Language Learning

The Effectiveness of Second Language Pronunciation Instruction: A Meta-Analysis

Junkyu Lee, Juhyun Jang, Luke Plonsky · Applied Linguistics · 2014 · 414 citations

Pronunciation instruction produces a large overall effect (Cohen's d = 0.89) on second language learners' pronunciation accuracy, with longer interventions, those that include feedback, and those using controlled outcome measures showing the largest gains — meaning if you want to improve your accent in a new language, structured practice with corrective feedback over several weeks is far more effective than casual exposure alone.

Replication in Second Language Research: Narrative and Systematic Reviews and Recommendations for the Field

Emma Marsden, Kara Morgan‐Short, Sophie Thompson‐Lee +1 more · Language Learning · 2018 · 269 citations

Only about 1 in every 400 second language research articles is a replication study, and the average replication takes over 6 years to appear — meaning most findings in the field have never been independently verified, which matters for anyone trying to apply language learning techniques to their own practice.

Visual Genome: Connecting Language and Vision Using Crowdsourced Dense Image Annotations

Ranjay Krishna, Yuke Zhu, Oliver Groth +9 more · International Journal of Computer Vision · 2017 · 5,148 citations

The Visual Genome dataset provides over 108,000 images with dense annotations (35 objects, 26 attributes, and 21 relationships per image on average) to train AI models on cognitive tasks like image description and question answering, rather than just perceptual tasks like object recognition.

Text Data Augmentation for Deep Learning

Connor Shorten, Taghi M. Khoshgoftaar, Borko Furht · Journal Of Big Data · 2021 · 1,665 citations

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is one of the most captivating applications of Deep Learning. In this survey, we consider how the Data Augmentation training strategy can aid in its development. We begin with the major motifs of Data Augmentation summarized into strengthening local decision boundaries, brute force training, causality and counterfactual examples, and the distinction between meaning and form. We follow these motifs with a concrete list of augmentation frameworks that have been developed for text data. Deep Learning generally struggles with the measurement of generalization and characterization of overfitting. We highlight studies that cover how augmentations can construct test sets for generalization. NLP is at an early stage in applying Data Augmentation compared to Computer Vision. We highlight the key differences and promising ideas that have yet to be tested in NLP. For the sake of practical implementation, we describe tools that facilitate Data Augmentation such as the use of consistency regularization, controllers, and offline and online augmentation pipelines, to preview a few. Finally, we discuss interesting topics around Data Augmentation in NLP such as task-specific augmentations, the use of prior knowledge in self-supervised learning versus Data Augmentation, intersections with transfer and multi-task learning, and ideas for AI-GAs (AI-Generating Algorithms). We hope this paper inspires further research interest in Text Data Augmentation.

Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning

John Seely Brown, Allan Collins, Paul Duguid · Educational Researcher · 1989 · 12,937 citations

Many teaching practices implicitly assume that conceptual knowledge can be abstracted from the situations in which it is learned and used. This article argues that this assumption inevitably limits the effectiveness of such practices. Drawing on recent research into cognition as it is manifest in everyday activity, the authors argue that knowledge is situated, being in part a product of the activity, context, and culture in which it is developed and used. They discuss how this view of knowledge affects our understanding of learning, and they note that conventional schooling too often ignores the influence of school culture on what is learned in school. As an alternative to conventional practices, they propose cognitive apprenticeship (Collins, Brown, & Newman, in press), which honors the situated nature of knowledge. They examine two examples of mathematics instruction that exhibit certain key features of this approach to teaching.

Instance-Based Learning Algorithms

David W. Aha, Dennis Kibler, Marc K. Albert · Machine Learning · 1991 · 4,107 citations

Translanguaging as a Practical Theory of Language

Li Wei · Applied Linguistics · 2017 · 2,527 citations

This article seeks to develop Translanguaging as a theory of language and discuss the theoretical motivations behind and the added values of the concept. I contextualize Translanguaging in the linguistic realities of the 21st century, especially the fluid and dynamic practices that transcend the boundaries between named languages, language varieties, and language and other semiotic systems. I highlight the contributions Translanguaging as a theoretical concept can make to the debates over the Language and Thought and the Modularity of Mind hypotheses. One particular aspect of multilingual language users' social interaction that I want to emphasize is its multimodal and multisensory nature. I elaborate on two related concepts: Translanguaging Space and Translanguaging Instinct, to underscore the necessity to bridge the artificial and ideological divides between the so-called sociocultural and the cognitive approaches to Translanguaging practices. In doing so, I respond to some of the criticisms and confusions about the notion of Translanguaging.

Structure and Deterioration of Semantic Memory: A Neuropsychological and Computational Investigation.

Timothy T. Rogers, Matthew A. Lambon Ralph, Peter Garrard +4 more · Psychological Review · 2004 · 980 citations

Wernicke (1900, as cited in G. H. Eggert, 1977) suggested that semantic knowledge arises from the interaction of perceptual representations of objects and words. The authors present a parallel distributed processing implementation of this theory, in which semantic representations emerge from mechanisms that acquire the mappings between visual representations of objects and their verbal descriptions. To test the theory, they trained the model to associate names, verbal descriptions, and visual representations of objects. When its inputs and outputs are constructed to capture aspects of structure apparent in attribute-norming experiments, the model provides an intuitive account of semantic task performance. The authors then used the model to understand the structure of impaired performance in patients with selective and progressive impairments of conceptual knowledge. Data from 4 well-known semantic tasks revealed consistent patterns that find a ready explanation in the model. The relationship between the model and related theories of semantic representation is discussed.

Induction of Decision Trees

J. R. Quinlan · Machine Learning · 1986 · 14,713 citations

Induction of decision trees

J. R. Quinlan · Machine Learning · 1986 · 12,369 citations

Shared computational principles for language processing in humans and deep language models

Ariel Goldstein, Zaid Zada, Eliav Buchnik +29 more · Nature Neuroscience · 2022 · 438 citations

Departing from traditional linguistic models, advances in deep learning have resulted in a new type of predictive (autoregressive) deep language models (DLMs). Using a self-supervised next-word prediction task, these models generate appropriate linguistic responses in a given context. In the current study, nine participants listened to a 30-min podcast while their brain responses were recorded using electrocorticography (ECoG). We provide empirical evidence that the human brain and autoregressive DLMs share three fundamental computational principles as they process the same natural narrative: (1) both are engaged in continuous next-word prediction before word onset; (2) both match their pre-onset predictions to the incoming word to calculate post-onset surprise; (3) both rely on contextual embeddings to represent words in natural contexts. Together, our findings suggest that autoregressive DLMs provide a new and biologically feasible computational framework for studying the neural basis of language.

The Knowledge‐Learning‐Instruction Framework: Bridging the Science‐Practice Chasm to Enhance Robust Student Learning

Kenneth R. Koedinger, Albert T. Corbett, Charles A. Perfetti · Cognitive Science · 2012 · 712 citations

Despite the accumulation of substantial cognitive science research relevant to education, there remains confusion and controversy in the application of research to educational practice. In support of a more systematic approach, we describe the Knowledge-Learning-Instruction (KLI) framework. KLI promotes the emergence of instructional principles of high potential for generality, while explicitly identifying constraints of and opportunities for detailed analysis of the knowledge students may acquire in courses. Drawing on research across domains of science, math, and language learning, we illustrate the analyses of knowledge, learning, and instructional events that the KLI framework affords. We present a set of three coordinated taxonomies of knowledge, learning, and instruction. For example, we identify three broad classes of learning events (LEs): (a) memory and fluency processes, (b) induction and refinement processes, and (c) understanding and sense-making processes, and we show how these can lead to different knowledge changes and constraints on optimal instructional choices.

Enhancing academic writing skills and motivation: assessing the efficacy of ChatGPT in AI-assisted language learning for EFL students

Cuiping Song, Yanping Song · Frontiers in Psychology · 2023 · 522 citations

Introduction: This mixed-methods study evaluates the impact of AI-assisted language learning on Chinese English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students' writing skills and writing motivation. As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more prevalent in educational settings, understanding its effects on language learning outcomes is crucial. Methods: The study employs a comprehensive approach, combining quantitative and qualitative methods. The quantitative phase utilizes a pre-test and post-test design to assess writing skills. Fifty EFL students, matched for proficiency, are randomly assigned to experimental (AI-assisted instruction via ChatGPT) or control (traditional instruction) groups. Writing samples are evaluated using established scoring rubrics. Concurrently, semi-structured interviews are conducted with a subset of participants to explore writing motivation and experiences with AI-assisted learning. Results: Quantitative analysis reveals significant improvements in both writing skills and motivation among students who received AI-assisted instruction compared to the control group. The experimental group demonstrates enhanced proficiency in various aspects of writing, including organization, coherence, grammar, and vocabulary. Qualitative findings showcase diverse perspectives, ranging from recognition of AI's innovative instructional role and its positive influence on writing skills and motivation to concerns about contextual accuracy and over-reliance. Participants also reflect on the long-term impact and sustainability of AI-assisted instruction, emphasizing the need for ongoing development and adaptation of AI tools. Discussion: The nuanced findings offer a comprehensive understanding of AI's transformative potential in education. These insights have practical implications for practitioners and researchers, emphasizing the benefits, challenges, and the evolving nature of AI's role in language instruction.

IMPLICIT AND EXPLICIT CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK AND THE ACQUISITION OF L2 GRAMMAR

Rod Ellis, Shawn Loewen, Rosemary Erlam · Studies in Second Language Acquisition · 2006 · 1,073 citations

This article reviews previous studies of the effects of implicit and explicit corrective feedback on SLA, pointing out a number of methodological problems. It then reports on a new study of the effects of these two types of corrective feedback on the acquisition of past tense -ed . In an experimental design (two experimental groups and a control group), low-intermediate learners of second language English completed two communicative tasks during which they received either recasts (implicit feedback) or metalinguistic explanation (explicit feedback) in response to any utterance that contained an error in the target structure. Acquisition was measured by means of an oral imitation test (designed to measure implicit knowledge) and both an untimed grammaticality judgment test and a metalinguistic knowledge test (both designed to measure explicit knowledge). The tests were administered prior to the instruction, 1 day after the instruction, and again 2 weeks later. Statistical comparisons of the learners' performance on the posttests showed a clear advantage for explicit feedback over implicit feedback for both the delayed imitation and grammaticality judgment posttests. Thus, the results indicate that metalinguistic explanation benefited implicit as well as explicit knowledge and point to the importance of including measures of both types of knowledge in experimental studies.

Using Linguistic Cues for the Automatic Recognition of Personality in Conversation and Text

François Mairesse, Marilyn Walker, Matthias R. Mehl +1 more · Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research · 2007 · 997 citations

It is well known that utterances convey a great deal of information about the speaker in addition to their semantic content. One such type of information consists of cues to the speaker's personality traits, the most fundamental dimension of variation between humans. Recent work explores the automatic detection of other types of pragmatic variation in text and conversation, such as emotion, deception, speaker charisma, dominance, point of view, subjectivity, opinion and sentiment. Personality affects these other aspects of linguistic production, and thus personality recognition may be useful for these tasks, in addition to many other potential applications. However, to date, there is little work on the automatic recognition of personality traits. This article reports experimental results for recognition of all Big Five personality traits, in both conversation and text, utilising both self and observer ratings of personality. While other work reports classification results, we experiment with classification, regression and ranking models. For each model, we analyse the effect of different feature sets on accuracy. Results show that for some traits, any type of statistical model performs significantly better than the baseline, but ranking models perform best overall. We also present an experiment suggesting that ranking models are more accurate than multi-class classifiers for modelling personality. In addition, recognition models trained on observed personality perform better than models trained using self-reports, and the optimal feature set depends on the personality trait. A qualitative analysis of the learned models confirms previous findings linking language and personality, while revealing many new linguistic markers.

Thinking through other minds: A variational approach to cognition and culture

Samuel P. L. Veissière, Axel Constant, Maxwell J. D. Ramstead +2 more · Behavioral and Brain Sciences · 2019 · 358 citations

The processes underwriting the acquisition of culture remain unclear. How are shared habits, norms, and expectations learned and maintained with precision and reliability across large-scale sociocultural ensembles? Is there a unifying account of the mechanisms involved in the acquisition of culture? Notions such as "shared expectations," the "selective patterning of attention and behaviour," "cultural evolution," "cultural inheritance," and "implicit learning" are the main candidates to underpin a unifying account of cognition and the acquisition of culture; however, their interactions require greater specification and clarification. In this article, we integrate these candidates using the variational (free-energy) approach to human cognition and culture in theoretical neuroscience. We describe the construction by humans of social niches that afford epistemic resources called cultural affordances. We argue that human agents learn the shared habits, norms, and expectations of their culture through immersive participation in patterned cultural practices that selectively pattern attention and behaviour. We call this process "thinking through other minds" (TTOM) - in effect, the process of inferring other agents' expectations about the world and how to behave in social context. We argue that for humans, information from and about other people's expectations constitutes the primary domain of statistical regularities that humans leverage to predict and organize behaviour. The integrative model we offer has implications that can advance theories of cognition, enculturation, adaptation, and psychopathology. Crucially, this formal (variational) treatment seeks to resolve key debates in current cognitive science, such as the distinction between internalist and externalist accounts of theory of mind abilities and the more fundamental distinction between dynamical and representational accounts of enactivism.

A critical period for second language acquisition: Evidence from 2/3 million English speakers

Joshua K. Hartshorne, Joshua B. Tenenbaum, Steven Pinker · Cognition · 2018 · 626 citations

The myth of language universals: Language diversity and its importance for cognitive science

Nicholas Evans, Stephen C. Levinson · Behavioral and Brain Sciences · 2009 · 2,619 citations

Talk of linguistic universals has given cognitive scientists the impression that languages are all built to a common pattern. In fact, there are vanishingly few universals of language in the direct sense that all languages exhibit them. Instead, diversity can be found at almost every level of linguistic organization. This fundamentally changes the object of enquiry from a cognitive science perspective. This target article summarizes decades of cross-linguistic work by typologists and descriptive linguists, showing just how few and unprofound the universal characteristics of language are, once we honestly confront the diversity offered to us by the world's 6,000 to 8,000 languages. After surveying the various uses of "universal," we illustrate the ways languages vary radically in sound, meaning, and syntactic organization, and then we examine in more detail the core grammatical machinery of recursion, constituency, and grammatical relations. Although there are significant recurrent patterns in organization, these are better explained as stable engineering solutions satisfying multiple design constraints, reflecting both cultural-historical factors and the constraints of human cognition. Linguistic diversity then becomes the crucial datum for cognitive science: we are the only species with a communication system that is fundamentally variable at all levels. Recognizing the true extent of structural diversity in human language opens up exciting new research directions for cognitive scientists, offering thousands of different natural experiments given by different languages, with new opportunities for dialogue with biological paradigms concerned with change and diversity, and confronting us with the extraordinary plasticity of the highest human skills.

Working Memory Underpins Cognitive Development, Learning, and Education

Nelson Cowan · Educational Psychology Review · 2013 · 808 citations

FREQUENCY EFFECTS IN LANGUAGE PROCESSING

Nick C. Ellis · Studies in Second Language Acquisition · 2002 · 2,165 citations

This article shows how language processing is intimately tuned to input frequency. Examples are given of frequency effects in the processing of phonology, phonotactics, reading, spelling, lexis, morphosyntax, formulaic language, language comprehension, grammaticality, sentence production, and syntax. The implications of these effects for the representations and developmental sequence of SLA are discussed. Usage-based theories hold that the acquisition of language is exemplar based. It is the piecemeal learning of many thousands of constructions and the frequency-biased abstraction of regularities within them. Determinants of pattern productivity include the power law of practice, cue competition and constraint satisfaction, connectionist learning, and effects of type and token frequency. The regularities of language emerge from experience as categories and prototypical patterns. The typical route of emergence of constructions is from formula, through low-scope pattern, to construction. Frequency plays a large part in explaining sociolinguistic variation and language change. Learners' sensitivity to frequency in all these domains has implications for theories of implicit and explicit learning and their interactions. The review concludes by considering the history of frequency as an explanatory concept in theoretical and applied linguistics, its 40 years of exile, and its necessary reinstatement as a bridging variable that binds the different schools of language acquisition research.

Supervised Learning of Semantic Classes for Image Annotation and Retrieval

Gustavo Carneiro, Antoni B. Chan, Pedro J. Moreno +1 more · IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence · 2007 · 870 citations

A probabilistic formulation for semantic image annotation and retrieval is proposed. Annotation and retrieval are posed as classification problems where each class is defined as the group of database images labeled with a common semantic label. It is shown that, by establishing this one-to-one correspondence between semantic labels and semantic classes, a minimum probability of error annotation and retrieval are feasible with algorithms that are 1) conceptually simple, 2) computationally efficient, and 3) do not require prior semantic segmentation of training images. In particular, images are represented as bags of localized feature vectors, a mixture density estimated for each image, and the mixtures associated with all images annotated with a common semantic label pooled into a density estimate for the corresponding semantic class. This pooling is justified by a multiple instance learning argument and performed efficiently with a hierarchical extension of expectation-maximization. The benefits of the supervised formulation over the more complex, and currently popular, joint modeling of semantic label and visual feature distributions are illustrated through theoretical arguments and extensive experiments. The supervised formulation is shown to achieve higher accuracy than various previously published methods at a fraction of their computational cost. Finally, the proposed method is shown to be fairly robust to parameter tuning.

Connectivity precedes function in the development of the visual word form area

Zeynep M. Saygin, David E. Osher, Elizabeth S. Norton +6 more · Nature Neuroscience · 2016 · 421 citations

Cross-Cultural Pragmatic Failure

J. THOMAS · Applied Linguistics · 1983 · 1,854 citations

La presente monografía es una revisión sistemática de la literatura (RSL) que tiene como objetivo revisar cualitativamente la literatura que utiliza series de televisión para desarrollar la competencia pragmática en contextos de inglés como lengua extranjera. Cuando se enseña en un contexto de inglés como lengua extranjera, el desarrollo de la competencia pragmática tiende a pasarse por alto en las aulas. Además, los estudiantes no tienen la necesidad real de usar el lenguaje fuera de clase ya que hay pocas oportunidades de enfrentar una situación comunicativa; por lo tanto, es necesario proponer una estrategia o herramienta que ayude a los educadores a desarrollar la competencia pragmática. En ese sentido, las series de televisión parecen ser un elemento de la realia que satisface estas necesidades debido a su vasta cantidad de comunicación auténtica. Por lo tanto, el presente documento propone una revisión sistemática de la literatura con el fin de revisar los estudios sobre el tema antes mencionado, de modo que sus resultados puedan ser recopilados, comparados y mostrados. Para seleccionar los archivos, se crearon algunos criterios de inclusión y exclusión. Posteriormente, los documentos fueron filtrados mediante una herramienta para valoración de la calidad de estudios y analizados en una matriz analítica. Una vez hecho el análisis, los trece documentos finales fueron divididos en dos capítulos de la monografía en los cuales fueron presentadas las implicaciones pedagógicas y pragmáticas.

Effects of limited English proficiency and physician language on health care comprehension

Elisabeth Wilson, Alice Hm Chen, Kevin Grumbach +2 more · Journal of General Internal Medicine · 2005 · 620 citations

Survey of the State of the Art in Natural Language Generation: Core tasks, applications and evaluation

Albert Gatt, Emiel Krahmer · Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research · 2018 · 750 citations

This paper surveys the current state of the art in Natural Language Generation (NLG), defined as the task of generating text or speech from non-linguistic input. A survey of NLG is timely in view of the changes that the field has undergone over the past two decades, especially in relation to new (usually data-driven) methods, as well as new applications of NLG technology. This survey therefore aims to (a) give an up-to-date synthesis of research on the core tasks in NLG and the architectures adopted in which such tasks are organised; (b) highlight a number of recent research topics that have arisen partly as a result of growing synergies between NLG and other areas of artificial intelligence; (c) draw attention to the challenges in NLG evaluation, relating them to similar challenges faced in other areas of NLP, with an emphasis on different evaluation methods and the relationships between them.

Repositioning English and multilingualism in English as a Lingua Franca

Jennifer Jenkins · Englishes in Practice · 2015 · 734 citations

Abstract In the relatively few years since empirical research into English as a Lingua Franca began being conducted more widely, the field has developed and expanded remarkably, and in myriad ways. In particular, researchers have explored ELF from the perspective of a range of linguistic levels and in an ever-increasing number of sociolinguistic contexts, as well as its synergies with the field of Intercultural Communication and its meaning for the fields of Second Language Acquisition and English as a Foreign Language. The original orientation to ELF communication focused heavily, if not exclusively, on form. In light of increasing empirical evidence, this gave way some years later to an understanding that it is the processes underlying these forms that are paramount, and hence to a focus on ELF users and ELF as social practice. It is argued in this article, however, that ELF is in need of further retheorisation in respect of its essentially multilingual nature: a nature that has always been present in ELF theory and empirical work, but which, I believe, has not so far been sufficiently foregrounded. This article therefore attempts to redress the balance by taking ELF theorisation a small step further in its evolution.

Active‐Constructive‐Interactive: A Conceptual Framework for Differentiating Learning Activities

T. H. Michelene · Topics in Cognitive Science · 2009 · 1,498 citations

Active, constructive, and interactive are terms that are commonly used in the cognitive and learning sciences. They describe activities that can be undertaken by learners. However, the literature is actually not explicit about how these terms can be defined; whether they are distinct; and whether they refer to overt manifestations, learning processes, or learning outcomes. Thus, a framework is provided here that offers a way to differentiate active, constructive, and interactive in terms of observable overt activities and underlying learning processes. The framework generates a testable hypothesis for learning: that interactive activities are most likely to be better than constructive activities, which in turn might be better than active activities, which are better than being passive. Studies from the literature are cited to provide evidence in support of this hypothesis. Moreover, postulating underlying learning processes allows us to interpret evidence in the literature more accurately. Specifying distinct overt activities for active, constructive, and interactive also offers suggestions for how learning activities can be coded and how each kind of activity might be elicited.

THE ROBUSTNESS OF CRITICAL PERIOD EFFECTS IN SECOND LANGUAGEACQUISITION

Robert DeKeyser · Studies in Second Language Acquisition · 2000 · 1,420 citations

This study was designed to test the Fundamental Difference Hypothesis (Bley-Vroman, 1988), which states that, whereas children are known to learn language almost completely through (implicit) domain-specific mechanisms, adults have largely lost the ability to learn a language without reflecting on its structure and have to use alternative mechanisms, drawing especially on their problem-solving capacities, to learn a second language. The hypothesis implies that only adults with a high level of verbal analytical ability will reach near-native competence in their second language, but that this ability will not be a significant predictor of success for childhood second language acquisition. A study with 57 adult Hungarian-speaking immigrants confirmed the hypothesis in the sense that very few adult immigrants scored within the range of child arrivals on a grammaticality judgment test, and that the few who did had high levels of verbal analytical ability; this ability was not a significant predictor for childhood arrivals. This study replicates the findings of Johnson and Newport (1989) and provides an explanation for the apparent exceptions in their study. These findings lead to a reconceptualization of the Critical Period Hypothesis: If the scope of this hypothesis is limited to implicit learning mechanisms, then it appears that there may be no exceptions to the age effects that the hypothesis seeks to explain.

Motivation in second and foreign language learning

Zoltán Dörnyei · Language Teaching · 1998 · 1,367 citations

All this work could be conceivable

Artificial intelligence in language instruction: impact on English learning achievement, L2 motivation, and self-regulated learning

Ling Wei · Frontiers in Psychology · 2023 · 385 citations

Introduction: This mixed methods study examines the effects of AI-mediated language instruction on English learning achievement, L2 motivation, and self-regulated learning among English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. It addresses the increasing interest in AI-driven educational technologies and their potential to revolutionize language instruction. Methods: Two intact classes, consisting of a total of 60 university students, participated in this study. The experimental group received AI-mediated instruction, while the control group received traditional language instruction. Pre-tests and post-tests were administered to evaluate English learning achievement across various domains, including grammar, vocabulary, reading comprehension, and writing skills. Additionally, self-report questionnaires were employed to assess L2 motivation and self-regulated learning. Results: Quantitative analysis revealed that the experimental group achieved significantly higher English learning outcomes in all assessed areas compared to the control group. Furthermore, they exhibited greater L2 motivation and more extensive utilization of self-regulated learning strategies. These results suggest that AI-mediated instruction positively impacts English learning achievement, L2 motivation, and self-regulated learning. Discussion: Qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews with 14 students from the experimental group shed light on the transformative effects of the AI platform. It was found to enhance engagement and offer personalized learning experiences, ultimately boosting motivation and fostering self-regulated learning. These findings emphasize the potential of AI-mediated language instruction to improve language learning outcomes, motivate learners, and promote autonomy. Conclusion: This study contributes to evidence-based language pedagogy, offering valuable insights to educators and researchers interested in incorporating AI-powered platforms into language classrooms. The results support the notion that AI-mediated language instruction holds promise in revolutionizing language learning, and it highlights the positive impact of AI-driven educational technologies in the realm of language education.

A National Study of School Effectiveness for Language Minority Students' Long-Term Academic Achievement

Wayne P. Thomas, Virginia P. Collier · eScholarship (California Digital Library) · 2002 · 1,201 citations

Our research from 1985 to 2001 has focused on analyzing the great variety of education services provided for language minority (LM) students in U.S. public schools and the resulting long-term academic achievement of these students. This five-year research study (1996-2001) is our most recent overview of the types of U.S. school programs provided for these linguistically and culturally diverse students, especially focusing on English language learners’ (ELLs/LEPs) academic achievement in Grades K-12. This study includes qualitative and quantitative research findings from five urban and rural research sites in the northeast, northwest, south-central, and southeast U.S. It is designed to answer urgent policy questions of interest to the federal and state governments of the United States, since this demographic group is projected to be 40 percent of the school-age population by the 2030s and most U.S. schools are currently under-educating this student group. Overall, this research provides whole school district views of policy decision-making that is data-driven regarding designing, implementing, evaluating, and reforming the education of LM students.

The instruction of reading comprehension

P. David Pearson, Margaret C. Gallagher · Contemporary Educational Psychology · 1983 · 1,144 citations

Maturational Constraints on Language Development

Michael H. Long · Studies in Second Language Acquisition · 1990 · 1,075 citations

This article reviews the second language research on age-related differences, as well as first language work needed to disambiguate some of the findings. Five conclusions are drawn, (a) Both the initial rate of acquisition and the ultimate level of attainment depend in part on the age at which learning begins. (b) There are sensitive periods governing language development, first or second, during which the acquisition of different linguistic abilities is successful and after which it is irregular and incomplete. (c) The age-related loss in ability is cumulative (not a catastrophic one-time event), affecting first one linguistic domain and then another, and is not limited to phonology, (d) The deterioration in some individuals begins as early as age 6—not at puberty as is often claimed. (e) Affective, input, and current cognitive explanations for the reduced ability are inadequate. The capacity for language development is maturationally constrained, and its decline probably reflects a progressive loss of neural plasticity, itself possibly associated with increasing myelination.

What's meaning got to do with it: The role of vocabulary in word reading and reading comprehension.

Gene P. Ouellette · Journal of Educational Psychology · 2006 · 1,003 citations

There is at present no clear consensus as to the nature of the relations between oral vocabulary and specific literacy skills.The present study distinguished between vocabulary breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge to better explain the role of oral vocabulary in various reading skills.A sample of 60 typically developing Grade 4 students was assessed on measures of receptive and expressive vocabulary breadth, depth of vocabulary knowledge, decoding, visual word recognition, and reading comprehension.Concurrent analyses revealed that each distinct reading skill was related to the vocabulary measures in a unique manner.Receptive vocabulary breadth was the only oral vocabulary variable that predicted decoding performance after controlling for age and nonverbal intelligence.In contrast, expressive vocabulary breadth predicted visual word recognition, whereas depth of vocabulary knowledge predicted reading comprehension.The results are discussed in terms of interrelations between phonological and semantic factors in the acquisition of distinct reading skills.

Lexical Information Drives Perceptual Learning of Distorted Speech: Evidence From the Comprehension of Noise-Vocoded Sentences.

Matthew H. Davis, Ingrid S. Johnsrude, Alexis Hervais‐Adelman +2 more · Journal of Experimental Psychology General · 2005 · 540 citations

Speech comprehension is resistant to acoustic distortion in the input, reflecting listeners' ability to adjust perceptual processes to match the speech input. For noise-vocoded sentences, a manipulation that removes spectral detail from speech, listeners' reporting improved from near 0% to 70% correct over 30 sentences (Experiment 1). Learning was enhanced if listeners heard distorted sentences while they knew the identity of the undistorted target (Experiments 2 and 3). Learning was absent when listeners were trained with nonword sentences (Experiments 4 and 5), although the meaning of the training sentences did not affect learning (Experiment 5). Perceptual learning of noise-vocoded speech depends on higher level information, consistent with top-down, lexically driven learning. Similar processes may facilitate comprehension of speech in an unfamiliar accent or following cochlear implantation.

Why Nouns are Learned Before Verbs : Linguistic Relativity versus Natural Partitioning

Dedre Gentner · Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) · 1982 · 970 citations

Perceptual learning in speech

Dennis Norris · Cognitive Psychology · 2003 · 885 citations

Sleep Spindle Activity is Associated with the Integration of New Memories and Existing Knowledge

Jakke Tamminen, Jessica D. Payne, Robert Stickgold +2 more · Journal of Neuroscience · 2010 · 483 citations

Sleep spindle activity has been associated with improvements in procedural and declarative memory. Here, for the first time, we looked at the role of spindles in the integration of newly learned information with existing knowledge, contrasting this with explicit recall of the new information. Two groups of participants learned novel spoken words (e.g., cathedruke) that overlapped phonologically with familiar words (e.g., cathedral). The sleep group was exposed to the novel words in the evening, followed by an initial test, a polysomnographically monitored night of sleep, and a second test in the morning. The wake group was exposed and initially tested in the morning and spent a retention interval of similar duration awake. Finally, both groups were tested a week later at the same circadian time to control for possible circadian effects. In the sleep group, participants recalled more words and recognized them faster after sleep, whereas in the wake group such changes were not observed until the final test 1 week later. Following acquisition of the novel words, recognition of the familiar words was slowed in both groups, but only after the retention interval, indicating that the novel words had been integrated into the mental lexicon following consolidation. Importantly, spindle activity was associated with overnight lexical integration in the sleep group, but not with gains in recall rate or recognition speed of the novel words themselves. Spindle activity appears to be particularly important for overnight integration of new memories with existing neocortical knowledge.

AT THE INTERFACE: DYNAMIC INTERACTIONS OF EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT LANGUAGE KNOWLEDGE

Nick C. Ellis · Studies in Second Language Acquisition · 2005 · 868 citations

This paper considers how implicit and explicit knowledge are dissociable but cooperative. It reviews various psychological and neurobiological processes by which explicit knowledge of form-meaning associations impacts upon implicit language learning. The interface is dynamic: It happens transiently during conscious processing, but the influence upon implicit cognition endures thereafter. The primary conscious involvement in SLA is the explicit learning involved in the initial registration of pattern recognizers for constructions that are then tuned and integrated into the system by implicit learning during subsequent input processing. Neural systems in the prefrontal cortex involved in working memory provide attentional selection, perceptual integration, and the unification of consciousness. Neural systems in the hippocampus then bind these disparate cortical representations into unitary episodic representations. These are the mechanisms by which Schmidt's (1990) noticing helps solve Quine's (1960) problem of referential indeterminacy. Explicit memories can also guide the conscious building of novel linguistic utterances through processes of analogy. Formulas, slot-and-frame patterns, drills, and declarative pedagogical grammar rules all contribute to the conscious creation of utterances whose subsequent usage promotes implicit learning and proceduralization. Flawed output can prompt focused feedback by way of recasts that present learners with psycholinguistic data ready for explicit analysis. Other processes of acquisition from output include differentiation, analysis, and preemption. These processes of conscious construction in working memory underpin relationships between individual differences in working memory capacities and language learning aptitude.Thanks to Rod Ellis for first suggesting that I try to write this and to the staff and students at Department of Applied Language Studies and Linguistics University of Auckland (2003), the TESOL Program Temple University Japan (2003), the Chester Language Development Reading Group, and the LOT winter school (2004) for helping me think it through. I am particularly grateful to Michel Paradis, Michael Swan, Karen Roehr, Anne Feryok, and Tamar Keren-Portnoy for pointing their giant biological cameras of consciousness at a prior draft, and for sharing their awareness with me in kindly and constructive fashion. I have learned a lot from it.

Formulaic Language in Native and Second Language Speakers: Psycholinguistics, Corpus Linguistics, and TESOL

Nick C. Ellis, Rita Simpson‐Vlach, Carson Maynard · TESOL Quarterly · 2008 · 640 citations

Natural language makes considerable use of recurrent formulaic patterns of words. This article triangulates the construct of formula from corpus linguistic, psycholinguistic, and educational perspectives. It describes the corpus linguistic extraction of pedagogically useful formulaic sequences for academic speech and writing. It determines English as a second language (ESL) and English for academic purposes (EAP) instructors' evaluations of their pedagogical importance. It summarizes three experiments which show that different aspects of formulaicity affect the accuracy and fluency of processing of these formulas in native speakers and in advanced L2 learners of English. The language processing tasks were selected to sample an ecologically valid range of language processing skills: spoken and written, production and comprehension. Processing in all experiments was affected by various corpus‐derived metrics: length, frequency, and mutual information (MI), but to different degrees in the different populations. For native speakers, it is predominantly the MI of the formula which determines processability; for nonnative learners of the language, it is predominantly the frequency of the formula. The implications of these findings are discussed for (a) the psycholinguistic validity of corpus‐derived formulas, (b) a model of their acquisition, (c) ESL and EAP instruction and the prioritization of which formulas to teach.

Neural organization of spoken language revealed by lesion–symptom mapping

Daniel Mirman, Qi Chen, Yong-Sheng Zhang +4 more · Nature Communications · 2015 · 316 citations

Studies of patients with acquired cognitive deficits following brain damage and studies using contemporary neuroimaging techniques form two distinct streams of research on the neural basis of cognition. In this study, we combine high-quality structural neuroimaging analysis techniques and extensive behavioural assessment of patients with persistent acquired language deficits to study the neural basis of language. Our results reveal two major divisions within the language system—meaning versus form and recognition versus production—and their instantiation in the brain. Phonological form deficits are associated with lesions in peri-Sylvian regions, whereas semantic production and recognition deficits are associated with damage to the left anterior temporal lobe and white matter connectivity with frontal cortex, respectively. These findings provide a novel synthesis of traditional and contemporary views of the cognitive and neural architecture of language processing, emphasizing dual routes for speech processing and convergence of white matter tracts for semantic control and/or integration. Contemporary neuroimaging techniques are enabling precise analysis of structure–function relations in the brain. This study combines large-scale structural neuroimaging and behavioural analyses in patients with acquired aphasia to elucidate the neural organization of spoken language processing.

Frequency drives lexical access in reading but not in speaking: The frequency-lag hypothesis.

Tamar H. Gollan, Timothy J. Slattery, Diane Goldenberg +3 more · Journal of Experimental Psychology General · 2011 · 301 citations

To contrast mechanisms of lexical access in production versus comprehension we compared the effects of word frequency (high, low), context (none, low constraint, high constraint), and level of English proficiency (monolingual, Spanish-English bilingual, Dutch-English bilingual) on picture naming, lexical decision, and eye fixation times. Semantic constraint effects were larger in production than in reading. Frequency effects were larger in production than in reading without constraining context but larger in reading than in production with constraining context. Bilingual disadvantages were modulated by frequency in production but not in eye fixation times, were not smaller in low-constraint contexts, and were reduced by high-constraint contexts only in production and only at the lowest level of English proficiency. These results challenge existing accounts of bilingual disadvantages and reveal fundamentally different processes during lexical access across modalities, entailing a primarily semantically driven search in production but a frequency-driven search in comprehension. The apparently more interactive process in production than comprehension could simply reflect a greater number of frequency-sensitive processing stages in production.

Sequencing in SLA

Nick C. Ellis · Studies in Second Language Acquisition · 1996 · 822 citations

This paper provides an overview of sequencing in SLA. It contends that much of language acquisition is in fact sequence learning (for vocabulary, the phonological units of language and their phonotactic sequences: for discourse, the lexical units of language and their sequences in clauses and collocations). It argues that the resultant long-term knowledge base of language sequences serves as the database for the acquisition of language grammar. It next demonstrates that SLA of lexis, idiom, collocation, and grammar are all determined by individual differences in learners' ability to remember simple verbal strings in order. It outlines how interactions between short-term and long-term phonological memory systems allow chunking and the tuning of language systems better to represent structural information for particular languages. It proposes mechanisms for the analysis of sequence information that result in knowledge of underlying grammar. Finally, it considers the relations between this empiricist approach and that of generative grammar.

DIFFERENTIAL EFFECTS OF PROMPTS AND RECASTS IN FORM-FOCUSED INSTRUCTION

Roy Lyster · Studies in Second Language Acquisition · 2004 · 822 citations

Four teachers and their eight classes of 179 fifth-grade (10–11-year-old) students participated in this quasi-experimental classroom study, which investigated the effects of form-focused instruction (FFI) and corrective feedback on immersion students' ability to accurately assign grammatical gender in French. The FFI treatment, designed to draw attention to selected noun endings that reliably predict grammatical gender and to provide opportunities for practice in associating these endings with gender attribution, was implemented in the context of regular subject-matter instruction by three of the four teachers, each with two classes, for approximately 9 hours during a 5-week period, while the fourth teacher taught the same subject matter without FFI to two comparison classes. Additionally, each of the three FFI teachers implemented a different feedback treatment: recasts, prompts, or no feedback. Analyses of pretest, immediate-posttest, and delayed-posttest results showed a significant increase in the ability of students exposed to FFI to correctly assign grammatical gender. Results of the written tasks in particular, and to a lesser degree the oral tasks, revealed that FFI is more effective when combined with prompts than with recasts or no feedback, as a means of enabling L2 learners to acquire rule-based representations of grammatical gender and to proceduralize their knowledge of these emerging forms.This study was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (nos. 410-98-0175 and 410-2002-0988). Parts of this study were presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for Applied Linguistics in Salt Lake City on April 7, 2002; the Congress of the Social Sciences and Humanities in Toronto on May 26, 2002; and at the Congress of the International Association for Applied Linguistics in Singapore on December 12, 2002. I am grateful to the participating teachers and their students, to Lucy Fazio for her role as research associate in the data collection, to José Correa for his assistance with the statistical analyses, and to the following research assistants for contributions to various phases of this research: Susan Ballinger, Kristina Eisenhower, Andréanne Gagné, Sophie Beaudoin, Laura-Annie Bouffard, France Bourassa, Sophie Bourgeois, Elisa David, Mélanie Mathieu, Sophie Prince, Andrea Sterzuk, and David Syncox. I gratefully acknowledge Leila Ranta, Iliana Panova, and four anonymous SSLA reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.

How vocabulary is learned

Paul Nation · Indonesian JELT Indonesian Journal of English Language Teaching · 2017 · 545 citations

Vocabulary learning requires two basic conditions – repetition (quantity of meetings with words) and good quality mental processing of the meetings. Other factors also affect vocabulary learning. For example, learners may differ greatly in their motivation to engage in learning, and words may differ greatly in their learning burden. However, without quantity and quality of processing, learning cannot occur. The greater the number of repetitions, the more likely learning is to occur. The deeper and more thoughtful the quality of processing, the more likely learning is to occur. This paper explains quantity and quality, and shows how teachers and learners can increase the quantity and quality of their processing of vocabulary, thus increasing their vocabulary size.

The emergence of the visual word form: Longitudinal evolution of category-specific ventral visual areas during reading acquisition

Ghislaine Dehaene‐Lambertz, Karla Monzalvo, Stanislas Dehaene · PLoS Biology · 2018 · 382 citations

How does education affect cortical organization? All literate adults possess a region specialized for letter strings, the visual word form area (VWFA), within the mosaic of ventral regions involved in processing other visual categories such as objects, places, faces, or body parts. Therefore, the acquisition of literacy may induce a reorientation of cortical maps towards letters at the expense of other categories such as faces. To test this cortical recycling hypothesis, we studied how the visual cortex of individual children changes during the first months of reading acquisition. Ten 6-year-old children were scanned longitudinally 6 or 7 times with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) before and throughout the first year of school. Subjects were exposed to a variety of pictures (words, numbers, tools, houses, faces, and bodies) while performing an unrelated target-detection task. Behavioral assessment indicated a sharp rise in grapheme-phoneme knowledge and reading speed in the first trimester of school. Concurrently, voxels specific to written words and digits emerged at the VWFA location. The responses to other categories remained largely stable, although right-hemispheric face-related activity increased in proportion to reading scores. Retrospective examination of the VWFA voxels prior to reading acquisition showed that reading encroaches on voxels that are initially weakly specialized for tools and close to but distinct from those responsive to faces. Remarkably, those voxels appear to keep their initial category selectivity while acquiring an additional and stronger responsivity to words. We propose a revised model of the neuronal recycling process in which new visual categories invade weakly specified cortex while leaving previously stabilized cortical responses unchanged.

Learning English through out-of-school exposure. Which levels of language proficiency are attained and which types of input are important?

Vanessa De Wilde, Marc Brysbaert, June Eyckmans · Bilingualism Language and Cognition · 2019 · 268 citations

Abstract In this study we examined the level of English proficiency children can obtain through out-of-school exposure in informal contexts prior to English classroom instruction. The second aim was to determine the input types that fuel children's informal language acquisition. Language learning was investigated in 780 Dutch-speaking children (aged 10–12), who were tested on their English receptive vocabulary knowledge, listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. Information about learner characteristics and out-of-school English exposure was gathered using questionnaires. The results show large language gains for a substantial number of children but also considerable individual differences. The most beneficial types of input were gaming, use of social media and speaking. These input types are interactive and multimodal and they involve language production. We also found that the various language tests largely measure the same proficiency component.

FACETS OF SPEAKING PROFICIENCY

Nivja H. de Jong, Margarita P. Steinel, A.F. Florijn +2 more · Studies in Second Language Acquisition · 2012 · 259 citations

This study examined the componential structure of second-language (L2) speaking proficiency. Participants—181 L2 and 54 native speakers of Dutch—performed eight speaking tasks and six tasks tapping nine linguistic skills. Performance in the speaking tasks was rated on functional adequacy by a panel of judges and formed the dependent variable in subsequent analyses (structural equation modeling). The following independent variables were assessed separately: linguistic knowledge in two tests (vocabulary and grammar); linguistic processing skills (four reaction time measures obtained in three tasks: picture naming, delayed picture naming, and sentence building); and pronunciation skills (speech sounds, word stress, and intonation). All linguistic skills, with the exception of two articulation measures in the delayed picture naming task, were significantly and substantially related to functional adequacy of speaking, explaining 76% of the variance. This provides substantial evidence for a componential view of L2 speaking proficiency that consists of language-knowledge and language-processing components. The componential structure of speaking proficiency was almost identical for the 40% of participants at the lower and the 40% of participants at the higher end of the functional adequacy distribution ( n = 73 each), which does not support Higgs and Clifford’s (1982) relative contribution model, predicting that, although L2 learners become more proficient over time, the relative weight of component skills may change.

Immersive Virtual Reality as an Effective Tool for Second Language Vocabulary Learning

Jennifer Legault, Jiayan Zhao, Ying-An Chi +3 more · Languages · 2019 · 190 citations

Learning a second language (L2) presents a significant challenge to many people in adulthood. Platforms for effective L2 instruction have been developed in both academia and the industry. While real-life (RL) immersion is often lauded as a particularly effective L2 learning platform, little is known about the features of immersive contexts that contribute to the L2 learning process. Immersive virtual reality (iVR) offers a flexible platform to simulate an RL immersive learning situation, while allowing the researcher to have tight experimental control for stimulus delivery and learner interaction with the environment. Using a mixed counterbalanced design, the current study examines individual differences in L2 performance during learning of 60 Mandarin Chinese words across two learning sessions, with each participant learning 30 words in iVR and 30 words via word–word (WW) paired association. Behavioral performance was collected immediately after L2 learning via an alternative forced-choice recognition task. Our results indicate a main effect of L2 learning context, such that accuracy on trials learned via iVR was significantly higher as compared to trials learned in the WW condition. These effects are reflected especially in the differential effects of learning contexts, in that less successful learners show a significant benefit of iVR instruction as compared to WW, whereas successful learners do not show a significant benefit of either learning condition. Our findings have broad implications for L2 education, particularly for those who struggle in learning an L2.

Language Control and Lexical Competition in Bilinguals: An Event-Related fMRI Study

Jubin Abutalebi, Jean‐Marie Annoni, Ivan Zimine +6 more · Cerebral Cortex · 2007 · 378 citations

Language selection (or control) refers to the cognitive mechanism that controls which language to use at a given moment and context. It allows bilinguals to selectively communicate in one target language while minimizing the interferences from the nontarget language. Previous studies have suggested the participation in language control of different brain areas. However, the question remains whether the selection of one language among others relies on a language-specific neural module or general executive regions that also allow switching between different competing behavioral responses including the switching between various linguistic registers. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging study, we investigated the neural correlates of language selection processes in German-French bilingual subjects during picture naming in different monolingual and bilingual selection contexts. We show that naming in the first language in the bilingual context (compared with monolingual contexts) increased activation in the left caudate and anterior cingulate cortex. Furthermore, the activation of these areas is even more extended when the subjects are using a second weaker language. These findings show that language control processes engaged in contexts during which both languages must remain active recruit the left caudate and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) in a manner that can be distinguished from areas engaged in intralanguage task switching.