The occurrence of alignment at the syntactic level, the same structure tends to be repetitively used between interlocutors in the dialogue (syntactic priming), plays an important role in achieving the goals of communication (Pickering & Garrod, 2004). Previous studies proposed that priming occurs from an error-based implicit learning mechanism and is a consequence of adaptation to minimize the expected prediction error (Chang et al., 2000; Jaeger & Snider, 2013). However, these results indicate changes in the acquired syntactic knowledge of L1 speakers. Thus, how EFL learners learn incomplete knowledge and whether error-based learning is applicable to second language acquisition have not been explored.
In this study, a picture description task with spoken primes and targets was conducted to investigate whether the spoken input affects Japanese EFL learners’ syntactic priming. The participants comprised 31 undergraduate learners who were asked to describe 88 pictures after they heard the primes with passives or fillers (actives).
The results show that the priming effect was observed, indicating that learners transited the knowledge of the structure from declarative to procedural knowledge when they heard spoken forms. The magnitude of the cumulative syntactic priming effect increased as learners were exposed to input showing the degree of formulation of syntactic representations changed with increased syntactic experience as the difference between prior predicted output and actually received input caused prediction errors. Therefore, the results indicate that Japanese EFL learners learned syntactic knowledge through an error-based learning process based on prediction errors as L1 speakers.

Authors:
Mayu Hamada, Kobe University, Japan

About the Presenter(s)
Dr Mayu HAMADA is a University Assistant Professor/Lecturer at Kobe University in Japan

See this presentation on the full schedule – Wednesday Schedule

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