, y & espatiol.'The classes I am taking are geology, math, and Spanish.'

7 f)


Example: *El estudiante necesite traer los blue jeans, los pantalones,las camisas, y las camisetas. También necesite traer los za-patos, las botas, y los suéteres.'The student needs to bring blue jeans, pants, shirts, andT-shirts. He also needs to bring shoes, boots, and sweaters.'

3. Vacillation.

Definite article with plurals; indefinite article with singulars.

Example: *. . debe llever los blue jeans, las camisetas y uno o doschaquetas . . . también el estudiante necesita llevar lossuéteres y u n abrigo.

. . he should bring blue jeans, T-shirts, and one or twojackets . . . also, the student needs to bring sweaters, and acoat.'

Definite for plurals; zero articles for singulars.

Example: *Tomo 0 espanol, y 0 clase de nilios developmental, y lasmatimáticas, y las ciencias.'I am taking Spanish, child development, math, and sci-ences.'

Zero article for plurals; definite article for singulars.

Example: *Necesite dos pars de blue jeans, 0 zapatos de tenis, lachaqueta, 0 botas, 0 suéteres, y 0 faldas.'(She) needs two pairs of blue jeans, tennis shoes, a jacket,

boots, sweaters, and skirts.'

Indefinite for plurals and singulars.

Example: Diga al estudiante traer unos pantalones cortos y unascamisetas para llevar en verano y otaio, y unos blue jeansy una chaqueta para llevar en invierno.'Tell the student to bring some shorts, and some T-shirtsto wear in summer and fall, and some blue jeans and ajacket to wear in winter.'

4. Grammatical stage.

Example: Necesite llevar un suéter, una chaqueta, y 0 ropa para la in-vierno.'(He) needs to bring a sweater, a jacket, and clothing for winter.'

7 4


Li interference examples:

*0 Lago Travis es muy bonito.'Lake Travis is pretty.'

*En Tejas, todo 0 ario hace un buen tiempo.'In Texas, all year long the weather is nice.'

*En lunes miramos un hombre toca la guitarra....'On Mondays, we watch a man playing the guitar....'

7 5

The Spanish Psych Verb Construction:Beginning and Intermediate Learners' Patterns of Usage

CHRISTOPHER D. GASCON, The University of Texas at Austin

The Spanish psychological verb construction seems to be especially diffi-cult for native English-speaking learners to acquire. Since some of themost common Spanish psych verbs, such as gustar 'to please' and encan-tar 'to delight,' require a grammatical structure that is different from thatof the English verbs frequently taken as their equivalents 'to like' and 'tolove,' it is understandable that native English speakers may struggle withthe construction. More precise information on how learners attempt toacquire this complex form would, however, prove valuable to Spanishinstructors. This study presents data that describe the patterns of usage ofstudents in first-, second-, third-, and fourth-semester university-levelSpanish courses. An analysis of the data reveals that learners initiallyc-ommit errors related to the transfer of structures from the native lan-guage. Gradually, however, transfer errors decline and developmentalerrors increase as learners experiment with elements of the target lan-guage. The study proposes that within this learning pattern, it is possibleto discern distinct stages in the learners' progress toward acquisition.

INTRODUCTIONGustar and other psychological verbs present a challenge to native Eng-

lish speakers attempting to learn Spanish. Since the "psych verb" construc-tion requires the learners to discern subject and beneficiary (or sufferer) in aninverted word order and to use the proper indirect object pronoun, the learn-ers struggle to acquire this structure. It is thus of interest to instructors toknow more about how learners develop their understanding of this construc-tion so that they may be better able to formulate effective strategies for facili-tating the acquisition process. This study addresses the following questions inan effort to achieve a clearer understanding of learners' acquisition of theSpanish psych verb construction:

1. What are the patterns of usage typical of learners attempting to acquirepsych verbs such as gustar 'to please,' importar 'to matter,' encantar 'to de-light,' molestar 'to bother,' and interesar 'to interest'? How do the learningpatterns of students at beginning levels compare to those of intermediatestudents?

2. How can we account for the performance of the learners?

3. Does the acquisition of the psych verb construction reflect stages of inter-language development?

Spanish Psych Verb Construction 70

Though it is beyond the scope of thisstudy to recommend specific tech-niques for teaching the Spanishpsych verb construction, it is hopedthat the data and analysis presentedhere may assist instructors in find-ing effective ways to help learnersacquire the structure.

It is possible for any Spanish in-structor to make certain general pre-dictions about how learners willhandle the psych verb construction.First, it is expected that, overall,learners will experience difficulty inmanaging this construction. Accord-ing to the Contrastive Analysis Hy-pothesis (Ellis, 1990, p. 25), the moreclosely a structure in the target lan-guage (L2) corresponds to its equiva-lent expression in the native lan-guage (L1), the easier it will be tolearn, and vice versa. Since many ofthe most common English psychverb constructions (like, love, a minterested in) utilize a "direct" struc-ture while their equivalent expres-sions in Spanish (gustar, encantar,interesar) require a "reverse" con-struction [1], we may expect studentsto struggle with the form generally.

Second, it may be predicted that,due to frequency of occurrence ininput (VanPatten, 1987, p. 87; Ellis,1990, p. 96) and according to the out-put hypothesis (Ellis, pp. 117-119)and the discourse hypothesis (Ellis,pp. 119-121), learners will be moreproficient in discussing their ownlikes and dislikes than in describingthose of friends or parents. The first-person construction seems to be theone learners hear and are asked toproduce most often in beginningand intermediate Spanish classes;thus, they should perform it best.

7 ')

Third, it is generally expectedthat students at higher levels willoutperform those at lower levels inall tasks. Results should suggest thatstudents improve their psych verbproficiency as they advance fromlevel to level.

Certain common errors mayalso be predicted. We can expect Lltransfer of the English word order S-V-0 [2], leading learners to confusethe Spanish subject and object andcommit errors like *me gusto lamlisica 'to me I am pleasing the mu-sic' [3]. We may also see the commondevelopmental error of the use of seinstead of the proper indirect objectpronouns le or les.

BACKGROUND LITERATUREThough psych verbs have been

of interest to linguists studyingcomparative syntax and relationalgrammar, they have received littleattention from second language ac-quisition researchers. Most of the lit-erature on the subject of psych verbsfocuses on the debate over the for-mal characterization of the construc-tion; in particular, of its transitiveproperties. Though the increasinglymore detailed definitions of transi-tivity that this debate has producedmay help second language instruc-tors systematize their own concep-tions of how the various types ofpsych verbs work, it is doubtful thatthese definitions will prove to be ofany practical use in teaching basicpsych verb constructions to begin-ning learners. Nevertheless, thesestudies have established a basic lexi-con that is helpful to any discussionon the subject. Thus, a brief reviewof some definitive studies, with anemphasis on the terminology they

use, is appropriate before proceedingto an explanation of the presentstudy.

Belletti and Rizzi (1988) firstdistinguish between the experiencer,which is "the individual experienc-ing the mental state," and thetheme, which is "the content or ob-ject of the mental state" (p. 292).They then postulate three distincttypes of psych verb constructionsbased on Italian syntax. The first typeof construction casts the experiencerinto the role of the deep-structuresubject and the theme into the accu-sative role. This psych verb configu-ration- is the most canonical and isexemplified by the verb temere. Inthe second type of construction, ex-emplified by preoccupare, the themeis considered a "derived subject,"while the experiencer is the accusa-tive object. The third type of con-struction, exemplified by piacere,works in the same way, except thatthe experiencers are assigned dativestatus: they are the indirect benefici-ary, rather than the direct recipient,of the effect.

The Belletti and Rizzi articlehas provoked a series of criticisms,revisions, and refinements by otherrelational and Chomskyan gram-marians of its classification of theroles of experiencer and theme inthe various psych constructions(Bouchard, 1992; Masullo, 1992; Sal-tarelli, 1992; Herschensohn, 1992;and Whitley, 1995) [4]. Of all of these,Whitley's study of transitivity ismost pertinent to the present study.He first translates Be lletti and Rizzi'stripartite conceptualization of Italianpsych verbs into a Spanish versionthat features a four-part typology.The terminology he uses is different


from theirs; while he accepts theterm experiencer from their study,he prefers cause to their theme. Inaddition, he distinguishes betweendirect verbs, which cast the experi-encer as subject (as in I like it), andreverse verbs, which treat the expe-riencer as object (as in it pleases me).Using these distinctions, he explainsthe four types of psych verbs:

Type 1: Direct transitive; forexample, desear. Theexperiencer acts as thesubject, the cause as di-rect object.

Type 2: Direct intransitive; forexample, gozar de/en.The experiencer acts assubject, and the causeas an "oblique object" ofa verb-specific prepo-sition.

Type 3: Reverse intransitive;for example, gustar.The experiencer is theindirect object, and thecause is cast as subject.The indirect object isoptional: the experi-encer may be general-ized or impersonal, asin La masica rock gustaen todas partes.

Type 4: Reverse transitive; forexample, fascinar. Thecause functions as sub-ject; the experienceracts as the direct ob-ject. (573-574)

Whitley goes on to show, how-ever, that such rigid syntactical cate-gories break down when we analyzeSpanish psych verbs more closely,and he proposes instead the idea of atransitivity "squish" based on se-


mantic distinctions. He borrows thisterm from John Ross (1973), whoused it to describe a continuum ofnoun phrase types. He also utilizes alist of ten features proposed by Hop-per and Thompson (1980) as a gaugeof transitivity. He concludes with acall for other pedagogical explana-tions of gustar verbs that are morerepresentative of the complexities ofpsych constructions, claiming thatsuch work "would be especiallyvaluable in second language acquisi-tion" (p. 582).

There is little evidence, how-ever, that comprehensive metalin-guistic explanations of concepts suchas transitivity facilitate beginningand intermediate learners' acquisi-tion of basic psych verbs. It is morelikely that input, output, and inter-active activities have a greater effecton learners' mastery of psych verbconstructions. Nevertheless, rela-tional grammar does provide termi-nology and an explanation of theframework of psych configurationsthat are fundamental to any study ofthe concept.

DESCRIPTION OF STUDYThe first step in understanding

better how learners attempt to ac-quire this complex construction isthat of gathering and analyzingsamples of their usage. The purposeof this pilot study has been to gener-ate examples of the use of Spanishpsych verbs by beginning and inter-mediate learners, to compare theperformance of learners at differentlevels, and to look for patterns of us-age that might suggest stages of in-terlanguage development.

SubjectsThe subjects of the study were

students in four University of Texasat Austin Spanish classes: 23 51(beginning level - first semesterSpanish) students, 26 S2 (second se-mester Spanish) students, 36 S3(third semester Spanish) students,and 20 S4 (fourth semester Spanish)students. At the time of data collec-tion, the S1 students had been intro-duced to the verb gustar and hadpracticed its use to describe theirown likes and dislikes. The use ofgustar in third person constructionshad not been emphasized, though itoccasionally appeared in input. Thestudents had not worked with otherpsych verbs, but they were informedat the time of the experiment thatthe other psych verbs, like importar,encantar, molestar, and interesar,worked generally like the verb gus-tar (that is, they feature a reversestructure).

The students in S2 had been in-troduced to some psych verbs otherthan gustar and had reviewed directand indirect object pronouns. It isassumed that they also had somepractice in the use of reverse con-structions through studying the useof the subjunctive after expressionsof emotion, such as me sorprendeque or me molesta que.

The instructor of the S3 stu-dents had given little explicit atten-tion to psych verbs in class, thoughthe construction was recycled in in-put and output with some fre-quency.

The students in S4 had re-viewed gustar-type verbs in a unitdedicated explicitly to the subject 10

7 5

class days prior to the experiment. Inaddition, instructors of fourth-semester Spanish emphasize thisconstruction as essential to one ofthe seven communicative goals ofthe course, the expression of likesand dislikes.

InstrumentThe learners completed three

written tasks:

Task 1: Describe your own likesand dislikes.

Task 2: Describe a friend's likesand dislikes.

Task 3: Describe your parents'likes and dislikes.

They were instructed to vary theirselection of verb and to choose fromamong the verbs gustar, importar,encantar, interesar, and molestar.The task was designed to generatesamples of usage of psych verbs re-quiring reverse structure that weretaught at most of the levels with theindirect object pronouns me, le, andles. The task called for a variety ofverbs in order to ensure that per-formance would be particular to thepsych verb construction and notsimply to one or two specific verbs.

The percentage of correct re-sponses (relative to the total numberof attempts at the target structuremade) was computed for each of thethree tasks at each of the four levels.If the student made no error in con-jugating the verb, selecting the cor-rect object pronoun, or including thepreposition a when appropriate, thesentence was judged as correct. Othererrors, such as those in spelling oruse of subjunctive/indicative, weredisregarded.


Types of errors were also noted.They fell into three main categories,two of which have subcategories:

1. Omission of the preposition a 'to'when inclusion is required(1) Example: *Mi amigo no le in-

teresa limpiar la casa 'Myfriend does not interest clean-ing the house.' The preposi-tion a should precede m iamigo.

2. Object pronoun errors

A. Omission of object pronounsme 'to me,' le 'to him/her,' orles 'to them' when inclusionis required(2) Example: *A mi amigo en-

canta corner 'Eating de-lights to my friend.' Thedirect object pronoun leshould precede encanta.

B. Use of reflexive pronoun seinstead of the correct objectpronouns le `to him/her' orles 'to them'(3) Example: *A José no se

importa la clase 'The classdoes not matter itself toJose.' The pronoun leshould be used instead ofse.

C. Confusion of object pronounsle 'to him/her' and les 'tothem'(4) Example: *A mis padres le

gusta la comida buena'Good food is pleasing tohim to my parents.' Thepronoun les should beused instead of le.


3. Verb morphology errors

A. Subject-object confusion(5) Example: *Mis padres gus-

tan ir al cine 'My parentsare pleasing to go to themovies.'

B. Use of singular verb for pluralsubject (cause)(6) Example: *A ellos les gusta

las fresas 'The strawberriesis pleasing to them.'

The first two categories are self-explanatory. With regard to verbmorphology- errors, subject-objectconfusion was judged as having oc-curred when (a) the form of the verbagreed with the form of the objectpronoun instead of with the subject(cause), and (b) a check of other re-sponses by the same student con-firmed that this error was repeatedconsistently and systematically inother situations. For example, an S2student performing Task 3 wrotethese four sentences:

(7) *Mis padres gustan con yoestudio 'My parents pleasewith I study'

(8) Les gustan mis amigos'They like my friends'

(9) *No les gustan con yo hagogradas mal 'They are notpleasing to them with Imake bad [grades]'

(10) *Les encantan mi 'Tothem they delight me'

Since the student used thethird-person plural conjugation in

all cases regardless of what the cause(subject) was, it remains clear that hetook the experiencers, his parents, tobe the subject of the verb; thus, Ex-amples (7), (9), and (10) would be re-corded as subject-object confusionerrors. Although the student mightnot have fully understood the con-struction of (8), the sentence is nev-ertheless structurally correct; thus, itwas not marked as an error. The fre-quency of each of these types of er-rors was calculated for each task ateach level.

These data enable a comparisonof the performance of the learnersfrom level to level. Based on this in-formation, one may describe"profiles" of each of the four levelswith respect to proficiency in the useof psych verbs. These profiles indi-cate general performance and thetypes of errors most common to eachlevel.

RESULTSFigure 1 summarizes the over-

all performances of each of theclasses in each of the tasks. Thesedata help to formulate an answer tothe first research question posed:What are the patterns of usage typi-cal of learners attempting to acquirepsych verbs such as gustar, importar,encantar, molestar, and interesar?How do the learning patterns of stu-dents at beginning levels compare tothose of intermediate students?

Task 1: Describing One's Own Likesand Dislikes

All levels performed this taskwith a relatively high degree of accu-racy ranging from 75% in S1 to 93%in S3. Generally, each level tended toperform slightly better than the

8i

Figure 1. Summary of Overall Performance I


%

Cor

r

ect

100

90

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0S1 S2 S3

Cour se Lev el

111 Task 1

IITask 2

nTask 3

previous level with the exception ofthe 54 class, which scored an 86%.The 7% difference between this classand the S3 class cannot, however, beconsidered significant since thesampling of responses generated bythe S4 class numbered only half thatof the S3 and S2 classes. Figure 2shows the frequency of the threegeneral types of errors that occurredin Task 1: omission of the preposi-tion a, object pronoun errors, andverb morphology errors. No errorsoccurred with the preposition a be-cause students avoided the emphatica mi 'to me.' The pronoun me 'tome' was consistently used correctly.Conjugation errors were the onlysignificant type of mistake commit-

ted in Task I. It is of interest to notethat the most common type of verbmorphology error in S1 was that ofsubject-object confusion, which oc-curred with a 15% frequency. Suchan error may take, for example, thefollowing form:

(11) *Molesto la clase de ingles'I bother the English class'

This type of error gradually disap-pears, however; it occurred withonly a 2% frequency in 54.

Task 2: Describing a Friend's Likesand DislikesAccuracy in the performance of thistask trails behind that demonstrated

8 2


100

90

F 80r 70e 60q 50

4030

c 2010 -0

S1 S2 S3

Cour se Level

ElOmission of preposition

EObject Pronoun

Verb Morphology

Figure 2. Task 1 Error Types

in Task 1, as seen in Figure 1. Never-theless, the general trend againseems to be one of improved per-formance at higher levels, with theexception of the S3 class, which wasactually outperformed by the S2class. There is a marked differencebetween no proficiency with thisconstruction in S1 to 58% accuracy inS2. This result is not surprising,given that the S1 class had had littleexposure to this form or to objectpronouns, while the S2 class hadbeen instructed explicitly in third-person constructions with psychverbs other than gustar and had re-viewed direct and indirect objects.The reason for the drop in perform-ance at the S3 level may be that littleexplicit attention is given to psychverbs in the chapters of the textbookcovered in this semester, nor did theinstructor of the course report anyreview or practice of the construc-

tion other than an occasional recy-cling in communicative activities.The 71% accuracy score of the S4class suggests that they benefitedfrom the review chapter on gustar-like verbs they had recently com-pleted.

Across all levels, the omissionof the preposition a accounted forthe greatest number of errors, asFigure 3 shows. Though the S2 classshows an exceptionally low fre-quency of this error, the generaltrend is one of slow improvement aslevels increase. Object pronoun er-rors are less frequent overall and fol-low a definite trend of improvedperformance at higher levels. It isinteresting to note that omission ofthe pronoun is the most commontype of pronoun error in 51 (24%frequency), but that its occurrencedwindles to 15% in S2 and to ap-proximately 7% in the S3 and S4

8 °

Figure 3. Task 2 Error Types I


908070605040302010

0S1 S2 S3

Cour se Level

NIOmission of preposition

ElObject Pronoun

El Verb Morphology

classes, while at the same time thefrequency of se interference errorsrises from 5% and 8% in S1 and S2 tonearly 20% in S3 before disappearingcompletely in S4.

Task 3: Describing Your Parents'Likes and Dislikes.

At all levels, accuracy in Task 3was the lowest of the three. As withthe other tasks, however, the trendis one of improved performance athigher levels, with the S4 classreaching a 60% success rate (see Fig-ure 1). Figure 4 shows the frequencyof the three general kinds of errorsthat occurred in Task 3. As in Task 2,omission of a is the most persistenterror; it seems to occur with aboutthe same frequency here as it did inthe second task, and it never im-proves to less than a 30% rate of ap-

pearance. Control of verb morphol-ogy and choice of correct object pro-noun improve dramatically from100% error frequency in S1 to 10%and less in S4. Especially noteworthyagain is the complete disappearanceof se for les at the S4 level, while itoccurred with 51% frequency in S1and 11% frequency in both S2 andS3.

ANALYSISGeneral Performance

We now address the second re-search question: How can we ac-count for the performance of thelearners?

The results generally affirm theexpectations outlined in the first sec-tion of this paper. It was stated thatthe Contrastive Analysis Hypothesiswould lead us to believe that the

8

Figure 4. Task 3 Error Types I


100908070605040302010

0S S2 S3

Course LevelS4

111 Omission of preposition

MObject Pronoun

D Verb Morphology

psych verb structure would besomewhat challenging for the Eng-lish-speaking learner. The experi-ment confirms this idea. Thoughlearners seem to come increasinglycloser to acquisition of the form inTask 1, results suggest that manylearners still will not have acquiredthe ability to use psych verbs cor-rectly in third-person constructionseven after two years of Spanishclasses.

The expectation that higherlevel students would outperformlower level students was generallyfulfilled by the data. Two exceptionsto this trend did occur, however, atthe S4 level in Task 1 and at the S3level in Task 2. The first of these, asstated, does not constitute a numeri-cally significant decline, while thesecond may be accounted for by thefact that the third-semester studentsreceived no review or practice exclu-

sively dedicated to the concepts, asdid the 52 students. It was men-tioned that they were occasionallycalled upon to recycle the psych verbstructure in communicative activi-ties, but in such situations learnerswould more than likely be calledupon to comment on their ownlikes, as in Task 1. This would ex-plain how S3 students outperformed52 students in Task 1, but not inTask 2.

The study also confirmed theprediction that learners would mas-ter Task 1 more easily than the othertasks. It was mentioned that any orall of the frequency, output, or dis-course hypotheses could serve to ex-plain this result. Me gusta is theform learners hear and producemost often. Furthermore, it is morelikely to serve learners' discourseneeds better than the other forms;that is, they are more likely to en-

8 5

gage in discourses that call uponthem to discuss their own likes anddislikes, rather than someone else's.A related idea is that of communica-tive utility. Van Patten (1987) sug-gests that as long as a beginninglearner believes that a linguistic fea-ture has little communicative value,it will not be used and, therefore,will not be acquired until later. Per-due and Klein (1992) make a similarpoint that if certain elements of alearner's speech do not grammatical-ize, it is because they are meetingtheir communicative needs withoutmastery of those elements and feellittle need to change. Either of theseversions of the communicativevalue idea would serve well to ex-plain why the learners in this studyshow more mastery over Task 1than Tasks 2 or 3.

Stages of Inter language Develop-ment

The third question posed at theoutset of this study concerned thepossibility of stages of interlanguagedevelopment. While a longitudinalstudy would be necessary to affirmany proposed order of acquisition,this pilot study may at least suggest apossible outline of certain stageslearners pass through as they de-velop their analysis and control ofpsych verb constructions.

While performance analysisgives us a general idea of wherelearners are in their developmenttoward acquisition, error analysismay help reveal some of the cogni-tive processes that are going on atthe same time. Figure 5 shows thefrequency in all three tasks of fourdifferent types of errors that werenot shown in Figures 2 through 4


because they are subcategories ofthose three general error types. Thefirst two types of errors listed in thelegend, omission of the object pro-noun and subject/object confusion,can be considered transfer-type er-rors. According to the Naive LexicalHypothesis (Lafford and Ryan, 1995),English-speaking beginners attemptto build their Spanish sentencesword for word from the English di-rect structure. Thus they producesentences like El los encantan superro in an attempt to express 'Theylove their dog.' Since the English ut-terance contains no object pronoun,the beginners omit it. They havealso transferred English S-V-0 wordorder, which produces in the Span-ish a subject-object confusion error.Thus, these two types of errors canbe understood to be symptomatic ofLl transfer.

The other two types of errors,the use of the reflexive pronoun seinstead of the indirect object pro-nouns me, le, or les, and the use ofle instead of les and vice-versa, arenot related to transfer because thesepronouns, for the most part, do nothave English equivalents when usedin psych verb constructions. Theyindicate, rather, that the learner istrying to develop hypotheses abouthow features particular to Spanishare used correctly. They may becalled, then, developmental errors.

This distinction between trans-fer and developmental errors mayhelp to define different cognitivestages of development in the learn-ing of psych verbs. Figure 5 showsthat errors prompted by L1 transferoccur with greater frequency at theS1 and S2 levels, while in S3 and S4,developmental errors are more fre-

8 6


30

% 25

20

e 10

15

5

0S1 S2 S3

Cour se Level

0

V

Omission of Object Pronoun

Subject/Object Confusion

Use of Reflexive Pronoun

Confusion of Object Pronouns

Figure 5. Frequency of Transfer and Developmental Errors

quent and transfer errors decline. Inother words, when first confrontedwith the psych verb construction,the S1 students' interlanguage couldbe described in terms of Se linker's(1972) restructuring continuum,wherein the learners transfer Ll pa-rameter settings to the L2. This stagecould then be called the "transferstage." In S2, it seems that the actualrestructuring begins to take place:transfer error frequency decreasesdramatically as the learners makeadjustments to their interlanguagewhere they see that the L2 is differ-ent from the Ll. This period mightbe called the "restructuring stage."At the S3 level we see that transfererrors become less frequent than de-velopmental errors; here, then, theinterlanguage resembles Corder's(1978) continuum of development,

wherein learners rely more on 12input than on Ll transfer to help setthe parameters of the L2. This phase,then, is the first developmentalstage. A significant finding at the S4level was that se errors disappearedcompletely. This developmentwould seem to mark an importantstep forward; students have learnedto separate the se they use with re-flexives, reciprocals, and double ob-ject pronouns from the le and lesthat are pertinent to the psych con-struction. Since learners at this levelseem to have progressed develop-mentally, we may call this the sec-ond developmental stage.

Level ProfilesThese stages may be combined

with the patterns of usage describedearlier to give us four profiles that

characterize early levels of progresstoward acquisition of the psych verbconstruction. The descriptions willalso serve to summarize the mostsignificant findings of the study ingeneral.

Transfer Stage: Learners at this leveldemonstrate proficiency with the megusta(n) construction, but none withthe le/les gusta(n) structures. Anumber of errors stem from at-tempts to transfer Ll parameters di-rectly to the L2.

Restructuring Stage: Learners at thisstage show increased proficiencywith me gusta and a marked im-provement over first-stage learnersin the use of le/les gusta. They beginto realize that they cannot simplymap structures from their Ll ontothe L2. They start to adjust the mis-takenly transferred parameters theyhad previously tried to follow. Asthey search for concepts to replacetheir previous hypotheses, they be-gin paying more attention to L2 in-put.

Developmental Stage I: Frequencyof transfer errors is greatly reduced.Learners reach even greater masteryover the me gusta form, and theyexperiment actively with featuresparticular to the L2 in an effort toform hypotheses concerning thele/les gusta forms. Recall may failthem here if there is no regular rein-forcement of this structure. Se inter-ference increases.

Developmental Stage II: When se isruled out as an alternative to the ob-ject pronouns used in the psych verbstructure, a new developmental


stage begins. Control of verb mor-phology and choice of object pro-noun is as high as it has ever been,though hypothesis formation basedon L2 input continues. Transfer er-rors nearly disappear. Acquisition ofthe psych verb construction, at leastas it is used in the first person singu-lar and the third person, seemswithin reach.

LIMITATIONSOf course, the findings of this

pilot study are tentative because theywere gathered synchronically; a lon-gitudinal study following individuallearners through their first four se-mesters of Spanish would providestronger evidence of any order of ac-quisition observed. Oral interviewswould also be a better indicator ofdegree of acquisition; the form-focused written tasks used for thisstudy may have prompted greatercontrol and monitoring than wouldbe possible in a more meaning-focused interview. It would also al-low for negotiation of meaning,which would ensure more uniformgeneration of samples: many stu-dents misunderstood the directionsto the second task in this experimentand wrote about their friends' collec-tive preferences rather than aboutone friend's likes and dislikes. Fi-nally, it would be of interest to com-pare this study's results with those ofan investigation of learners in natu-ral environments to see if there isany relation between their 'stages'and those proposed here.

IMPLICATIONS ANDCONCLUSIONGiven that learners at all levelsdemonstrate a relatively high level

8


of competence with the first-personsingular form of the Spanish psychverb construction and a relativelylow level of competence with thethird person forms, instructors maywish to consider how much rein-forcement is being given to a giventask type at each level. Though it isunderstandable that teachers maynaturally call on students to performtasks in the first person since one'sexpression of one's own likes or dis-likes is a common communicativefunction, instructors may want toconsider giving more reinforcementto third person forms as well. If wethink of me gusta as the unmarked,canonical form of the psych verbstructure, and of le/les gusta as themarked forms, then perhaps weshould spend more time reinforcingthe latter, if, as Guntermann (1992)and Rutherford (1982) maintain, in-struction in more marked featurescan facilitate acquisition of lessmarked features, while instructionin less marked features may result inlearners simplifying their interlan-guages.

In the third person construc-tions, errors in the use of indirectobjects and elements related tothem, such as the preposition a 'to,'are more persistent than verb mor-phology errors. This seems to sug-gest that, whether as a result of in-struction or of their own independ-ent cognitive processes, learnersseem to prioritize the elements inthe Spanish psych verb construction.They attempt to control the mostcommunicative and most easilytranslatable items first, such as theeffect (verb) in question and its cause(the subject). Learners appear to giveless attention, at least initially, to less

easily translatable, more subtleforms, such as indirect object pro-nouns and the preposition a, whichoperate on L2, rather than Ll, prin-ciples.

Such findings lead to certainquestions regarding the instructionof the psych verb construction. First,is it possible to determine preciselywhat makes learners shift from astrategy that attempts to acquire L2forms by restructuring familiar Llforms to a strategy that recognizesthe L2 forms as different from the L1and seeks knowledge of its princi-ples? Second, is it desirable for aninstructor to attempt to facilitatesuch a shift in the learner's con-sciousness? If so, at what moment inthe learner's progress should the in-structor make such an attempt? Ifnot, are there other ways in whichinstructors should adjust their se-quence of instruction of the psychverb structure, given the sequence oflearner acquisition hypothesized inthis study? Answers to these ques-tions would further enable instruc-tors to better facilitate native Englishspeakers' acquisition of the Spanishpsych verb construction.

NOTES:1 These terms, borrowed from

Whitley (995), are defined in thenext section.

2 VanPatten (1987) discusses asimilar type of Ll transfer in theL2 acquisition of ser and estar.

3 Throughout this study, an aster-isk indicates that the exampleprovided is grammatically incor-rect.

4 These theorists offer various in-terpretations of psych verb con-structions designed to show how

8 ri

the configurations either chal-lenge or support the UniversalAlignment Hypothesis, which, asstated by Perlmutter and Postal(1984), maintains that "there existprinciples of universal grammarwhich predict the initial relationborne by each nominal in a givenclause from the meaning of theclause" (p. 97).

REFERENCESBelletti, A., & Rizzi, L. (1988). Psych-

verbs and theta theory. NaturalLanguage and Linguistic Theory,6 (3), 291-352.

Bouchard, D. (1992). Psych construc-tions and linking to conceptualstructures. In P. Hirschbilliler &K. Koerner (Eds.), Romance lan-guages and modern linguistictheory: Papers from the 20th Lin-guistic Symposium on RomanceLanguages (pp. 25-44). Amster-dam: John Benjamins.

Corder, P. (1978). Language-learnerlanguage. In J. Richards (Ed.),Understanding second and for-eign language learning (pp. 71-93). Rowley, MA: NewburyHouse.

Ellis, R. (1990). Instructed secondlanguage acquisition. Cambridge:Blackwell.

Guntermann, G. (1992). An analysisof interlanguage developmentover time: Part II, ser and estar.Hispania, 75 (5), 1294-1303.

Herschensohn, J. (1992). A postfunc-tionalist perspective on Frenchpsych unaccusatives. In WilliamAshby (Ed.), Linguistic perspec-tives on the romance languages:Selected papers from the 21stLinguistic Symposium on Ro-


mance Languages (pp. 239-247).Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Hopper, P., & Thompson, S. (1980).Transitivity in grammar and dis-course. Language, 56 (2), 251-299.

Lafford, B., & Ryan, J. (1995). The ac-quisition of lexical meaning in astudy abroad context: The Span-ish prepositions por and para.Hispania, 78 (3), 528-547.

Masullo, P. (1992). Antipassive con-structions in Spanish. In P.Hirschbuhler & K. Koerner (Eds.),Romance languages and modernlinguistic theory: Papers from the20th Linguistic Symposium o nRomance Languages (pp. 175-194). Amsterdam: John Ben-jamins.

Perdue, C., & Klein, W. (1992). Whydoes the production of somelearners not grammaticalize?Studies in Second Language Ac-quisition, 14 (3), 259-272.

Perlmutter, D., & Postal, P. (1984).The 1-advancement exclusive-ness law. In D. Perlmutter & C.Rosen (Eds.), Studies in relationalgrammar 2 (pp. 81-125). Chicago:University of Chicago Press.

Ross, J. (1973). A fake NP squish. InC. J. Bailey & R. Shuy (Eds.), N e wways of analyzing variation inEnglish (pp. 96-140). Washington:Georgetown University Press.

Rutherford, W. (1982). Markednessin L2 acquisition. LanguageLearning, 32 (1), 85-108.

Saltarelli, M. (1992). The subject ofpsych-verbs and case theory. In P.Hirschbahler & K. Koerner (Eds.),Romance languages and modernlinguistic theory: Papers from the20th Linguistic Symposium o n

0


Romance Languages (pp. 251-267). Amsterdam: John Ben-jamins.

Se linker, L. (1972). Inter language. In-ternational Review of AppliedLinguistics, 10 (3), 209-230.

VanPatten, B. (1987). Classroomlearners' acquisition of ser and

estar. In B. Van Patten, T. Dvorak,& J. Lee (Eds.), Foreign languagelearning: A research perspective(pp. 101-123). Cambridge: New-bury House.

Whitley, M. (1995). Gustar and otherpsych verbs: A problem in transi-tivity. Hispania, 78 (3), 573-585.

The Relationship Between the Production and Perception of 12Spanish Stops

MARY L. ZAMPINI, The University of Arizona

This paper explores the relationship between the second language (L2)production and perception of the Spanish stop consonants /p/ and /b/.An experiment was conducted that collected data on adult English-speaking learners' production of Spanish /p, b/ in a sentence context.The same learners also completed a series of perception experiments thatexamined their perceptual boundary between /p/ and /b/ as reflected bychanges in voice onset time (VOT). The mean VOTs produced by thelearners in the production experiment were compared to their percep-tual VOT boundary. The results do not reveal a strong correlation be-tween learners' perceptual capabilities and production of the L2 Spanishstops. In particular, while some learners' L2 productions approximatedthose of native Spanish speakers, their perceptual boundaries were simi-lar to boundaries for monolingual English speakers, and vice versa.

INTRODUCTIONAn important issue of second language (L2) pronunciation and

phonological acquisition is whether the ability to perceive accurately a par-ticular L2 contrast (e.g., the contrast between Spanish /p/ and /b/) is necessaryfor proper articulation of the contrasting phones. Flege's (1992) Speech Learn-ing Model, for example, suggests that the inability to recognize or(re)categorize perceptual distinctions limits accurate 12 production. This pa-per will address that question with regard to the acquisition of the Spanishvoiced and voiceless stop consonants by native English speakers.

The acquisition of the Spanish stops by English speakers is problematicfor several reasons. While both languages contain a series of stop phonemesdistinguished by voicingvoiceless /p t k/ contrasted with voiced /b d g/the phonetic realization of the voiced and voiceless stops in the two lan-guages differs in important respects. First, English /p t k/ are known as long-lag voiceless stops: they are realized with a relatively long voice onset time(VOT), which refers to the amount of time that elapses between the releaseburst of the stop and the onset of vocal fold vibration. This lag causes the as-piration that typically accompanies the production of /p t k/ in English, espe-cially in word-initial position. The voiced stops, on the other hand, haveshort VOT values and are hence considered short-lag voiceless stops. Thiscontrast is illustrated by the waveforms in Figures 1A and 1B, which show thefirst syllable of the words poker and both, produced by a native speaker ofEnglish, along with their respective VOT values.

Unlike those in English, Spanish voiceless stops have short VOT values,while the voiced stops are realized with voicing lead (or prevoicing) in which


VOT = 50 msecs

20.00 40.00 60.00 80.00 100.00 120.00 ms

A. English poker

00 60.00 80.00 10 .00 120.00 ms

B. English both

VOT = 16 msecs20.00 40.00

if

60.00 80.00 100.00 ms

C. Spanish Roca

Prevoicing = 58 msecs

20.00 40.00 60.00 80.00 100.00 120.00 ms

D. Spanish boca

Figure 1. Sample Waveforms for English /p/ and /b/and Spanish /p/ and /b/

9 3

Production and

the vocal folds begin vibrating beforethe release burst. Waveforms illus-trating this distinction for the Span-ish words poca and boca (producedby a native speakers of Spanish) ap-pear in Figures 1C and 1D. Thus,from a phonological perspective, /p/and /b/ differ with regard to the fea-ture [voiced] in both languages.From a phonetic perspective, how-ever, Spanish /p/ is more like Eng-lish /b/ in that both belong to theshort-lag stop category and are char-acterized by short VOT values, asshown in Figures 1B and 1C of Fig-ure 1. To illustrate the differencesbetween the two languages further,Table 1 provides the average VOTproduction values for native speak-ers of Spanish and English, as well as

Perception of L2 Spanish Stops 87

the range of VOT values found, re-ported in a classic study by Liskerand Abramson (1964).

Given the phonetic differencesbetween the two languages, the chal-lenge for English-speaking learnersof Spanish becomes clear: they mustreorganize the phonetic categories ofthe voiced and voiceless stop pho-nemes so as to reflect those of thetarget language. The learner mustshorten the relative VOT of /p/ dur-ing Spanish production, so that thisphone falls within the target rangeof a short-lag stop, and also elimi-nate voicing lag from the productionof Spanish /b/, so that this phonebecomes prevoiced. In addition, thephonetic category overlap betweenSpanish /p/ and English /b/ has

Table 1Mean VOT Measurements (in msecs) of English and Spanish Stops (Lisker &

Abramson, 1964)

[Positive values indicate voicing lag; negative values indicate prevoicing]

English Spanish

Stop Mean VOT VOT Range Stop Mean VOT VOT Range

/p/ 58 20 / 120 /p/ 4 0 / 15

/t/ 0 30 / 105 /t/ 9 0 / 15

/k/ 80 50 / 135 /k/ 29 15 / 55

/b/ 1 0 / 5 /b/ -138 -235 / -60

/d/ 5 0 / 25 /d/ -110 -170 / -75

/g/ 21 0 / 35 /g/ -108 -165 / -45


important implications for SpanishL2 speech perception. Given theirphonetic similarities, learners mayconfuse Spanish /p/ for /b/ percep-tually and must therefore adjusttheir perceptual categories (orboundaries) to reflect the Spanishsystem in order to avoid confusionand promote comprehension.

METHODSThe differences in the phonetic

realization of the Spanish and Eng-lish stop consonants with regard toVOT provide the motivation for thecurrent study. In particular, thestudy addresses the following re-search questions:

1. Do learners acquire the appropri-ate phonetic categories with re-gard to the Spanish voiceless andvoiced stops? If so, how do theymanipulate the different acousticcues of the speech signal in orderto achieve the necessary distinc-tion?

2. What effect does formal trainingin phonetics have on the acquisi-tion of the Spanish stops?

3. Is there a relationship betweenthe perception and production ofthe Spanish stops? That is, dolearners with native-like pro-nunciations of the Spanish stopsalso show evidence of native-likeboundaries between the voicelessand voiced phonemes in percep-tion?

While all three questions havesome bearing on the results to bediscussed, the present work focusesprimarily on the issues raised by the

9 5

third question, that of the relation-ship between production and percep-tion in L2 Spanish acquisition.

In order to address the statedresearch questions, an experimentalstudy was designed to examine boththe production and perception ofword-initial Spanish stop conso-nants by L2 learners whose nativelanguage was English. The partici-pants were enrolled in an advancedundergraduate Spanish phoneticscourse at the University of Arizona.Thirteen learners volunteered forthe study and were asked to com-plete a series of production and per-ception experiments in a speechlaboratory setting at several pointsthroughout the semester.

For the production portion ofthe experiment, each learner was re-corded during four repetitions of anEnglish or Spanish sentence, eachcontaining a target word that beganwith a stop consonant. The Englishproductions were obtained once dur-ing the second week of the semester,while Spanish productions were ob-tained three times. The first Spanishrecording occurred during the thirdweek of the semester, one week fol-lowing the English production ses-sion. At that point, the learners hadnot yet begun to study the articula-tion of individual Spanish pho-nemes; instead, they had studied ba-sic concepts of phonetics, as well asSpanish syllable structure and syl-labification. The second Spanish re-cording session took place threeweeks later, immediately after theSpanish voiceless stops had beenstudied in class. The text used for thepresentation and practice of thesephones was Barrutia and Schwegler(1994). In this text, the difference be-

Production and Perception of L2 Spanish Stops 89

tween the Spanish and Englishvoiceless stops is not described interms of short-lag vs. long-lag cate-gories and VOT; however, the textdoes tell the learner to try to avoidaspiration of /p t k/ when speakingSpanish by maintaining greatermuscular tension of the articulatorsand vocal tract during production.The final Spanish production ex-periment took place near the end ofthe semesterduring the fifteenthweek of class (and nine weeks afterthe second session). The sentencesthat the learners read were the samefor all recording sessions. A total of32 sentences were used with targetwords containing a variety of word-initial consonants. The data and re-sults discussed in the present studycome from the target stops that ap-pear in sentences like those in Table2.

Table 2Sample Sentences Used in the Pro-

duction Exercises

English:Please say the word paces to me.Please say the word bases to me.

Spanish:Diga la palabra peso por favor.'Say the word peso please.'

Diga la palabra beso por favor.'Say the word beso please.'

Once all the production data hadbeen gathered, the sentences weredigitized, and the voiceless closureintervals and VOT of the target stops

were measured from the digitizedwaveforms using SoundEdit 16.Voiceless closure interval refers tothe duration of closure before therelease of the stop consonant that ischaracterized by a lack of vocal cordvibration. Prevoicing of the voicedstops was also measured where ap-plicable; in such cases, the durationof prevoicing was measured as anegative VOT (see Table 1).

Finally, spirantized variants ofthe voiced Spanish stops were notedas well, and these tokens wereeliminated from the analysis. Spi-rantization is a process wherebySpanish /b d g/ are realized as ap-proximants in certain phonetic con-texts. The stop allophones generallyappear after a nasal consonant andin phrase-initial position (and /d/appears as a stop after laterals, aswell), whereas the spirantized allo-phones appear elsewhere. Since thespirants do not have the closure, re-lease burst, or VOT associated withstops, they were not included in thepresent analysis.

For the perception portion ofthe study, the learners listened tocomputer-edited versions of theEnglish and Spanish nonsensewords, pada and bada. These non-word tokens were natural, speech to-kens produced by a fluent English-Spanish bilingual, and they were ed-ited so as to vary from 40 msecs ofprevoicing to 56 msecs of voicing lagat approximately 5-msec intervals.The VOT continuum consisted of atotal of 20 tokens for each language.The learners listened to both Englishand Spanish versions of the wordspresented randomly and indicatedwhether each one began with /p/ or/b/ by pressing the appropriate but-

98


ton on a response box in the testingroom. Each token of the continuumappeared 10 times throughout theexperiment for a total of 200 re-sponses per language. This experi-ment was also carried out threetimes during the same three weeksas the Spanish production exercises:Weeks 3, 6, and 15 of the semester.In addition, 15 monolingual speak-ers of English and 12 Sp anish-English bilinguals completed theperception experiment, so as to pro-vide a basis of comparison for the L2learners' perception data. A meanVOT perceptual boundary for /b/and /p/ was determined for eachsubject group based upon the per-centage of /b/ (or /p/) responses.Separate boundaries were obtainedfor the English and Spanish versionsof the tokens.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONIn the discussion of the results,

the production results will be brieflydescribed first, followed by a descrip-tion of the perception results. Fi-nally, the relationship between thelearners' production and perceptionof Spanish /p/ and /b/ will be dis-cussed.

Production ResultsThe production results are pre-

sented in Figures 2 and 3. These fig-ures show the mean voiceless clo-sure interval and VOT values forthe English tokens paces and basesand the Spanish tokens peso("weight") and beso ("kiss") for theL2 learner group as a whole.

Consider first the informationin Figure 2. As shown, the learnersproduced Spanish /p/ with VOTvalues that approach the average

values reported for native Spanishspeakers shown in Table 1. Al-though the learners' VOT valueswere somewhat longer than those ofnative Spanish speakers, they werestill significantly shorter than theircorresponding VOT values for Eng-lish /p/. The learners also producedVOT values for Spanish /p/ thatwere similar to English /b/. Statisti-cal testing of these data revealed thatalthough the difference between theaverage VOT value of English /b/ inFigure 2 proved significant from thatof peso-1 and peso-2, there was nosignificant VOT difference betweenbases and peso-3. This indicates thatby the end of the semester, thelearners equated the Ll short-lagcategory, /b/, with the L2 short-lagcategory, /p/, at least with respect toVOT. Figure 2 also shows, however,that the learners distinguished Span-ish /p/ from English /b/ throughsignificantly longer closure intervalsof the Spanish phone.

As for Spanish /b/, Figure 3shows that the learners producedthese tokens with somewhat shorterVOT values than in English; thesedifferences, however, did not provesignificant. Furthermore, the overallpositive VOT means for L2 Spanish/b/ across all three sessions indicatethat the learners failed to producethese tokens with prevoicing. Asmentioned above, prevoicing ismeasured as a negative VOT; there-fore, if the learners had prevoicedconsistently (or learned to prevoiceover the course of the semester), onewould expect an overall negativeVOT average. An examination ofthe individual data, however, re-vealed only two prevoiced /b/'s inthe first session, three during the


100.00

90.00

80.00

70.00

60.00

50.00

40.00

30.00

20.00

10.00

0.00paces bases peso-1 peso-2 peso-3

peso-1: 1st session (Week 3) peso-2: 2nd session (Week 6)peso-3: 3rd session (Week 15)

Figure 2. Mean Voiceless Closure and VOT Values (in msecs)Learner Production of English /p, b/ and Spanish /p/

@Voiceless ClosureEa VOT

100.00

90.00

80.00

70.00

60.00

50.00

40.00

30.00 -

20.00

10.00

0.00beso-1 beso-2 beso-3

g Voiceless Closure21 VOT

beso-1: 1st session (Week 3) beso-2: 2nd session (Week 6) beso-3: 3rd session (Week 15)

Figure 3. Mean Voiceless Closure and VOT Values (in msecs)Learner Production of English and Spanish /b/

9S


second session, and four during thethird (out of a total of 56 tokens withword-initial /b/ in each session).Thus, the prevoicing associated withthe Spanish voiced stops appears totake longer to acquire than the short-lag VOTs of the Spanish voicelessstops. (See Zampini (1998) for a de-tailed discussion of the productionresults presented in Figures 2 and 3,including a more detailed descrip-tion of the statistical analyses.)

Perception ResultsTurning now to the results of

the perception experiments, considerfirst the information in Table 3,which shows the average VOT

boundary that separates /p/ from /b/perceptually for the L2 learners andthe two control groups; Figure 4 pre-sents the same information ingraphical form.

First, it is interesting to notethat all subject groups showed a con-sistent difference with regard to theVOT boundary for the Spanish andEnglish versions of the nonsensewords; namely, the Spanish bound-ary was consistently shorter thanthat for the English tokens. Thesetwo token types were identical intheir acoustic characteristics prior tothe release burst, so the voicing deci-sion must

Table 3Mean VOT Perceptual Boundaries (in msecs) Between /p/ and /b/

[Positive value indicates boundary in voicing lag range; negative value indi-cates boundary in prevoiced range.]

GroupEnglishTokens

SpanishTokens Mean

Monolingual Eng-lish

14.5 2.77 8.635

Spanish/EnglishBilinguals

6.12 -8.96 -1.42

L2 Learners - 1stSession

8.22 -3.65 2.285

L2 Learners 2ndSession

11.56 -7.59 1.985

L2 Learners - 3rd Ses-sion

11.85 -5.15 3.35

9


English Tokens IN

Spanish Tokens 0

I I I I 1

Mono- Spanish- 1st 2nd 3rdlingual English Session Session SessionEnglish Bilinguals \ Learners /

Figure 4. Mean VOT Perceptual Boundaries between /p/ and /b/

have been determined by aspects ofthe speech signal following the re-lease burst; however, a discussion ofthe reasons for these differences isbeyond the scope of the current pa-per.

Statistical analyses on the meanVOT boundaries revealed severalsignificant effects. Consider first theboundaries for the English tokens inFigure 4. Analyses of these tokensrevealed three significant differ-ences. First, the English boundarydifference between the monolingualEnglish and Spanish-English bilin-

gual speakers was significant. Sec-ond, there was also a significant dif-ference in the English tokenboundaries for the monolingualEnglish speakers and the L2 learnersin the first L2 session, but not thesecond or third. Finally, the differ-ences in English boundary betweenthe L2 learners and the Spanish-English bilinguals were not signifi-cant for the first L2 session, but werefor both the second and third ses-sions.

The Spanish token perceptualboundaries in Figure 4 also showed


several significant effects. First, themonolingual English speakers'Spanish boundary was significantlylonger than that of the Spanish-English bilinguals; this pattern issimilar to the one found for the Eng-lish data of these two groups. Sec-ond, there was no significant differ-ence in the Spanish perceptualboundaries of the monolingual Eng-lish speakers compared to the L2learners in the first session; how-ever, the differences between thesetwo groups in the second and thirdL2 sessions did prove significant.Third, none of the Spanish bound-ary differences between the L2 learn-ers and Spanish-English bilingualswere significant. Finally, an exami-nation of just the L2 learners' per-ceptual data revealed a significantdifference in their English VOTboundaries between the first andsecond, and first and third, sessions,but not between the last two ses-sions. For the Spanish tokens, theonly significant difference across ses-sions occurred between the first andsecond L2 sessions.

To summarize, the L2 learnersstarted out with an English percep-tual boundary that was significantlyshorter than that of their monolin-gual English counterparts, but notsignificantly different from that ofSpanish-English bilinguals; thus,their English boundary was moreSpanish-like. These boundaries,however, shifted after training inthe Spanish voiceless stops tookplace and became significantlylonger and more English-like; thisshift was sustained through the endof the semester. As for the Spanishperceptual boundaries, the L2 learn-ers started out somewhere in be-

1 0 1

tween the two control groups, with aVOT boundary that was not signifi-cantly different from either group.They shifted toward more Spanish-like boundaries after training tookplace, however, as evidenced by thechanges in the Spanish VOT bound-ary during the second session. Al-though this shift does not appear tobe wholly sustained through the endof the semester, the L2 learners'Spanish boundary of the third ses-sion remained significantly differentfrom the corresponding boundary ofthe monolingual English speakers,but not from the boundary of theSpanish-English bilinguals. Takentogether, the changes in the L2learners' English and Spanish per-ceptual boundaries indicate an at-tempt to maintain a clear distinctionbetween the two languages bymaximizing the perceptual distancebetween them. Thus, rather thanshowing evidence for one mergedperceptual boundary between thevoiced and voiceless stops regardlessof language mode, the results sug-gest that the learners have two sepa-rate perceptual boundariesone foreach languageand that theseboundaries become even more dis-tinct with training.

The Relationship between Produc-tion and Perception

Finally, having discussed theindividual production and percep-tion results, we may now turn to thecentral issue of the paper: the rela-tionship between the L2 learners'production and perception of theSpanish stops. If a positive relation-ship exists, one would expect thatthose learners who show short per-ceptual boundaries will also exhibit


short VOT production values, whilethose with longer perceptualboundaries will likewise exhibitlonger VOT production values. Suchan idealized relationship betweenproduction and perception is de-picted in Figure 5.

In a similar fashion, if native-like perception in L2 is necessary for(or precedes) accurate production,one would expect that those learnerswith long perceptual boundaries willalso have long VOT production val-ues. Learners with short perceptualboundaries, however, may or maynot have correspondingly short VOTproduction values. That is, if percep-tion precedes production, learnersthat show accurate perceptual

boundaries could still exhibit longproduction values if they are in astage of acquisition in which produc-tion has not yet begun to change.

To examine this issue with re-gard to learner performance, correla-tions were obtained between the per-ceptual boundaries of a particularsession and the corresponding pro-ductions of peso and beso from thesame session. This information ap-pears in Figures 6A - 6F.

In each of the graphs in Figure6, the points represent the intersec-tion of the Spanish perceptualboundary and mean Spanish VOTproduction value for each individ-ual learner. None of the graphs ap-proach the kind of idealized

40-

30-

20-

10-

lofif

Ago- Spanish-likePerception/Production

Perception/Production

r =+1.0

0 . . . . .

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

Voiceless Productions (Mean VOT in msecs)

Figure 5. Idealized Relationship between Production and Perception

10 2


20

15 -

10 -

5 -

0 -

-5 -

-10 -

-15 -

20

r = .5

0 10 20 30 40 50 60Voiceless Productions

(Mean VOT)A. Peso - 1st Session

20 -

15 -

.10:

5

-5

-10:-15:-20

s%

is\110

US

15 -

10 -

5 -

0 -

-5

-10 -

-15 -

-20 -

Os 41

r =

-250 10

1.20 30 40 50 60

Voiceless Productions(Mean VOT)

C. Peso - 2nd Session

-20 -10 0 10 20

Voiced Productions(Mean VOT)

B. Beso - 1st Session

15 -

10 -

5 -

0 -

-5 -

-10 -

-15 -

-20 -

-25

r = -.35 s`s

ill

`..S,

I I

-20 -10 0 10 20


D. Beso - 2nd Session

Figure 6. Correlations Between L2 Spanish Production and Perception (cont.)


10 -

5 -0 -

-5 --10 -

-15 -

-20 -

-25 -

-30 --35

621-10.........

----

r = +.14

*

p

oCI)

rs

g.0ra.-o

20 -

15

10

5_

0 -

-5

-15--20

r = +.17

/

0 10 20 30 401

50 60 -20....

-10 0,

10 20

Figure 6.

Voiceless Productions(Mean VOT)

E. Peso - 3rd Session


F. Beso - 3rd Session

Correlations between L2 Spanish Production and Perception(concluded)

relationship shown in Figure 5. Forexample, consider the first sessioncorrelation data for the Spanishword peso in Figure 6A. Recall thatif a positive relationship existed be-tween production and perception,one would expect that learners withshort VOT production values wouldalso have short VOT perceptualboundaries. As seen in Figure 6A,however, those learners with thelongest perceptual boundaries alsohave some of the shortest produc-tion values. This trend is also seenfor the peso data in the second andthird sessions, as shown in Figures6C and 6E. These results, therefore,fail to support the hypothesis pro-posed by Flege's (1992) Speech Learn-ing Model that inaccurate L2 percep-tion will limit U production andsuggest instead that perception doesnot necessarily precede production.In fact, the peso data in Figures 6A,6C, and 6E appear to support an op-

posing hypothesis, namely, that 12production may in some cases pre-cede perception. That is, it may bethe case that learners do not begin toadjust perceptual boundaries untilthey have attained accurate produc-tion categories. That this might be sois illustrated in Figure 7, whichshows a predictive distribution ofdata for the opposing hypotheses.

If perception precedes produc-tion, one might expect a range ofdata along the horizontal axis, as de-picted in Figure 7. Learners withshort, Spanish-like perceptualboundaries may or may not exhibitcorrespondingly short productionvalues, depending upon their stageof acquisition. If production precedesperception, on the other hand, onemight expect a range of data alongthe vertical axis, since learners withshort production values may or maynot exhibit correspondingly shortperceptual boundaries. This pattern

S 1;


p 40-C)

cn

y, 30-(4 :

etcl

20-o

CY

114

.0 0

DProduction Leads Perception

ETI Perception Leads Production

e.

S.S.S. S. S. S. S. S. N.'''

English-likePerception/Production

e.Ieee / / ,/ / / /S. S. S. S. S. S. S. S. S. S. S. S. S. S. S. S. S. S. S. S. S. S.ee/f!...1/I////////////////////

0 10 20 30 40 50 60Voiceless Productions (Mean VOT in msecs)

Spanish-likePerception/Production

Figure 7. Relationship between Production and Perception - Two Hypotheses

would again depend upon each in-dividual's stage of acquisition. Re-turning now to Figures 6A, C, and E,the overall spread of the individualpoints corresponds more closely tothe predictions made by the hy-pothesis that production precedesperception. Thus, it appears thatsome learners learn to make thephonetic category substitution forSpanish /p/ before they make corre-sponding changes in perception.This result may not seem too sur-prising, since the phonetic categorythat they must learn for Spanish/p/,that of a short-lag stop, is one that

J1 0 5

already exists in the learners' firstlanguage. The phonetic category thatlearners must acquire for Spanish/b/, on the other hand, that of aprevoiced stop, does not exist in Eng-lish. As a result, the substitution inproduction may take longer, which-could, in turn, affect the interactionbetween production and perception.Consider, for example, the informa-tion in Figures 6B, 6D, and 6F, whichcorrelate the Spanish perceptualboundary with the average VOTvalues for /b/. The correlations inthese graphs are more scattered anddo not appear to support either of


the predictions made by the hy-potheses illustrated in Figure 7.

To summarize, the correlationdata do not provide evidence for apositive relationship between the I2production and perception of theSpanish stops. While some learners'L2 productions approximated thoseof native Spanish speakers, theirperceptual boundaries were similarto boundaries for monolingual Eng-lish speakers, and vice versa. In ad-dition, the correlation data for Span-ish /p/ suggest that production mayprecede perception, at least for thiscategory. This indication does notnecessarily mean, however, that in-accurate production will limit accu-rate perception; rather, it simply im-plies that the two may not be mutu-ally dependent processes. The ob-served variation in the correlationdata for Spanish /b/ further suggestthat production and perception maybe independent processes (at least forcertain stages of acquisition or forcertain types of phones), since n oclear interaction was found.

These results have importantimplications for studies of both sec-ond language acquisition and speechprocessing. For example, althoughthe results do not show a positivecorrelation between the perceptionand production with regard to VOT,there are other acoustic cues of thestop consonants that may play an in-fluential role in the acquisitionprocess. It was observed in Figure 2,for example, that learner productionof the Spanish voiceless stops hadsignificantly longer closure intervalsthan those for either the voiceless orvoiced English stops; this differenceprovided a means of distinguishingthe Spanish short-lag phones /p t k/

from the corresponding Englishones, /b d g/. Given that the learnershave learned to manipulate closureinterval in order to achieve a givendistinction, the interaction betweenVOT and closure may prove moreimportant in L2 Spanish productionand perception than either one ofthese two acoustic cues alone. Thus,research in both L2 production andperception is needed to gain addi-tional insight into the relative im-portance of the different acousticcues in second language acquisition,as well as into ways in which theweighting of these cues changes overtime.

CONCLUSIONTo conclude, this study has

presented evidence for the acquisi-tion of L2 Spanish stops by nativeEnglish speakers as demonstrated bychanges in production and percep-tion over the course of the semester.Analyses that examined these proc-esses individually showed signifi-cant changes toward Spanish-likeproduction and perception categoriesover the course of the semester. Cor-relations of the production and per-ception results with regard to VOT,however, did not reveal a strong re-lationship between the two. The cor-relation data for Spanish /p/ pro-vided some evidence for L2 acquisi-tion in which accurate productionprecedes accurate perception, whilethe data for Spanish /b/ did not sup-port either the notion that produc-tion precedes perception or that per-ception precedes production. It wassuggested that the two processes mayact independently during certainstages of acquisition. It may also bethe case that, for some phones, per-

106


ception does precede production,while for others the reverse holds.Hence, this present study has servedto illuminate a variety of potentialinteractions and to propose that theinteraction between production andperception is more complex than issometimes assumed.

REFERENCESBarrutia, R., & Schwegler, A. (1994).

Fonética y fonologia espanolas.New York: Wiley.

Flege, J. (1992). Speech learning in asecond language. In C. A. Fergu-

son, L. Menn, & C. Stoel-Gammon (Eds.), Phonologicaldevelopment: Models, research,and application (pp. 565-604). Ti-monium, MD: York Press.

Lisker, L., & Abramson, A. (1964). Across-language study of voicingin initial stops. Word, 20, 384-422.

Zampini, M. L. (1998). VOT andvoiceless closure interval in theproduction of second languageSpanish stop consonants. Manu-script submitted for publication.

English Speakers' Acquisition of Voiceless Stops andTrills in L2 Spanish

JEFFREY T. REEDER, Sonoma State University

The purpose of this paper is threefold: (1) to define acoustically thelearner progress in the acquisition of a set of phonological features, spe-cifically interlingual differences in the voice onset time of voiceless stopconsonants and the number of taps produced when attempting to pro-duce the Spanish phoneme irk (2) to determine if and at what stage ofacquisition the given L2 targets are realized; and (3) to use data fromadult English-speaking learners of Spanish to test Flege's framework ofsecond language speech acquisition known as the Speech LearningModel. The basis for addressing the above questions in this paper is across-sectional study of 40 native English-speaking learners of Spanish ina U.S. university. These learners, representing four different levels, pro-tided data that were analyzed acoustically using computer-based speechanalysis software. In addition to tracing the acquisition of a set of soundsthrough the four levels, this study provides evidence that the Spanishtrill is acquired differently than the voiceless stops. Furthermore, Flege'sSLM is shown to be a relevant model of second language speech acquisi-tion with respect to the sounds and language combination examined inthis study.

INTRODUCTIONThis paper is divided into four sections. The first section provides the

background for this study by summarizing current views of some of the fac-tors constraining second language (12) speech acquisition and by describingFlege's (1995) Speech Learning Model (SLM). Also in the first section is a de-scription of the Spanish sounds that are studied in this work, accompanied byan overview of previous research done on the L2 acquisition of those Spanishsounds by English speakers. The second section of this paper describes themethod used in this cross-sectional study, including a description of the par-ticipants and their experience with the study of Spanish, an explanation of thedata collection procedure, and an outline of the scoring procedure. The nextsection presents the results of the perception test and the data from the par-ticipants' production attempts of the trill and the voiceless stops, and the finalsection summarizes the results and their implications for what is knownabout the acquisition of L2 Spanish speech.

BACKGROUNDIn this section, current views of some of the factors governing second

language (12) speech acquisition are summarized. After this background in-formation is given, a description of relevant portions of Flege's (1995) SLM isprovided, given that it is a model of 12 speech acquisition that claims to be

J. 0 S


applicable to learners of all ages.Next is a description of the Spanishsounds /r/, /p/, /t/, and /k/ that arestudied here, as well as an encapsu-lation of the research that has al-ready been done on the L2 acquisi-tion of those sounds by native Eng-lish speakers.

L2 Speech Perception ConstraintsEarly in their linguistic experi-

ence, humans learn to organize theenormous set of perceived sounds byclassifying them as speech or non-speech and, for the former, assounds with phonemic significancein the Ll phonological inventory, inmuch the same way as they organizethe infinite variety of color intocategories such as red, pink, or or-ange. With respect to L2 acquisition,the research suggests that learners inearly stages routinely categorize L2speech sounds that they perceive interms of their L1 phonological in-ventory. To test the hypothesis thatLl phonemic categorization rulesinfluence perception of other speechsounds, Scholes (1967) designed anexperiment in which listeners froma variety of language backgroundswere presented aurally with a set ofsynthetic vowel stimuli. The result-ing data showed that subjects tendedto organize the stimuli in accordancewith the vowel systems of their na-tive languages, suggesting an L1 in-fluence in vowel perception. In ex-periments in which subjects wereasked to categorize initial occlusives,for which voice onset time (VOT) isan acoustic cue, Lisker & Abramson(1964) reported that listeners regu-larly separated a continuum of stopconsonant stimuli varying in VOT

109

value according to the categoriza-tions in their Ll.

Also seeking evidence of howcategories are established, Williams(1979) engaged bilingual adults inperceptory discrimination tasks andfound that the subjects establishedcompromise VOT values falling be-tween the categories present in theL1 and L2, suggesting that learnersmay alter their perceptive categoriesin response to stimuli. This findingwas later confirmed by Flege (1987)and forms the basis for his"equivalence classification" hy-pothesis, which proposes that learn-ers may group similar L1 and L2phones into one category based o nsuch compromise values. Accordingto this hypothesis, a learner projectsLl phonetic categories onto the L2whenever the sounds are judged bythe learner to be equivalent; newphonetic categories are formed onlywhen the learner perceives thesounds as different. One effect thatFlege (1995) proposed for suchequivalence classification is thatcases of continued perceptual link-age of Ll and L2 sounds limit the ac-curacy with which L2 sounds may beproduced (Flege, 1995).

L2 Speech Production ConstraintsJust as perceptual categories are

established for Ll processing, Bor-den, Harris, Fitch, and Yoshioka(1981) claim that speakers have men-tally pre-established representationsof muscular gestures that are neces-sary to produce the articulatory tar-get. Accordingly, L2 productionwould presumably be limited, eitherby the degree of similarity betweenthe Ll and L2 targets or by the degree

Acquisition of Stops and Trills in L2 Spanish 103

to which the learner is able to suc-cessfully establish new gestural rep-resentations. Borden (1980) suggeststhat self-perception plays an impor-tant role in establishing a link be-tween the perception and produc-tion of novel phonetic targets in thatthe learner progressively modifiesgestural representations until audi-tory feedback indicates to the learnerthat the L2 target has been met satis-factorily. Direct realist accounts ofspeech learning, such as that pro-posed by Best (1995), point out thatlearners have proprioceptive accessto the gestures used to create speechsounds and are able to learn effi-ciently the important elements ofthe gestures used to create Ll speechsounds. Best proposed that this ges-tural proprioceptivity leads to theformation of relational "lower-orderinvariants," which may graduallygive way to language-specific,"higher-order invariants," causing areduced amount of lower-orderphonetic detail to be detected andthus potentially interfering with themechanisms used in the learning ofnew sounds.

A question that has generatedcontroversy in the literature iswhether L2 perception precedes pro-duction or whether accurate produc-tion can come before (or without)perception. Some studies, such asLane (1963), Neufeld (1979), andFlege (1987), have suggested that ac-curate perception must come beforeproduction, but other research, suchas Gass's (1984) study on Englishlearners' VOT production, suggeststhat accurate production may pre-cede perception.

The Speech Learning ModelIn its current form, the Speech

Learning Model (Flege, 1995) pres-ents four postulates and seven hy-potheses concerned with the ulti-mate attainment of L2 pronuncia-tion. The SLM claims that learnersof an L2 must create accurate percep-tual "targets" to guide them in theproduction of L2 sounds; failure todo so will result in inaccurately pro-duced targets. The first postulate ofthe SLM proposes that the same de-vices that are used by learners tolearn their native language (11) canbe accessed at any age and applied toL2 learning. Since the present studytreats the adult [1] acquisition of L2Spanish, this postulate is of consid-erable importance since it providesthe assumption that speech learningprocesses remain accessible to all L2learners, regardless of age. Of theseven hypotheses of the modelgiven by Flege (1995, p. 239), the sec-ond, third, and seventh are particu-larly relevant to the present studyand are listed here:

Hypothesis 2: A new phoneticcategory can be established for an L2sound that differs phonetically fromthe closest Ll sound if bilinguals dis-cern at least some of the phoneticdifferences between the Ll and L2sounds.

Hypothesis 3: The greater theperceived phonetic dissimilarity be-tween an L2 sound and the closest L1sound, the more likely it is thatphonetic differences between thesounds will be discerned.


Hypothesis 7: The productionof a sound eventually corresponds tothe properties represented in itsphonetic category representation.

Hypotheses 2 and 3 predict thatlearners will be able to create a newphonetic category once they perceivethat a sound differs from a corre-sponding sound in the Ll; the like-lihood of this occurring increases asthe differences between the Ll andL2 sounds magnify. According toHypothesis 7, once learners have es-tablished such a phonetic categoryrepresentation for a novel sound,their production of that sound willeventually correspond to that of na-tive speakers of the L2, providedtheir phonetic categories were accu-rately represented.

Description of Sounds

The Phonemes /pl, /t/, /k/The phonemes /p/, /t/, and /k/

are present in both English andSpanish. Despite their apparentsimilarity, however, in English theallophones [ph] (aspirated voicelessbilabial stop), [th] (aspirated voicelessalveolar stop), and [kh] (aspiratedvoiceless velar stop) may occur inword-initial position or at the be-ginning of a stressed syllable,whereas in Spanish the three pho-nemes in question each have onlyone possible syllable-initial allo-phonic realization (the voicelessbilabial stop [p] for /p/, the voicelessdental stop [t] for It/, and the voice-less velar stop [k] for /k/).

As originally proposed byLisker and Abramson (1964), and assince expanded further by manyother researchers, the standard

iiI

acoustic correlate used to measurestop consonant production is VOT[2]. Within the VOT continuum,Lisker and Abramson found thatmost languages tend to cluster VOTaround three or fewer categories ofvalues: long voicing lead, zero onsetor short lag, and long voicing lag.Keating (1984) proposed describingthese as phonetic categories, suchthat Lisker and Abramson's catego-ries would be phonetically realizedas the following: voiced (also re-ferred to as prevoiced), voiceless un-aspirated, and voiceless aspirated,respectively. Figure 1 illustrates thephonological differences for stopconsonants between English andSpanish along the VOT continuum.The figure shows that English usesall three phonetic categories, withthe voiced and voiceless unaspiratedcategories used for voiced phonemesand the voiceless aspirated categoryused for voiceless phonemes. Span-ish, however, uses only two of thephonetic categories. In Spanish, thevoiced category represents voicedphonemes and the voiceless unaspi-rated category is used for voicelessphonemes. The voiceless aspiratedphonetic category is not used inSpanish.

The Phoneme /r/The Spanish trill /r/ has no

counterpart in any dialect of Ameri-can English, nor in most other dia-lects of English. Although this pho-neme's allophonic distribution mayinclude allophones that are voicedor voiceless fricatives, uvular trills,and voiced or voiceless alveolartrills, the most common allophonein most dialects and the one that ismost frequently taught to learners of


Figure 1. Perception Test Results, by Level

L2 Spanish is the voiced alveolartrill represented by the InternationalPhonetic Alphabet symbol /r/. Themost readily identifiable acousticcorrelate of the /r/ is a regular inter-ruption in the waveform and spec-trograph caused by the brief, periodiccessations of phonation that corre-spond to each contact between thetongue and the alveolar area.

Existing Research On L2 SpanishPhonemes /p/, /k/, and Irl

Although interest in the acqui-sition of L2 Spanish stop consonantsby English-speaking populations hasdeveloped relatively recently, therehave been a number of importantadvances. González-Bueno (1997)tested two groups of intermediatelearners of Spanish in a foreign lan-guage setting. The first, an experi-mental group, received explicit in-struction and practice in the produc-

tion of Spanish stop consonants,while a control group received nospecial instruction. Over the courseof one semester, she found thatlearners in the experimental groupwere able to significantly shortenVOT in their production of /p/ and/g/, thus rendering their productionmore Spanish-like. Although the/t/, /k/, /b/, and /d/ also improved,the degree of improvement was notstatistically significant, which Gon-zalez-Bueno attributes to the interac-tive- operation of developmental andtransfer processes.

Flege and Eefting (1988) con-ducted an experiment in which Eng-lish monolinguals, Spanish mono-linguals, and native Spanish bilin-guals imitated a consonant-vowelcontinuum in which the VOT of theinitial consonant varied. As ex-pected, the Spanish monolingualsshowed a tendency to produce stops

1 2


with Spanish-like VOT values (shortlag, long lead) and the Englishmonolinguals tended to produceEnglish-like stops (short lag, longlag). With the bilingual group, how-ever, the researchers reported stopproduction in all three VOT ranges,suggesting that those subjects hadprocessed the stops in terms of thethree phonetic categories present inboth languages.

Contrasting with the amount ofattention that has been given to theacquisition of L2 Spanish stop con-sonants as evidenced by the afore-mentioned studies, the trill has notbeen the subject of recent publishedstudies. Consequently, this studyhopes to fill a gap in the research bydirecting inquiry to the L2 acquisi-tion of the /r/ among adult Englishspeakers.

METHODThis section of this paper de-

scribes the research method em-ployed in this cross-sectional study.A description of basic characteristicsof the participants as well as infor-mation about their background withL2 Spanish is given. Following thedescription of the subjects, an expla-nation of the data collection proce-dure and an outline of the scoringprocedure are provided.

SubjectsThe present study examines

data gathered in 1997 from 45 volun-teers affiliated with the Spanish pro-gram at a medium-sized, privateuniversity in the United States. Ofthese participants, 40 were nativespeakers of English and the remain-ing 5 were native speakers of Span-ish. The native English-speaking

1 3

subjects were recruited from amongthose who had no significant child-hood background with Spanish, nei-ther through significant formalstudy prior to age 12, through resi-dence or extensive travel in Span-ish-speaking communities, northrough family contact. The nativeEnglish-speaking subjects are catego-rized as below and are described inTable 1.

Level 1 (Beginning Learners):The 10 participants in this groupwere students enrolled for credit in afirst-semester university Spanishlanguage course.

Level 2 (Intermediate Learners):The 10 participants in this groupwere students enrolled for credit in athird-semester university Spanishlanguage course.

Level 3 (Advanced Learners):The 10 participants in this groupwere enrolled for credit in an upper-division or graduate-level univer-sity course in Spanish language, lit-erature, or culture.

Level 4 (Very Advanced Learn-ers): The 10 participants in thisgroup were native speakers of Eng-lish who were full-time instruc-tional faculty teaching universitycourses in Spanish language, litera-ture, or culture and who otherwisemet the criteria for inclusion in thestudy.

The native Spanish-speakingparticipants were recruited fromamong teachers of Spanish at thesame university. These nativespeakers, from Chile, Colombia,

Proficiency of Bilingual Education Teachers 107

Table 1Participant Characteristics (Group Means)

Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4

Age (years) 18.5 19.7 21.6 41.8

H.S. Span. (years) 2.2 2.5 2.3 2.2

Univ Span. (semesters) 1.1 2.6 7.9 21.6

Hrs Span used/day 1.2 0.9 1.8 4.1

Days in Span country 4.2 5.0 18.3 1615.5

Mexico, and Spain, were selected toprovide speech data for purposes ofcomparison, and they representmany of the most common varietiesof Spanish.

Data ElicitationThe data collection process con-

sisted of three separate types of data-gathering methods. A questionnairecollected relevant biographical dataand learner characteristics, a forced-choice minimal pair test promptedby a Spanish audio recording pro-vided a measure of auditory dis-crimination, and three differenttypes of audio recordings of eachsubject's Spanish captured 12 pro-duction. To ensure consistency andcross-level comparability of data, thedata collection procedure was identi-cal for each participant, regardless oflevel. All instructions were given inEnglish.

After signing a form indicatingtheir informed willingness to par-

ticipate in the study, each participantcompleted the first part of the study,a questionnaire that identified therelevant individual learner charac-teristics and established a profile ofeach level of subjects, as seen in Ta-ble 1. The second part of data collec-tion was a two-alternative, forced-choice discrimination test designedto measure perception of discretetarget language items among 12minimal pairs. The stimulus for thisportion of the experiment was apreviously recorded audio recordingof a native Spanish speaker readingone of the minimal pair items; sub-jects circled the item they believedthey heard on a score sheet. The re-cording was presented via a SonyTCM-919 cassette player.

The third part of this study re-corded the subjects' production ofSpanish. This part consisted of threedifferent segments, each involving adifferent elicitation protocol. In thefirst of these segments, the re-


searcher instructed subjects to readfrom a list of ten Spanish words orphrases embedded in a carrier phrasecommon to all items (e.g. "digo -esta vez"). These items were selectedto provide a wide variety of phone-mic targets and to measure sensitiv-ity to (and influence from) ortho-graphic cues in an elicitation proto-col where all or most of the partici-pant's attention could be directed topronunciation. In the second seg-ment, also designed to measure dis-crete lexical items, participants weresequentially shown 11 picture cards,each with a drawing of a relativelycommon item. The task was for thesubjects to say the names of the ob-jects in Spanish. Finally, in the thirdspeech elicitation protocol, partici-pants provided a 30-second guidednarration in Spanish in response toa written cue. This segment pro-vided data from a context in whichthe participant's mental resourceswere presumably engaged in manyelements of language production be-sides pronunciation.

Speech data for all participantswere recorded as follows: Each sub-ject was recorded individually in theresearcher's office (which, while notan anechoic chamber, includes anumber of sound muffling features).Having been prompted, subjectsspoke into a Sony SV-9 microphonemounted on a Nissin tripod stand.The resulting input fed directly intothe audio input of a Macintosh desk-top computer, which then processedand recorded the signals digitally us-ing Signalyze speech analysis soft-ware.

1 5

RESULTSThe results section presents the

findings of the perception and speak-ing elicitation tests. These findings,presented in tabular and graphicformats, are also analyzed statisti-cally to evaluate the significance ofthe findings.

Perception TestThe results of the two-

alternative forced-choice perceptiontest for each level are presented inFigure 1. The perception test in thisstudy provides a general assessmentof the participants' perception ofSpanish minimal pairs, including 5vocalic and 6 consonantal features.These results show that in this studylearners at more advanced levelswere better able to discriminateamong Spanish minimal pairs thanthose at beginning levels, althoughlearners at all levels showed a highpercentage of correct responses, sug-gesting that most learners correctlyperceive phonemic features in Span-ish.

Spanish Production Data: Stop Con-sonants

The data collected from thespeech elicitation tests appear in Ta-bles 2 and 3. Table 2 indicates theshortest, longest, and mean VOTvalues recorded for each stop conso-nant (the data are also arrangedgraphically in Figures 2 through 7).The results of the ANOVA shownin Table 3 suggest that stop conso-nants are produced with a signifi-cantly more Spanish-like VOT when


Table 2VOT Values for Each Phoneme, by Group

/p/ /t/ /k/Level 1

Shortest VOT (ms) 36 26 41

Longest VOT (ms) 89 102 117

Mean VOT (ms) 54 53 .73

Level 2Shortest VOT (ms) 27 30 53


Mean VOT (ms) 51 55 74







Native Speaker [31Shortest VOT (ms) 9 10 17



1 16


Table 3ANOVA on the Difference of Mean VOT Values Between Levels

ComparisonDifference in Mean VOT

(ms)

Level 1 > Level 2 0

Level 1 > Level 3 -48*

Level 1 > Level 4 -73**

Level 2 > Level 3 -48*

Level 2 > Level 4 -73**

Level 3 > Level 4 -25

*p <0.01**p <.001

comparing Level 1 with Levels 3 and4, as well as when comparing Level 2with Levels 3 and 4. With some ex-ception, reduction of VOT times wasa general tendency throughout all ofthe levels, but only the increasesevident between the first two andlasttwo levels reached confidence levelsof 99% or greater.

Table 3 shows the results of anANOVA on the difference of meanVOT values between levels for allthree voiceless stops. The differencebetween the Level 1 values and theLevel 2 values were, coincidentally,zero (the reduction in /p/ valuesfrom Level 1 to Level 2 was offset bythe slightly higher values with /t/and /k/). Statistically significantVOT reductions occur from Level 1to Levels 3 and 4, and from Level 2

to Levels 3 and 4. Although a VOTreduction occurs from Level 3 toLevel 4, it does not reach signifi-cance.

Figures 2 through 7 on the fol-lowing pages illustrate the range ofmean VOT values recorded fromparticipants' speech samples. Figures2 through 4 show the entire range ofVOT mean values for /p/, /t/, and/k/, respectively, whereas the over-all mean VOT for each level appearsin Figures 5 through 7.

As shown in Figures 2 through7 above, the three voiceless stopsounds follow the same pattern ofacquisition. Learners in the earlierstages of acquisition, such as those inLevels 1 and 2, tend to produce thetarget sound inconsistently, as


VOT range: /p/

1201101009080

v 700 60T 50

403020100

Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 1N.Spkrs

Figure 2. Range of Mean VOT Values for /p/, in Milliseconds.

1207110100

VOT range: /t/ I

9080

v 700 60T 50

40302010

0IN.SpkrsLevel 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4

Figure 3. Range of Mean VOT Values for /t/, in Milliseconds

c'1

VOT range: /k/ I


1201101009080

v 700 60T 50

40302010

0Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 IN.Spkrs

Figure 4. Range of Mean VOT Values for /k/, in Milliseconds.

80

70

60

50V0 40T 30_.

Llean VOT: /p/1

20

10

0Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 N.Spkrs

Figure 5. Group Mean VOT Values for /p/, in Milliseconds.


Figure 6. Group Mean VOT Values for /t/, in Milliseconds.

80

70

60

50V0 40

30

Figure 7. Group Mean VOT Values for /k/, in Milliseconds.


evidenced by a wide range of VOTvalues in their attempts at the L2target.

For example, Figure 3 showsthat there is more than 70 ms differ-ence between the shortest and long-est Level 1 mean VOT. Addition-ally,the less advanced learners showa tendency to equate the 12 soundwith its Ll counterpart, resulting inthe high, English-like mean VOTvalues that are shown in Figures 5through 7. Although the learners inLevels 3 and 4 show considerablyshorter, more Spanish-like meanVOT values- than those in Levels 1and 2, their VOT ranges are still notsignificantly Spanish-like and in-stead are intermediate between Eng-lish and Spanish norms, suggestingthe possibility of continued, al-though diminished, association be-tween the Ll and L2 sounds.

Spanish Production Tests: TrillWith respect to the acquisition

of the Spanish trill, the data showclearly definable progress. Evidenceof this progress shown in Table 4 isthat the mean number of trills pro-duced by learners in each level stead-ily increases from 0.6 taps per /r/ at-tempt among the beginners to 2.6taps per /r/ attempt among the veryadvanced learners. Similarly, thepercentage of /r/ attempts with atleast two taps increases from 7% to83% from beginners to very ad-vanced learners.

Given that this sound does notexist in the Ll of the participants inthis study, it is not surprising thatthe beginning learners in Level 1demonstrated an almost completeinability to produce the Spanish trillwhen necessary, evidenced by thelow 7% of all Level 1 /r/ attempts

Table 4Number of Closures (Trills) for /r/ Attempts

Min Max Mean % with 2+ trills

Level 1 0 4 0.6 7

Level 2 0 4 0.9 13

Level 3 0 5 1.8 37

Level 4 1 4 2.6 83

N. Spkrs. 2 5 3.2 100 [4]


that were produced within the na-tive speaker range of 2-5 frills. Con-trarily, the near complete mastery ofthis novel sound by the Level 4 par-ticipants suggests that learners areultimately able to construct and em-ploy an entirely new sound category.

DISCUSSIONThe subjects in this study repre-

sent Spanish L2 learners of all levels,ranging from beginners whose expo-sure to Spanish came largely frominput available in a formal foreignlanguage study context to advancedlearners with years of target lan-guage experience in both formal andnaturalistic settings. Despite the exis-tence of many differences betweenthe populations represented in eachof the four groups, all subjectsshared several important character-istics. Before reaching age 12, none ofthe 40 participants in the four groupsof native English-speakers had stud-ied Spanish, been a part of a Span-ish-speaking family, or lived in aSpanish-speaking community. Thus,this study can serve as a measure ofthe progress in L2 Spanish pronun-ciation of voiceless stops and frills bya group of English-speaking adultlearners.

The results suggest that thephonological interlanguage in thegroups tested, as measured by thetest instrument used in this study,may be characterized as having anacoustically definable and statisti-cally significant acquisitional se-quence that initially shows many Llcharacteristics and progresses overtime to a more L2-like production,supporting Flege's postulate that themechanisms and processes used inlearning the Ll sound system re-

main intact throughout one's lifeand are available to be applied to L2learning. Although the beginnerswere generally unable to produce thespeech targets with phonetic accu-racy, the advanced learners in thisstudy were able to produce Spanishfrills and voiceless stops that fre-quently matched or closely resem-bled those produced by native Span-ish speakers.

The SLM claims that inaccurateproductions in Ii sounds may resultfrom the learners' failure to createappropriate perceptual "targets" toguide their production (Hypothesis7), which may in turn be caused bythe learners not discerning at leastsome of the phonetic differences be-tween the Ll and L2 sounds(Hypothesis 2). This learner aware-ness and identification of the pho-netic differences between the L1 andL2 are made more likely as the per-ceived phonetic dissimilarity be-tween an L2 sound and the closest Llsound increases (Hypothesis 3). TheSLM thus predicts that the nativeEnglish speakers learning Spanish inthis study will be more likely to cre-ate a new phonetic category for the/r/, which differs from any sound inthe Ll, than for either of the voice-less occlusives /p/, /t/, or /k/, whichshare many similarities between thetwo languages. Evidence of the for-mation. of (or failure to form) newphonetic categories, according to Hy-pothesis 7, will come from learnerproduction of that sound, whichmay eventually correspond to that ofnative speakers. The data presentedin Table 4 on the acquisition of the/r/ indicate a near-complete masteryof the /r/ among the group of veryadvanced learners compared to a

3 2


near-zero ability among the begin-ners. Since the /r/ represents anovel phonetic category for the par-ticipants in this study, these findingssupport the SLM. The results of thedata collected on the voiceless stops/p/, /t/, and /k/ also support Flege'smodel. As seen in Figures 4 through6, the VOT values of the targetvoiceless stop phonemes were rarelyproduced within the native speakerranges by the beginners; however,even the VOT ranges of the mostadvanced learners do not convinc-ingly overlap the native speakerranges. One explanation for thisfinding is that the phonetic dissimi-larity between the Spanish and Eng-lish stops is not as great as with the/r/ and thus learners are not aslikely to perceive the need to ac-tively and accurately create newphonetic categories.

In sum, this paper suggests thatEnglish-speaking adult learners' ac-quisition of the trill and the voice-less stops in L2 Spanish evolves inan acoustically definable manner. Italso suggests that significant im-provement is evident between manyof the levels, even though none ofthe L2 Spanish sounds examined inthis study were acquired completelyenough to show significantly similaracoustic parameters to native speak-ers' production of the same sounds.Finally the evidence suggests thatover the long term, the /r/, a soundfor which no English counterpartexists, is acquired much more com-pletely and consistently than the /p/,/t/, or /k/, all sounds that havesimilar English counterparts. Thisfinding supports the SLM's (Flege,1995) contention that L2 sounds forwhich no L1 equivalent exists are

1 env

1,.)

ultimately more likely to be acquiredthan sounds for which there are Llequivalents.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTSI thank Dale A. Koike and the par-ticipants at the University of TexasSpanish Second Language Sympo-sium for their comments and sug-gestions on an earlier version of thispaper, as well as the students, fac-ulty, and administration of BaylorUniversity who contributed to thisstudy. Special thanks to Susye andAndrew for their continuous sup-port.

NOTES1 The term adult in this paper re-

fers to any individual beyond pu-berty. Although I have chosenthe term "adult language acquisi-tion" for language acquisition af-ter puberty and have set a crite-rion in participant selectionwhich excludes those signifi-cantly exposed to Spanish prior toage 12, my doing so is arbitrary.Researchers such as Lenneberg(1967) and Scovel (1988) haveproposed that language cannot belearned perfectly once a biologi-cally predetermined critical pe-riod has been passed, due at leastin part to neurological matura-tion. However, recent evidence(e.g., Flege, Munro, and MacKay,1995) suggests that the acquisitionof L2 speech, at least, follows astrong linear relationship withage and shows no evidence of adefinable critical period.

2 Voice onset time (VOT) is thetime between the release of thearticulators in a stop consonantand the onset of vocal fold vibra-


tion in the following vowel. VOTis usually measured in millisec-onds (ms), with the stop conso-nant release representing zero.When vocal fold vibrations beginbefore the articulators' release, asmay occur with voiced stops, theconvention is to assign a nega-tive VOT value.

3 For comparison, Nathan (1987)presented the following meanVOT values (ranges in parenthe-sis) for seven Spanish speakersfrom Costa Rica, Colombia, andVenezuela: /p/ 18.8 (8.2/31), /t/22.6 (13.5/30.3), /k/ 40.7(22.5/55.5). From the samesource, mean values for Englishwere given as /p/ 82.5, /t/ 105,and /k/ 117.

4 One of the native speakers pro-duced the voiced alveolar trill al-lophone during the reading andpicture identification portions ofthe data collection, but produceda voiceless alveolar slit fricativeduring the free-speaking portion.This allophone is fairly commonin certain regions of SpanishAmerica, and its appearance inthe speaking task, but not thereading or identification tasks, isconsistent with Dalbor (1980),who reports that many speakersuse the trill in formal speech andthe fricative in informal speech.

REFERENCESBest, C. (1995). A direct realist view

of cross-language speech percep-tion. In W. Strange (Ed.), Speechperception and linguistic experi-ence: Issues in cross-language re-search (pp. 171-206). Timonium,MD: York Press.

Borden, G. (1980). Use of feedback inestablished and developingspeech. In N. Lass (Ed.), Speechand Language, Volume 3 (pp.233-249). New York: AcademicPress.

Borden, G., Harris, K., Fitch, H., &Yoshioka, H. (1981). Producingrelatively unfamiliar speech ges-tures: A synthesis of perceptualtargets and production rules.Status Report on Speech Re-search, 66, 85-117. New Haven,CT: Haskins Laboratories.

Dalbor, J. (1980). Spanish pronuncia-tion. Fort Worth: Holt, Rinehart,and Winston.

Flege, J. (1987). The production of"new" and "similar" phones in aforeign language: Evidence forthe effect of equivalence classifi-cation. Journal of Phonetics, 15,47-65.

Flege, J. (1995). In W. Strange (Ed.),Speech perception and linguisticexperience: Issues in cross-language research (pp. 233-272).Timonium, MD: York Press.

Flege, J., & Eefting, W. (1988). Imita-tion of a VOT continuum by na-tive speakers of English andSpanish: Evidence for phoneticcategory formation. Journal ofthe Acoustical Society of Amer-ica, 83, 729-740.

Flege, J., Munro, M., & MacKay, I.(1995). Effects of age of second-language learning on the produc-tion of English consonants.Speech Communication, 16, 1-26.

Gass, S. (1984). Development ofspeech perception and speechproduction abilities in adult sec-ond language learners. AppliedPsycho linguistics, 5, 51-74.

2 z2


González-Bueno, M. (1997). The ef-fects of formal instruction on theacquisition of Spanish stop con-sonants. In W. R. Glass & A. T.Pérez-Leroux (Eds.), Contempo-rary perspectives on the acquisi-tion of Spanish, Volume 2: Pro-duction, processing, and compre-hension (pp. 57-75). Somerville,MA: Cascadilla Press.

Keating, P. (1984). Phonetic andphonological representation ofstop consonant voicing. Lan-guage, 60, 286-319.

Lane, H. (1963). Foreign accent andspeech distortion. Journal of theAcoustical Society of America, 35,451-453.

Lisker, L., & Abramson, A. (1964). Across-language study of voicing

in initial stops: Acoustical meas-urements. Word, 20, 384-422.

Nathan, G. S. 1987. On second lan-guage acquisition of voiced stops.Journal of Phonetics, 15, 313-322.

Neufeld, G. (1979). Towards a theoryof language learning ability. Lan-guage Learning, 29, 227-241.

Scholes, R. (1967). Phoneme catego-rization of synthetic vocalicstimuli by speakers of Japanese,Spanish, Persian, and AmericanEnglish. Language and Speech,10, 46-68.

Williams, L. (1979). The modifica-tion of speech perception andproduction in second-languagelearning. Perception and Psycho-physics, 26, 95-104.

Prochievement Testing of Speaking: Matching InstructorExpectations, Learner Proficiency Level, and Task Type

BARBARA GONZALEZ PINO, The University of Texas at San Antonio

Earlier literature on classroom testing of speaking provides severalmodels of both task types and rubrics for rating and suggestions re-garding procedures for testing speaking with large numbers oflearners. There is no clear, widely disseminated consensus in theprofession, however, on the appropriate paradigm to guide the test-ing and rating of learner performance in a new language, neitherfrom second language acquisition research nor from the best prac-tices of successful teachers. While there is similarity of descriptorsfrom one rubric to another in professional publications, thesestatements are at best somewhat subjective. Thus, the rating o flearners' performance rests heavily on individual instructors' in-terpretations of those descriptors. The author conducted an initialinvestigation of instructor assumptions regarding student perform-ance on speaking tests in her own program and identified severaldiscrepant areas of instructor testing and rating practice. Further,faculty as a group will need to delineate more their specific expecta-tions by level for a number of the rated features. The concerns iden-tified coincided with those discussed recently in the literature,which suggests that other programs may also benefit from similarself-analysis.

INTRODUCTIONThe language educator who is familiar with both the American Council

on Teaching Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Proficiency Guidelines and the pro-ficiency levels typically achieved by first- and second-year university learnersof foreign languages may well have questions about some of the ways inwhich speaking is tested and rated in classes in some of those university pro-grams. If learners are in the Novice Mid to Intermediate Mid range, are thetesting tasks they are given always level-appropriate and should they be? Arethe descriptors of the rating scales used by the instructors always appropriateand clear? Do all the instructors interpret general or ambiguous descriptors inthe same way? Is the system of testing and rating that is in place implementedconsistently by the instructors in a program and should it be? Do the testsmatch well with what is covered in classes? Do the instructors' expectationswhile rating reflect a solid understanding of what learners can do at their pro-ficiency level? Do their expectations reflect an understanding of the restruc-turing of knowledge and performance that may occur in learners as theymove to the Intermediate proficiency level? How do instructor-raters handlebeyond-level tasks? We may not always know the answers to these questionsas they pertain to our own programs, much less on a larger scale.

1(2G


Concern about these questions andabout the issue of fairness to stu-dents led the author to conduct astudy in the lower-level program ofher own institution to determinethe procedures and criteria her in-structors were actually using in test-ing and rating speaking, and the ex-tent to which these criteria coincidedwith program goals and current bestpractice. Clearly, as in most pro-grams, instructors were testing tasksthat were above the students' profi-ciency level, and their rating scalesdid not really distinguish level-appropriate -tasks from above-leveltasks. In addition, the degree of pos-sible variations in implementationand interpretation of process, proce-dure, and criteria in testing and rat-ing was unknown. Therefore, theauthor proposed to investigate theseareas and use the results to initiatediscussion among instructors in theprogram and in a broader profes-sional setting.

THE LITERATUREThroughout the recent litera-

ture on the testing of speaking,many concerns are raised about test-ing and rating procedures. Much ofthis literature, however, focuses onproficiency testing rather than onprochievement testing (Clark, 1989),a term that refers to the kind of pro-ficiency-oriented achievement test-ing we do in foreign language classeson a regular basis, perhaps severaltimes a semester. Nevertheless, inboth the proficiency literature andthe prochievement literature, as-pects of testing and rating appropri-ately or inappropriately are discussedat length, and some of the features

discussed in proficiency studies mayhave relevance for prochievementtesting as well. In general, the pro-fession defines achievement tests asthose limited to a particular body ofmaterial just covered in class(es) andproficiency instruments as thosetesting the total range of skills andcontexts a learner may be able tohandleregardless of where andwhen they may have been learnedand testing them through actual in-teraction in realistic situations. Pro-chievement tests are a combinationof the preceding two types, testingstudents' ability to perform in onlythe contexts and situations that havebeen practiced in class.

FormatsA common concern is whether

particular tasks or formats are bestsuited to certain proficiency levels orparticular teaching and testing cir-cumstances. According to Fulcher(1996), there is little evidence to sug-gest that any particular task format ismore suited to one proficiency levelthan another. Indeed, most of thecommon formats can be used withlearners at different points in theirstudies. With appropriate expecta-tions, the picture, the topic, the in-terview, the multi-skilled or inte-grated task, and even the more de-manding roleplay can all be adaptedaccording to the level of the stu-dents. The crucial element in usingthe formats well is their content,which should comprise functions,topics or life situations, and gram-matical features appropriate for theparticular students and the materialcovered in their classes (GonzalezPino, 1989).

Prochievement Testing of Speaking 121

Instructor-Rater ExpectationsThe aspects of the topic of test-

ing speaking that are most thor-oughly covered in the literature arethose of rating and the underlyinginstructor expectations that are suchan important part of rating. Effectiveways to rate have been studied fordecades and in an extensive varietyof formats and weighting schemes(Hart Gonzalez, 1994). Thompson(1996) found that rating may varyaccording to whether the test is tapedor not and noted that a rater who islistening to a tape is not as likely tobe distracted by the human qualitiespresent in a live interview and ismore likely to pay greater attentionto form. Richards and Chambers(1996) studied a number of instruc-tor-related variables in rating andreported that many of them havesome effect on the rating process.They stated that training on how torate improves consistency and thatlinguistic background counts, be-cause native speakers rate morestringently. According to their study,the type of school in which teacherswork matters; teachers in more eliteor selective schools rate more strin-gently. One type of teacher experi-ence significant in their findings isexperience with learners at the levelbeing rated. Length of overall teach-ing experience does not matter,however.

Richards and Chambers (1996)examined three types of rating scalesin their studies: a norm-referencedcategorical scale (one with weightedcriteria and numeric scales for eachbut with no descriptors for the crite-ria), a criterion-referenced categoricalscale (one with a set of criteria, eachwith a hierarchy of descriptors and

numeric values), and a global crite-rion-referenced scale (one with de-scriptors and numeric values foreach of several general levels of per-formance). They found that the twomore global scales were more reli-able, but they explained their findingby suggesting that the descriptors forthe criterion-referenced categoricalscale were vague and would requiremuch greater specificity in order tofunction appropriately. Douglas(1994) found that most raters whoused scoring rubrics were apparentlyaffected by aspects of performancethat were not mentioned in the ru-brics. He noted that grammar andrhetorical complexity were particularproblem areas for which teacher-raters might employ their own stan-dards or substandards. Richards andChambers (1996) discovered thatpronunciation and grammar causedthe greatest rating problems in theirstudy, possibly because these two ar-eas are concrete and yet have no spe-cific detailed standards set out incommon for the various levels forall raters to use.

In their 1995 study, Chambersand Richards also found that if thecriteria to be used in rating were notdescribed in some detail, teachersvaried in their interpretations of thedescriptors. Further, they found thatteachers may expect strong perform-ance on grammatical elements evenif those elements are not appropriateto the task, are not appropriate to thestudents' level, and would not havebeen used by native speakers on thesame task. Their study specificallycompared learners' and nativespeakers' performances on the sameset of tasks in order to compare thegrammatical structures that were


used. They determined that teachersmay expect forms that not even na-tive speakers employ. They alsofound that learners who spoke moreoften received higher ratings, regard-less of quality issues. Finally, theydetermined that these expectationsfrequently persisted despite differingexpectations written into course syl-labi, where certain features werecited for recognition and others forboth recognition and production.

Thompson (1995) found that agroup of proficiency raters tended todevelop idiosyncratic testing and rat-ing procedures as compared to othergroups. Mullen (1978) recommendedthat more than one rater rate eachtest in order to eliminate the effect ofrater inconsistency, a practice thathas often been followed in profi-ciency testing since that time, al-though that procedure would not bepractical in classroom testing multi-ple times per semester. Ross (1987)raised the issue of the appropriatemental construct to undergirdnorm-referenced scales, suggestingthe proficient nonnative would be abetter standard than the educated na-tive speaker and highlighting thefact that we may vary in the standardto which we refer. Meredith (1990)suggested further that when rating,teachers must consider whether ornot learners have had prior experi-ence in the language; thus, he indi-cates yet another way in which ourmental model and our expectationsmay vary. Whom do we expect ourlearners to be like? And do we expecta higher performance level of ourfalse beginners than that indicatedfor all learners in a particularcourse?

Levels of ProficiencySeveral other concerns in the

literature center on the proficiencylevels themselves. Stansfield andKenyon's (1992) study reported thatIntermediate and Advanced tasksare more difficult to rate than Nov-ice and Superior and that sublevelsof performance in the midranges aremore problematic to distinguishfrom each other. Byrnes (1987)pointed out that Intermediates maymake more errors than Novice Lowsand Novice Mids, a seeming incon-sistency. This indication, however, isrelated to Young's (1992) indicationthat there may be an uneven pro-gression in language acquisition,even a "U-shaped" phenomenon inwhich Intermediate learners mayseem to regress because, as they ac-quire new structures and vocabularyand reformulate their interlanguage,the restructuring destabilizes theirperformance for a time. The fact thatthey are creating in the language andrelying less on memorized materialhas a similar effect. Thus, in addi-tion to considering whether our ex-pectations of learners are generallyappropriate to their level, we mustalso consider the extent to whichthose expectations take into accountthese additional complexities in sec-ond language acquisition and in therating process.

TextbooksFinally, we can consider our

textbooks as a type of professionalliterature to be examined and hav-ing clear implications regarding pro-ficiency levels. First-year textbooks,so called whether they are used forthe first year or a year and a half, in-variably cover much of the structure


of the language in question and in-clude functions and content thatwould be consistent with the Ad-vanced and Superior proficiencylevels, despite the fact that no learn-ers (other than native speakers, per-haps) are expected to achieve thoselevels of proficiency during the first-year (or year-and-a-half) course. Sec-ond-year materials also typically in-clude Intermediate through Supe-rior material. The case can certainlybe made that we are introducing ma-terials at those levels as a pedagogi-cal strategy to enable learners to be-gin to develop those particular skills.In each program, however, we stillmust decide on the appropriate wayto evaluate performance on Ad-vanced- and Superior-level materialrelative to performance on func-tions, structures, and topics for lowerlevels of proficiency, both when wedesign and when we rate our pro-chievement tests of speaking.

Summary of LiteratureClearly, then, in summary, the

literature addresses some of our ini-tial concerns by indicating that manyvariables affect teachers' rating oflearners' speaking. Chief amongthese variables is the teacher's ownset of expectations of students. Sincethese expectations could apply evenin the face of specific statements onsyllabi constraining such expecta-tions and despite recommendationscontrary to instructor expectationspresented during training on how torate, the concerns seem valid. Sinceonly Richards and Chambers' (1996)and Gonzalez Pino's (1989) studiesspecifically concern class-related test-ing, while the others focus on profi-ciency testing of speaking, however,

the investigator undertook to ex-plore further the extent of variationin expectations among instructorswho rate their own students' pro-chievement tests of speaking.

DESCRIPTION OF THE SURVEYSeveral researchers have men-

tioned the need to ask raters to en-gage in self-assessment and in"think-aloud" protocols. They pointout that a comparison of assignedratings does not always permit ananalysis of underlying differences inexpectations since two raters can as-sign the same score for different rea-sons. Thus, this investigation beginswith a self-assessment of testing andrating procedures that, it is hoped,will pinpoint further topics for in-vestigation. The author will analyzeconsistency among raters and the re-lationships of responses to the con-structs of the ACTFL ProficiencyGuidelines and the tenets of secondlanguage acquisition

The SampleTwenty instructors of lower-

level language courses at the uni-versity level participated in the sur-vey. These individuals teach in acommunicatively oriented programin which the policy calls for dailyemphasis on speaking skills. Theyadminister and rate speaking testsfor their own learners three timeseach semester. A set of 20 to 30 sam-ple oral test items is provided to theinstructors and the learners 2 weeksprior to each test. Each test comprisespictures, topics, interviews, and role-plays related to the chapters in ques-tion. The items, which were devel-oped by a subcommittee of instruc-tors for use by the entire group of 20


to 25 for coordinated examinations,cover the dozens of functions andtopics included in the text. The textincludes functions and topics appro-priate to the Advanced and Superiorlevels reflective of the texts dis-cussed above. The instructors thenuse the sample items as a repertoireor bank of items as they individuallystructure the way in which they willadminister the test. The instructorsdetermine whether they will testone-on-one or in learner pairs, inclass or in their offices, whether theywill use two or more formats on agiven test (two are the departmentalminimum), and whether they willtape record the test or not.

The instructor-raters vary inage, and their teaching experienceranges from 2 years to more than 30.They all have Master's degrees orhigher, and all have a graduate spe-cialization in the language in ques-tion. They are all professional lan-guage educators, even though a feware pursuing further graduate stud-ies on a part-time basis. Some areforeign nationals, but all have expe-rience in the U.S. educational set-ting. Almost all have had Oral Profi-ciency Interview familiarizationtraining, and several have com-pleted ACTFL OPI training. Many ofthem serve as Simulated Oral Profi-ciency Interview (SOPI) raters on aregular basis as well, and many haverated oral placement tests at the in-stitution for a number of years. Theyhave all attended training each yearon how to administer and rate thetests. The amount of training per in-structor thus varies with the num-ber of years of experience in the pro-gam. They all use the same set of rat-ing scales, and all are of the norm-

3 1

referenced categorical types, as ad-justed for year 1 and year 2. Most ofthe instructor-raters have attendedinterrater reliability training sessionsin which four or five actual studenttapes have been rated by the groupand in which expectations and in-terpretations of the criteria were dis-cussed at length. Nevertheless, in-teraction in those sessions and othermeetings of the group has high-lighted on-going variation amongthe members in their expectations inthe various categories being rated.The present survey should providethe opportunity to highlight specificareas of variation for further discus-sion and training.

The Instrument and ProcedureThe author created a two-page

checklist of 61 items relating to func-tions tested, formats used, and expec-tations held in rating (Appendix).There are 20 items on functionstested, thus sampling only a part ofthe curriculum in this area; 17 onformats used; and 24 on rater expec-tations of student performance. Theinstructors were asked to check allthe statements that applied regard-ing their own procedures in testingand rating and their own expecta-tions of learners in first- and second-year classes, which all of the instruc-tors teach. In addition, they wereprovided space at the end of thequestionnaire to write anything elsethey wished regarding their expecta-tions of first- and second-year learn-ers on speaking tests for their classes.The respondents were anonymous,since no place was provided on thesurvey for them to identify them-selves. Anonymity was important,since one could assume that any in-


structors who felt their proceduresor expectations did not match coor-dinated departmental expectationsmight not have wished to revealthem otherwise.

The instructors were accus-tomed to surveys and other efforts toresearch program functioning; there-fore, they were simply asked viamemo to fill out an attached surveyin order to inform the coordinator'sefforts to plan tester training for thesemester in question. Forms werereturned anonymously to the re-searcher's box over a period of days.Ninety percent of the instructor poolresponded.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONAs stated previously, respon-

dents were asked to react to itemscovering functions tested, formatsused, and expectations held. The re-sults are shown in Table 1 and dis-cussed in the following sections.

FunctionsThere was somewhat less varia-

tion among the instructor tester-raters in the area of functions testedthan in the areas of formats and ex-pectations. This finding might notseem surprising at first glance, giventhe coordinated nature of the pro-gram and the standard test samplesdistributed to faculty and learners;however, the same uniformity couldhave held true for formats but didnot to the same extent.

The description function,which is a staple for Intermediate-level students and a logical startingpoint for Novices as well, was al-most universally tested. All the in-structors indicated that they in-cluded description of pictures and

people, and 90% included descrip-tion of places. Only 70% included de-scription of objects, however.

Ninety percent of the instruc-tor-raters had the learners ask ques-tions on specific topics and get in-formation about costs, times, and soon in real-life situations. Only 60%had students ask information ques-tions about pictures. Interestingly,only 60% indicated that they hadlearners give information to others,although one would assume thatparticipating in these question-asking formats would also includeanswering questions. Again, askingand answering information ques-tions would seem appropriate func-tions for teaching and testing first-and second-year learners.

Seventy percent had learnersroleplay greetings and introductions,and 70% had students express likesand dislikes. Both of these level-appropriate areas are part of the cur-riculum and of sample tests. Never-theless, 30% of the instructors didnot test them. In addition, 70% ofthe instructors had learners makerequests as part of their roleplay; 30%did not, even though this possibilityis also included in the sample tests.

All instructor-raters includednarration in present and past tenses,and 90% included narration in thefuture tense. Again, the discrepancyis interesting, though small, as fu-ture-tense narration (be it formal orinformal) is included in the sampletests. While present-tense narrationcould be considered appropriate forthe learners' level of proficiency,past- and future-tense narration asAdvanced-level tasks are in therealm of practice and goals morethan of achievement and mastery.

3 3 2


Ninety percent of the instruc-tors have the learners give direc-tions for going somewhere and in-structions for doing something, bothof which are included in the sampletests but which vary in level appro-priateness. Giving directions for go-ing somewhere is considered Inter-mediate level, but giving instruc-tions on how to do something canexceed the learners' level of profi-ciency, depending on the task ortopic.

Only 60% of the instructor-raters include the comparison func-tion on their tests, despite its inclu-sion in the curriculum and the sam-ple tests. Only 60% included hy-pothesis, and 50% included persua-sion. Forty percent included formalsituations (work- or profession-related, for example), again despitethe fact that there are such itemsavailable to them and such materialis covered in both the first and sec-ond year. These functions are of theAdvanced and Superior levels. Evi-dently some of these instructorshave answered the question of howto rate learners on tasks that havebeen covered, but are beyond theirlevel of proficiency, by eliminatingthe problem altogether and not in-cluding those functions on thespeaking test at all.

FormatsThere was somewhat greater

variation among the instructor-raters on the questions regardingformats. Seventy percent used inter-views, 50% used situations withoutcomplications, and 40% used situa-tions with complications. Seventypercent used topics. Seventy percent

used prepared material, referring tothe sample tests distributed to stu-dents. Fifty percent also required theuse of extemporaneous topics. Eightypercent expected performance at thephrase and sentence level; only 40%expected students to attempt per-formance at the paragraph level.Only 30% varied formats so that stu-dents would have to adapt their lan-guage to different registers. Seventypercent used formats that called forgiving personal answers, not justgeneral information, and 70% usedformats that elicited variable an-swers. Given that as many as 30% ofthe instructors do not use some ofthe formats at all, one could assumethat some learners are receivingmore well-rounded assessment thanothers, if not also more well-rounded preparation.

The roleplay formats could beconsidered more difficult to perform(and to rate) than interviews, whichconsist of asking and answeringquestions, but roleplay can be an In-termediate-level format. Therefore,the fact that only half the instructorsuse roleplay is a concern because thatformat is the best simulation of real-life use of language. Having thelearners speak extemporaneously isalso more difficult than adhering toa specific repertoire of material; yet,it too is an essential skill that half ofthese learners are not attempting ontests. If only 40% of the instructor-raters expect students to attemptparagraph-level speech in the first 2years of language study, this is yetanother decision that has been maderegarding what is too difficult forlearners. The issue of how to rate thelearners on beyond-level tasks doesnot arise for half of them because the


Table 1Table of Responses

[Percentages of Positive Responses to Items by Instructor-Raters]

QUESTIONTHEMES %

QUESTIONTHEMES %

QUESTIONTHEMES %

FUNCTIONS_

Require students to 30TESTEDDescriptions:

Situations withoutcomplications

50 speak withouthesitation

Pictures 100People 100 Situations with 40 Require students to 90Places 90 complications use vocabularyObjects 70 covered

Topics 70Ask questions Require students to 60

Situations 90 Prepared material 70 use accurately allPictures 60 grammar covered

Extemporaneous 50Answer Questions

Roleplay

60 material

Sentence -level 80

Require accurateuse of past, present,and future

80

Greetings 70 formatsIntroductions 70 Require students to 80

Paragraph-level 40 handle any topicsExpress likes/ dis-likes

70 formats covered

Formats vary reg- 30 Expect coherence 80Make requests 70 isters

Expect cohesion 50Narration Require personal 70

Present 100 information Expect sociolin- 30Past 100 guistic appropri-Future 90 Require variable

answers70 ateness

Giving directions 90 Expect students toperform only Nov-

50EXPECTATIONS

Giving instructions 90 More than two er-rors allowed for an

80 ice-Intermediatetasks well

Comparison 90 A gradeExpect students to 30

Hypothesis 60 Require students topronounce accu-

40 perform Advancedtasks well if cov-

Persuasion 50 rately ered

Formal situations,work-related

50 Require students topronounce under-standably

50 Expect students toperform Superiortasks well if cov-ered

50

FORMATSInterviews 70

- -

I 3


tasks simply are not required ofthem. Adapting language for differ-ent registers is also a beyond-leveltask, but one that is covered in theprogram. It appears in few of thespeaking tests, apparently because itis also thought to be too difficult forthe learners.

Instructor-Rater ExpectationsThe responses to the questions

regarding instructor-raters' expecta-tions of learners when rating re-vealed the greatest variation of allthe variables. Eighty percent of theinstructor-raters agreed that an Astudent could have more than oneor two errors in a test speech sample,so they began on a similar footing.They were divided on pronuncia-tion, however, with 40% indicatingthat learners must pronounce accu-rately and 50% indicating that learn-ers should pronounce understanda-bly but not necessarily entirely accu-rately. Thirty percent expected learn-ers to speak without hesitation,which could be difficult for Noviceseven with the sort of semi-preparedrepertoire testing used. Ninety per-cent expected learners to know anduse the appropriate vocabulary thathad been covered, and 60% expectedthe accurate use of all grammaticalstructures covered in the currentsemester and previously. This latterexpectation is especially interesting,given that, as noted previously,many of the structures coveredwould not be mastered until thelearners rose one or two more levelsin their proficiency. In previous sec-tions we saw that instructors omit-ted some functions and formatsdeemed too difficult; this type of ex-ception occurs at about the same rate

for grammar, which is nearly halfthe time. The one difference, how-ever, at least for the grammar topicsincluded, was the tenses, since accu-rate performance with past, present,and future was expected by 80% ofthe instructors.

Eighty percent of the instructorsfelt that learners should be able tohandle all the topics covered. Eightypercent said they expected coherence,and 50%, cohesion, which are Ad-vanced-level expectations. Thirtypercent expected sociolinguistic ap-propriateness, which, while a lowfigure, nevertheless reflects a groupof instructors who have anotherAdvanced-level expectation forNovice and Intermediate learners.Seventy percent say they hold theseexpectations for the semi-preparedrepertoire material, but only 10%hold these expectations for extempo-raneous material, which may renderthe expectations somewhat morereasonable.

Half the respondents expectedlearners to perform well only onNovice and Intermediate material,and 30% expected them to performwell on Advanced material that hadbeen covered. Only 10% expectedlearners to perform well on Superiormaterial that had been covered.These responses are not entirelyconsistent with the percentage of in-structors who expected Advanced-level grammar and functions, whichwas 60%. Thus, many instructorsmay expect higher-level functioningof students, even though only 30%of them at most marked these Ad-vanced and Superior-level items.

Half the respondents agreedthat Novices would perform fairlyaccurately because they were using


primarily memorized material andthat Intermediates would performrelatively less accurately becausethey were now creating in the lan-guage. Apparently the other half ofthe respondents were not aware thatthe literature does appear to supportthose positions. Sixty percent agreedthat students would make more er-rors on new material than on oldmaterial, a truism for which wewould have expected a greater levelof support. Sixty percent agreed thatstudents would make more errorson extemporaneous material thanon prepared material, where againwe would have expected a higherlevel of support.

In the comments sections, theonly respondents who provided ad-ditional information did not addcategories of expectations. Theymerely reinforced the answers theyhad marked previously by elaborat-ing on the reasons they expectedstudents to speak without hesitationor the reasons they expected gram-matical accuracy.

CONCLUSIONSClearly, this study reinforces

findings in the literature that evenwith seemingly well-defined expec-tations for students in syllabi andclarification of expectations throughdiscussion and training for faculty,testing and rating procedures canand do vary. The entire area of be-yond-level material evidently needsto be discussed more carefully in thisprogram and most likely in anyuniversity or high-school programin which the issue has not yet beenraised. Those areas that are beingcovered in the courses need to betested, and clarification is needed

about how to include them and ratethem appropriately. Language-specific expectations for pronuncia-tion and grammar need to be dis-cussed in some detail, just asRichards and Chambers (1996)found. In particular, expectations re-garding the use of past and futuretenses require further definition,and expectations regarding otherstructures need to be explored. In-structions, comparisons, hypothesis,and persuasion are other areas forwhich discussion is indicated. Theconcerns about fairness to learnersthat instructors may be expressing byomitting some areas from testsshould be addressed so that adapta-tion and not elimination is the solu-tion. Clarifying and modifying ratingrubrics is essential to ensuringgreater agreement on what instruc-tors are expecting.

In addition, there clearly needsto be a broader use of varied formatsin the testing so that learners form abroader communicative base and sothey are not affected by always hav-ing to perform in their weakest for-mat, should that be the case. Instruc-tors should include formats that callfor adaptation to the situation andinterlocutor. As noted, roleplay isoften neglected, and it is the formatthat best affords opportunity to nego-tiate meaning and attend to sociol-inguistic details (Omaggio, 1980).Teachers should give learners op-portunities to perform at the para-graph level so that they can be led inthat direction. They should ask stu-dents to perform extemporaneouslyas well as with their prepared reper-toire in order to facilitate learners'ability to use the language in the realworld.

136


Perhaps we need to developbrief tester-rater manuals for usewithin our programs with contentbased on faculty consensus from dis-cussion, training, and further studyof the literature. In addition, as Ken-yon and Stansfield (1993) suggest, thecreation of a set of reference tapes foruse within a program could be verybeneficial. If instructors had somesample student responses and rat-ings for the different formats usedon each of the tests in each of thecourses in the program, their inte-gration into the process when newlyhired and their on-going comfortand consistency would be better en-sured.

Further discussion and train-ing, including inter-rater reliabilitytraining, is needed on all these top-ics. Even though there will un-doubtedly always be some degree ofvariation from one rater to another,we as professionals have focusedheavily on proficiency testing andrather little on prochievement orclassroom testing. With an increasedfocus on the quality of our ratings inthe tests we give most frequently, wecan only enhance the effectivenessof our programs and our students'achievement and proficiency.

REFERENCESByrnes, H. (1987). Proficiency as a

framework for second languageacquisition. The Modern Lan-guage Journal, 71 (1), 44-49.

Chambers, F., & Richards, B. (1995).The free conversation and the as-sessment of oral proficiency. Lan-guage Learning Journal, 11, 6-10.

Clark, J. (1989). Multipurpose lan-guage tests: Is a conceptual andoperational synthesis possible?

I 1-)

Language teaching, testing, andtechnology. Washington, D. C.:Georgetown University Press.

Douglas, D. (1994). Quantity andquality in speaking test perform-ance. Language International,125-143.

Fulcher, G. (1996). Testing tasks: Is-sues in task design and the grouporal. Language Testing, 13 (1), 23-52.

Gonzalez Pino, B. (1989). Pro-chievement testing of speaking.Foreign Language Annals, 22 (3),478-487.

Hart Gonzalez, L. (1994). Raters andscales in oral proficiency testing:The FSI experience. Paper pre-sented at the Sixteenth AnnualLanguage Testing Research Col-loquium, Washington, D.C.

Kenyon, D., & Stansfield, C. (1993)Evaluating the efficacy of raterself-training. Language TestingResearch. Cambridge: The Fif-teenth Annual Language TestingResearch Colloquium.

Meredith, R. (1990). The oral profi-ciency interview in real life:Sharpening the scale. ModernLanguage Journal, 74 (3), 288-296.

Mullen, K. (1978). Direct evaluationof second language proficiency:The effect of rater and scale inoral interviews. Language Learn-ing, 28 (2), 302-308.

Omaggio, Alice. (1980). Priorities forthe 1980s. In D. Lange (Ed.), Pro-ceedings of the National Confer-ence on Professional Priorities(pp. 47-53). Hastings-on-Hudson,NY: ACTFL.

Richards, B., & Chambers, F. (1996).Reliability and validity in theGCSC oral examination. Lan-guage Learning Journal, 14, 28-34.

f' I


Ross, S. (1987). An experiment witha narrative discourse test. Lan-guage Testing Research. Mon-terey, CA: The Ninth AnnualLanguage Testing Research Col-loquium. Monterey, California.

Stansfield, C., & Kenyon, D. (1992).The development and validationof a Simulated Oral ProficiencyInterview. Modern LanguageJournal, 76 (2), 129-141.

Thompson, I. (1995). A study of in-terrater reliability of the ACTFLOral Proficiency Interview in fiveEuropean languages: ESL, French,German, Russian, and Spanish.

Foreign Language Annals, 28 (3),407-422.

Thompson, I. (1996). Assessing for-eign language skills: Data fromRussian. Modern Language Jour-nal, 80 (1), 47-65.

Young, R. (1992). Expert-novice dif-ferences in oral foreign languageproficiency. Paper presented atthe Colloquium on Non-NativeSpeaker International Discourseat the Fourteenth Annual Meet-ing of the American Associationfor Applied Linguistics, Seattle,Washington.

APPENDIXADMINISTERING AND RATING ORAL TESTS

Check all that apply in your point of view and in the way that you administerand rate oral tests.

1. In oral tests (tests of speaking) for my first- and/or second-year foreignlanguage students, at some point during the year the students must

describe picturesdescribe objectsdescribe peopledescribe placesask questions based on a pictureask questions on topics, such as family, studies, etc.ask questions to get information about cost, times, etc.express likes and dislikesgreet others, perform introductions, say farewellmake requestsgive information on a variety of topicsnarrate in the present; e.g., say what they do on weekends, during atypical day, etc.

_ narrate in the past; e.g., say what they did on a weekend, holiday, typi-cal day, etc.narrate in the future; e.g., say what they will do on a holiday, in their


future work, etc.explain a process, such as how to make a particular dishgive directions or instructions., such as how to go from one place toanothercompare two (or more) pictures, people, places, objectssay what they would do in a hypothetical situationtry to persuade someone of somethinguse formal language (introduce a speaker, start a formal talk, explainan abstract topic, such as socialism, etc.)

2. When taking speaking tests, my first- and/or second-year foreign lan-guage students are expected to

interview a partner (another student or the teacher)roleplay situations without complicationsroleplay situations with complicationsperform extemporaneously sometimesperform with prepared situations, topics, presentations, etc.

_ vary the way they speak to suit the audience (listener) and the situa-tion (be more or less formal)speak at the phrase levelspeak at the sentence levelgive personal answers based on their own information, experiences,preferences, opinions, etc.give variable answers (answering open-ended questions rather thanthose which have only one right answer, such as what day it is)answer closed questions (those with one right answer)speak in context (on a particular topic or situation)handle a random selection of topics, questions, situations, etc., from apool of them which have been practiced and/or prepared during thetesting period

3. When I rate the speaking tests of my foreign language students in first orsecond-year courses, I expect students to perform as follows for a grade ofA:

have only one or two errors in the speech samplepronounce accuratelypronounce understandably, but not always accuratelyspeak virtually without hesitationknow and use the appropriate vocabulary (with no English)use accurately the grammatical structures that have been covered inthis level class and in previous levelscomplete adequately all the types of tasks or functions that have beencoveredtalk adequately about any and all of the content areas that have been


covered (family, clothing, current events, jobs, etc.)speak in a culturally or sociolinguistically appropriate mannerorganize their thoughts logicallytransition appropriately from one idea to anotherdo all of the above when speaking with prepared materialdo all of the above when speaking extemporaneouslyperform well only on Novice tasks (ACTFL scale)perform well only on Intermediate tasksperform well on Advanced tasks if they have been coveredperform well on Superior tasks if they have been coveredaccurate performance from Novices because they are memorizingtheir materialless accurate performance from Intermediates because they are nowcreating in the languagemore errors on new material than on oldmore errors on extemporaneous formatsfewer errors on prepared formatsphrase- or sentence-level or length performance or responsesparagraph-level or length performance or responses

4. Other: Your additional comments about what you expect from firstand/or second-year foreign language students on their speaking tests:

Current Issues in the Spanish Language Proficiency of BilingualEducation Teachers

MICHAEL D. GUERRERO, The University of Texas at Austin

The purpose of this paper is to examine some critical issues regarding theSpanish language proficiency of bilingual education teachers, primarilythose teachers from the Spanish language-origin community. Recentlongitudinal studies have demonstrated a positive relationship betweensustained native-language instruction and student achievement. Be-cause this finding is encouraging, it is time to take a closer look at thecontext in which bilingual education teachers develop their Spanish lan-guage proficiency. This examination reveals that given the present sub-tractive sociolinguistic context in the U.S., the likelihood of bilingualteachers developing native-like Spanish language proficiency is an up-hill battle. Further, the Spanish language preparation bilingual educa-tion teachers receive at institutions of higher education is not commen-surate with the task of developing a high level of Spanish language pro-ficiency. Finally, the Spanish language proficiency measures used togauge the Spanish language proficiency of bilingual education teachersare not without their problems. Under the present circumstances, bilin-gual education teachers with the ability to provide sustained native-language instruction will continue to be the exception.

INTRODUCTIONThere is little doubt that the longitudinal findings of both the Ramirez,

Yuen, and Ramey (1991) and Thomas and Collier (1997) studies providedsorely needed empirical evidence that the sustained use of the Englishlearner's native language, in this instance Spanish, is a key variable positivelyassociated with student achievement. Clearly, there are other variables thatprobably contribute to the success of the learner, such as program design, pa-rental involvement, a shared vision among staff, appropriate assessmentpractices and strong leadership provided by the principals. The use of the na-tive language, however, arguably assumes a more central role in the successof the learner. Language issues must be considered while the school staff de-signs the program. Similarly, language issues are probably considered as thestaff engages in developing and implementing parental involvement activi-ties, assessment policies, and vision building. Principals probably work dili-gently to recruit and hire highly qualified staff, especially staff with solidSpanish language skills.


The most central of all the lan-guage decisions made in a bilingualprogram relate to the classroomteacher's use of the Spanish lan-guage for Mstructional purposes andthe ability of the teacher to use thelanguage for academic purposes.This centrality hinges on the factthat it is the classroom teacher whospends the majority of the schoolday with the learners in attemptingto implement the bilingual program.

The conscious and deliberateconsideration of the role of the non-English language in successful bilin-gual education programs is symp-tomatic of the implementation ofsuch programs in a society that has astrong subtractive (Lambert, 1977)and linguicist orientation (Phillip-son, 1988). This subtractive orienta-tion is best exemplified by the factthat few schools aim to maintainand continue developing thelearner's first language. These pro-grams are generally referred to astransitional bilingual education pro-grams as they aim to transition thelearner from Spanish language in-struction to English language in-struction as quickly as possible andwith no long term commitment tonative language development.

Regarding the notion of 1M-guicism, Phillipson (1988, p. 341)states

The forms that linguicism takesare many. For instance, structurallinguicism may be overt, e.g. useof a given language is prohibitedin institutional settings such asschools. Or linguicism may becovert, e.g. certain languages arede facto not used in teacher train-ing, or as languages of instruction,

0

or in aid activities, even if use ofthe languages is not explicitlyforbidden. The prevailing ideol-ogy may be consciously linguicist,e.g. teachers instruct pupils not touse their mother tongue, becausethey are under the delusion thata ban of this kind will help thelearning of another language.

The point is that bilingual edu-cation teachers are not immune tothe subtractive and linguicist orien-tation of U.S. society. The majorityof these teachers and their familieswere schooled in the U.S. and hencesubjected to the array of languagepractices that perpetuate languageshift and loss among speakers ofSpanish language origin. In short,the implementation of a bilingualeducation program that includessustained native-language instruc-tion goes against the linguistic grainof this country and will requiremuch conscious and deliberateplanning on the part of the schoolstaff.

Providing sustained native lan-guage instruction logically entailsthe availability of bilingual educa-tion teachers with the facility to doso. The development of this facility,however, is contingent upon mean-ingful language development oppor-tunities, which may be hard to comeby through mandatory (K-12) publicschooling in the U.S. Consequently,most bilingual education teacherswill rely on the required languagerelated course work at a teachertraining institution to develop thisskill. Unfortunately, universitiesand colleges are part of the same sub-tractive sociolinguistic milieu. Span-ish language development requires


time, more time than most post-secondary institutions are able orwilling to offer prospective bilingualeducation teachers.

The irony of the situation re-sides in the fact that well inten-tioned state departments of educa-tion require bilingual educationteachers to pass a formal Spanishlanguage examination. The natureof the tests, however, varies greatly(Grant, 1995), and this author be-lieves that their construct validity isopen to question. More importantly,the language standards inherent tothese measures may not be adequatefor making a judgment about an in-dividual's ability to deliver sus-tained native-language instruction.The social consequences generatedby using these tests must be carefullyexamined .

Sustained native-language in-struction is desirable, but the socialconditions for providing bilingualeducation teachers the opportunitiesthey need to develop native-likeproficiency in Spanish are notwidely available. It is the intent ofthis paper to begin placing these is-sues into proper perspective.

SUSTAINED NATIVE LANGUAGEINSTRUCTION

Collier (1995, p. 3) makes thestatement that

To assure cognitive and academicsuccess in a second language, astudent's first language system,oral and written, must be devel-oped to a high cognitive level a tleast through the elementaryschool years.

One can assume that, in order forlearners to develop their first lan-

guage to a high cognitive level, thelearners must also have access tothis level of language or to target-language speakers, especially teach-ers (Wong Fillmore, 1989). It is theteacher who carries the responsibil-ity of modeling spoken and writtenSpanish that will provide even na-tive Spanish-speaking children theopportunity to develop further theiroral and literacy skills.

Collier also maintains that inorder for a learner to develop aca-demically, in an efficient manner,the student must receive instructionin the native language. Academicdevelopment includes growth ineach of the content areas such asmath, science, and social studies.The implication is that the class-room teacher will also serve as a keytarget-language speaker from whomthe learner should be able to acquireacademic language proficiency in thenon-English language.

Stated differently, the bilingualeducation teacher should be able todeliver instruction in the non-English language across the curricu-lum as well as the mainstream class-room teacher does in English(Gaarder, 1977). This ability willlikely transcend a simple knowledgeof technical vocabulary in the con-tent areas. It will require the abilityto comprehend (listen and read) andproduce (speak and write) the non-English language with appropriatesyntax, cohesive markers, rhetoricalorganization, functions, gestures,figures of speech, and cultural refer-ences, all of which may vary depend-ing on the subject matter taught.Trueba (1989, p. 113) adds:

.4 issf,

j, )


In bilingual education, lack ofmastery of the language of in-struction causes serious problemsfor the teachers; it affects theirclassroom management, the irclarity in explaining subject mat-ter, and the quality of relation-ships with native speakers ofthat language. If a teacher doesnot know the target languagewell, children's linguistic andcognitive development also suf-fers, because they are deprivedof guidance and feedback insituations where correct and pre-cise use of the language is re-quired to understand a concept orthe logical foundations of reason-ing.

Again, there are other factors,such as program design, methodol-ogy, assessment, and educationalpolicies, that can influence the aca-demic success of English-languagelearners. Nonetheless, no one candeny that each classroom teacher oc-cupies a critical role in the academicsuccess of English learners. Moreo-ver, it is not the language ability ofeach teacher in isolation that mat-ters, but rather the collective, consis-tent, and sustained use of the nativelanguage over several years that willdetermine student outcomes asThomas and Collier's research sug-gests (1997).

BEFORE THEY BECOMEBILINGUAL TEACHERS

The main position of this paperis that prospective bilingual educa-tion teachers from the Spanish-language-origin community oftendo not reach expected levels of profi-ciency in the Spanish language dueto a variety of factors. Basically, pro-spective bilingual education teachersare members of the wider society

14

and are subjected to the same sub-tractive and linguicist practices andpolicies as everybody else. Thesepractices, unfortunately, begin toimpact the prospective bilingualeducation teacher negatively at avery early age and continue to do sothroughout their public educationexperience.

Even before schooling begins,Spanish-speaking parents strugglewith the decision as to whether ornot they should teach their childrenSpanish. Grosjean (1982, p. 124)states, "in the United States, thereare innumerable examples of immi-grant parents encouraging, if notforcing, their children to learn Eng-lish, with the potential consequencethat some may become rootless andalienated from their native languagegroup."

From a linguistic perspective,and to the degree to which Spanish-speaking parents withhold linguisticinput from their young children, itis at this point that the lion's shareof the damage may occur. Accordingto the model of communicative lan-guage ability set forth by Bachman(1990), linguistic input that begins toshape the organizational and prag-matic competence of the young childmay be withheld. The linguistic andsocial consequences, as Hernández-Chavez (1993, p. 58) states, are that

Large numbers of Chicano chil-dren and young people fromSpanish speaking families ei-ther no longer learn the languageor acquire but a limited facilityin it. As a result, patterns ofcommunication are disrupted,cultural and social structuresbreak down and youth become a -lienated from their communities.


A frequently cited reason thatSpanish-speaking immigrants donot transmit the Spanish languageto their children is rooted in the par-ents' belief that if their childrenlearn English, they will secure goodjobs and prosper. Perialosa (1980) andZentella (1990) argue that this beliefis more a myth than reality. Chica-nos and Puerto Ricans continue tobe economically marginalized evenafter acquiring English.

The economic argument aside,Spanish-speaking immigrant par-ents also receive numerous mes-sages -from different components ofsociety indicating that their childrenshould be taught only English. Thepresent movement to make Englishthe official language of the U.S. is acase in point. The recent judicial casein which a judge equated a mother'sspeaking Spanish to her youngdaughter with child abuse is yet an-other (Morales, 1995). Further, theparents themselves may have beenvictimized for using Spanish atschool.

As young children from theSpanish language community enterschooling, the message to abandonthe Spanish language is further rein-forced. Wong Fillmore (1991, p. 20),in a compelling study of preschoolprograms designed to serve languageminority children, concludes thatmany of these children lose theirprimary language as they learn Eng-lish. The researcher explains

Consider what happens whenyoung children find themselvesin the attractive new world ofthe American school. What dothey do when they discover thatthe only language that is spoken

there is one that they do notknow? How do they respondwhen they realize that the onlylanguage they know has m func-tion or value in that new socialworld, and that in fact, it consti-tutes a barrier to their participa-tion in the social life of theschool? They do just as the pro-moters of early education for lan-guage minority students hopethey will. They learn English,and too often, they drop theirprimary languages as they do. Intime, many of these children losetheir first languages.

Unfortunately, there are alsofew opportunities offered throughthe K-12 educational system in thiscountry to promote the maintenanceand development of non-Englishlanguages among school age chil-dren. In a study conducted by theU.S. Department of Education (1993),a number of findings relevant to thisdiscussion were reported. The studyfound that

1. Only 17% of schools provide asignificant degree of primary lan-guage instruction.

2. ESL is the predominant instruc-tional approach.

3. Of the 363,000 teachers providingservices to Limited English Profi-cient students, only 10% are certi-fied bilingual teachers.

4. The majority of teachers servingSpanish-speaking pupils have n oproficiency in Spanish.

With regard to the finding thatthe majority of teachers that serveSpanish-speaking pupils lack profi-

11 4 5


ciency in the language, even thosefew students that do find their wayinto a bilingual program cannotcount on having the kind of accessthey need to continue developingtheir Spanish language academicproficiency. Escamilla (1992) studiedvarious features of 25 elementary bi-lingual maintenance programs overa 2-year period. With regard to theuses to which Spanish and Englishwere put, the researcher reports thatin some classrooms Spanish wasused primarily for direction givingand discipline. English was used foracademic instruction and conversa-tion.

It should also be noted that bi-lingual education in the U.S. is mostreadily associated with elementaryschool programs as opposed to sec-ondary education programs (Faltis &Arias, 1993). Not only are there pro-portionately fewer bilingual educa-tion programs at the secondary level,but there are also fewer programsthat are aimed at continued devel-opment of the learner's Spanish lan-guage skills.

Consequently, with each succes-sive year of schooling, the likelihoodof opportunities for prospective bi-lingual education teachers to de-velop academic Spanish languageproficiency is further reduced. Theresult of such an educational experi-ence for the majority of membersfrom a Spanish-language-origincommunity is language shift thatgenerally results in language loss. Anumber of studies using U.S. Censusdata support the trend of languageshift and loss among Spanish-language-origin people in the U.S.(Bills, 1989; Veltman, 1988; Her-nández-Chdvez, 1996).

These findings are especiallyimportant since it is youth of Span-ish language origin who will proba-bly become bilingual teachers. Fewerand fewer members of this groupwill raise their children to speakSpanish, and those that do may passon a model of Spanish-language pro-ficiency unlike that of native speak-ers. T'his trend is facilitated by thelack of high-quality bilingual educa-tion programs in the U.S. In short,the pool from which to draw profi-cient speakers and writers of Spanishis continuously dwindling.

Merino and Faltis (1993) indi-cate that sustained native-languageinstruction appears to be contingentupon two factors, teacher languageproficiency and the implementationof a well-articulated, late-exit (K-6)bilingual education program. Inshort, with so few exemplary, devel-opmental bilingual education pro-grams, it is unlikely that the pressingdemand for prospective bilingualeducation teachers that are proficientin Spanish will be met through edu-cation. Moreover, with continuouslydecreasing numbers of individualsproficient in the Spanish language, itis unlikely that any meaningfulnumber of programs designed to usesustained native language-instruction could ever be imple-mented at any given point in time.

This discussion would be in-complete if some thought was notgiven as to why there are so few ex-emplary bilingual programs in theU.S. and why there is a dire need forwell-trained bilingual educationteachers with native-like academicproficiency in Spanish. The reason isarguably intimately related to the so-cietal value placed on bilingualism

1 4 c,


in this country. Kjolseth (1983, p. 48)maintains

We are not bumpkins but quiteordinary and normal humanswho develop language skillswhen they are effectively calledfor, and do not when they are not.And although easily made thescapegoat, our schools are not toblame, because schools reflectthe cultural policies i.e., v a 1-ues of our dominant groupsandare merely the places where ourmain cultural myths are trans-lated into curriculum.

The language values of thedominant groups in this society are,as Kjolseth (1983) has described,schizophrenic. On the one hand, inthis society it is admirable when na-tive speakers of English learn non-English languages through foreignlanguage study, even as imperfect astheir mastery of the languages willbe. On the other hand, before mem-bers of a non-English-language-speaking group can perfect their na-tive language through schooling,they must postpone, perhaps aban-don, this endeavor and first (or only)acquire English. The point is that, ifthe dominant groups in our societytruly value bilingualism, it must besupported in a manner that is logicaland that generates the best results.Lyons (1990, p. 79) explains,

[C]onsider that an undergraduatestudent preparing to be a teacherwould receive in four years only600 hours, at five hours per week,of foreign language instruction.The average graduate of such ateacher-training program lacksthe skills to use properly, muchless teach, a foreign language tochildren. Only rarely would he

or she possess foreign-languageskills suitable for the "imitativecapacities of young children."

Time could be turned to ouradvantage, however, if we wereto conserve, develop, and capi-talize on the language skills ofthe language minority students inour schools. These skills, devel-oped through tens of thousands ofhours of mother tongue instruc-tion, offer both a quick fix and along term solution to the problemof American monolingualism.

The average language minor-ity child entering kindergartenhas a higher level of languagemastery than the averagegraduate of the intensive and ex-pensive 47 week Defense Lan-guage Institute program.

It is beyond the scope of thisdiscussion to examine closely whysuch language policies are firmlyrooted in U.S. society. Is it out of na-tionalism, compassion, ignorance,linguicism, or simply the need tosustain a steady supply of individu-als to fill undesirable and low-statusjobs (Spener, 1988)? Perhaps a casecould be made for each rationale.Regardless of the motivation, it isclear that when it comes to cultivat-ing language resources in the U.S.,the orientation is subtractive andlinguicist.

In sum, prospective bilingualeducation teachers must survive thesociolinguistic forces that graduallyand predictably deteriorate the Span-ish language abilities of the generalSpanish-language-origin commu-nity even before schooling begins.Schooling, bilingual education pro-grams, and foreign language trainingin particular do little to enhance theSpanish language abilities of pro-spective bilingual education teach-


ers, because they are predicated uponillogical premises, ideologies thatover the decades have only provenhow ineffective they are. Conse-quently, it is unreasonable to expectprospective bilingual educationteachers to have gained an age-appropriate level of academic Span-ish language proficiency prior toteacher training.

THE ROLE OF INSTITUTIONS OFHIGHER EDUCATION

Virtually no research has beendedicated to the design of bilingualeducation teacher training programs,including the language trainingcomponent of these programs; thatis, little research has been conductedthat might provide empirical evi-dence for the effectiveness of suchprograms. Rodriguez (1980, p. 372)states,

Legislative regulations andState Board of Education guide-lines press teacher trainers withmyriad lists for bilingualteacher competencies. While a 11such competency lists are said tobe synonymous with effective bi-lingual teachers, they are vul-nerable to criticism for severalreasons. To begin, there is as yetlittle or no empirical evidencethat existing competencies arevalid. Most competencies for bi-lingual education teachers aregenerated by experts.

Little appears to have changedsince Rodriguez made this state-ment. Grant (1992, p. 431) observestha t

While the lack of a substantialbody of solid research is a seriousproblem in teacher education ingeneral, it is a doubly serious

problem when it comes to re-search on the preparation ofteachers to work in culturallydiverse schools, especially whenthat preparation indudes work-ing with limited English profi-cient (LEP) students.

Dalton and Moir (1992, p. 416)speak more specifically to the paucityof research on the effectiveness of bi-lingual education teacher-trainingprograms. These authors state,

It appears that in practice littleprogram evaluation is specifi-cally designed for internal use inprogram improvement or to in-crease understanding about de-velopmental processes. Thismeans that the suitability ofteacher education curricula forthe communities served, the ef-fect of the program on profes-sional and LEP student consumers,and experiences of program par-ticipants remain largely unex-plored.

What can be inferred fromthese observations is that little isalso known about the effectivenessof different approaches on develop-ing the prospective bilingual educa-tion teacher's Spanish language pro-ficiency. As previously stated, manyteachers instructing Sp anish-speaking students have no profi-ciency in Spanish (U.S. Departmentof Education, 1993). Assuming theteachers to which this finding ap-plies have already taken the requiredcourse work to instruct in a bilingualsetting, it is also safe to assume thatthe Spanish language training theyreceived did not fully meet theirneeds. This trend is not new. A dec-ade earlier, Waggoner and O'Malley


(1984, p. 25) reached a similar con-clusion:

[A]pproximately four out of fiveteachers using a non-English lan-guage in instruction during 1980-81 did not have the languageskills or basic professionalpreparation to do so.

The fact of the matter is thatthere are many fundamental em-pirical questions that must be ex-plored if this situation is to beginchanging. Consider, for example, thenumber of courses required of pro-spective bilingual education teachersthat are taught in Spanish. Is therean empirical rationale for establish-ing a set number (e.g., two or three)of language-related courses? Whatevidence is there that the amount ofcourse work offered in Spanish iscommensurate with the languagegoals of the bilingual educationteacher training program?

The content of the courses of-fered in Spanish is an equally impor-tant and related question. Prospec-tive bilingual education teachersneed to have opportunities to de-velop their Spanish language aca-demic proficiency. How to assist pro-spective bilingual education teacherswith the development of their aca-demic proficiency in Spanish is yetanother fundamental empiricalquestion.

Regarding the quality of thecourses generally offered in Spanish,at least one related issue should beraised. Faculty who offer coursestaught in Spanish must assume therole of a language model in muchthe same way K-12 bilingual educa-tion teachers must for their students.Whether or not the faculty possess

the requisite language skills also re-mains an important question. As-suming that the majority of bilin-gual education faculty were schooledin the same subtractive sociolinguis-tic milieu, it may well be that facultyare also in need of further opportu-nities to develop their own academicSpanish language proficiency.

The bilingual education teachertraining practice of requiring pro-spective bilingual education teachersto take Spanish language coursesthrough a Foreign Language De-partment must also be carefully ex-amined. Empirical evidence isneeded that can shed light on the ef-fectiveness of this long-standingpractice. In what ways does this kindof course work aid prospective bilin-gual education teachers to meet thelinguistic demands of a bilingualeducation setting? Overall, are theSpanish language learning opportu-nities provided to the prospective bi-lingual education student teachersufficient to meet this demand?

The culminating experience fora prospective bilingual educationteacher is student teaching within abilingual setting. Assuming that thestudent teacher is placed in a bilin-gual education program that usessustained Spanish language instruc-tion, perhaps the most critical em-pirical question could be addressed.What kinds of language skills areneeded in order to provide sustainednative language instruction?

In sum, available data (U.S. De-partment of Education, 1993; Wag-goner & O'Malley, 1984) indicate thatthe Spanish language developmentopportunities offered through bilin-gual education teacher training pro-grams are less than adequate given

n


the needs of the participants. Part ofthe reason for this dilemma stemsfrom the use of pre-service languagedevelopment opportunities thathave not been empirically substanti-ated. The professional judgment ofcollege and university faculty is areasonable starting point for settingup the language component of a bi-lingual teacher training program,but this judgment must also betested for its validity.

SPANISH LANGUAGEPROFICIENCY TESTS

There are a number of statesthat have implemented a Spanishlanguage testing policy for prospec-tive bilingual education teachers(Grant, 1995). The assumption is thatthe prospective bilingual educationteacher will have been prepared tomeet the language demands of thetest during their teacher-training ex-perience. One can also assume thatthe intent of such a policy is to en-sure that a bilingual educationteacher is proficient enough in theSpanish language to fulfill the lin-guistic demands associated with a bi-lingual education classroom or pro-gram. Nonetheless, it is the validityof the test used on which the valueof these kinds of policies depends.

It is safe to say that the socialconsequences (Messick, 1989) associ-ated with the use of these kinds oftests, for the learners and for societyin general, are considerable. If thetests are valid and measure whatthey purport to, then the social con-sequences associated with their usewill be positive in most cases. Onlythose teachers who are able to teachacross the curriculum will find theirway into the classroom. By exten-

sion, learners will be more likely toachieve academically.

Unfortunately, these tests donot appear to be fulfilling their func-tion. Recall that over the last twodecades empirical findings suggestthat bilingual education teachersgenerally have a less than adequatecommand of the Spanish language(U.S. Department of Education, 1993;Waggoner & O'Malley, 1984). Howcould this be if tests are in place, atleast in some states, to ensure thatthe bilingual education teacher isproficient in the Spanish language?The obvious explanation is that thetests are of questionable validity.

It is beyond the scope of thisshort paper to report on the psy-chometric properties of each of thetests currently used in the U.S. Thepoint to be made here is a generalone, but a critical one. These high-stakes tests must possess constructvalidity, and this test quality is inti-mately linked to instances of its usein the appropriate setting. The vastmajority of bilingual education pro-grams in the U.S., however, aretransitional bilingual programs atgrades K-3. The goal of this type ofprogram is to transition the learnerinto all English instruction as soonas possible. Further, and as statedmany times in this paper, manypracticing bilingual education teach-ers lack proficiency in the language.Consequently, as these tests are de-veloped, and bilingual teachers areobserved by the test developers toexamine which language abilities areused, how they are used, and thelevel of proficiency modeled by theteacher, the construct validity of thetest is shaped. The end result is a testwith construct validity based on


weak language models operatingwithin an educational context withEnglish, not bilingualism, as the ul-timate goal.

Guerrero (1994) examined theunified validity (Messick, 1989) ofthe Spanish language proficiency testdesigned for bilingual educationteachers in New Mexico. In terms ofthis measure's subtractive orienta-tion, an examinee can pass the writ-ten part of the test, a letter to parentsconsisting of at least 150 words, withas many as 20 errors. As another ex-ample, excerpts used to measure thereading ability of teachers were takenfrom -no higher than fourth gradetext books (Valdés, 1989). The test ispresently used to endorse teachers atall grade levels (K-12). One of themore disturbing findings is that ap-proximately 80% of the examinees(n= 217) taking the test for the firsttime did not pass the test. Stated dif-ferently, the majority of this samplewere not amply prepared to meet therelatively low level demands of thistest.

Norfleet (1994) examined thereliability and validity of the Span-ish language proficiency test used forbilingual endorsement purposes inArizona public schools. The generalconclusion reached by the researcheris that the test, developed in 1981,continues to serve its intended pur-pose. Norfleet (1994, p. 238) explains,

Although some of the results in-dicate that the test appears to beaccomplishing its main objective,the measurement of the abilityto use Spanish in the bilingualclassroom, major revisions for theACTSPE [Arizona ClassroomTeacher Spanish Proficiency

Exam] are essential in other ar-eas.

The same subtractive orienta-tion can be detected in this test aswell. For example, the test was de-signed for the elementary grades(Barkin-Riegelhaupt, 1985), but thesame test is also used to measure theSpanish language proficiency of pro-spective bilingual education teachersat all levels (K-12). Further, the oralparts of the test are weighted moreheavily in scoring the test than theparts involving literacy. The mes-sage conveyed is that the ability tospeak the Spanish language is moreimportant than the ability to write it.In the present context of transitionalbilingual education in the U.S., thismessage is accurate.

Grant (1995) indicates that 28states across the country offer eithercertification or endorsement in bi-lingual education. Unfortunately,twelve of these states do not test forteacher language proficiency, andthree states measure only oral lan-guage proficiency. Seven states allowthe bilingual education teacherpreparation institutions to establishtheir own language testing proce-dures and criteria. These practices,however, do not mean that each in-stitution within a given state ad-heres to the same procedures andcriteria. Only six states have adoptedtests that entail more than one lan-guage measure (e.g., for speaking,reading, writing, or culture). Grant(1995, p. 5) seems to suggest that onlytwo states, Arizona and California,have developed tests that target "theproficiency needed by bilingualteachers for teaching." New Mexicois currently using a test that was also


intended to be linked to the class-room uses of Spanish (Valdés, 1989).

Throughout this country, theSpanish language proficiency of bi-lingual teachers seems to equatewith only oral proficiency. Further,based on the variety of languagemeasures used, there is little consen-sus, regionally or nationally, regard-ing what this ability entails. In thefew cases where Spanish literacyskills are required, there appears tobe a propensity for the standards tobe lower than what might be ex-pected of an English-speakingteacher and to assign less value tothe literacy skills than to oral skills.Last, in the cases of states with n olanguage testing policy at all, thewhole issue of Spanish languageproficiency is simply disregarded.

In sum, there are a number ofstates that have implemented lan-guage testing policies for prospectivebilingual education teachers. Whilethe spirit of these policies is well-intentioned, the policies reflect thesubtractive orientation of bilingualeducation programs in the U.S. Ineffect, these tests help perpetuate lessthan adequate Spanish languageabilities not only among prospectiveand practicing bilingual educationteachers, but also among the stu-dents they will teach. Ada (1986, p.390) speaks to this dilemma whenshe states,

Bilingual teachers may feel in-adequate in their language abil-ity because of several factors.Those teachers whose mothertongue is English may not havehad the opportunity to acquirefull mastery of a second lan-guagea sad reflection on ourlimited and deficient foreign

2

language teaching. Members oflanguage minorities who chose tobecome bilingual teachers mayalso have been victims of lan-guage oppression as children,when they were scolded or pun-ished in school for using theirhome language. Therefore, i tshould not be surprising th a tmany bilingual teachers lackconfidence in their literacyskills. Yet if these individualscan acknowledge that the lan-guage inadequacy stems fromdeeply rooted institutionalizedoppression. . ., they will be betterable to understand what theirstudents may be going through.

CONCLUSIONThis paper has attempted to ex-

amine some of the critical issues re-lated to the Spanish language profi-ciency of bilingual teachers. For themajority of bilingual educationteachers, and within the present sub-tractive sociolinguistic context, thedevelopment of advanced level,teacher-like proficiency in Spanish isan ambitious goal. U.S. society, andschooling in particular, make it es-pecially difficult for bilingual educa-tion teachers to develop the ability toprovide sustained native-languageinstruction.

The burden of developing thisability is presently placed on bilin-gual education teacher training pro-grams. Unfortunately, these pro-grams attempt to meet the languageneeds of prospective bilingual educa-tion teachers based on language prac-tices with little or no demonstratedempirical support. This languagepractice is much in line with thoseused for children of limited Englishproficiency in the majority of schoolprograms; that is, in both cases, edu-


cators assume that the learners willacquire academic proficiency in thetarget language quickly or can foregonative language instruction alto-gether.

With regard to the policy ofmandating Spanish language testingfor bilingual education teachers, thepolicy can only be as valid as the in-strument used. Presently, the profes-sional language norm upheldthrough the use of these tests is sub-tractively oriented, much in keepingwith the majority of existing bilin-gual education programs. Nonethe-less, if an individual manages tomeet the prescribed expectations, theperception is that this individual isable to fulfill the language demandsof a bilingual setting. In effect, thisindividual probably can fulfill thesedemands since the majority of bilin-gual education programs are earlyelementary programs and seek totransition the learner to all Englishinstruction as quickly as possible.

The promise of sustained na-tive-language instruction is great,too great to ignore or neglect. Beforemore children can benefit from bi-lingual education programs with anadditive orientation, however,many fundamental linguisticchanges must take place in the expe-riences, practices, and policies thataffect prospective bilingual educa-tion teachers in this country.

REFERENCESAda, A. (1986). Creative education

for bilingual teachers. HarvardEducation Review, 56 (4), 386-394.

Bachman, L. (1990). Fundamentalconsiderations in language test-ing. Reading, MA: Oxford Uni-versity Press.

Barkin-Riegelhaupt, F. (1985). Test-ing bilingual language profi-ciency: An applied approach. In L.Elias-Olivares (Ed.), Spanish lan-guage use and public life in theU.S.A. (pp. 165-180). Berlin: Mou-ton de Gruyter.

Bills, G. (1989). The U.S. Census of1980 and Spanish in the South-west. International Journal o nthe Sociology of Language, 79, 11-28.

Collier, V. (1995). Acquiring a secondlanguage for school. Directions inLanguage & Education, 1 (4).Washington, DC: National Clear-inghouse for Bilingual Educa-tion.

Dalton, S., & Moir, E. (1992). Evaluat-ing limited English proficient(LEP) teacher training and in-service programs. Second Na-tional Research Symposium o nlimited English proficient stu-dent issues: Focus on evaluationand measurement. (Vol. 1, pp.415-453). Washington, D.C.: Officeof Bilingual Education and Mi-nority Languages Affairs.

Escamilla, K. (1992). Theory to prac-tice: A look at maintenance bilin-gual classrooms. The Journal o fEducational Issues of LanguageMinority Students, 11, 1-25. Boise,ID: Boise State University.

Faltis, C., & Arias, M. (1993). Speak-ers of languages other than Eng-lish in the secondary school: Ac-complishments and struggles.Peabody Journal of Education, 69(1), 6-29.

Gaarder, B. (1977). Bilingual school-ing and the survival of Spanishin the United States. Rowley:MA: Newbury House.

11 53


Grant, C. (1992). Educational researchand teacher training for success-fully teaching limited Englishproficient students. Proceedingsof the Second National ResearchSymposium on limited Englishproficient student issues: Focuson evaluation and measurement(Vol. 2, pp. 431-473). Washington,D.C.: Office of Bilingual Educa-tion and Minority Languages Af-fairs.

Grant, L. (1995). Testing bilingualteacher's language proficiency:The case of Arizona. (EducationalResource Information Center) ED384 222.

Grosjean, F. (1982). Life with twolanguages. An introduction tobilingualism. Cambridge: Har-vard University Press.

Guerrero, M. (1994). A critical analy-sis of the validity of the FourSkills Exam. Unpublished doc-toral dissertation. University ofNew Mexico, Albuquerque, N.Mex.

Hernández-Chavez, E. (1993). Nativelanguage loss and its implicationsfor revitalization of Spanish inChicano communities. In B. Me-rino, H. Trueba, & F. Samaniego(Eds.), Language and culture inlearning: Teaching Spanish to na-tive speakers of Spanish (pp. 58-74). Washington, D.C.: FalmerPress.

Hernández-Chavez, E. (1996). Lapérdida del espaiiol entre los chi-canos. Paper presented at theAnnual New Mexico Associationfor Bilingual Education. Albu-querque, NM.

Kjolseth, R. (1983). Cultural politicsof bilingualism. Transaction So-

154

cial Science and Modern Society,20 (4), 40-48.

Lambert, W. (1977). The effects of bil-ingualism on the individual:Cognitive and sociocultural con-sequences. In P.A. Hornby (Ed.),Bilingualism: Psychological, so-cial and educational implications(pp. 15-27). New York: AcademicPress.

Lyons, J. (1990). The past and futuredirections of federal bilingualeducation policy. ANNALS,AAPSS, 508, 66-80.

Merino, B., & Faltis, C. (1993). Lan-guage and culture in the prepara-tion of bilingual teachers. In M.B.Arias & U. Casanova (Eds.), Bi-lingual education: Politics, prac-tice, research (pp. 171-198). Chi-cago: University of Chicago Press.

Messick, S. (1989). Meaning and val-ues in test validation: The scienceand ethics of assessment. Educa-tional Researcher, 18 (2), 5-11.

Morales, A. (1995, August 30). Law-maker blasts judge's commentson language. Austin AmericanStatesman, p. Bl.

Norfleet, L. (1994). The reliabilityand validity of the Arizona Class-room Teacher Spanish Profi-ciency Exam. Unpublished doc-toral dissertation. Northern Ari-zona University, Flagstaff, AZ.

Perialosa, F. (1980). Chicano bilin-gualism and the world system. InR. Padilla (Ed.), Theory in bilin-gual education. Ethnoperspec-tives in bilingual education re-search (Vol. II, pp. 3-17). Ypsi-lanti, MI: Eastern Michigan Uni-versity Press.

Phillipson, R. (1988). Linguicism:Structures and ideologies in lin-guistic imperialism. In T. Skut-


nabb-Kangas (Ed.), Minority edu-cation: From shame to struggle(pp. 339-358). Clevedon, England:Multilingual Matters.

Ramirez, D., Yuen, S., & Ramey, D.(1991). Final report: Longitudinalstudy of structured English im-mersion strategy, early-exit andlate-exit transitional bilingualeducation programs for languageminority children. San Mateo,CA: Aguirre International.

Rodriguez, A. (1980). Empirically de-fining competencies for effectivebilingual teachers: A preliminarystudy. In R. Padilla (Ed.), Theoryin -bilingual education. E thnoper-spectives in bilingual educationresearch. (Vol. II, pp. 372-387). Yp-silanti, MI: Eastern MichiganUniversity Press.

Spener, D. (1988). Transitional bilin-gual education and the socializa-tion of immigrants. HarvardEducation Review, 58 (2), 133-153.

Thomas, W., & Collier, V. (1997).School effectiveness for languageminority students. Washington,D.C.: National Clearinghouse forBilingual Education.

Trueba, H. (1989). Raising silentvoices: Educating the linguisticminorities for the twenty-firstcentury. Boston: Heinle &Heinle.

U.S. Department of Education.(1993). Descriptive study of serv-ices to limited English proficientstudents. Washington, D.C.

Valdéz, G. (1989). Testing bilingualproficiency for specialized occu-

pations: Issues and implications.In B.R. Gifford (Ed.), Test policyand test performance: Education,language and culture, (pp. 207-229). Norwell, MA: Kluwer Aca-demic.

Veltman, C. (1988). The future of theSpanish language in the UnitedStates. New York City & Wash-ington, D.C.: Hispanic Policy De-velopment Project.

Waggoner, D., & O'Malley, J. (1984).Teachers of limited English profi-cient children in the UnitedStates. Journal of the NationalAssociation for Bilingual Educa-tion, 9 (3), 25-42.

Wong Fillmore,L. (1989). Languagelearning in social context. Theview from research in secondlanguage learning. In R. Dietrich& C. Graumann (Eds.), Languageprocessing in social context, (277-302). North Holland: ElsevierScience Publishers.

Wong Fillmore, L. (1991). Whenlearning a second languagemeans losing the first. EarlyChildhood Quarterly, 6, 323-346.

Zentella, A. (1990). El impacto de larealidad socio-económica en lascomunidades hispanoparlantesde los Estados Unidos: Reto a lateoria y metodologia linguistica.In J. Bergen (Ed.), Spanish in theUnited States: Sociolinguistic Is-sues (152-166). Washington, D.C.:Georgetown University Press.

The Multiple Challenges of Multimedia: Development, Implemen-tation, and Evaluation

MARGARET ANN KASSEN, The Catholic University of America

This article presents an overview of an ongoing initiative to develop, in-tegrate, and evaluate multimedia lessons to enhance listening compre-hension in Spanish language classes at The Catholic University of Amer-ica. In an effort to focus on the process involved, the two phases thathave been completed are examined, including the rationale for the proj-ect, the selection of the Libra authoring system, the building of theauthoring team, the design and revision of the lessons, and their integra-tion into the curriculum. Findings from the evaluation components areexplored with particular emphasis on the evidence pointing to the needto understand better how learners actually interact with multimedia.Based on the lessons learned from this project, guidelines are suggestedfor those who may be interested in pursuing a similar undertaking.

INTRODUCTIONIn the second language teaching field today, there is great interest in

technology and its potential to enhance second language learning. Multime-dia has a particular appeal, due in part to what Pusack and Otto (1997) refer toas its "capacity to access and control via computer a full range of familiar me-dia: text, motion video, photo images, sound and graphics" (p. 2). Many of thematerials teachers have previously used effectively to promote languagelearning can be placed at the learners' fingertips in the digital environmentwith the promise of increased learning outcomes. The allure of multimediamust be tempered, however, with the realities that confront any instructionalinnovation: the challenges of development, implementation, and evalua-tion. How does one go about developing multimedia lessons for use in mul-tiple-section courses? How can these lessons be integrated in the existing cur-riculum? How can multimedia be evaluated? These fundamental questionswill be examined in the context of a multimedia project for beginning levelSpanish undertaken at The Catholic University of America (CUA).

BACKGROUND OF THE PROJECTThe Department of Modern Languages at CUA was interested in explor-

ing language learning technology, particularly as a way to enhance students'out-of-class language learning. This option had become feasible due to our re-cently installed Multimedia Language Center, a small, independent studyroom equipped with computers, VCRs, laserdisc, etc. As a first step, the mediadirector and language coordinator attended a workshop on Libra, a multime-dia authoring system designed to facilitate listening comprehension. Librawas developed by Robert Fischer and Mike Farris at Southwest Texas StateUniversity at San Marcos [1] with the support of the Fund for the Improve-ment of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE). Because the listening comprehen-

3 5


sion goals of CUA's Spanish pro-gram Destinos were compatible withthose of Libra, the team applied forand received a grant to develop, im-plement, and evaluate Libra lessonsfor Destinos as a part of Fischer'sFIPSE project.

LISTENING COMPREHENSIONAND TECHNOLOGY

A focus on listening compre-hension at the novice and interme-diate levels is well supported by re-search and theoretical models thatpoint to comprehensible input andintake as fundamental to secondlanguage acquisition. As Rubin(1994) noted in her review of therelevant literature, the actual processof listening has received consider-able research attention. Comprehen-sion has come to be seen as a dy-namic, interactive, cognitive processin which listeners construct mentalrepresentations of their understand-ing of texts, using and coordinatingboth concept-driven (top-down) andsentence and word-level (bottom-up) processes. Furthermore, in real-world, face-to-face communication,listeners have immediate access toinformation about the context oftheir interactions (participants andsetting) and paralinguistic cues (suchas eye movement and gestures), andthey generally have some control ofthe interaction by means of negotia-tion and use of strategies (Joiner,1997).

Given this understanding ofthe listening process, how can tech-nology best be brought to bear on lis-tening skill development? Whiletraditional cassettes provide theaudio component and video thevisual information, these media do

1 r r

not facilitate the interaction oflearners with the text other thanthrough their cumbersome replayoption. Multimedia, however, be-cause of its digital nature, allows di-rect access to and manipulation ofparticular segments of text and, bymeans of various help features, of-fers the user added options for man-aging the interaction. As Joiner(1997) notes,

Computer-assisted multimediacomes closer than the other audioand visual media to meeting thestandard for listening embodiedin face-to-face communication.Presence, interactivity, control,multisensory input, and multiplesources of assistance can be incor-porated into this sophisticatedtechnology. (p. 90)

LIBRA AUTHORING SYSTEMLibra is a hypercard-type program forMacintosh [2] that allows the teacherto create a stack of question cardswritten to target selected segments ofa videotext. These question cards ap-pear on the computer screen and arelinked to video clips that have eitherbeen digitized and are accessible onthe same screen or that are shownon a laserdisc player, as was the casein this study. The Libra documenta-tion recommends beginning eachlesson with a textmap to acquaintlearners graphically with the struc-ture of the text. These advance or-ganizers may reappear before eachsegment to lead users from onesegment to another logically (seeFigure 1). The five question tem-plates available in the program areflexible and may be used to focuslearners' attention on various as-pects of listening comprehension,

Multiple Challenges of Multimedia 153

from main ideas to details and spe-cific words. For multiple choice,checklist, binary checklist, and iconsorting questions (see Figures 2, 3, 4,and 5), learners select the correct re-sponses by clicking or dragging andget immediate feedback. The fifthquestion type is open-ended and al-lbws users to create their own an-swers by typing into a notebook.While the teacher sets parameters bydeciding which portion of the videois available on a given card, learnersare given considerable control oftheir learning: they may rewind, re-play, and fast-forward as needed, and

they may access a number of helpfeatures such as a dictionary, a list ofcharacters, a story summary, script,and special notes.

THE PROJECTThe multimedia project at CUA

has gone through two phases, eachof which involved developing, im-plementing, and evaluating lessons.

Phase 1: Development and Imple-mentation

In the initial pilot study in thespring of 1995, the language coordi-nator/media director team and a

Mapa de Escenas, III

Cuba y EEUU

LA EXCAVACION

Arturo en Mexico

rGramatica

CIO

Esta escena nos relate lo que Arturo este haciendo en el DistritoFederal de Mexico mientras espera una Ilamada de Raquel. Cliqueael icono en la caia para continuar..

Figure 1. Advance Organizer

1.5E;


IELa excavación, pregunta 1

Si quieres, utiliza el control del video para repasar la escena.

4,En qué pensaba Angela?

0 Pensaba en que si Roberto tenfa hambre.o Pensaba en que si Roberto tenfa suficiente aire.o Pensaba en que si Roberto estaba enfermo.

Click here for feedback.

Move mouse over buttons for an explanation.

Figure 2. Multiple Choice Questions

Esperando: pregunta 3[45-1wi

Ufill7a el control de video para repasar la escena y contesta la pregunta sobreRaquel.

Cliquea el blot& a la derecha para escuchar la pregunta.Escoge todas las respuestas correctas.

o médicaabogadaveterinaria

o actrizama de casa

0 profesora


pregunta


Figure 3. Checklist Questions

1,511-

153


La civilización maya: pregunta 4

Para contestar la pregunta, repasa la escena usando el control del video.

Marca las respuestas como cierta o. falsa. Los mavas

cierta falsa

0 0

0 gobernaban un vasto imperio del este al oeste.0 vivian en la peninsula del Yucatan.

formaban una serie de estados autónomos.llegaron a su maximo apogeo en el tiempo de Cristo.

o 0 hicieron grandes avances en el campo de la filosofia.o 0 sabian todos los ciclos de los eclipses solares y lunares



Figure 4. Binary Checklist Questions

Arturo en Mexico, pregunta 3

Mira la siguiente escena:LAciónde va Arturo?

bar

gasolinera

almacén banco0cine supermercado

farrnacia


com

Arturo visita...


Figure 5. Icon Sorting Questions


graduate teaching assistant (TA) de-signed Libra lessons of approxi-mately 20 cards each to accompanyeight Destinos episodes used in sec-ond- and third-semester Spanish.The 25-minute episodes were seg-mented into scenes, and text mapsled the learners to view each scenein its entirety without stopping. Sub-sequent cards asked questions onboth main ideas and details in thescene and provided learners the op-portunity to review relevant por-tions of the scene as needed. Due totime limitations, no glossary wasprovided, and scripts and characterlists were not available for all les-sons.

At the second-semester level,two instructors of four class sectionswith a total of 59 students partici-pated in Phase 1. The third-semestergroup involved three instructors ofsix sections with 106 students. Foreach lesson, students had one weekto go to the Multimedia LanguageCenter individually or with a part-ner to complete the assignment.They either completed the Libra les-son linked with the Destinos vide-odisc in the experimental group, orthey viewed the video and filled in awritten worksheet in the controlgroup. The questions in both condi-tions were substantially the same,though some of the written ques-tions had to be adapted from elec-tronic to print medium. The instruc-tors were requested not to discussthe episode until the day it was to becompleted.

Because the episodes assignedfor out-of-class work were an inte-gral part of the Destinos program,the project team felt that they would

I 6

integrate smoothly into the class-work just as the other videos viewedin the lab did. To reinforce the no-tion that these assignments were in-deed required, the syllabus listedtheir due dates, and the course de-scription stated that they counted as10% of the final course grade.

Phase 1: EvaluationThe evaluation of the pilot

study was based on a time-series ex-perimental design in which the stu-dents alternated between the ex-perimental Libra condition and thecontrol group. A modified recall pro-tocol pretest served to establish pre-existing differences among the stu-dents. Similar recall protocols inEnglish, collected in class the daystudents were to have completedviewing the assigned episode, servedas the posttest. Due primarily to anuncooperative instructor, the sec-ond-semester data were quite in-complete and yielded no statisticallysignificant results. The third-semester data were reduced by stu-dent absences, but complete data setswere available on 17 students in theexperimental group and 20 in thecontrol group. An analysis of covari-ance revealed that on two of the fourposttests, the experimental groupsignificantly outperformed the con-trol group. A third posttest ap-proached significance (see FIPSE,1994, for complete data and explana-tion). Thus, despite the limited data,the pilot study provided evidence ofthe positive impact that the Libra-based viewing of the Destinos videoshad on comprehension.

Student questionnaires admin-istered at the end of the semester


complemented the quantitativeanalysis. These questionnaires re-vealed a generally positive attitudetoward the multimedia lessons (seeTable 1). The areas of concern identi-fied by the student users includedthe length of time required to com-plete the lessons and the lack of un-derstanding of the program on thepart of some of the instructors, stu-dents, and lab attendants. In its ownevaluation of the project, the devel-opment team posited two additionalfactors that may have contributed tothe lack of regular student participa-tion: insufficient integration intoclasswork and the redundancy builtinto the Destinos program, which,appropriately for a soap opera, al-lows viewers to follow the story lineeven if they miss an episode.

Phase 2: Development and Imple-mentation

The second phase of the projectfocused on addressing the concernsraised in the pilot and on improvingparticipation. The Phase 1 authoringteam and two additional TAs recon-figured four of the lessons for sec-ond-semester Spanish (see samplecards in Figures 2 to 5). With thecontinued support of the FIPSE proj-ect, one of the TAs had received agrant to attend a Libra workshop,and he then helped teach theauthoring system to the other T Ateam member as they rewrote thelessons.

Two major changes were incor-porated into the lesson revisions.First, given the redundant nature ofthe videos, the team reduced the

Table 1Attitude Questionnaire Item from Phase 1 (n=80)

My attitude toward using computers to learn a foreign language:

Before This Semester After This Semester

Hostile 1 2

Hesitant 13 14

Indifferent 30 22

Curious 31 21

Enthusiastic 5 21

162


amount of video to be viewed ineach lesson to three to four seg-ments: one or two that presented thekey story line events, one that fo-cused on culture, and one that tar-geted functional language use. Sec-ond, several adjustments were madeto the lessons to allow the learnergreater flexibility in interacting withthe text. A video control panel wasadded to every card so studentscould fast-forward, rewind, and re-play as needed at any time. Morehelp features, in the form of scripts,character lists, and a glossary, wereprovided in three of the four les-sons. A third change involved theaddition of video-related grammarexercises, but because this compo-nent was not included in the pilotstudy, it will not be examined in thisarticle.

Significant changes were madein the implementation of the re-vised lessons. The two second-semester Spanish instructors wereclosely involved in the develop-ment of the lessons, and, as a resultof their investment in the process,they understood Libra clearly andwere able to explain it adequately totheir students. The instructor teammade a conscious effort to integratethe viewings more tightly withcoursework. They agreed to hold de-tailed discussions of the targetedscenes in class, to give brief dicta-tions and quizzes on them, and toincorporate them directly into examuestions. Care was also taken to

train the lab assistants more thor-oughly on the program.

During the spring semester of1997, the 55 students enrolled in thefour sections of second-semesterSpanish taught by the two TAs who

163

helped revise the Libra lessons par-ticipated in Phase 2 of the project. Asrequested by the students in the pilotstudy and recommended by Masters-Wicks et al. (1996), an orientation tothe program was held in class beforethe first lesson was assigned. Usingtransparencies of sample computerscreens, the instructors explained thequestion types and the general navi-gation features. As before, the les-sons represented 10% of the finalgrade, and due dates were listed onthe syllabus.

The final evaluation, whichwas qualitative in nature, was donevia a user questionnaire (see the ap-pendix). The questionnaire includedLikert-scale items to assess studentreactions and open-ended questionsto gain more insight into the stu-dents' own perceptions of the les-sons. Instead of waiting until theend of the semester to assess stu-dents' views, the students completedthe Phase 2 questionnaire in theMultimedia Language Center fol-lowing completion of the last lesson.It was hoped that, by answering thequestions immediately after the les-son, learners would provide moreaccurate information because theirexperiences would be fresh in theirminds.

Phase 2: Evaluation Results andDiscussion

A total of 30 students out of the55 enrolled completed the question-naire. The instructors were surprisedat this low response rate becausemore than 30 students reported do-ing the Libra lessons. Some studentsmay have done all the lessons exceptthe final one when the question-naire was distributed. Perhaps the


lab attendants were not diligentenough in handing out and collect-ing the questionnaires as studentscompleted the lesson. While thecauses cannot be determined withcertainty, the 55% response rate isevidence of the difficulty of investi-gating a phenomenon that is essen-tially an out-of-class, independentactivity.

The four Likert-scale questionsare presented in Table 2. The re-sponses to Questions 1 and 2 suggestthat this second phase more success-fully provided the support learnersneeded to feel comfortable using thecomputer materials. The third andfourth questions again reflect a gen-erally positive (though not enthusi-astic) attitude toward computer-mediated learning: fewer students

were negative at the end of the proj-ect than at the beginning.

The following five open-endedquestions composed the second partof the survey:

1. What was the main benefit youderived from doing the Libracomputer lessons?

2. What strategies did you use tomaximize this benefit?

3. What did you like the mostabout doing the Libra computerlessons?

4. If you could improve one aspectof the Libra computer lesson,what would it be?

Table 2Likert-Scale Questionnaire Items from Phase 2 (n=30)

SA A N D SD

1. I had sufficient orientation to the Libra programbefore doing the lessons on my own.

10 9 3 6 1

2. The lab attendants are helpful to me when Iuse the multimedia program.

8 13 5 2 0

3. At the beginning of the semester, my attitudetoward using computers to learn a foreign lan-guage was positive.

8 8 10 4 0

4. After the completing the Libra computer les-sons, my attitude toward using computers tolearn a foreign language is positive.

8 13 8 1 0

A = Strongly Agree, A=Agree, N=No Opinion, D=Disagree,SD=Strongly Disagree

1.6 4


5. In your opinion, what would bethe ideal number of Libra com-puter lessons to do [per semes-ter]? How much time would yoube willing to spend on each?

While there was considerablevariation in the wording of individ-ual student responses, the answersto these questions were revealing, inparticular when considering the pat-terns that emerged across studentcomments. Tables 3, 4, and 5 sum-marize the responses to the firstthree questions, including the cate-gory or pattern of response, thenumber of students who madecomments with that focus, and somesample comments.

When questioned about theirperceptions of the benefits of the Li-bra lessons (see Table 3 for sum-mary), half of the students (14) ex-pressed the view that the lessonshelped them "hear" or "understand"the videos. This response is in linewith the listening comprehensiongoals of the authoring system itselfand our own programmatic objec-tives and provides encouraging evi-dence of Libra's face validity. Closelyrelated to the comprehension focuswas the observation of three stu-dents that the lessons emphasizedthe storyline. This awareness ofmain events appears to support theuse of the textmap as a way to offerlearners support in building the

Table 3Questionnaire Responses, Phase 2: Student-Perceived Benefit of

Multimedia Lessons (n =30)

Question 1. What was the main benefit you derived from doing the Libracomputer lessons?

Category of Response Number ofResponses

Sample Comment

Listening comprehension

Focus on content

Practice

Vocabulary

14

3

3

2

To see and hear lesson at my speedUnderstanding more of what was saidby the characters

Reinforced the storyline and made itmore dear

To watch a lesson and do exercisesabout it

I gained a larger vocabulary

1.

Multiple Challenges of Multimedia 161.

macropropositional structure of thetext. Additionally, three studentsidentified practice as Libra's greatestbenefit, an apparent recognition ofbeing more actively involved thanin traditional video viewing. Fi-nally, two students specified that Li-bra was useful in improving theirvocabulary. While no vocabularyassessment was done in this study,Chun and Plass (1996) found evi-dence of considerable vocabularylearning in their work with multi-media to enhance reading compre-hension. Their work and studentcomments in this study raise ques-tions about the possibility of inciden-tal vocabulary learning in the Libramultimedia environment, questionsthat need to be addressed in futureresearch.

The second question asked stu-dents to reflect on and identify the

strategies they had used while doingthe Libra lessons (see Table 4). Mostfrequently cited (by ten students) wasthe use of the rewind/replay button,with comments such as "I listened tosegments more than once using re-view buttons." Students' willingnessto interact with the computer in or-der to adjust for their own learningneeds is an example of the positiveside of learner control in multime-dia.

A second strategy mentioned bythree students was attending moreclosely to the material; as one stu-dent said, "[I] listened to it morethan I pay attention to Destinos."Multimedia lessons written withsystems such as Libra have the po-tential to facilitate attention in anumber of ways: video is segmentedand efficiently accessible, lessons aretask-oriented, earphones reduce

Table 4Questionnaire Responses, Phase 2: Strategy Use (n=30)

Question 2. What strategies did you use to maximize this benefit?

Category of ResponseNumber ofResponses Sample Comment

No response 12

Replay 10 Using the rewind button to review whenconfused or unsure

Attention 3 Listened to it more than I pay attentionto Destinos

Visuals 2 Watching the videos themselves


sound distortion, and studentsphysically interact with the com-puter via mouse clicks to progressthrough the lesson. Because payingattention is one of the metacognitivestrategies considered essential forlanguage learning (Oxford, 1990),this capacity may be one of multi-media's important strengths.

In a response that may be re-lated to learning style preferences,two students claimed to attend to thevideos themselves. Since the visualstimulus helps to contextualize theinput, focusing on the images maybe a particularly helpful strategy tovisual learners. Though learningstyles were not examined in this in-vestigation, there is growing re-search interest in this area (Beauvois& Eledge, 1996; Chun & Plass, 1996;and Meunier, 1997). Other strategiesmentioned (each by one student) in-cluded doing the lessons with apartner, reading the questions in ad-vance, and consulting the feedback.

Perhaps most notable is whatstudents did not say in response tothis question. Twelve of the 28 stu-dents did not offer any strategies atall. Though the lack of commentdoes not necessarily mean that thestudents did not make use of anystrategies, it does raise a fundamen-tal question: Are students suffi-ciently aware of their learning needsin order to address them? In the tra-ditional, teacher-mediated class-room, metacognitive strategies thatenable learners to address theirlearning needs are essential, but theymay be even more critical in theautonomous learning environmentof multimedia.

As a case in point, the ques-tionnaire results suggest that thestudents may not have taken fulladvantage of some of the help fea-tures. While 80 to 90% of the stu-dents claimed to use the replay func-tion "sometimes" or "often," 25% ofthe students reported "never" usingthe script or glossary, 40% reportedusing them "sometimes," and theremainder did not respond. The un-even use of help functions may be inpart due to issues such as the level ofdifficulty of the lesson questions, thescreen design of these features, thelack of adequate training on theiruse, and forgetfulness on the part ofthe students. Though the version ofLibra used in this project did not al-low for tracking student actions [3],studies that examined computer logsfor computer-assisted writing (Scott,1990) and reading (Davis & Lyman-Hager, 1997) came to a similar con-clusion: students did not make ade-quate use of the resources provided.Based on their findings with third-semester French students, Davis andLyman-Hager suggest that "studentsneed training to use computers inthe most beneficial way" (p. 68).

What are the strategies that"good multimedia learners" use?Can or should these strategies betaught? If so, how? How is strategyuse affected by proficiency level andmotivation? Hoven (1997) proposesthat not all second language learn-ers, especially in the initial stages oftheir learning, want or are able totake control (105). She advocates ahierarchy of task types to raise stu-dents' awareness of strategies. Asrecommended by Pusack and Otto


(1997), "issues of control and interac-tivity in multimedia instruction ur-gently require more attention fromresearchers to inform development"(p. 10).

When asked what they likedbest about the multimedia lessons,students responded quite pragmati-cally (see Table 5). Nine students in-dicated that the lessons helped themachieve their short-range goals ("Ithelped my understanding of Desti-nos") and their longer-range goals("Improved my listening skills,""Very helpful on tests"). Five stu-dents highlighted the learner-centeredness of the lessons, for ex-ample, being able to "choose [their]

own time [to do the lessons],""partner up", and "start[ing] andstop[ping] when I need to."

The ability to check their workvia the feedback button was cited as aplus by four students. In the litera-ture, access to immediate, non-threatening feedback is widely seenas an advantage of computer-assistedlearning (Bush, 1997; Pennington,1996; Pusack Sr Otto, 1997). In theforeign language learning context,the research on error correction hasbeen focused primarily on oral feed-back, and results have been mixed(for a summary, see Chaudron,1988). As yet, there is little researchon the impact of computer-provided

Table 5Questionnaire Responses, Phase 2: What Students Liked the Most About the

Lessons (n =30)

Question 3. What did you like the most about doing the Libra computerlessons?

Category of Response Number ofResponses

Sample Comment

Goal-oriented

Control

Feedback

9

5

4

Made the lesson more clearVery helpful on testsImproved my listening skills

Having the option of starting and stop-ping when I need toChoose own timeCan partner up if you want

Checking your answers


feedback on language learners. Howdo learners react to computer feed-back? Is it anxiety-producing? Whattypes of feedback are most helpful?

In a study of feedback on com-puter-assisted grammar practice, Na-gata and Swisher (1995) found evi-dence that 'smart' feedback, whichgave further information about er-rors, was more useful to studentsthan the generic variety. What feed-back is most appropriate for com-prehension-based tasks? The feed-back provided in the Libra lessonswas generic, offering such responsesas the following: "All of the answersso far are correct. Keep going.""None of your answers are correct.""Some of your answers are correctand some are not." Despite the gen-eral nature of this feedback, 68% ofthe students claimed to use the feed-back "sometimes" or "often," and68% described it as "helpful" or"very helpful." There were, how-ever, two requests for improvedfeedback. One student noted, "If I gotit wrong, I never knew why." Thelack of understanding of this poten-tially valuable component of themultimedia environment pointsclearly to a need for further research.

The final questions providedinput for further cycles of develop-ment and implementation. For ex-ample, one student recommendedshowing the video on the samescreen as the questions, a possibilitywith newer versions of the Libraprogram, but feasible only with theaddition of a video server to storethe lesson segments. The generallypositive attitude of the students tothe Libra lessons was reflected intheir responses to the last question.Three students wanted to do one

_160

multimedia lesson for each of the 17chapters studied during the semes-ter. Others offered suggestions rang-ing from 3 to 6 lessons, with 5 as themedian. Almost half of the studentsexpressed a willingness to spendfrom 20 to 40 minutes per lesson. Atthe present time, the Libra lessonsthat were not updated in Phase 2 arecurrently being restructured to be 20to 30 minutes in length.

CONCLUSION ANDIMPLICATIONS

The effective use of multimediapresents challenges at many levels.For those who are interested in ex-ploring this instructional tool, sev-eral recommendations follow fromthe CUA experience.

1. Select authorware according toits theoretical foundation andyour project goals.As the array of possibilities for

authorware is growing rapidly, theselection process needs to be madewith care. Authorware should be se-lected according to its compatibilitywith current language learningmodels and the project goals. Librawas created with comprehensiontheory in mind and our goals werelistening comprehension. Otherprograms such as GALT and An-notext are designed to facilitate read-ing comprehension (for a summaryof currently available authorware bylanguage skill, see Martinez & Her-ren, 1998).

2. Create broad support for yourproject.Due to the time, skill, and en-

ergy demands of working with mul-timedia, broad support is necessary.


The development team might in-clude the language coordinator, an-other faculty member(s), the mediadirector, graduate teaching assis-tant(s), and undergraduate assistants.Outside support from the softwarecreator and grant project director isnecessary for technical reasons andcan also be valuable in building sup-port for the project at higher levelsin the university. Backing from thedepartment chair and dean is impor-tant as release time and funds arenecessary for project members to at-tend workshops and develop andrework lessons. This high-level sup-port is also key when faculty submitmultimedia projects as part of theiractivity reports and tenure and pro-motion reviews.

3. Assess facilities and technicalissues in advance.Because university facilities,

academic computer support, andsoftware requirements vary widely,it is not useful to outline specifictechnical guidelines. The basics ofavailability and compatibility ofequipment and software need to beaddressed, however, as do logisticalconsiderations, such as the follow-ing: How many stations are availablefor how many students? Shouldstudents reserve time slots? Shouldthey work in pairs? Are the lessonsproperly loaded and easily accessibleon each station? Are lab assistantsfamiliar enough with the lessons tohelp students as needed? Dealingwith these issues will help the proj-ect run more smoothly.

4. Familiarize instructors with theprogram and the project.Instructor preparation is crucial

to the implementation process. Notonly do instructors need to be famil-iar with how the program functions,but they also need an understandingof the rationale for the program inorder to respond adequately to stu-dents' questions. It may be useful toacquaint new instructors with thehistory of the project and, if possible,to involve them in revising ques-tions. In this manner, instructorswill feel more a part of the lessonsand will be able to offer useful sug-gestions for future improvements.

5. Integrate the out-of-class workinto class.Integrating the lessons into the

coursework is a substantial chal-lenge. Including the project on thecourse description and assigning it apercentage of the grade are only thebeginning. Conducting student ori-entations helps make student usersmore aware of what they are ex-pected to do and allows them to be-gin to establish a comfort level withthe lessons. Beyond the need forthese preliminary arrangements, ourexperience points to one key realityof the use of multimedia, especiallyfor out-of-class work: learners inter-act variably with the program. Somestudents may do the lessons quicklywith no difficulties, some may listenseveral times to the segments andconsult numerous help features,others may begin but not finish, andothers may not do the lessons at all.

5 7u


Because the use of multimedia is afragmentary experience that differsfrom one learner to another, spend-ing time in class to recreate andunify the experience for the class as awhole is indispensible [4]. Thus, fol-low-up activities such as puttingevents in order, identifying charac-ters and their roles, and summariz-ing, as well as providing traditionalmatching and dictation quizzes,need to be incorporated. Exams canalso include questions that focus onthe lesson segments.

6. Include evaluation.Evaluation is an essential com-

ponent of the process. The informa-tion it provides supports the subse-quent development and implemen-tation cycles and brings new ques-tions into focus. Both phases of thisproject experienced difficulties withtwo overlapping concerns: participa-tion and data gathering. Actual stu-dent participation in the lessons,which cannot be documented due tothe lack of computer tracking, is notclearly reflected in the data collected.In addition to using the computerlogs now available in Libra, en-hancements of class integrationtechniques, improved lab attendantoversight, and increased access tovideodisc stations to accommodatestudent schedules better may resultin greater participation and betterdata in future phases. It may also be,however, that not all learners, par-ticularly those at the first and secondyear levels, are motivated enough todo multimedia lessons outside ofclass. Investigating the use of mul-timedia with more advanced, moremotivated students might result in

increased participation and morecomplete data [5].

A fundamental issue revealedin this project is how little is actuallyknown about what learners do withmultimedia. The limited number ofstrategies reported and the numberof students who listed no strategiessuggest a lack of awareness of how tolearn with multimedia. Whilemuch work has been done in identi-fying strategies in communication,research needs to identify those thatare appropriate for computer-mediated learning. In addition tocomputer tracking of students' inter-actions with computers, researchersneed to collect retrospective proto-cols to gain a better understanding ofthe strategies used. This approachcan be incorporated in future cyclesof evaluation through the randomselection of a subset of participants tomonitor more closely via appoint-ments for the lessons and for follow-up interviews.

Other areas of further researchsuggested by this study include theeffect of multimedia on vocabularylearning and the impact of learningstyles and feedback on computer-mediated learning.

As the exploration of multime-dia continues, projects such as theone undertaken at CUA will dem-onstrate the feasibility of creatinglessons tailored to the context of anindividual department. The processis not a simple one, however, as itinvolves ongoing cycles of devel-opment, implementation, andevaluation. The experience of oneproject provides important feedbackto further this process and is alsocrucial in developing a knowledge


base in this rapidly expanding field.The generally positive outcomes ofthis project, both in terms of studentlearning and student attitude, serveto further motivate continued re-finement and use of the lessons atCUA. The questions raised suggestareas for much-needed future re-search, in particular, the need to un-derstand better how learners makeuse of resources afforded by thecomputer in order to manage theirown learning. It is through contin-ued cycles of this development-implementation-ev aluation processthat teachers and students will gainthe ability to use the tools that tech-nology provides more knowledgea-bly and effectively.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSThis project would have been

impossible without the support andassistance of a number of people.Robert Fischer and Mike Farris, thedevelopers of Libra, have been ever-willing to offer their guidance andinsight. I would especially like tothank the rest of the team, media di-rectors, Chris Higgins and Ed Dixon,and graduate students, CharmaineMcMahon, Chris Schaefer, and JohnCrowley, who, throughout the proj-ect, have devoted time and energywhile maintaining enthusiasm andgood humor. Finally, I wish to ex-press my appreciation to the ModernLanguage Department Chairs MarioRojas and George Gingras for theirvision of the role technology canplay in language learning.

NOTES1 For information on the Libra

authoring system, contact Dr.Robert Fischer, Department of

Modern Languages, SouthwestTexas State University, San Mar-cos, Texas 78666, or seehttp: / /www.libra.swt.edu.

2 An IBM compatible version ofLibra is currently being devel-oped.

3 The most recent version of Libra,1.2.9, has a tracking log.

4 Gilberte Furstenberg, author ofthe simulation program A la ren-contre de Philippe, expressed thisview in response to my questionat the Tech Talk session at theNortheast Conference on theTeaching of Foreign Languages,April, 1997.

5 Judith Liskin-Gasparro offeredthis consideration at the Univer-sity of Texas Spanish SecondLanguage Acquisition Sympo-sium, October 1997.

REFERENCESBeauvois, M., & Eledge, J. (1996). Per-

sonality types and megabytes:Student attitudes toward com-puter-mediated communicationin the language classroom.CALICO Journal, 13 (2 & 3), 27-45.

Bush, M. (1997). Implementingtechnology for language learning.In M. D. Bush (Ed.), Technology-enhanced language learning (pp.287-349). Lincolnwood, IL: Na-tional Textbook Co.

Chaudron, C. (1988). Second lan-guage classrooms: Research o nteaching and learning. Cam-bridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.

Chun, D., & Plass, J. (1996). Effects ofmultimedia annotations on vo-cabulary acquisition. The ModernLanguage Journal, 80 (2), 183-198.

172


Davis, J., & Lyman-Hagar, M. (1997).Computers and L2 reading: Stu-dent performance, student atti-tudes. Foreign Language Annals,30 (1), 58-72.

Fischer, R., & Farris, M. Libra[Computer software]. San Marcos,TX: Southwest Texas University.

Foelsche, 0. et al. Annotext[Computer software]. Hanover,NH: Dartmouth College.

Fund for the Improvement of Post-secondary Education. (1994). A n -nual report. Washington, DC:FIPSE.

Hoven, D. (1997). Instructional de-sign for multimedia: Towards alearner centered CELL model. InK. A. Murphy-Judy & R. Sanders(Eds.), Nexus [CALICO Mono-graph Vol. 4] (pp. 98-111). Dur-ham, NC: Duke University Press.

Joiner, E. (1997). Teaching listening:How technology can help. In M.D. Bush (Ed.), Technology-enhanced language learning (pp.77-120). Lincolnwood, IL: Na-tional Textbook Co.

Lyman-Hager, M., Stout, M., & We-instock, M. (1995). Glossingauthentic language texts (GALT)[Computer software]. State Col-lege, PA: Education TechnologyServices, The Pennsylvania StateUniversity.

Martinez, A., & Herren, D. (1998).Challenges and opportunities:Curriculum pressures in thetechnological present. In J. Har-per, M. Lively, & M. Williams(Eds.), The coming of age of theprofession (pp. 141-167). Boston:Heinle and Heinle ITP.

I 7 3

Masters-Wicks, K., Pistlewate, L., &Lewental, M. (1996). Developinginteractive instructional softwarefor language acquisition. ForeignLanguage Annals, 29 (2), 217-222.

Meunier, L. (1997). Affective factorsand cyberteaching: Implicationsfor a postmodern pedagogy. In K.A. Murphy-Judy & R. Sanders(Eds.), Nexus [CALICO Mono-graph Vol. 4] (pp. 122-132). Dur-ham: Duke University Press.

Nagata, N., & Swisher, M. (1995). Astudy of consciousness-raising bycomputer: The effect of metalin-guistic feedback on second lan-guage learning. Foreign LanguageAnnals, 28 (3), 335-347.

Oxford, R. (1990). Language learningstrategies. New York: NewburyHouse Publishers.

Pennington, M. (1996). The power ofthe computer in language educa-tion. In M. C. Pennington (Ed.),The power of CALL (pp. 1-14).Houston, TX: Athelstan.

Pusack, J., & Otto, S. (1997). Takingcontrol of multimedia. In M. D.Bush (Ed.), Technology-enhancedlanguage learning (pp. 1-46). Lin-colnwood, IL: National TextbookCo.

Rubin, J. (1994). A review of secondlanguage listening comprehen-sion research. Modern LanguageJournal, 78 (2), 199-221.

Scott, V. (1990). Task-oriented crea-tive writing with Systeme-D.CALICO Journal, 7 (2), 58-67.

VanPatten, B., Marks, M., & Tesch-ner, R. (1992). Destinos: An In-troduction to Spanish [video].Boston, MA: WGBH Annen-berg/CPB Project.


APPENDIXQUESTIONNAIRE SPANISH 102

This questionnaire has been developed to solicit your views about the Desti-nos Libra computer lessons you have just completed in order to better under-stand their effectiveness and how students can best make use of them. Yourresponses are needed and appreciated. Your name is requested here in orderto give you attendance credit for Lección 33; your responses themselves willnot affect your grade in any way.

Name Instructor:

YOUR EXPERIENCE USING THE LIBRA COMPUTER PROGRAMFill in the information as appropriate:

1. How much time did you spend doing the Libra lessons?

Lesson # Time spentDid notdo thislesson

less than15 min. 15-30 min. 30-45 min. 45-60 min.

more than1 hr.

Lec. 22Lec. 30Lec. 33

2. In doing the computer lessons, which of the following features did youuse? How helpful were they?

Features neverused

some-times

oftenused

nothelpful helpful

very noopinion

Directions and samplequestions in English

_helpful

Text map with synopsisOn the video palette:_

playfast forwardrewindpause/stop

Script (not available inLesson 30)Glossary (not availablein Lesson 30)Feedback buttonGrammar exercisesPlease comment on your experiences using any of the above features:

3. How useful were the computer lessons in helping you develop skills inthe following areas? In the last column, number them 1 to 5 to rank theareas according to which ones were most improved for you by doing the

174


computer lessons, with 1 being the least improvement up to 5 for thegreatest improvement.

Skills not use-ful

somewhatuseful

very use-ful

no opin-ion

RANK1-5

listening comprehensionvocabulary learningcultural understandingsituational language usegrarrunar usage

DO YOU AGREE OR DISAGREE?For the following statements, indicate your view by circling 5 for StronglyAgree, 4 for Agree, 3 for Neutral, 2 for Disagree, and 1 for Strongly Disagree.Please clarify your response in the far right hand margin as needed.

Statement

1. I am generally comfortable working on computers.

2. I had sufficient orientation to the Libra program beforedoing the Libra lessons on my own.

3. I cannot follow the Destinos storyline just by watchingthe segments in the Libra lesson.

4. The computer lessons are sufficiently reinforced in classactivities.

5. I often feel frustrated while doing the lesson.

6. At the beginning of this semester, my attitude towardusing computers to learn a foreign language was positive.

7. After completing the Libra computer lessons, my attitudeabout using computers to learn a foreign language ispositive.

8. The directions and questions in Spanish are clear so I knowwhat I need to do to answer.

9. It is difficult to "navigate" from one part of the lesson toanother.

10. It is easy to quit the Libra lesson and open the grammar.

11. Doing the computer lessons helps me do better on thetests.

12. The lab attendants (work study students) are helpful to

SA A N D SD Comments

5 4 3 2 1

5 4 3 2 1

5 4 3 2 1

5 4 3 2 1

5 4 3 2 1

5 4 3 2 1

5 4 3 2 1

5 4 3 2 1

5 4 3 2 1

5 4 3 2 1

5 4 3 2 1

5 4 3 2 1


me when I use the Libra computer program.

13. It is easier to do dictations in class/on exams after 5 4 3 2 1

completing the Libra lesson.

14. I would like to do more Libra computer lessons. 5 4 3 2 1

YOUR IDEAS, PLEASE1. What was the main benefit you derived from doing the Libra computer

lessons?

What strategies did you use to maximize this benefit?

2. For Lesson 30, you saw the complete video in lab and you did the Libra les-son in the MLC. How would you compare these two experiences? Explainthe advantages and disadvantages of each.

3. What did you like the most about doing the Libra computer lessons?

4. If you could improve one aspect of the Libra computer lesson, what wouldit be?

5. There are approximately 17 Destinos episodes per semester. In your opin-ion, what would be the ideal number of Libra computer lessons to do?How much time would you be willing to spend on each? Please explain.

7 6

Editorial Policy

TITLE is devoted to the promotion of pedagogical and theoretical issuers inthe fields of Foreign/Second Language Education, Teaching of English tas aForeign/Second Language, and Applied Linguistics related to language l6rn-ing and teaching. Manuscripts submitted for publication undergo blindevaluation by two referees selected from members of an editorial advisoryboard. The editor has the right to make editorial changes in any manuscriptaccepted for publication.

Submission Information

To be considered for publication, a manuscript should be typewritten accord-ing to APA style and format (see TESOL Quarterly) and be no more than 30double-spaced pages in length (including references and appendices). Leave 11/2-inch top and left margins and 1-inch margins elsewhere. Include an ab-stract of not more than 200 words under the title of the manuscript. A sepa-rate page should contain the title of the manuscript and the author's name,address, e-mail, and phone number. The author's name should not appearelsewhere in the text. Refer to your previous publications in the third person.Submit three copies of the manuscript to

The Editor of TPFLESanchez Building 528The University of Texas at AustinAustin, TX 78712

Besides providing the three hard copies, the author(s) should submit the arti-cle on a Macintosh diskette (Microsoft Word 5.1 or later). Please set the docu-ment in 12-point type.

Subscription Information

TPFLE is published biannually in the Spring and Fall. The annual member-ship to TPFLE is $10.00, inclusive of postage, and an individual issue of thisjournal is available at $5.00. Make your checks payable to "The University ofTexas at Austin."

177

u

U.S. Department of EducationOffice of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI)

National Library of Education (NLE)Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC)

NOTICE

REPRODUCTION BASIS

IC

This document is covered by a signed "Reproduction Release(Blanket) form (on file within the ERIC system), encompassing allor classes of documents from its source organization and, therefore,does not require a "Specific Document" Release form.

This document is Federally-funded, or carries its own permission toreproduce, or is otherwise in the public domain and, therefore, maybe reproduced by ERIC without a signed Reproduction Release form(either "Specific Document" or "Blanket").

EFF-089 (9/97)

document resume institution - ericdocument resume. ed 427 515 fl 025 687. author carpenter, mark,...

Documents