Impact of Input of Students’ Second Language Proficiency 1
The Impact of Input on Student’s Proficiency
Language Acquisition
Myriam Bélanger, Alice Hachey-Bujold
Laval University
April17, 2012
Impact of Input of Students’ Second Language Proficiency 2
Introduction
With the upcoming implementation of the intensive English program in grade 6 classes in
Québec schools, elementary teachers around the province wonder if this measure is worthwhile,
and question its practicalities. Indeed, they worry that the material that used to be taught over the
course of a whole scholar year will be hard to teach in only half a year and that maybe English is
taking too much space in the education of the children. To begin to experiment the efficiency of
this measure, certain schools have already started to participate in the program, and differences
between these schools and regular schools can already be witnessed. As a matter of fact, people
who receive more input in a second language usually become more proficient in the language.
For example, students who go to exchange programs and visit another country to learn the local
language have benefited greatly from the experience. This effect has been witnessed in students
from Cégep Lévis Lauzon who went on an exchange in Germany for two weeks in 2010. The
majority of these students had fewer difficulties in German when they came back than before
they went. They were more willing to speak and take risks, and had better grades on tests and
assignments. As another example, in a few Quebec high schools, there are programs that are
meant to provide students with more English classes and international trips and opportunities,
such as Pamphile Le May’s LCI program, in which only students with an average grade above
85% can participate. They, just like the students at Les Grandes Marées, have more hours of
English per cycle, which allows for more practice for the students. The difference between
regular and LCI students is easily noticeable. That supports the idea that half a year taught in
English will most probably result in an increase in proficiency, even if the input is not from
native speakers in the country where it is spoken.
Impact of Input of Students’ Second Language Proficiency 3
This study seeks to examine the relationship between input in English and proficiency in
the language. The objective of this study is to determine if more input and time spent studying
the English language has a significant impact on the type and frequency of mistakes made in the
oral and written language. The questions that we will attempt to answer in this study are:
-Does more input in English affect proficiency significantly?
-What factors may influence children’s mistakes in L2 and their frequency?
-How do those factors influence the second language errors?
The hypothesis is that more input at a younger age and more time spent studying a second
language helps learners attain proficiency more easily. Indeed, we believe that the more input in
a second language the children have, the less mistakes children will make in that language.
Many studies have been conducted pertaining to the influence of input on students. In
their study, Dulay and Burt address the errors that children make as they learn an L2 and
examine the reasons behind them, mostly L1 interference or developmental strategies. It was
found that a mere 7.6% of mistakes were from L1 interference, but they have also found that less
explicit teaching of L2 may have better effects on learning.( add more information about the
content itself not the study..)
In their study, Neuman and Kaskinen argue that comprehensible input put into context
helps students acquire knowledge or concepts more easily. They have conducted their study with
students aged between 12 to 14 years old and divided them into assigned groups in order to
verify the difference between those who watched captioned television from those who did not to
Impact of Input of Students’ Second Language Proficiency 4
see if captioned television influenced acquisition of science vocabulary or concepts. The findings
show that comprehensible input (captioned television) helped students learned and recall the
information better than if they had not had it.
Wonnacott addresses the over-generalizations made by children as they learn a second
language. For example, 6 year old kids were presented with an artificial language and were asked
to learn two types of nouns which required two types of meaningless particles when in a
sentence. They had to create sentences and apply the rules, and the authors studied whether they
generalized the rules and applied the wrong particles to nouns that were exceptions.( add more
information about the content itself not the study..)
In their study, Brenders, Van Hell, and Dijkstra examine how L2 learners recognize and
process cognates and false friends. Beginners and intermediate Dutch students were presented
with texts in English. The students had a hard time finding cognates unless they were told that
there were cognates in the text and they knew the L1 translation of the words. As for false
friends, they study whether the students get better at recognizing them with better proficiency in
the L2.( add more information about the content itself not the study..)
Method
1.1 Participants
The participants of the following study are grade 6 students from an intensive English
class, and grade 6 students from a regular English class. Students from the intensive class are
from École les Grandes Marées in Sainte-Foy, and the students from the regular class are from
École Primaire Filteau, also located in Sainte-Foy. Those from the advanced classroom have two
hours of English per day as opposed to two hours of English per 10-day cycle for those in the
Impact of Input of Students’ Second Language Proficiency 5
regular program. Moreover, students who are in the regular program are in an International
program school, meaning that students work in a project based way, and they are taught to be
more sensitized to other cultures, and society in general. As for the students in the intensive
English class, they were selected because of their good grades, they also had to complete an
application form and answer questions to verify their motivation towards English. A group of
four students from each class was taken aside to answer questions orally to verify the most
common mistakes. Students were all francophone learning English as a second language. The
groups of interviewees were composed of two boys and two girls in each group in order to have
an equal amount of boys and girls and a more representative sample. Moreover, in the regular
program, students were chosen from their abilities in English, they were average students,
meaning not too strong students and not too weak students. Their abilities were evaluated from
their home-class teacher. This method was only taken for those in the regular program because
the students in the intensive class were pretty much at the same level.
1.2 Materials and Procedures
We went into the classrooms and selected two boys and two girls among the students who
volunteered. We took one student at a time, alone in a room, leaving the three others outside so
they do not interfere and we recorded their answers using a recording application on a cell phone
to analyse them afterwards and try to identify the most frequent types of mistakes. The questions
were meant to elicit answers long enough to be analysed. We wanted to verify their listening
comprehension, choice of verb tense, word order, and the construction of sentences. The
questions’ level of difficulty went from easy, for the first questions, to hard for the last questions.
There were ten questions in total, the same were asked to all the students to ensure uniformity.
Impact of Input of Students’ Second Language Proficiency 6
Sometimes for the students who had more difficulties understanding the questions, we had to ask
other questions related to the first question to elicit the answer. In addition, we could ask other
questions to make the student talk more or to make a longer sentence and to give more
information.
Results
2.1 Students in the regular program
The data we collected from the two groups differ in many points. The students from the
regular program answered with short sentences for the questions that needed simple information
and often needed more help to answer properly and with complete sentences. Sometimes they
forgot to use verbs in their sentences and answered with just key words. For example, a student
answered “computer” to the question “What do you do in your free time?” or omitted to form the
complete sentence “My name is Noémy” and instead only answered “Noémy”. Moreover, it took
them more time to answer the questions because they had difficulties understanding them. In
order to elicit longer answers or for students to fully understand the meaning of the questions, we
had to intervene and ask other easy questions, or make gestures, activate prior knowledge, repeat
slowly once or twice with simpler words etc. Furthermore, they seemed really shy and nervous
about answering questions in English; most of them did not make efforts to answer using long
sentences, or new vocabulary. They also hesitated a lot. However, with a little help or time, they
understood all of our questions and were able to answer them properly or at least with the needed
information. The types of mistakes that were the most frequent were the word order, and
conjugation of verbs. Indeed, the majority of students could not conjugate verbs in the past and
Impact of Input of Students’ Second Language Proficiency 7
were not aware of irregular verbs in the past. For example, they would say “ Last week, I go visit
my cousin...” instead of saying “ Last week, I went visiting ...” or “ Last week, I visited my
cousin..”. That mistake was found in both groups. Also, French interference was really present in
their sentences. For example, they would say “ I went glissing” instead of “ sliding”. They also
sometimes used actual French words, such as in “Sorry, I’m not very “bon”.” to compensate for
the lack of vocabulary. Final ”s” were forgotten with the plural and the third person singular.
Finally, they had problems using the prepositions correctly and misused the auxiliaries. For
example, they would omit the pronoun “it” and used the auxiliary “do” incorrectly.
2.2 Students from the intensive class
As for the intensive group, the level of oral English proficiency was significantly higher.
Indeed, they were generally less hesitant and quicker when answering our questions and spoke
fast. They had very few or no difficulties understanding the questions we were asking them, as
they rarely asked for clarifications or repetition. We sometimes added side questions, that asked
even more information on their part, and they answered just as easily. The students from the
intensive class also answered with complete, complex and sometimes long sentences containing
clauses. Most of them also surprised us with their relatively rich vocabulary and accurate
sentence structures. They also have excellent communicative strategies, as they tried to find
synonyms or explain what they were trying to say in different, simpler words. Pronunciation
wise, they were definitely not perfect, but their speech was fluid and accurate. For example, a
student pronounced “schedule” “chédule”, but we assume it is due to an infrequent use of the
word. Overall, the word order was correct, even though there were some occasional mistakes.
One of the students said “Because it is a team school, uh, school team.” He auto corrected his
Impact of Input of Students’ Second Language Proficiency 8
sentence automatically, so even though they make mistakes when they speak, the students know
the rules and how to apply them. Other mistakes occur when they use past tense verbs even
though they are aware of the special conjugation of irregular verbs and often successfully apply
those conjugations. For example, one of them accurately used the verb “come” in its past tense,
“came” as well as the verb “buy”, which became “bought”. Other times, they just forget to use
the past tense. In general, they seem to have little problems when using prepositions, as they
sometimes use the wrong ones, and auxiliaries, which they tend to forget or use inaccurately.
Impact of Input of Students’ Second Language Proficiency 9
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