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Assignment Logue 2020

This document summarizes a study that investigated the relationship between environmental factors and Arabic-speaking children's comprehension of English sentences of varying complexity levels. The study examined how factors like length of English exposure, home language use, environment richness, maternal education and English ability correlated with comprehending simple to complex sentence structures. The results showed that length of exposure positively correlated with comprehending all structures, especially more complex ones. Home language use slightly correlated with some structures but not significantly. Environment richness significantly correlated with simpler structures. Maternal education and English ability showed weak or negative correlations with some structures.

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54 views

Assignment Logue 2020

This document summarizes a study that investigated the relationship between environmental factors and Arabic-speaking children's comprehension of English sentences of varying complexity levels. The study examined how factors like length of English exposure, home language use, environment richness, maternal education and English ability correlated with comprehending simple to complex sentence structures. The results showed that length of exposure positively correlated with comprehending all structures, especially more complex ones. Home language use slightly correlated with some structures but not significantly. Environment richness significantly correlated with simpler structures. Maternal education and English ability showed weak or negative correlations with some structures.

Uploaded by

Oana Motohoi
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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OANA MOTOHOI

Assignment Logue, Sevdali, Folli, Gerard 2020

1. To show that when it comes to the variability in the linguistics of bilinguals, there are
differences of exposure to the target language. The current study aims to further research
in the domain of child L2 acquisition by focusing on identified influential environmental
variables and investigating their correlation with the comprehension of sentences ranging
in complexity by Arabic-speaking children acquiring L2 English.

2. The environmental factors are length of L2 exposure, L2 language use at home, richness
of the L2 environment, maternal education and maternal L2 proficiency.

3.
 Length of L2 exposure -> both negative and positive aspects
 L2 language use at home -> no effects on proficiency of sentences including two clause
structures, while other studies have found correlations for accuracy of wh-questions
 Richness of the L2 environment -> effects on the accuracy of morphology and sentence
structures
 Maternal education -> mixed findings with some studies showing no impact on linguistic
scores, whereas others do find an effect
 Maternal L2 proficiency -> varies considerably as some mothers may be in the early
stages of acquiring the L2, while others who emigrate for employment or study
opportunities may have quite high levels of fluency

4. The independent variable is the variable the experimenter changes or controls and is
assumed to have a direct effect on the dependent variable. The dependent variable is the
variable being tested and measured in an experiment, and is 'dependent' on the
independent variable. Length of L2 exposure, L2 language use and input at home,
richness of the L2 environment, maternal education, and maternal L2 proficiency are the
independent variables.

5. For the present study, we investigate comprehension of sentence structures ranging in


complexity to allow us to investigate how correlations between input and interpretation of
sentence structures may be affected by the simplicity or complexity of the sentence
construction. This range of complexity is reflected in the different number of components
and relationships between components within each structure and its impact on
acquisition.
While children have few difficulties, acquiring sentences with canonical word order:
(1) Active voice: The dog chased the cat (canonical word order)
(2) Subject relative clauses: The dog that chased the cat (canonical word
order and embedding), more difficulties are found with structures containing non-
canonical word order and additional clauses or phrases

3) Passive voice: The cat was chased by the dog (non-canonical word order and by-
phrase)
OANA MOTOHOI

(4) Object relative clauses: The cat that the dog chased (non-canonical word order and
embedding)

6. The questions are whether environmental factors correlate with comprehension of


sentence structures in child L2 acquisition and which type of sentence structures (simple
to complex) are correlated with the target environmental factors.

7. Correlations between length of exposure and interpretation of sentence structures show


positive trends across structures however, this is weak for active voice, slightly stronger
for subject relative clauses and passive voice but much more robust for object relative
clauses which indicated a significant correlation.
Language use at home revealed a slight positive correlation with interpretation of active
voice, passive voice and object relative clauses however, none were significant.
The correlation coefficient for the richness of L2 environment revealed a positive trend
for all structures with significance found for active and passive voice while a marginal
correlation was found for object relative clauses.
Maternal education had a very weak association with passive voice and object relative
clauses and a clear negative association with both active voice and subject relative clauses.
Results for maternal L2 proficiency showed a similar pattern with very weak associations
revealed for passive voice and object relative clauses but negative associations with active voice
and subject relative clauses.

8. Length of exposure, maternal education and maternal L2 proficiency correlate with all
other input factors with the exception of richness of the L2 environment; while language use at
home correlates with all input factors.

9. It was quite hard to follow some of the ideas and the questions were quite ambiguous,
especially those that concerned the type of variables.

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