Marion Coumel

Speakers of all backgrounds tend to repeat the syntactic structures they hear, a phenomenon known as syntactic priming, and this effect influences not just their immediate language but also contributes to their long-term use and learning of structures. Yet the mechanisms underlying these processes remain the subject of debate. To tease apart the predictions of different classes of syntactic priming models, we took the unique approach of comparing immediate and long-term priming, with and without lexical overlap, in two populations of speakers and for two different structural alternations. We compared L2 and L1 French speakers’ (N=186) production of fronted/non-fronted temporal adverbial phrases and active/passive transitive structures. We replicated standard priming effects observing immediate and long-term priming, and lexical boost effects, across speakers and structures but we found that the magnitude of these effects differed between groups and structures. Abstract priming, both immediate and long-term, was greater for fronted than passive structures but did not differ between L2 and L1 groups, which is inconsistent with our predictions based on implicit learning models of syntactic priming. L2 speakers showed greater priming with lexical overlap and greater lexical boost effects than L1 speakers, which is consistent with developmental residual activation accounts that propose learners rely on lexicalised representations and short-term memory for primes. Our findings also suggest that accounts of syntactic priming should consider the role of production in supporting learning. This study shows the importance of comparing priming across speakers and for different structures for clarifying theoretical accounts of syntactic priming.

We tested whether second language (L2) learners rely more on explicit memory during structural priming at lower than at higher proficiency levels (Hartsuiker & Bernolet, 2017). We compared within‐L2 priming with lexical overlap in 100 low and 100 high proficiency French L2 speakers under low versus high working memory load conditions induced with a letter series recall task presented between primes and targets. The high load condition would prevent explicit recall of primes during target production. Both groups primed more under low than high load. The effect of load was similar across groups, but exploratory analyses with proficiency as a continuous variable suggested that, with increasing proficiency, participants primed less under high load. We discuss how these findings support the idea that learners exploit explicit memory more during priming in early versus later stages of acquisition. Overall, this study showed that explicit memory influences syntactic processing across the L2 learning trajectory.

This study examined how second language (L2) speakers’ individual differences in music perception abilities, singing abilities and phonetic aptitude relate to their L2 phonological awareness. To measure participants’ L2 phonological awareness, we used an accent faking paradigm, where participants were asked to speak in their native language (German) while imitating a strong L2 accent (English). We measured their musical abilities with the AMMA test and their singing abilities with two singing tasks and a self-report questionnaire. Their phonetic aptitude was assessed with a combination of phonological short-term memory tasks (forward and backward digit span tasks), and language perception and production tasks, in which participants needed to process and imitate sounds from unfamiliar languages. A regression analysis revealed that singing abilities and phonetic aptitude could predict participants’ English faking abilities. This suggests that being able to sing could help learners produce and memorise highly accurate L2 sounds, although their performance could also partly be explained by innate learning capacities such as phonetic aptitude. This study also proposes a new combination of tests to obtain a well-rounded assessment of individual differences in phonetic aptitude.

We examined whether input modality and individual differences in attention and motivation influence second language (L2) learning via syntactic priming. In an online study, we compared the primed production of English passives by 235 L2 and native English speakers in reading‐to‐writing versus listening‐to‐writing conditions. We measured immediate priming (producing passives immediately after exposure to passives) and short‐ and long‐term learning (producing more passives in immediate and 1‐week delayed posttests relative to pretests). Both groups showed immediate priming and short‐ and long‐term learning, although L2 speakers produced more passives with immediate priming and showed greater long‐term learning. Learning was unaffected by modality, but immediate priming was greatest in the listening‐to‐writing condition across groups. Individual differences in attention and motivation did not influence priming or learning. Thus, syntactic priming fosters long‐term L2 learning regardless of input modality, but participants may be sensitive to the frequency of passives in spoken versus written language during immediate priming.

Every day we talk with people. But have you ever wondered how two people with completely separate minds manage to understand each other? To have a successful conversation, you must understand the language that the other person is using and produce language that your conversational partner can understand, otherwise communicating can become difficult. One thing that human speakers do to make sure that the other person understands them is to copy the language that their conversational partners use, such as their word choices. This is called alignment, and it increases the likelihood of two people having a successful conversation or doing well on a shared task. Scientific experiments have shown that alignment is an important feature of human communication that occurs in multiple situations. In this article, we explain three different types of alignment that speakers use and describe how language scientists study alignment.

European learners of English are increasingly using this language recreationally, which is referred to as Extramural English (henceforth EE). The level of EE use in a given country might be reflected in English Language Teaching (ELT) practices. Yet, no research so far has examined cross-nationally what potential for language learning teachers perceive in their learners’ EE engagement and how this relates to ELT practices. To address this gap, the present study draws on interview data from lower secondary English teachers from Austria, France, and Sweden (n = 20). They were enquired about (1) their students’ EE engagement and its effects on learning, (2) their accuracy and fluency teaching methods, and (3) the perceived link between EE and ELT. Swedish teachers seemed to have a more positive and fine-grained conceptualization of the impact of EE on learning than Austrian and French participants, especially in terms of grammar acquisition. The implicit learning environment that Swedish students encounter extramurally might extend to the classroom, where the use of explicit grammar rules occurs less dominantly than in the Austrian and French samples. The countries converged in the type of fluency-based instruction they reported. Gaps in language areas not (fully) developed through EE seem to be more intentionally addressed in ELT in Sweden.