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Word-Level and Sentence-Level Automaticity in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Learners: A Comparative Study

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Abstract

The present study aimed to investigate second language (L2) word-level and sentence-level automatic processing among English as a foreign language students through a comparative analysis of students with different proficiency levels. As a multidimensional and dynamic construct, automaticity is conceptualized as processing speed, stability, and accuracy which are indexed by reaction time, coefficient variation and accuracy rate. Sixty students (39 undergraduate students and 21 graduate students) who majored in English participated in this study. They completed the lexical semantic classification task, the sentence construction task, the sentence verification task under two different modalities (visually- and aurally-presented situations). Multivariate analyses were conducted to examine the differences between the students with different proficiency levels pertaining to their L2 performance. The results indicated that the processing speed was not found to be a good indicator of automatic language processing. Moreover, both levels of students appeared to reach a plateau in word-level processing but there were some variations in students’ sentential processing. Finally, the findings showed that automatic language processing seemed to be module-specific and non-sharable across different modalities and skills.

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Notes

  1. TEM: Test for English Majors, a standardized national test in China for undergraduate English majors. TEM4 is taken by sophomore undergraduates and TEM8 is taken by senior undergraduates.

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Acknowledgements

Funding was provided by the National Social Science Fund of China; Title of the Project: A System for Dynamic Diagnostic Assessment of Chinese University Students’ English Speaking Ability (Grant No. 15BYY079). We would like to thank the reviewer for providing constructive feedback on our previous manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Foreign Languages, Southeast University, Nanjing, China

    Dongmei Ma

  2. Center for Language Studies, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Xiaoru Yu

  3. Department of Modern Languages, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Haomin Zhang

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  1. Dongmei Ma
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  2. Xiaoru Yu
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Correspondence to Dongmei Ma.

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Ma, D., Yu, X. & Zhang, H. Word-Level and Sentence-Level Automaticity in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Learners: A Comparative Study. J Psycholinguist Res 46, 1471–1483 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-017-9509-8

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