Mike Tiittanen p.tiittanen@lancaster.ac.uk
Copyright, Mike Tiittanen, 2009. This work is the intellectual property of the author
.
• Compared the knowledge and oral production of the simple past tense by
Mandarin and Tamil learners
• Results: a) knowledge similar b) Tamils more accurate in oral production (on one task) c) some types of verbs were more accurate than others
a) knowledge of past tense acquisition b) importance of accuracy in past tense
(past > past progressive >present perfect
> past perfect)
(Bardovi-Harlig 2000) c) EFL context (China) d) ESL teachers + classroom materials development e) publishers
• Research – L1 may influence acquisition of
L2 grammar
(Jarvis & Odlin 2000, Orr 1987)
• Tamil has past tense
(Annamalai & Steever 1998)
• Mandarin does not have past tense
2005)
• Mandarin learners :
(Smith & Erdbaugh a)low accuracy in usage of past tense
(Witton-
Davies 2004) b) irregular verbs more accurate than regular verbs
(Goad, White and Steele 2003)
• Telic verbs – inherent endpoint e.g. – John finished his PhD.
• Atelic verbs – no inherent endpoint e.g. – John watched TV.
• Telic verbs are more accurate than atelic verbs
(Bardovi-Harlig 2000)
• Irregular verbs are more accurate than regular verbs
(Perdue 1993 Vol. II5)
• Difference in knowledge of simple past tense for Tamil and Mandarin learners?
• Difference in accuracy of oral production of simple past tense for the L2 groups?
• Difference in accuracy of regular and irregular verbs?
• Order of accuracy of Aspect Hypothesis
(e.g. – telic verbs more accurate?)
• 21 Mandarin speakers and 21 Tamil speakers
• Similar grammar test (OPT) scores –
Mandarin (53.1%) & Tamil (49.8%)
• Similar knowledge of historic present tense
• Similar length of residence, age-of-arrival and age at time of study
• Film retell; 7 min. ESL video
• Interview questions
• Cloze task (fill-in-the blanks)
• Verbal protocol (of cloze task)
• both L1 groups - scores higher on the cloze task than on oral production tasks.
• Mandarin group: cloze task mean = 84.7% film retell mean = 30.6% interview qtns = 26.8%
• Tamil group: cloze task mean = 75.3% film retell mean = 39.8 % interview qtns mean = 52.1%
• Both L1 groups – knowledge higher than oral production
• Difference between knowledge and oral production greater for Mandarin group
• Processing constraints on oral production?
• Pedagogical relevance? – more practice with oral production of simple past; particularly Mandarin ESL/EFL learners
• Few differences between and within L1 groups on different types of verbs
• Tamil; telic (81.0%) > atelic (69.5%)
1) base form (e.g.- speak) 94/296.5 mistakes
2) overregularization (e.g. falled) –
43.5/296.5 mistakes
3) past progressive – 26.0 / 296.5 mistakes
4) verb-ing – 17.0 / 296.5 mistakes
5) past perfect – 12.0 / 296.5 mistakes
6) past participle – 10.0 / 296.5 mistakes
• Editing exercises; types of errors learners really make
• Use interlanguage of students in mistake correction (including oversuppliance)
• L1 differences in types of errors
• Differences in types of mistakes on cloze task versus oral production errors (e.g. – overregularization)
• Tamil participants more accurate than
Mandarin participants (interview questions:
52.1% vs. 26.8%)
• Probable reason – L1 influence
• Tamil past tense is a bound suffix
• No grammatical past tense in Mandarin
• Role of L1 influence in grammar
• Pedagogy – oral practice with past tense
• Materials for oral practice of past tense a) film retell b) form-focussed interview questions
• Need for more studies
• Smaller difference between L1 groups
(Mandarin – 30.6%; Tamil – 39.8%)
• Film retell elicited many historic present tokens from 2 native speaker participants
• Did some Tamil participants use historic present on film retell?
• Declarative knowledge before procedural knowledge?
• Oversuppliance – e.g. I didn’t went shopping yesterday.
• Mandarin learners had more oversuppliances of simple past tense a) film retell; Mandarin – 8.2%
Tamil – 4.9% b) interview qtns; Mandarin – 15.0 %
Tamil – 5.3%
• Mandarin;
(film retell) reg.(16.3%) vs. irreg. (36.2%)
(interview) reg. (19.4%) vs. irreg. (30.1%)
• Tamil;
(film retell) reg.(21.1%) vs. irreg. (47.2%)
(interview) reg.(48.9%) vs. irreg.(52.7%)
• Results consistent with dual route paradigm – 1) first locate irregular form;
2) if irregular form not found, apply past tense rule (i.e. – verb + -ed)
• Time constraints and no focus on form
• Irregular verbs more frequent
(Pinker 1999)
• Irregular verbs more salient
(Goldschneider & DeKeyser 2005)
• Tamil group – no difference between irregular and regular verbs on interview
• L1 structure – Tamil has a bound inflectional past tense suffix
(Lehmann 1989)
;
Mandarin does not
• L1 structure? – Mandarin does not allow final consonant clusters (e.g. – wal ked )
(Goad, White & Steele 2003)
/kt/
• Both L1 groups more accurate with telic verbs than atelic verbs
• Mandarin
(film retell) telic (44.6 %) vs. atelic (12.0%)
(interview) telic (44.5%) vs. atelic (13.2%)
• Tamil
(film retell) telic (47.4%) vs. atelic (26.1%)
(interview) telic (67.3%) vs. atelic (41.1%)
• Telic verbs – inherent endpoint
(Andersen & Shirai 1994)
Simple past – usually an endpoint
(Declerck 1991)
• Input – Child L1 studies; telic verbs more frequent past tense input
(Andersen 2002)
• Telic verbs - the prototypical past tense for
L2 learners
• Pedagogical relevance - positive evidence, focused noticing, production
(Bardovi-Harlig & Reynolds 1995)
1) Base form (film retell – 66.1%; interview qtns. – 60.9%)
2) Simple present (film retell – 20.0%; interview qtns. – 27.5%)
3) ALL verb-ING (film retell – 8.2%; interview qtns. – 4.7%)
4) ALL be + verb (film retell – 4.9%; interview qtns. – 3.8%)
• L1 differences in types of errors base form – Mandarin > Tamil
ALL verb-ING – Tamil > Mandarin
ALL be + verb – Tamil > Mandarin
• Error rate differences reflect differences in
L1 structure – base form (no inflection)
ALL verb-ING (inflection)
ALL be + verb (inflection)
• On verbal protocols, more Mandarin participants mentioned the presence of a past time adverbial on cloze task
(Mandarin – 7) (Tamil – 1)
• Ratio of past time adverbials to correct past tense verbs
Mandarin (1.50) vs. Tamil (1.21)
• Use of time adverbs in Mandarin
• Questions about the study
• Potential relevance of study a) ESL/EFL acquisition and teaching b) classroom materials development c) ESL/EFL publishers
• e-mail - p.tiittanen@lancaster.ac.uk
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