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SOURCES OF VARIATION IN SECOND AND NATIVE LANGUAGE SPEAKING PROFICIENCY AMONG COLLEGE-AGED SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNERS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 June 2021

Mona Roxana Botezatu Open the ORCID record for Mona Roxana Botezatu [Opens in a new window] ,
Taomei Guo ,
Judith F. Kroll ,
Sarah Peterson  and
Dalia L. Garcia
Mona Roxana Botezatu*
Affiliation:
University of Missouri, Columbia
Taomei Guo
Affiliation:
Beijing Normal University
Judith F. Kroll
Affiliation:
University of California, Irvine
Sarah Peterson
Affiliation:
University of Missouri, Columbia
Dalia L. Garcia
Affiliation:
San Diego State University/University of California, San Diego, Joint Doctoral Program in Language & Communicative Disorders
*
*Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Mona Roxana Botezatu, Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, University of Missouri, School of Health Professions, 420 Lewis Hall, Columbia, Missouri 65211 E-mail: botezatum@health.missouri.edu.
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Abstract

We evaluated external and internal sources of variation in second language (L2) and native language (L1) proficiency among college students. One hundred and twelve native-English L2 learners completed measures of L1 and L2 speaking proficiency, working memory, and cognitive control and provided self-ratings of language exposure and use. When considering learner-external variation, we found that more frequent L2 exposure predicted higher L2 and L1 proficiency, while earlier L2 exposure predicted higher L2 proficiency, but poorer L1 maintenance. L1–L2 distance limited crosslinguistic transfer of print-to-sound mappings. When considering learner-internal variation, we found that L1 and L2 proficiency were highly correlated and that better working memory, but not cognitive control, accounted for additional variance in L2 and L1 proficiency. More frequent L2 exposure was associated with better cognitive control.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Second Language Acquisition , Volume 44 , Issue 2 , May 2022 , pp. 305 - 330
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

This research was supported by a Catalyst Award and a Richard Wallace Faculty Incentive Grant from the University of Missouri and an Advancing Academic-Research Careers Award from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association to MRB, as well as by grant 31871097 from the National Natural Science Foundation of China to TG. We would like to thank Kathleen Acord, Madison Backes, Ashley Bramer, Jennifer Calvin, Sierra Cheung, Sierra Clemetson, Sarah D’Amico, Ryley Ewy, Laura Fry, Madison Hinmon, Jaclyn Johnson, Zeping Liu, Hanna Lowther, Sarah Marx, Carlos Martinez Villar, Allie Mitan, Xi Ren, Istvan Romhany, Morgan Trachsel, Jason Wong, No-Ya Yu, and Qiming Yuan for help with data collection and coding.

References

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