Can L2 Grammar Be Learned Through Listening an EXP ST

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CAN SECOND LANGUAGEGRAMMAR BE LEARNED

THROUGH LISTENING?

An Experimental Study

Nel De JongUniversity of Amsterdam

This study examines whether aural processing of input in a situation

of implicit instruction can build a knowledge base that is available

for both comprehension and production tasks. Fifty-five Dutch stu-

dents learned a miniature linguistic system based on Spanish. Three

training conditions were compared in which noun-adjective genderagreement was the learning target. The first group of participants

received receptive training, the second group received receptive and

productive training, and a third group served as a control. The con-

trol group received no training of the target structure and only read

an explanation of the target structure rule. Receptive knowledge was

assessed with a self-paced listening test, a match-mismatch test, and

a grammaticality judgment task. Productive knowledge was tested

with a picture description task in single- and dual-task conditions. A

postexperimental questionnaire tested whether any explicit knowl-

edge had been induced. Results suggest that the receptive andreceptive + productive training programs succeeded in building a

knowledge base that was used in comprehension but much less so

in production. These results will be interpreted in light of processing

and the distinction between implicit and explicit knowledge.

Learners involved in instructed SLA traditionally are given a rule and then

engage in comprehension and production tasks that employ the presented rule+

After a long period of practice and through devices such as error correction

I would like to express my gratitude to Jan Hulstijn and Rob Schoonen from the University of Amster

SSLA, 27, 205–234+ Printed in the United States of America+

DOI: 10+10170S0272263105050114



by others or self-monitoring and self-correction, learners might eventually reach

a stage of fluent, errorless production ~Kelly, 1969; Titone, 1968!+ Many other

scenarios for language acquisition in instructed settings have been proposed+

Some did away with explanation of grammar rules; others focused on eithercomprehension or production as the most effective direction of training+ In

the 1980s, for instance, a number of researchers proposed the postponement

of production until after an initial silent period ~e+g+, Asher, 1982; Davies, 1980;

Krashen & Terrell, 1983; Nord, 1980, 1981; Winitz, 1981a, 1981b!+ Later, VanPat-

ten and others ~VanPatten, 2002a; VanPatten & Cadierno, 1993a, 1993b; Van-

Patten & Oikkenon, 1996! argued for the importance of input processing in

acquisition+ In response, DeKeyser and Sokalski ~1996! and DeKeyser ~1997!claimed that both comprehension and production training were indispens-

able+ New insights into the representation, processing, and acquisition of lin-guistic knowledge were presented by researchers such as N+ Ellis ~2002, 2003,

this issue! and Hulstijn ~2002!+ These accounts imply that learning starts out

receptively and that explicit knowledge of grammar cannot ~directly! influ-

ence acquisition of implicit knowledge+ The notions of implicitness of knowl-

edge and learning are discussed in the following section, as are some research

findings on processing of input as a basis for language acquisition+

The goals of the present study are ~a! to examine receptive training with-

out explicit instruction, comprising instantiations of the target structure in

which many utterances containing instantiations of the target structure areprocessed, and ~b! to investigate whether early introduction of production tasks

will either hinder or promote acquisition+ Both receptive and productive per-

formances are assessed+

IMPLICITNESS AND EXPLICITNESS IN SLA

Because no information about grammar was given to the learners, the treat-

ment in the present study is one of implicit instruction+ Furthermore, this studytargeted implicit learning and knowledge+ An important criterion for implicit-

ness of learning in the literature on both SLA and psychology is awareness:

Explicit learning is often defined as learning with awareness at the point of

learning, whereas implicit learning is characterized almost without exception

as learning without awareness ~DeKeyser, 2003; R+ Ellis, 1994; Krashen, 1994;

Schmidt, 1994a, 1994b; Sharwood Smith, 1994; Williams, 1999!+ Additionally,

implicit learning is often said to be unintentional+

Awareness is also a key criterion in assessing the explicit or implicit nature

of language knowledge+ Knowledge is considered explicit when it involves con-scious awareness of the formal properties of the target language, which can

be verbalized on demand This knowledge could be expressed in metalinguis

206 Nel De Jong



and intentionality+ Thus, language users are not ~immediately! aware of the

existence and nature of the knowledge they have acquired and are not able

to verbalize it+ As a result, implicit knowledge can only be attested in perfor-

mance+ Often, the absence of the ability to verbalize knowledge in combina-tion with accurate performance is taken as an indication of implicitness +

However, this does not mean that the ability to verbalize knowledge only

entails explicit knowledge; implicit knowledge might also be present+ In con-

trast to implicit knowledge, which is learned incidentally, some researchers

claim that explicit knowledge is learned intentionally ~e+g+, Krashen, 1994; Para-

dis, 1994!+ Others consider intentionality to be related to—but in principle

separate from—the notion of implicitness ~Hulstijn, this issue; Robinson, this

issue!+

Associative accounts of language learning exemplified by N+ Ellis ~2002, 2003,this issue! and Hulstijn ~2002! provide the rationale for the present studies+ N+

Ellis ~2002, this issue! argued for an interpretation of implicit learning as the

formation and strengthening of representations and associations+ It starts out

at low, concrete levels—for instance, as representations of phonemes or words+

After a ~large! number of instances of these low-level representations have

been processed, associations with frequently co-occurring elements will start

to form+ This associative learning process is called chunking+ It operates at all

levels of representations, from phonology to discourse and from small and

concrete representations to larger and more abstract ones+ Eventually, chunk-ing might lead to the formation of abstract categories and symbols, which

might resemble categories known from syntactic theories, such as noun or

verb phrase+ This means that although learning starts out at low, subsymbolic

levels, symbolic chunks might also evolve+ It is important to note, however,

that although processing of these symbolic chunks could eventually come to

appear rulelike, according to this view, no rules as such are represented in

the network of representations and associations+ Thus, these chunks will not

be rule-governed+

In this article, knowledge in the form of networks will be considered implicitknowledge+ Learners might become aware of the implicit knowledge they have

acquired+ For instance, after having processed a large number of instantia-

tions of nominal plural forms in English, a learner of English as a second lan-

guage could become aware of the fact that plurals are often formed by adding

0s0, 0z0, or 0éz0 ~orthographically -s or -es! to the stem of a noun+ When learn-

ers become aware of this, they might consciously attempt to induce a rule

and thus gain explicit knowledge+ In this way, implicit learning can lead to

explicit knowledge, but it has been mediated by implicit knowledge+

If learning, as N+ Ellis ~2002, 2003, this issue! argued, starts out at low, con-crete levels, it can be argued that implicit learning and knowledge have their

origins in explicit knowledge This explicit knowledge as representations of

Can L2 Grammar Be Learned Through Listening? 207



does not play a role in acquisition of implicit knowledge because the forma-

tion of representations and the adjustment of the connections between them

can only be established by processing of input or output+

KNOWLEDGE AND PROCESSING IN COMPREHENSIONAND PRODUCTION

Associative accounts of language learning, such as those put forward by N+

Ellis ~2002, 2003, this issue!, imply that receptive processing is most impor-

tant, at least in the initial stages of acquisition, because connections must be

tuned to ~co-!occurrences in the input+ The resulting implicit knowledge base

should be, to a certain extent, available for production+ However, this point isnot explicitly addressed, which is also the case in many other accounts of

first language ~L1! or second language ~L2! knowledge and processing+ Most

of these accounts fail to indicate whether the same knowledge base—implicit

or explicit—and the same set of processing mechanisms are drawn upon in

comprehension and production+

Thornton and MacDonald ~2003! provided some results that suggested that

comprehension and production indeed share knowledge and processing mech-

anisms+ They found an effect of plausibility in L1 subject-verb agreement pro-

cessing that was similar in comprehension and production+ However, it wasstressed that comprehension and production are fundamentally different tasks:

They pose different demands on processing and, therefore, differentially affect

behavior+

Many language learning studies only concern either comprehension or pro-

duction and not their relation+ Of those who directly addressed that issue,

Bates and MacWhinney ~1989! held that comprehension and production make

use of the same system of representations but that the real-time exigencies of

processing might be quite different+ A similar claim was made by Izumi ~2003!

in order to explain the differences between receptive and productive process-ing of relative clauses in L2 English+ Different types of relative clause might

put different demands on processing, which results in hierarchies of process-

ing difficulty+ However, because memory demands for each type of relative

clause might be different for comprehension and production, there might be

a different hierarchy for each direction+ Izumi made tentative claims that pro-

ductive knowledge lags behind receptive knowledge and that productive abil-

ity is more susceptible to processing difficulty than is receptive ability+

DeKeyser ~1997! addressed the comprehension-production asymmetry from

the perspective of Anderson’s ACT theory of skill learning, which asserts thatskill learning starts out by turning declarative knowledge into qualitatively

different procedural knowledge ~e g Anderson 1983 1993; Anderson & Fin

208 Nel De Jong



can only be used in the direction commensurate with practice+ Because of

this skill-specificity of procedural knowledge, the skills of comprehension and

production each require separate practice+ In contrast, VanPatten ~e+g+,VanPat-

ten, 2002a; VanPatten & Cadierno, 1993a, 1993b; VanPatten & Oikkenon, 1996!interpreted training effects from the perspective of the theories of Krashen

~1982! and Schwartz ~1993!, who posited a single acquired language compe-

tence to be the basis for comprehension as well as production+ It should be

noted, however, that Schwartz ~1999! later argued that although there is a

shared knowledge base, there are separate computational modules for com-

prehension and production+

The Effect of Training on Receptive and Productive Performance

The research conducted by VanPatten and associates has addressed the effect

of processing of input on performance in both comprehension and produc-

tion tasks ~e+g+,VanPatten, 2002a; VanPatten & Cadierno, 1993a, 1993b; VanPat-

ten & Oikkenon, 1996!+ In particular, these studies have focused on the effects

of processing instruction ~PI!+ PI attempts to alter the way in which input is

processed, so that the underlying implicit system of knowledge is adjusted

and performance improves in comprehension as well as production tasks+

This altering of input processing is done by increasing the communicativevalue of the structure to be learned; as such, the formation of form-meaning

connections is facilitated+ In this account of acquisition, output fulfills two

roles: It is a focusing device and it is necessary to develop fluency and

accuracy+

Processing instruction has been compared to traditional instruction ~TI!,which comprises explicit instruction about the target rule and a series of

mechanical, meaningful, and communicative output activities+ The original PI

study by VanPatten and Cadierno ~1993a! compared the effect of PI and TI+

The experiment, in which the target was the acquisition of direct object clit-ics in Spanish, showed that PI resulted in better comprehension skills than

the traditional, output-focused instruction but that learners achieved equal

levels of production skills following both instruction types + The authors

claimed that PI led to acquired competence, whereas TI only resulted in

learned competence+ To determine the role of rule explanation in PI , VanPat-

ten and Oikkenon ~1996! replicated the study of VanPatten and Cadierno+ This

replication included a group receiving explanation only, one receiving struc-

tured input activities only, and one receiving PI ~i+e+, explanation as well as

structured input activities!+ After training, only the PI and the structured inputgroups had improved their scores on the comprehension task; the explana-

tion group had not On the production tasks no interaction between treat




the developing system but that explicit information did not play a significant

role; it was the structured input that drove the improvement+ However, the

authors could not rule out the possibility that participants in the structured-

input-only group spontaneously induced explicit knowledge, which might haveaffected the results+

DeKeyser and Sokalski ~1996! argued that the findings in the VanPatten and

Cadierno ~1993a! study were attributable to imperfections in the design+ There-

fore, DeKeyser and Sokalski conducted a similar experiment in which the gram-

mar explanation and the required amount of attention to meaning and forms

were kept constant for both training conditions+ Two target structures were

chosen: ~a! direct object clitics, which were thought to be easy for compre-

hension but difficult for production, and ~b! conditional forms of the verb,

which were assumed to be easy for production but difficult for comprehen-sion+ Comprehension and production tests revealed mixed results+ In immedi-

ate posttests, input practice was generally better for comprehension, and

output practice was better for production when direct object clitics were con-

cerned+ For the conditional verb forms, however, output practice was gener-

ally more efficient than input practice+ Delayed posttests showed no significant

differences among the groups for either structure+ It seems that neither train-

ing condition had led to an acquired competence that was available for both

comprehension and production+ DeKeyser and Sokalski acknowledged that the

amount of practice in their study was limited, which made it less likely thatknowledge had been proceduralized or, in other words, that implicit knowl-

edge had been acquired+ They claimed that any transfer between comprehen-

sion and production had occurred via declarative ~i+e+, explicit! knowledge+ In

short, participants might not have relied on implicit knowledge during the

tests, but, rather, on explicit knowledge+

This same caveat can be applied to the studies of VanPatten and Cadi-

erno ~1993a, 1993b! and VanPatten and Oikkenon ~1996!: It is not clear what

type of knowledge drove performance in comprehension and production tasks+

Although VanPatten ~2002b! stressed that PI studies have never addressedthe explicit-implicit distinction, he claimed that acquisition results in an

implicit knowledge system ~e+g+, VanPatten, 2002a, p+ 796!+ Therefore, this claim

commits him to provide evidence for the implicitness of the knowledge in

the assessment tasks+ Unfortunately, firm conclusions could not be drawn as

to the type of knowledge involved in any of the PI studies referred to by

VanPatten+ DeKeyser, Salaberry, Robinson, and Harrington ~2002! clearly high-

lighted this shortcoming+ First, they noted that participants in all conditions

might have had access to explicit knowledge: They either read explicit infor-

mation about the target structure or had the opportunity to induce a rulefrom the structured input activities+ Second, conclusions in these studies are

based only on scores on offline tests that gave participants the opportunity

210 Nel De Jong



require larger amounts of production!+ Because higher memory demands leave

less space available for controlled processes, only knowledge that has been

automatized can be used for production+ Results showed that performance

improved on assessment tasks with lower memory demands ~written sen-tence completion! as well as with higher memory demands ~written video retell-

ing!+ However, on the task with the highest memory demands ~oral video

retelling!, there was no significant improvement+ Therefore, an alternative expla-

nation is possible+ Because implicit knowledge is usually considered to not

rely on controlled processes, the lack of improvement on the oral video retell-

ing task could lead to the conclusion that performance was the result of explicit

rather than implicit knowledge+ So, again, no clear evidence that a change

occurred in the underlying implicit system has been provided+

In sum, VanPatten ~2002a, 2002b! stressed that PI leads to results superiorto TI in several studies and that this effect shows up on a variety of assess-

ment tasks+ However, the exact causes could not be identified because PI and

TI differ in more than one respect, including the direction of training ~compre-

hension or production!, the content of the explicit information provided, and

the type of knowledge ~implicit or explicit! favored by training+ It has not been

shown that performance was based on implicit knowledge, and it is also not

likely that implicit knowledge was acquired, considering the short duration of

training+ In all of these studies, there is a feasible alternative explanation that

attributes the results to practice with ~given or induced! explicit knowledge+This means that the claim that PI can alter the underlying implicit knowledge

system has not been supported and, therefore, it cannot be claimed that the

same implicit knowledge was used in comprehension as well as production+

A study with a longer, more substantial training and with online tests was

conducted by DeKeyser ~1997!+ Three groups of participants received 8 weeks

of comprehension training ~not PI!, production training, or a mixed compre-

hension production training+ Speed and accuracy improved for all groups,

although the greatest gains were found in the direction that had been prac-

ticed+ Improvements achieved by the comprehension and production groupsin their respective trained skills were equaled by the mixed-training group+

However, the mixed group’s performance was better than that of the compre-

hension and production groups in the direction these groups had not trained

~e+g+, the mixed group performed better than the comprehension training group

on the production task!+ Therefore, DeKeyser claimed that comprehension and

production do not rely on the same knowledge system and processing mech-

anisms and that both skills have to be practiced+

This contrasts with an associative point of view, which implies that—at

least in the initial stages of acquisition—receptive processing is most impor-tant because connections must be tuned to ~co-!occurrences in the input+ To

a certain extent the resulting knowledge base should be available for produc




knowledge can play a role during production and how it can affect the acqui-

sition of implicit knowledge is described by N+ Ellis ~this issue!+ When produc-

tion leads to incorrect output, acquisition of correct knowledge might be

hindered+ Consequently, it seems that only after correct implicit or explicitknowledge of a structure has been sufficiently established receptively should

production of that structure take place to further tune the existing network

and to establish any processes specific to production+

The Present Study

In an attempt to answer two research questions, the present study directly

addresses the issues of learning through processing of input and the direc-

tion of training and testing+ First, can training aimed at learning through recep-

tive processing of many instantiations of a target structure build a knowledge

base ~explicit or implicit! that is available in comprehension as well as pro-

duction? Second, does early introduction of tasks that call for production of

the target structure hinder the building of such a knowledge base? If it is

found that both questions are answered affirmatively, the following two

hypotheses will be supported: ~a! receptive training—in comparison to con-

trol conditions—will result in high processing speed in comprehension tasks

and possibly also in high accuracy in production tasks and ~b! early intro-

duction of production—in comparison to a receptive training—will result in

slow processing speed in comprehension tasks and low accuracy in produc-

tion tasks+

To assess the influence of any spontaneously induced explicit knowledge,

performance of the trained groups was compared to that of a control group

that had read an explanation of the rule but had not received any comprehen-

sion or production training of the target structure+

METHOD

Participants

A total of 59 L1 speakers of Dutch from various institutions of higher educa-

tion participated in this study, which was described to them as concerning

language processing and understanding and speaking language+ All partici-

pants were studying subjects not related to language but had learned English ,

German, and French in secondary school for a period of 3 to 6 years + They

had little or no prior knowledge of any Romance language other than French +Data from four participants were eliminated from the analyses for reasons

related to illness insufficient vocabulary knowledge technical problems or

212 Nel De Jong





color ~see Appendix B for screenshots!+ All visual stimuli were preceded by a

400-ms fixation mark ~! in the middle of the presentation area+

The software for this experiment was developed by the experimenter using

Authorware 6 ~McGraw, Tew, & Williams, 2000; Schmidt, 2001! and was run onGateway Pentium II personal computers+

Procedure

Participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups + Two groups

received training containing the target structures+ The first group ~n 18!received receptive training only ~group R!+ The second group ~n19! received

both receptive and productive training ~group R P!+ Finally, a third group

~n18! acted as a control group ~group C!: This group performed comprehen-sion and production tasks that did not include the target structure and read

an explanation of the target structure immediately before the posttests+

All training and test tasks were presented aurally and oral responses were

provided by the participants: No written forms were given or required+ Train-

ing and testing took place in a computerized setting during a period of 2 weeks

in four 90-minute sessions+ The breakdown of training and testing into four

sessions is shown in ~5!+

~5! Session 1: vocabulary trainingSession 2: sentence trainingSession 3: target structure trainingSession 4: target structure training and posttests

Because none of the participants had prior knowledge of Spanish, vocabu-

lary training was necessary+ To monitor vocabulary knowledge, receptive and

productive vocabulary tests were administered at the end of session 1, at the

beginning of sessions 2 and 3, and before the posttests in session 4+ Sessions

2 and 3 started with vocabulary warm-up tasks ~e+g+, word-picture matching;see the Training Tasks section for description!+ The entire first session and all

subsequent vocabulary tasks were identical for participants in all groups+

The aim of the second session was to familiarize participants with the pro-

cedure and the sentences of the target structure training+ This session was

identical for all groups+ No overtly agreeing adjectives were presented: In the

sentences, only invariable adjectives occurred ~see ~2! and ~4!!+ The session

consisted of two sequences of comprehension tasks and one sequence of pro-

duction tasks+ Each sequence consisted of four parts: ~a! an attributive train-

ing task, ~b! an attributive test task, ~c! a predicative training task, and ~d! apredicative test task+

The aim of the third session was to train the target structures in the R

214 Nel De Jong



~e+g+, rojo/a and negro/a!+ The agreement training of both groups started with

a sequence of identical comprehension tasks+ Following the first sequence,

group R continued with two sequences of comprehension tasks, whereas group

R

P completed two sequences of production tasks+ Group C engaged in acomprehension task and two production tasks, all with invariable adjectives

~e+g+, azul and verde!+ At the beginning and end of this session, all groups

performed sentence comprehension and production tests with invariable

adjectives+

The fourth session consisted of two parts+ The aim of the first part was to

continue training+ It started with vocabulary warm-up tasks for all groups

~match-mismatch, see the Training Tasks section for description! and contin-

ued with further sentence training tasks+ Group R performed two sequences

of comprehension tasks with overtly agreeing adjectives+ Group R

P per-formed one sequence of comprehension tasks and one of production tasks,

both of which included overtly agreeing adjectives+ Finally, group C performed

one sequence of comprehension tasks and one of production tasks that both

included invariable adjectives+

Training Tasks

The goal of the study was to assess the effect of processing, not of rule induc-

tion+ For this reason, it was preferable to minimize chances that participants

would adopt an explicit learning attitude+ All training tasks could therefore be

performed on the basis of meaning alone, without attention to formal aspects+

Accuracy was encouraged in pretask instructions+ Feedback about accuracy

consisted of a green check mark or a red cross and was provided after each

response in all receptive training tasks+

The activities that made up the vocabulary tasks—word-picture matching,

match-mismatch, and picture naming—corresponded as much as possible with

those of the sentence tasks, so they will be described together when possible

in the following subsections+

Vocabulary Presentation. The vocabulary training session started with lis-

tening tasks in which each word was presented once coupled with a picture

to clarify its meaning+ No response was required+

Comprehension Training Task. Participants received vocabulary and the

target structure training receptively with the same task: a word-picture match-

ing task for vocabulary and a sentence-picture matching task for the target

structure+ The participants saw two pictures and indicated which picturematched the aurally presented word or sentence by pressing a key on a key-

board In the sentence picture matching task only one word was crucial for




the participant to decide between the two pictures ~cf+ ~1!–~4!!+ In half of the

trials, the crucial word for the decision was the verb in the main clause ~diceor cree!, which immediately followed the last element of the target structure

~i+e+, the adjective ending!+ This required participants to process as much ofthe sentence as possible—and, therefore, the entire target structure—before

responding+ All sentences were grammatically correct+ These tasks consisted

of 24 items in the first comprehension sequence in sessions 3 and 4, and 48

items in all other sequences+ The word-picture matching tasks consisted of

20, 32, and 16 trials for nouns, adjectives, and other words, respectively+

Production Training Task. Participants received productive training on

vocabulary and the target structure with the same task—a picture descrip-

tion task eliciting either individual words or sentences+ Responses were

recorded into 4- or 8-second files+ After the participants’ response, a modelresponse was presented aurally and the participants were to indicate whether

they thought their answer was correct+ To facilitate self-assessment, partici-

pants listened to a recording of their own response after the model response

in the vocabulary training+ In the vocabulary training task, each word occurred

once+ Participants were expected to name nouns with the corresponding arti-

cle, and adjectives in the masculine forms+ The productive sentence training

task always consisted of 24 items+ As each item contained 1 sentence pro-

duced by the participants and 1 model response, the total number of sen-

tences in one task was 48, equal to the number of stimulus sentences in thereceptive training task+ In the productive vocabulary task, each word occurred

twice+

Test Tasks

In the test tasks, speed as well as accuracy were encouraged in the pretask

instructions and by presentation of the reaction times after each trial and

after each block+ Feedback about accuracy was provided as in the trainingtasks+

Rationale. It is difficult to find pure and sensitive measures to discrimi-

nate between implicit or explicit knowledge ~cf+ DeKeyser, 2003, pp+ 319–320;

R+ Ellis, this issue!+ Accuracy and reaction time data by themselves will not

show which type of knowledge is used, but changes in performance over time

and comparisons between different training and test tasks might shed some

light on this matter+ In the present study, performance of the two trained

groups during the posttests was compared to that of the control group, whichhad only explicit knowledge of the target structure+ Also, production perfor-

mance was compared between single and dual task conditions; it was

216 Nel De Jong



Vocabulary Tests. A match-mismatch task was used to test vocabulary

knowledge: The participants pressed a key to indicate whether the presented

picture and word matched ~cf+ match-mismatch task for sentences!+ A picture

naming task was used to test productive vocabulary knowledge ~cf+ produc-tive training task!+ In this test, no feedback was given+ All words were included

in the tests+

Criteria for speed and accuracy were set only for vocabulary tasks at the

end of session 1 and the beginning of sessions 2 and 3 ~receptive: 100% accu-

racy and mean reaction time , 1000 ms for nouns and adjectives and

, 1200 ms for the other words; productive: . 75% accuracy and reaction

time , 4 seconds!+ If the criteria were not met, the test was restarted+ No

criteria were set in the vocabulary tests immediately prior to the sentence

posttests+

Self-Paced Listening Test. Two online comprehension measures were used+

Whereas offline tasks require responses after the input has been processed

and are considered to measure knowledge ~either implicit or explicit!, online

tasks require responses while the input is still being processed and are con-

sidered to be a measure of the speed of input processing+

The first online comprehension task in this study was the self-paced read-

ing or listening technique ~moving window!+ This technique typically involves

the visual presentation of sentences word-by-word or sometimes phrase-by-phrase+ Participants read the word or phrase and press a button to go on to

the next one+ They are asked to do this as quickly as possible ; thus, partici-

pants are still trying to understand the meaning of the sentence when they

call up the next segment, which might be checked by a plausibility judgment

after completion of the sentence+ Latencies are expected to increase as pro-

cessing difficulties arise—for instance, as a result of ungrammaticality or ambi-

guity resolution+ This usually happens on the site of the ungrammaticality or

ambiguity resolution+ When the effect shows up on one or more words imme-

diately following the ungrammaticality or ambiguity, this is referred to as thespillover effect+ The task has been used before to provide a measure of the

processing load of a whole array of phenomena, including processing of

subject-verb agreement, verb-argument structure, relative clauses, and noun

phrase arguments and adjuncts ~Caplan & Waters, 2003; Deevy, 2000; Fer-

reira, Henderson, Anes, Weeks, & McFarlane, 1996; Juffs, 1998; Kennison, 2002;

Konieczny, 2000; Pearlmutter, Garnsey, & Bock, 1999; Thornton & MacDonald,

2003; Weyerts, Penke, Münte, Heinze, & Clahsen, 2002!+In the present study, the task was used in the auditory mode ~self-paced

listening!+ The participants pressed a key to hear the next words of the sen-tence+ Each sentence was split into five phrases, as illustrated in ~6! and ~7!+Each phrase was spoken with an intonation as if it were part of a sentence




the noun, the noun in the prepositional phrase, the adjective, or the verb in

the last phrase+ The task consisted of 24 trials, half of which required matchresponses; only data from correct match responses were analyzed+ All sen-

tences were grammatically correct+

~6! En el círculo - aparece - el coche - rojo - dice JoséPP V1 NP Adj V2 name

~7! El coche - en el círculo - se vuelve - rojo - dice JoséNP PP V1 Adj V2 name

It was expected that slower processing of the target structure would be

reflected by longer listening times of its last element, the adjective+ Whereasin most studies grammaticality, ambiguity, or complexity of the input material

are varied, in the present study a difference is expected between sentences

with and without the target structure ~overtly agreeing and invariable adjec-

tives! and between different manifestations of the target structure ~masculine

and feminine adjective endings!+

Match-Mismatch Test. The second online measure based on the same ratio-

nale was the match-mismatch task+ It was designed to provide a slightly more

natural task tapping the same knowledge and processing as the self-paced lis-tening task+ Although the same content and procedure were maintained, the

aural stimulus was presented as one uninterrupted sentence in the match-

mismatch task+ Reaction times for the correct match responses were ana-

lyzed for the sentences in which the cue to the answer was the second verb,

which immediately followed the offset of the last element of the target struc-

ture ~i+e+, the adjective ending!+ It was expected that longer reaction times

would reflect slower processing of gender agreement+ To the best of my knowl-

edge, this type of task has not been used in this way previously+

Speeded Grammaticality Judgment Test. A speeded grammaticality judg-

ment test was included in the posttests+ The participants pressed a key

as soon as they heard “something wrong” in the sentence+ The following

errors were included in the test: agreement violation involving incorrect adjec-

tive ending ~24 trials!, incorrect article ~7 trials!, incorrect position of the

adjective ~attributive instead of predicative, or vice versa; 3 trials!, and

missing word or word part ~2 trials!+ The remaining 24 trials contained cor-

rect sentences+ The task consisted of 60 trials per adjective position+ No

instruction was given to pay attention to agreement violations + Accuracyof detecting violations of the target structure and accepting the correct

sentences provided a measure of knowledge of the target structure This

218 Nel De Jong



Production Tests. The productive test tasks had the same procedure

as the productive training task, but did not include the model response and

self-assessment+ The production posttests each contained 24 trials+ Half of

the trials contained nouns that had not appeared in training, in order to testgeneralizability+ To test the extent to which explicit knowledge was used,

the posttest included a dual-task condition+ In the dual-task paradigm, which

is common in psychological research, two tasks are performed simulta-

neously: If performance of one task affects performance of the other, this

indicates the type of knowledge or processing involved+ For instance, Gil-

hooly, Logie, and Wynn ~1999! tested different types of secondary tasks to

assess what type of working memory subsystems were involved in syllogis-

tic reasoning+ DeKeyser ~1997! used the paradigm to test the amount of autom-

atisation of language skills, reasoning that “the more a skill is automatized,the less it should interfere with a secondary task or show interference from

it” ~p+ 203!+In the present study, the dual-task condition included finger tapping as a

concurrent secondary task: Before the visual stimulus appeared, participants

tapped along with six clicks at 600-ms intervals and continued tapping as they

spoke+ It was expected that the tapping task would require attention and, thus,

interact mainly with processing of explicit knowledge+

Questionnaires. At the end of the first session, participants filled out acomputerized background questionnaire that included questions about their

age, education, and language knowledge+ Immediately following the posttests

in the last session, they filled out a questionnaire about their explicit knowl-

edge of the target structure+ The first question asked whether participants

had noticed a rule during the experiment and asked them to provide a descrip-

tion of the rule—even if they had to think up a rule on the spot+ The second

question was more guided: A formulation of the rule was given and partici-

pants filled in the blanks with the letters corresponding to the adjective end-

ings ~see Appendix C!+

Coding and Analyses

Vocabulary Tests. An analysis of variance with repeated measures was

used to analyze data from the vocabulary tasks+ The dependent variables were

reaction times for the comprehension tasks and accuracy for the production

tasks+ Gender ~masculine or feminine nouns! and adjective type ~overtly agree-

ing or invariable adjectives; see Appendix A ! were the within-subject vari-ables and group ~R, R P, or C! was the between-subject variable+




fect in all groups, and analyses were performed on the listening time data of

correct answers to target trials ~hits!+ Responses in the self-paced listening

task were analyzed using an analysis of variance with repeated measures+ The

dependent variable was the listening time for the adjectives + Adjective posi-tion ~attributive or predicative!, gender ~masculine or feminine!, and adjec-

tive type ~overtly agreeing or invariable! were the within-subject variables+

Finally, group ~R, R P, or C! was the between-subject variable+

Match-Mismatch Test. Reaction time measurement in the match-mismatch

test started at the cue to the answer ~i+e+, the beginning of the last phrase!+Any responses given before the cue were coded as incorrect + In line with the

analysis of the self-paced listening test, only reaction times of correct answers

to target trials were analyzed, using an analysis of variance with repeated mea-sures+ Reaction time was the dependent variable+ Adjective position ~attribu-

tive or predicative!, gender ~masculine or feminine!, and adjective type ~overtly

agreeing or invariable! were the within-subject variables+ Finally, group ~R, R

P, or C! was the between-subject variable+

Grammaticality Judgment Test. Responses in the grammaticality judg-

ment test were also analyzed with an analysis of variance with repeated

measures+ The dependent variable was the proportion of correct responses

to target trials+ Adjective position ~attributive or predicative!, gender ~mas-culine or feminine!, and violation ~no violation or agreement violation! were

the within-subject variables+ Group ~R, R P, and C! was the between-subject

variable+

Production Tests. All responses were listened to twice by the author+

Pronunciation errors were ignored as long as words and endings were recog-

nizable+ Responses in which any element was difficult to understand were

checked by a second coder: When codes did not correspond, the trial was

discarded from the analyses ~32 out of 64 judgments; 0+5% of all judgments!+Sentences in which all elements except the adjective ending were correct ~not

repaired! were tagged as analyzable sentences+ Of these analyzable sen-

tences, accuracy of the adjective ending—and, therefore, of gender

agreement—was analyzed+

The accuracy data of the production posttests were analyzed using an analy-

sis of variance with repeated measures+ The dependent variable was agree-

ment accuracy in otherwise correct sentences, as data of the primary task

proved more informative than data of the secondary task+ Adjective position

~attributive or predicative!, gender ~masculine or feminine!, and cognitive load~single task or dual task! were the within-subject variables and group ~R, R

P or C! was the between subject variable To retain a sufficient number of

220 Nel De Jong



All Tests. As proportions and reaction times often have a non-Normal dis-

tribution, transformations can help to achieve a more Normal distribution ~Ste-

vens, 1996, p+ 246!+ For proportions, the arcsine transformation 2*arcsin ~M p!

was used, in which p is the proportion of correct responses+ For reaction times,the log-function 10log~rt! was used, in which rt is reaction time+ Subsequently,

for the reaction times, outliers were discarded and all missing values ~outliers

and misses! were replaced using the expectation maximization technique in

SPSS 11+2 Outliers were defined for each group as reaction times that were 1+5

times the interquartile range below the first quartile or above the third quar-

tile+ Note that all analyses have been performed on the transformed and

replaced data, but for clarity purposes, all tables show raw accuracy scores

and reaction times+

Reliability of the comprehension tasks was high, ranging between a

+94and a +97+ In the production tests, the spread of the unanalyzable sentences

over items and participants made it impossible to compute accurate reliabil-

ity figures+ An alpha level of +05 was used for all statistical tests+

RESULTS

Vocabulary Knowledge

To rule out any vocabulary knowledge effects, the sentence posttests in ses-sion 4 were preceded by receptive and productive vocabulary tests+ Speed in

comprehension tests and accuracy in production tests were high for all word

categories ~comprehension: mean reaction time of 544 ms; production: mean

accuracy of 95%!+ Analyses of variance revealed that group R responded some-

what faster to invariable adjectives than to overtly agreeing adjectives and

produced somewhat fewer correct feminine nouns than masculine+

Posttests

Comprehension. The mean accuracy score in the self-paced listening post-

test was 93% and there was no significant correlation between the accuracy

scores and reaction times+ Table 1 shows the listening times for the adjec-

tives+ The analysis of variance revealed that there was no overall effect for

group, and there were significant effects for adjective type, gender, and adjec-

tive position+ Additionally, interactions of Group Adjective type and Gen-

der Adjective type were found+

The interaction of interest was Group

Adjective type, F ~2, 52!

9+128, p , +001, h p

2 +260+ This interaction shows that in the invariable adjective

condition there were no differences between the groups whereas in the agree




ance revealed these differences: groups R and R P both took less time to

listen to the overtly agreeing adjectives than group C, F ~1, 53! 7+135,

p , +01, h p

2 +119, and the two experimental groups did not differ from each

other+ Furthermore, groups R and R P took less time to listen to overtly

agreeing adjectives than to invariable adjectives, F ~1, 52!

14+673, p , +001,h p

2 +220 and F ~1, 52! 4+880, p , +05, h p

2 +086, respectively, whereas group

C showed the opposite effect, F ~1, 52! 4+123, p , +05, h p

2 +073+ This sug-

gests that the presence of overt agreement slowed down the processing speed

of group C+

The Gender Adjective type interaction, F ~1, 52! 13+401, p , +001, h p

2

+205 shows that listening times were shorter for masculine overtly agreeing

adjectives as compared to feminine overtly agreeing adjectives and all invari-

able adjectives+ This suggests that the presence of overtly agreeing adjec-

tives slowed down the processing of agreement with feminine forms+ Finally,the effect of adjective position indicates that listening times were longer for

attributive adjectives than for predicative adjectives, F ~1, 52! 19+550, p ,+001, h p

2 +273+

The interactions with adjective type indicate that both the group and gen-

der effects were related to the presence of agreement+ The absence of inter-

actions with adjective position shows that none of the effects is different for

attributive or predicative adjectives+

The mean accuracy score in the match-mismatch posttest was 97%, and

there was no significant correlation between the accuracy scores and reac-tion times+ Table 2 shows the reaction time data+ The analysis of variance

revealed that there were significant effects for group adjective type and adjec

Table 1. Listening time means and standard deviations of self-pacedlistening posttest ~in ms!

Invariable adjectives Overtly agreeing adjectives

Group Masculine Feminine Masculine Feminine

AttributiveR ~n 18! 532 ~69! 531 ~75! 472 ~94! 494 ~97!R P ~n 19! 570 ~87! 551 ~90! 505 ~104! 536 ~108!C ~n 18! 546 ~92! 540 ~84! 557 ~137! 610 ~179!

PredicativeR ~n 18! 501 ~65! 502 ~59! 431 ~97! 461 ~62!R P ~n 19! 520 ~66! 527 ~50! 489 ~90! 518 ~80!C ~

n 18! 525 ~106! 516 ~92! 571 ~129! 557 ~121!

Note+ Standard deviations are enclosed in parentheses+

222 Nel De Jong



For this study, the most relevant interaction is the Adjective type Gen-

der group, F ~2, 52! 3+277, p , +05, h p

2 +112+ This three-way interaction

shows again that differences among the groups only show up in the overtly

agreeing adjectives condition: Group R responded significantly faster than

group C with both genders and faster than group R P with masculine forms+Additionally, the interaction reveals that the groups were differentially affected

by gender and by the presence of overtly agreeing adjectives: Group R remained

unaffected by gender and the presence of overtly agreeing adjectives, whereas

groups R P and C were slowed down by masculine forms of overtly agreeing

adjectives+

The interactions of Gender Adjective position, F ~1, 52! 21+512, p , +001,

h p

2 +293, and Adjective type Adjective position, F ~1, 52! 26+737, p , +001,

h p

2 +340, together show that processing was slowed down mainly by mascu-

line forms of overtly agreeing predicative adjectives+ Taken together, the resultsof these two comprehension tasks show that the presence of overtly agreeing

adjectives did not slow down group R’s processing speed, whereas it slowed

down processing for the two other groups+ This slowing effect was more pro-

nounced for group C than for group R P+

Grammaticality Judgment. Table 3 shows the accuracy scores on the gram-

maticality judgment task in the no-violation and agreement-violation con-

ditions+ The analysis of variance revealed that there was only a significant

effect for violation condition: Accuracy was higher in the agreement-violationcondition than in the no-violation condition, F ~1, 52! 7+507, p , +01,

h2 126 In other words violation of agreement was detected more

Table 2. Reaction time means and standard deviations of match-mismatchposttest ~in ms!

Invariable adjectives Overtly agreeing adjectives


AttributiveR ~n 18! 586 ~132! 644 ~165! 544 ~142! 579 ~123!R P ~n 19! 687 ~255! 792 ~252! 751 ~269! 704 ~180!C ~n 18! 611 ~199! 631 ~173! 850 ~231! 805 ~227!

PredicativeR ~n 18! 562 ~146! 521 ~149! 570 ~148! 562 ~125!R P ~n 19! 655 ~236! 663 ~244! 767 ~264! 671 ~182!C ~

n 18! 567 ~134! 552 ~202! 897 ~267! 799 ~250!





Production. Table 4 shows the accuracy scores from the production post-

tests+ One participant from group R, one from group R P, and two from

group C were removed from this analysis because they produced too few ana-

lyzable sentences ~fewer than 65% overall!+ Of the remaining data, 88% of the

sentences could be analyzed+ The test included both trained and untrainednouns, so that generalizable rule~-like! knowledge could be tested ~for an analy-

sis including familiarity as a factor and an analysis of the performance on the

secondary task, see De Jong, 2005!+The analysis of variance revealed that there were main effects for group,

F ~2, 48! 6+568, p , +01, h p

2 +215, and gender, F ~1, 48! 34+927, p , +001, h p

2

+421, and significant interactions for Gender Group, F ~2, 48! 4+820, p , +05,

Table 3. Accuracy score means and standard deviations of grammaticalityjudgment task

No agreement violation Agreement violation


AttributiveR ~n 18! +70 ~+26! +69 ~+29! +71 ~+34! +64 ~+37!R P ~n 19! +60 ~+30! +67 ~+25! +80 ~+30! +79 ~+32!C ~n 18! +71 ~+22! +72 ~+19! +85 ~+17! +81 ~+25!

PredicativeR ~n 18! +66 ~+30! +65 ~+27! +70 ~+35! +66 ~+37!R P ~n 19! +69 ~+27! +71 ~+25! +79 ~+29! +72 ~+33!C ~

n 18! +75 ~+18! +73 ~+23! +82 ~+27! +84 ~+20!


Table 4. Accuracy score means and standard deviations of productionposttests

Single-task condition Dual-task condition


AttributiveR ~n 17! +93 ~+13! +45 ~+37! +93 ~+09! +53 ~+40!R P ~n 18! +92 ~+17! +77 ~+31! +93 ~+11! +78 ~+30!

C ~n 16! +94 ~+12! +91 ~+18! +97 ~+06! +86 ~+25!Predicative

R ~n 17! 92 ~ 15! 51 ~ 41! 94 ~ 14! 48 ~ 46!

224 Nel De Jong



h p

2 +167, and Gender Adjective position, F ~1, 48! 4+029, p +05, h p

2 +077+

Interestingly, there was no significant effect for cognitive load or any inter-

action with it+

The interaction of Gender

Group is important because it reveals thatthere were differences between the groups, although only with respect to

feminine forms, F ~2, 48! 6+251, p , +01, h p

2 +207+ Post hoc analyses of

variance showed that groups R and R P together produced fewer correct

feminine forms than group C, F ~2, 49! 6+327, p , +05, h p

2 +114, and that

group R produced fewer than group R P, F ~2, 33! 4+760, p , +05, h p

2

+126+ Furthermore, unlike group C, groups R and R P produced fewer cor-

rect feminine forms than masculine forms: group R: F ~1, 48! 34+655, p ,+001, h p

2 +419 and group R P: F ~1, 48! 8+013, p , +01, h p

2 +143+

The interaction between gender and adjective position showed that therewas a difference between the adjective positions only for feminine nouns , in

that more correct attributive adjectives were produced than predicative adjec-

tives, F ~1, 48! 4+668, p , +05, h p

2 +089+

In summary, all groups achieved some accuracy in producing gender agree-

ment+ There were differences between the groups, although only with respect

to the feminine forms: The largest number of correct feminine forms was pro-

duced by group C and the least by group R+ Furthermore, more correct femi-

nine forms were produced in attributive position than in predicative position+

Crucially, accuracy was not affected by the secondary tapping task +

Questionnaire. Table 5 shows the accuracy with which participants

described the grammatical rule that they thought was the subject of the exper-

iment+ More than half of the participants provided at least a partially correct

description of the rule+ In the second, guided question, the rule was pre-

sented on screen and participants only filled in the adjective endings+ Of the

34 participants who had not given a correct rule description in the unguided

question, 7 did not provide the correct adjective endings in the guided ques-

tion ~4 participants in group R, 2 in group R P, and 1 in group C!+ Only one

participant ~in group R! claimed not to have detected the target rule at any

time during training+ She did not demonstrate explicit knowledge of the target

structure, nor did she produce any feminine adjectival forms in the produc-

Table 5. Number of participants demonstrating explicit rule knowledge asdisplayed by responses to unguided question

GroupCorrect and

complete rulePartly

incorrect ruleIncomplete

ruleDifferent rule

or no rule




tion tasks+ In short, all but one participant had detected the target structure,

and more than half of them had induced at least some verbalizable explicit

knowledge of the rule+

DISCUSSION

The main results of this study can be summarized as follows+ The sentence-

comprehension posttests showed that participants in the receptive condition

processed sentences with overtly agreeing adjectives fastest, whereas those

in the control group had the slowest processing times+ The fact that reaction

time differences between groups and genders were found almost exclusively

with overtly agreeing adjectives suggests that these differences result fromthe presence of agreement+ The grammaticality judgment task showed that

to, a large extent, participants in all groups could identify correct and incor-

rect noun-adjective gender agreement+ The questionnaire demonstrated that

nearly all participants had explicit knowledge of the target rule + In the produc-

tion posttests, differences between the groups appeared only for the feminine

forms+ Contrary to expectation, the receptive group produced the fewest cor-

rect feminine adjectival forms, and the control group produced the most+ The

fact that a larger number of correct attributive as opposed to predicative adjec-

tives were produced appears to reflect the difference in distance between nounand adjective+ This fits in with the pattern found in the match-mismatch com-

prehension task, where the presence of overt agreement slowed down pro-

cessing more in the predicative condition than in the attributive condition+

Finally, accuracy in production was not affected by a concurrent finger tap-

ping task+ The absence of such an effect for the control group, which could

rely only on explicit knowledge, suggests that the secondary task was not suf-

ficiently demanding to hinder use of explicit knowledge significantly+

The first hypothesis was that receptive training—in comparison to the con-

trol condition—would result in high processing speed in comprehension tasksand, possibly, also in high accuracy in production tasks+ In comparison to both

the control group and to sentences with invariable adjectives, participants in

the receptive group did indeed show fast receptive processing of sentences

with overtly agreeing adjectives+ Nevertheless, they made a relatively large

number of errors in production+ Thus, it seems that the receptive training had

built a knowledge base—whether implicit or explicit—that was available for

comprehension, but it could not prevent errors in the production tasks+ Fur-

thermore, the grammaticality judgment task showed that participants in the

receptive training group were able to detect agreement violations, and ques-tionnaire data showed that they had induced explicit knowledge+ It must be

stressed that there was some success in production of gender agreement: For

226 Nel De Jong



100%+ If the participants had had no knowledge of the target rule at all, they

would have used only masculine forms, resulting in an accuracy of 100% for

masculine and 0% for feminine forms+ Alternatively, they could have ran-

domly chosen masculine and feminine forms, resulting in an accuracy ofroughly 50% for both genders+ This was clearly not the case for all but two

participants, who produced masculine forms exclusively+

The second hypothesis was that early introduction of production—in com-

parison to a receptive training—would result in slow processing speed in com-

prehension tasks and low accuracy in production tasks+ The reaction times of

group R P in the comprehension tests were indeed somewhat slower than

those of the R group+ However, group R P performed significantly more accu-

rately in the production test than group R with respect to feminine forms+

Thus, it seems that early introduction of production tasks did not hinder build-ing a knowledge base+ Both groups showed comparable performance on the

grammaticality judgment task as well as on the questionnaire+

In sum, the proposed receptive training seems to have succeeded in help-

ing learners to build a knowledge base but was not as successful as expected

in terms of production accuracy+ On the other hand, the early introduction

of production practice did not hinder acquisition, although reaction times of

group R P in the comprehension tasks were somewhat slower than those of

group R+

What do these results tell us about the type of knowledge used ~implicitvs+ explicit!? Given that the control group only read an explicit grammar expla-

nation, any knowledge held must have been explicit+ The two trained groups

had induced explicit knowledge, as shown by the questionnaire data+ Their

relatively fast processing in the comprehension tasks, in comparison to the

control group, indicates that these groups either processed their explicit

knowledge quickly or used implicit knowledge+ Not only were there differ-

ences in performance between the two experimental groups and the control

group but there were also differences between the two experimental groups+

Group R’s reaction times were slightly faster in one of the comprehensiontasks as compared to those of the R P group+ It is conceivable that this is

a reflection of the difference in the amount of input that instantiated the tar-

get structure during training+ It is important to bear in mind that partici-

pants in the two trained groups might have induced rule knowledge only when

rule knowledge was elicited in the postexperimental questionnaire; this knowl-

edge might not have influenced performance on the comprehension and pro-

duction tests+

Taken together, the results suggest an effect of the direction of processing

~comprehension or production! for the two experimental groups+ Although theyoutperformed the control group in terms of receptive processing speed, nei-

ther their implicit knowledge ~if they had any! nor their explicit knowledge




an all-or-nothing matter: The trained groups performed well in the practiced

mode but also showed some accuracy in the reverse direction+

Three possible explanations for the directionality in this study will be pre-

sented here+ The first explanation is in line with an argumentation made byDeKeyser ~1997!+ In his study, he claimed that transfer could be attributed to

the use of proceduralized knowledge in the trained direction and the use of

declarative knowledge in the reverse direction+ Likewise, it can be argued

that participants in the present study used implicit knowledge in the trained

directions and explicit knowledge in the untrained direction+ Because both

directions were untrained for the control group, they could only use explicit

knowledge in either direction+ Especially problematic in this explanation is

the fact that the control group performed better in the production task than

group R

P: Both groups had explicit knowledge, but the production train-ing group should have shown the advantage of the opportunity to procedur-

alize knowledge during the production training in the form of higher accuracy

in the production tests+

A second explanation for the effect of processing direction might be a dif-

ferential flow of information through a network of representations+ Whereas

in comprehension a participant can compare information about gender pro-

vided by the article, noun, and adjective ending, in production only the noun

provides information about gender+ Thus, in production, the noun alone must

serve as a basis for selection of the correct article and adjective ending+ Thiswould mean that implicit knowledge in the form of networks is not necessar-

ily bidirectional and might require training to fine-tune processing specific for

each direction+ The finding that group R P produced more correct adjective

endings than group R might reflect the former group’s production practice of

the target structure, which might have made the processes for the produc-

tion of overt agreement more efficient+ The explicit knowledge of the control

group might have functioned as an even more efficient shortcut+

A third explanation for the directionality effect in this study might be related

to attention+ The attention of the control group was explicitly directed at thegender agreement structure by the explicit instruction concerning the target

structure+ The attention of group R P was indirectly focused at the target

structure because these learners assessed their own accuracy during produc-

tion training+ However, as a result, their attention was also focused on other

aspects, such as vocabulary and pronunciation+ Participants in the receptive

condition did not receive a description of the target structure, nor was their

attention directed to the target structure through self-assessment or instruc-

tion ~as could have been accomplished by asking participants to pay atten-

tion to the adjective endings!+ Therefore, this group is most likely to havedivided attention over gender agreement and other aspects of their output,

such as word choice word order and pronunciation

228 Nel De Jong



advantage for the participants in the receptive condition due to the lack of

production training, they were given the opportunity to practice producing

sentences without the target structure+ However, this might be the explana-

tion for their less accurate performance in the production posttest: Duringthe production training tasks with sentences containing only invariable adjec-

tives, participants might have learned not to process the target structure in

production+ Although the receptive productive and control groups also per-

formed these tasks, they received production practice or rule instruction to

counteract this potential effect+

Finally, let us return to the question posed in the title of this article: Can

second language grammar be learned through listening? This study cannot give

a straightforward affirmative answer+ First, as only one aspect of grammar has

been studied, no generalizations can be made to other aspects of grammar+ Sec-ond, despite the variety of measures, no firm conclusions can be drawn as to

the type of knowledge—implicit or explicit—that was acquired+ What is more,

as DeKeyser ~2003! pointed out, training studies of short duration are biased

in favor of explicit learning+ Implicit learning is a long process, as it requires

processing large numbers of instantiations, probably more than the few hun-

dred in the learning conditions of the present study+ Nevertheless, this study

suggests that some L2 grammar knowledge can be learned through listening,

although it might not prevent grammatical errors in production+

NOTES

1+ The reader with knowledge of Spanish might find the use of the verb volverse in these sen-tences unusual+ However, it must be stressed that this is of no major importance to the logic of theexperiment+ The participants had no prior knowledge of the target language and will probably inter-pret this verb as the equivalent of the verb worden “to turn, to become” in Dutch, their L1+

2+ Outliers on the self-paced listening task totaled 0+46%+ Outliers on the match-mismatch testtotaled 0+31%

3+ An anonymous SSLA reviewer suggested there might have been a set effect because therewere twice as many agreement violation items as distracter items+ However, this does not seem tobe the case+ The mean accuracy scores for the distracter items show that participants attended to

more than just agreement violations: They correctly rejected on average 77% of the sentences withincorrect articles, 51% of the sentences of the incorrect type, and 95% of the sentences with missingwords or word parts+

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APPENDIX A

VOCABULARY IN TRAINING AND TEST TASKS

Masculine Nouns

el guante “the glove”el peine “the comb”el coche “the car”




el collar “the necklace”el jersey “the sweater”el reloj “the watch”el farol * “the streetlamp”

el papel * “the paper”

Feminine Nouns

la fuente “the fountain”la torre “the tower”la nave “the boat”la llave* “the key”la nube* “the cloud”la nariz “the nose”la sartén “the frying pan”la prisión “the prison”la postal * “the postcard”la pared * “the wall”

Overtly Agreeing Adjectives

rojo/a “red”negro/a “black”rosado/a “pink”morado/a “purple”

Invariable Adjectives

azul “blue”verde “green”

gris “grey”marron “brown”

Other

aparece “appears”se vuelve “turns”en el círculo “in the circle”en el cuadro “in the square”

dice José “says José”cree Javier “thinks Javier”

232 Nel De Jong



APPENDIX B

SCREENSHOTS

Figure B1. Screenshot of a trial in the sentence-picture matching task+ Auditive stimulus: “En el cír-culo aparece la fuente roja, dice José” ~response:

left!+

Figure B2. Screenshots of trials in the match-mismatch task with attributiveadjectives ~left! and predicative adjectives ~right! during the visualization of

i g d h gi g l A diti ti l ~l ft! “E l d




APPENDIX C

EXPLICIT KNOWLEDGE PROBE QUESTIONS IN QUESTIONNAIRE

Open-Ended Question Concerning Explicit Rule Knowledge

This experiment concerned the learning of a rule of Spanish+

Have you noticed a rule?

1 YES 2 NO

@If YES#

What do you think is the rule about? Give as complete a description as possible +

@If NO#Looking back, what rule do you reckon was concerned here? Give as complete a

description as possible+

Guided Question Concerning Explicit Rule Knowledge

Please try to give the correct answers+ Type in the correct letter~s!:

After an object with ‘el’ some colors end in the sound ___ +

After an object with ‘la’ some colors end in the sound ___ +

This only applies to colors that you have initially learned with the last sound ___ +

Other colors always keep the same form+

Note 1+ In the guided question, each line appeared only after the preceding answer was

given+

Note 2 + In the instructions for the tasks included in the experiment , nouns were always

referred to as objects and adjectives as colors+ No reference had been made to the deter-

miners or adjective endings before the rule explanation for the control group or before

the postexperimental questionnaire for the two experimental groups+

234 Nel De Jong



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