Lanspan Lectures 2023

Schedule of Lanspan Lectures 2023

Abstracts

Carola Strobl (Universiteit van Antwerpen) - Cohesion in second language writing and in translation: A case for research into varioversals

Globalisation and multilingual societies have led to increased language production in multilingual contact situations, such as second language (L2) writing and translation. Recent research has shown that language produced in these contexts has common characteristics ('varioversals'), which distinguish it from language produced in monolingual settings (Kruger & Van Rooy, 2016). Research into 'varioversals' bridges two research fields, L2 writing and Translation Studies. Both investigate the effects of similar cognitive and normative constraints on the language produced by L2 learners and translators, respectively. The project I will present aims to substantially advance this new and promising research line by focusing on the use of cohesion and on the under-researched language pair Dutch–German.

Cohesion is crucial for effective communication; yet, the preferred way to establish cohesion varies according to genre and language. Each language has its own range of grammatical and lexical devices to connect sentences, paragraphs and ideas in texts and its own preferred ways to use cohesive devices in specific genres. Even languages as closely related as German and Dutch, which share a similar range of possible cohesive devices, show differences in terms of their preferred use. Differences between languages have been used to explain (a) why L2 writers seldom attain native-like mastery of cohesion, even at advanced stages of language proficiency (Crossley et al., 2016) and (b) why translations are different from source texts and from comparable non-translated texts in terms of cohesion (Becher, 2011; Blum-Kulka, 1986; Kunz et al., 2021). In conclusion, cohesion is an interesting locus to investigate 'varioversals'.

This investigation will be conducted applying a recently developed method for combined corpus-based analysis of L1 writing, L2 writing, translated and non-translated language (Granger, 2018). To this aim, new learner corpora have been collected (e.g., Strobl, 2020) and are currently being annotated with linguistic information about cohesion. In parallel, existing translation corpora (Parallelkorpus Deutsch-Niederländisch, UGent; Europarl corpus) are being annotated according to the same principles. In my talk, I will discuss methodological challenges and present preliminary results of the ongoing project, including newly developed annotation guidelines for cohesion in learner language and first insights drawn from pilot studies.

Sonia López Serrano (Universidad de la Laguna) - Fostering L2 pragmatic awareness through self-access online materials: The case of email requests to faculty

Even though email communication is pervasive in higher education, research has shown that students' emails to faculty usually contain numerous pragmatic infelicities, particularly when these are written in a foreign language (L2) (e.g., Economidou-Kogetsidis 2011). As a response to students' need to develop their awareness of how to write status-congruent emails in a foreign language, a small but growing body of research has started to investigate the effects of pedagogical interventions on email pragmatics (e.g., Chen 2015; Nguyen 2018; Usó-Juan 2022), showing positive results for in-class instruction. In spite of these positive effects, the reality is that L2 pragmatics in general, and email pragmatics in particular, are rarely included in the curriculum in foreign language university courses. This may be due to factors such as the limited contact hours available per week, or the fact that many non-native language teachers do not feel they have the expertise to cover L2 pragmatics in their lessons (e.g., Cohen 2016). It has been suggested that one solution to this problem may be the creation of self-access online materials that provide learners with opportunities for out-of-class pragmatic reflection and practice (e.g., Sydorenko et al. 2020; Muhammad 2022). 

In this talk, I will focus on the Communication at University (UniComm) project, which intends to contribute to this emerging line of research through the design of self-access web-based materials that help students develop their pragmatic awareness concerning email interactions with faculty. Specifically, I will discuss the needs analysis conducted and the main principles considered in the design of the materials that focus on email requests, and present an overview of their implementation with two groups of EFL first-year university students: while one group engaged in out-of-class autonomous work only, a second group experienced a combination of in-class teacher-led discussions and out-of-class independent work. The main pedagogical implications of these data will be considered.

Majid Elahi Shirvan (University of Bojnord) - Towards Innovative CDST-Compatible Research Methods in the Investigation of Emotional Variables in the Second Language Acquisition Context

Given the vital role of affective factors in the second language  learning process, many scholars have explored the antecedents of these factors, their pedagogical outcomes, and their implications. However, the vast majority of prior research studies on affective factors in the SLA setting have been bound to traditional research methods. These traditional methods frequently fail to assess the dynamic, non-linear nature of affective constructs. Therefore, some innovative research approaches are needed to explore the dynamicity and complexity of affective constructs in the SLA context. In response to this demand, in this presentation, I will talk about new methodological perspectives for exploring affective constructs in second and foreign language education. Some of these methodological innovations are process tracing, Q methodology, the idiodynamic method, self-organizing maps, ecological momentary assessment, and latent growth curve modeling.

Ana Guerberof Arenas (University of Groningen) - Creativity: new approaches to study technology and translation

In this talk, Dr Ana Guerberof Arenas will present the results obtained within the framework of the project CREAMT. This research project (2020-2022) explored creativity in literary texts in different translation modalities: translation by professional literary translators, machine translation using a customized neural engine, and post-edition. Further it looked at the impact on readers by looking at narrative engagement, enjoyment and translation reception in two language combinations, English-Catalan and English-Dutch. She will also touch upon her new ERC CoG research project INCREC that looks to uncover the creative process: from inception to reception of translated literary and audiovisual content using machine translation.

Pernelle Lorette (University of Mannheim) - Prediction in L1 and L2 German based on semantic and gender cues

Making active predictions about upcoming information is a crucial aspect of language comprehension. Both first (L1) and second (L2) language users have been found to predict, although prediction abilities appear to be reduced in L2. Various factors affect prediction, such as type of cue and L1-L2 similarities. In L2 Dutch for instance, van Bergen & Flecken (2017) found some evidence for prediction based on the semantic contrast legen[put.LIE and zetten[put.STAND], but only among L2 users whose L1 encode this semantic contrast. Moreover, Hopp (2015) found that L2 users predicted based semantic cues but not based on morphosyntactic ones (case marking). However, in Hopp’s study, case was absent from participants’ L1 while semantic cues were transferable from their L1. It is thus unclear whether this preference for semantic over morphosyntactic cues would hold if the morphosyntactic cue is present in the L2 users’ L1 while the semantic cues are not directly transferable from their L1.

I will present the results of three studies investigating whether German L1 users and L1-French/L2- German bilinguals predict the complement of a sentence based on semantic cues (either constraining verbs such as essen[eat] or the semantic contrast between stellen[put.LIE] and legen[put.STAND]) and/or based on morphosyntactic cues (gender encoded in the determiner of the complement).

In a first online reaction time experiment implementing the visual world paradigm, we investigated predictive behaviour based on semantic cues, gender cues, or the integration of both semantics and gender marking. Crucially, this first study relied on a conscious decision-making task, and we found that neither L1 users nor L2 users predicted – unless predictions were possible based on semantic cues only.

Subsequently, two visual-world eye-tracking studies with a very similar design were conducted among L1 German users and L1-French/L2-German bilinguals. While we expected to find less predictive eye-movements among L2 users, we did expect L1 users to demonstrate stable prediction abilities in all experimental conditions. However, analyses do not provide clear evidence for prediction among L1 users, casting doubt on our hypotheses regarding the L2 data. I will present the results of these three studies, discuss potential aspects that may explain our unexpected results, and suggest next steps for L2 prediction research.

Aline Godfroid (Michigan State University) - Knowledge of second-language learning is biased towards the highly educated: the SLA for All? initiative

Second Language Acquisition (SLA) researchers routinely make claims about language learners and language learning in general, even though their samples of research participants are composed primarily of university students, who are not representative of the population of language learners at large. Convenience sampling is thus pervasive. And therefore, we SLA researchers need to take steps to assess and address the scope of this bias and its effects on theory construction.

In this talk, I report on the outcomes of one such initiative, titled SLA for All? (Andringa & Godfroid, 2020a, 2020b; Andringa, Godfroid, et al., 2021; Godfroid & Andringa, 2022, in press).  As a part of the SLA for All? initiative, Andringa and Godfroid invited replications of foundational SLA studies. The goal of these replications was to evaluate whether the initial-study results, which were obtained with university students, would still hold true when the same study was repeated with a non-university participant group. Although some replications obtained partial support for the initial-study results, most replications did not (Godfroid & Andringa, in press). In other words, findings obtained with university students did not necessarily seem true for the population at large. It is not necessarily valid to use university students when the aim is to understand general SLA questions.