Heritage Language 2 Consortium

A strategic partnership for the study of Portuguese in multilingual settings

Month: October 2021

Porto MOOC receives IELA Honorable Mention

October 29, 2021 /

We are pleased to announce that Porto University’s Introduction to Portuguese MOOC has received an  Honorable Mention in the Academic Division of the 2021 International E-Learning Awards under the E-Learning category. Congratulations to all colleagues involved!

The MOOC (Massively Open Online Course) was co-produced by Porto’s Faculty of Arts and by the Educational Technologies Cluster. The MOOC is a free online course hosted by the AcademiaUP platform, and the scheme of work aims to explore first contact with Portuguese in everyday situations. The course is based on a fiction series consisting of 8 episodes, recorded by TVU Networks, involving professional actors in different areas of the city of Porto. The teaching materials were developed by a team of trainers with experience in teaching Portuguese as a Foreign Language, and the audiovisual work was carried out by the Educational Technologies Nucleus.

Below you will find a brief video introduction to the course.

The International E-Learning Association (IELA) hosts the annual competition to recognise candidates who show an outstanding ability to promote learning, professional development and job performance through the use of technology. Successful candidates in this Award demonstrated this through the application of E-learning, blended learning and mobile learning, and were evaluated based on criteria such as “soundness and effectiveness”, “usability”, and “overall significance”.

The Faculty of Arts and the Educational Technologies Cluster at the University of Porto deserve a huge “congratulations” for their achievement. For more information on the MOOC, please contact Professor Fátima Silva, mhenri@letras.up.pt.

 

 

HL2C Seminar: Children using collaborative tasks in an EFL context

October 20, 2021 /

We are delighted to host the next talk as part of the  HL2C Seminar Series for 2021-2022 , taking place on Wednesday 27th October, 12 noon to 1pm UK (same time zone as Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London).

Presenter:

María del Pilar García Mayo (University of the Basque Country, UPV/EHU)

Title:

Children using collaborative tasks in an EFL context. Some insights from research

How to join:

Our seminars are free to attend. Simply sign up to the HL2C Mailing List to receive the link to join us via Microsoft Teams link. You do not need a Teams account to access the talk.

Abstract:

The early learning of English in school settings has grown tremendously in the past twenty years, with estimated figures of half a billion primary-aged children around the world (Ellis & Knagg, 2013; Enever, 2018). Considering this trend it seems striking that the research lens has only recently been placed on young learners (Enever & Lindgren, 2018; García Mayo, 2017; Murphy & Evangelou, 2016; Pinter, 2011), as child second language acquisition (SLA) differs significantly from adult SLA and deserves to be studied in its own right (Oliver & Azkarai, 2017). In the last decade, task-based language teaching (TBLT) research has expanded substantially in foreign language contexts, but most research studies have been carried out with adults in university settings. There is a clear lack of research-based evidence of what children actually do while performing tasks in this setting and about their learning process. This evidence is crucial in order to make decisions about appropriate educational provision, to inform policy makers and to maximize children’s learning opportunities (García Mayo, 2017, 2018).

In this talk I will focus on current research with Spanish English as a foreign language (EFL) children (age range 8-12) while they perform several collaborative tasks (oral and oral+written) in both mainstream and Content and Language integrated learning (CLIL) contexts. I will show how children are able to negotiate for meaning with age- and proficiency-matched peers and to focus on formal aspects of the language without the teacher’s intervention. Issues related to the impact of task modality on language-related episodes and of task repetition on collaborative patterns and L1 use will also be considered, together with the importance of agency in pair formation. I will conclude by highlighting both ethical and methodological challenges in this type of research (García Mayo, 2021) and by pointing to interesting topics in the future research agenda.

 

PhD Defense: Joana Zahner da Silva Matos, University of Minho

October 16, 2021 /

On Friday, 22nd October, 2021, at 2pm (GMT),  Joana Zahner da Silva Matos  will defend her PhD thesis  in Language Sciences, German Linguistics  to a panel at The University of Minho. The PhD defense is a public event, and you can join by clicking on the Zoom link below. For more information, please see below.

Title:

“Kland, Kländer, Klanden? Aquisição do plural por falantes portugueses de alemão língua segunda”

How to join:

The defense will be presented via Zoom.  The link to the event is provided below, along with the ID code and Password.

Zoom: Please click here to join. ID: 884 4660 8616. Password: 280633.

Abstract:

In the acquisition of the nominal morphology of German as a first language (L1) plural markers appear early but their stabilisation occurs late, around 6 years of age (Kauschke et al., 2011). As far as the acquisition of German as a second language (L2) is concerned, most empirical studies have focused on the successive acquisition of two languages in childhood (Günay, 2016). These show that L2 children at an initial stage also employ overgeneralization strategies and that the differences with respect to L1 acquisition are quantitative rather than qualitative in nature. The present experimental study focuses on the acquisition of the German plural by native speakers of European Portuguese (EP) who started acquiring German from adolescence onwards. We aim to abstract the pluralization patterns applied by these speakers, identifying the strategies used in the initial phase of acquisition and assessing whether crosslinguistic influence effects are observable. The influence that certain linguistic and extralinguistic factors, such as lexical knowledge, amount and type of exposure to the target language and motivation, may have on the selection of L2 plural morphemes is also analysed.

We tested 120 speakers, divided into three groups: L2 (n=80), 2L1 (n=20) and L1 (n=20). The linguistic tasks applied include a lexical decision test, a plural elicitation task with nonce words and an elicitation task targeting the case system. In addition, a detailed sociolinguistic questionnaire was also applied. The main results show that at an early stage of acquisition L2 speakers employ pluralisation strategies based on frequency criteria and much more gender-based when compared to L1 and 2L1 speakers. Higher proficiency levels, as well as greater exposure to the target language and greater motivation are significantly associated with a progression in pluralisation patterns and the production of later-acquired plurals. The reduced use of the {-s} morpheme, that is the regular plural marker in Portuguese, shows that it was not overgeneralised and that there is no crosslinguistic influence from the L1. The 2L1 speakers are very close to the L1 speakers as far as the use of plural morphemes is concerned. However, as they are returnee speakers, some effects of the reduced exposure to German on the later acquired forms can already be observed, which may be interpreted as effects of language attrition.

Keywords: L2 German; late L2 acquisition; 2L1 returnee speakers; plural.

Members of the PhD committee:

Prof. Isabel Cristina Costa Alves Ermida (President), Escola de Letras, Artes e Ciências Humanas da Universidade do Minho.

Prof. Ana Maria Lavadinho Madeira, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas da Universidade Nova de Lisboa;

Prof. Ana Margarida Abrantes, Faculdade de Ciências Humanas da Universidade Católica;

Prof. Maria do Pilar Barbosa, Escola de Letras, Artes e Ciências Humanas da Universidade do Minho;

Prof. Cristina Maria Moreira Flores (supervisor), Escola de Letras, Artes e Ciências Humanas da Universidade do Minho;

Prof. Idalete Maria Silva Dias, Escola de Letras, Artes e Ciências Humanas da Universidade do Minho.

 

Webinar: Raising a Bilingual Child Today

October 15, 2021 /

On Wednesday 6th October, 2021, the challenges and opportunities surrounding language learning and bilingual development were discussed by a panel of leading experts. These included Paul Dunne, Headmaster of St. John Bosco College in Battersea; Patrick Rebuschat, Professor of linguistics and cognitive science at Lancaster University and Director of the Heritage Language 2 Consortium; Federica Piedimonte, Teacher of Italian language and culture teacher; and Agnieszka Derleta,  Head of Polish/English as an Additional Language (EAL) Department at St Thomas More in Bedford.

Both the presentations and audience’s contributions  were very insightful and the webinar offered some very exciting leads to further discussions.

The event was a joint initiative of St. John Bosco College, the Embassy of the Republic of Poland, the Camões Instiute, and the Italian General Consulate in London.

Please see the YouTube link below to watch the webinar in full.

 

 

HL2C Seminar: Aida Cardoso (Lisbon), Acquisition of infinitival constructions in L2 Portuguese

October 12, 2021 /

Our next HL2C seminar will take place on Wednesday, November 17 from 12pm to 1pm GMT (Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London). This talk is a joint initiative with Lancaster’s SLLAT Research Group.

Presenters:

Aida Cardoso (Lisbon)

Title:

Acquisition of infinitival constructions in L2 Portuguese by Spanish native speakers: A Feature Reassembly approach

How to join:

Our seminars are free to attend. Simply sign up to the HL2C Mailing List to receive the link to join us via Microsoft Teams link. You do not need a Teams account to access the talk.

Abstract:

This talk discusses the acquisition of the Prepositional Infinitival Construction (PIC) as a complement of perception verbs by Spanish learners of European Portuguese (EP).

In Romance languages, the PIC (1) and the Gerund Construction (GC) (2) tend to occur in complementary distribution (Casalicchio, 2019). This is the case in EP and Spanish: Only the PIC is available (in the standard variety) in EP, whereas only the GC is available in Spanish. What is more, both languages make available other infinitival constructions that can also occur as complements of perception verbs (e.g., ECM).

1a.

O professor viu-os a ler a gramática.

the teacher saw-CL.ACC to.ASP read.INF the grammar

“The teacher saw them reading the grammar.”

1b.

O professor viu-os a lerem a gramática.

the teacher saw-CL.ACC to.ASP read.INF.3PL the grammar

“The teacher saw them reading the grammar.”

2.

Vi a Juan conduciendo una furgoneta blanca.

saw.1SG A Juan driving.GER a van white

“I saw Juan driving a white van.”

[Rafel 1999: 202 (44a)]

Crucially, the PIC and the GC share semantic and syntactic properties (both being analysed as small clauses): They both have a progressive aspectual value, and they are traditionally analysed as small clauses (Raposo, 1989; Rafel, 2000; Barbosa & Cochofel, 2005; Casalicchio, 2019). However, the progressive aspectual value has different morphological counterparts in both languages. In Spanish, it corresponds to a Gerund verb form and in EP to an aspectual head (the preposition a, ‘to’) plus an inflected or uninflected infinitival verb form (Duarte, 1992).

Following the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (Lardiere, 2008, 2009), we predict that Spanish learners will have difficulties reassembling the aspectual features of the GC into the ones of the PIC due to difficulties identifying the contrasts in the respective morphological counterparts. Furthermore, we hypothesise that Spanish learners will perform better considering the PIC with uninflected infinitive than with inflected infinitive since Spanish does not make available complements with inflected infinitives, and consequently, the acquisition of such structures entails a feature addition task (namely, ɸ-features).

Three experimental tasks were designed in order to collect complementary data on the acquisition of the PIC: an acceptability judgment task (AJT), a sentence completion task (SCT) and a forced choice task (FCT). For each task, we tested a control group of monolingual EP speakers and three groups of adult Spanish learners of EP (formal instruction context) with distinct levels of proficiency: initial, intermediate, and advanced. In the AJT, we compared the acceptability rates of PIC with inflected and uninflected infinitive; in the SCT, the preference rates of the inflected and uninflected infinitive PIC with another infinitival complement only available in EP: the Inflected Infinitive structure; and, in the FCT, the preference rates of the inflected infinitive PIC with a non-standard structure (Accusative subject plus inflected infinitive) with similarities to the Exceptional Case Marking (ECM), a structure available in both languages.

The data from the three tasks show that Spanish learners struggle with PIC even in advanced levels of proficiency. Overall, we found statistically significant differences between the control group and all test groups (p<.05), indicating a lower acceptance rate of PIC by the latter. The AJT and the SCT show that Spanish learners prefer PIC with uninflected infinitives.

Furthermore, the FCT shows that all L2 groups tend to reject PIC with inflected infinitive in favour of the non-standard structure closer to ECM (a complement structure available both in the L1 and the L2). Additionally, in the corrections provided in the AJT, Spanish learners do not replace PIC by GC, but mainly by instances of ECM. We hypothesise that this difficulty in acquiring the PIC may result from a difficulty in reassembling the relevant features and from an L1 pre- emption effect (Iverson & Rothman, 2014): Spanish learners may unconsciously deem the properties of the ECM structure of their L1 as sufficient to account for the EP input.

References:

Barbosa, P. & F. Cochofel (2005). A construção de infinitivo preposicionado em PE. In I. Duarte & I. Leiria (orgs.), Actas do XX Encontro Nacional da Associação Portuguesa de Linguística. Lisboa: APL/Edições Colibri, 387-400.

Casalicchio, J. (2019). Gerunds become prepositional infinitives in Romance Small Clauses: the effects of later Merge to the syntactic spine. Probus 31 (1), 75-117.

Duarte, I. (1992). Complementos Infinitivos Preposicionados e Outras Construções Temporalmente Defectivas em Português Europeu. In Actas do VIII ENAPL. Lisboa: Colibri.

Iverson, M. & Rothman, J. (2014). Object drop in L2 Spanish, (complex) feature reassembly and L1 pre-emption. In: Judy, T. & Perpiñán, S. (eds.) The Acquisition of Spanish anish in Understudied Language Pairings. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Lardiere, D. (2008). Feature-Assembly in Second Language Acquisition. In J. Liceras, H. Zobl & H. Goodluck (eds.), The role of formal features in second language acquisition. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Lardiere, D. (2009). Some thoughts on the contrastive analysis of features in second language acquisition. Second Language Research 25(2), 173-227.

Rafel, J. (1999). Complex Small Clauses. PhD Dissertation. UAB.

Raposo, E. P. (1989). Prepositional infinitival constructions in European Portuguese. In O. Jaegli & K.J. Safir (eds.), The Null Subject Parameter. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

HL2C Seminar: Gabriela Tavares (NOVA), Phonological categorization of L2 Portuguese

October 12, 2021 /

Our next HL2C seminar will take place on Wednesday, October 20 from 12pm to 1pm UK time (same as Lisbon). This talk is a joint initiative with Lancaster’s SLLAT Research Group.

Presenters:

Gabriela Tavares (NOVA University Lisbon), Andrea Deme (Hungarian Academy of Sciences & Eötvös Loránd University), and Susana Correia (NOVA University Lisbon)

Title:

Phonological categorization of L2 Portuguese by Hungarian native speakers

How to join:

Our seminars are free to attend. Simply sign up to the HL2C Mailing List to receive the link to join us via Microsoft Teams link. You do not need a Teams account to access the talk.

Abstract:

Empirical observations in the classroom suggest that Hungarian learners of L2 European Portuguese (EP) have difficulties acquiring variable stress and vowel reduction – in particular the two EP reduced vowels [ɐ] and [ɨ] – since these are absent in the Hungarian phonological system [1]. These features are essential from an intelligibility perspective, since in EP stress is variable and lexically contrastive [2] and vowel reduction is found to be the main clue for stress perception in this language [3].

In this talk, we will present results of the first experiment of a larger project that seeks to develop pedagogical interventions that facilitate the acquisition of L2 Portuguese phonology. In this first step, we developed and empirically validated a forced-choice identification task to map the categorization of the EP oral vowels by Hungarian speakers in their native phonological system.

This presentation will report the results of this forced-choice identification task. Forty-six Hungarian native speakers (age range 18 to 45) took part in this experiment. One group (n=32) had no experience in learning EP; the other group (n = 14) consisted of learners of EP with approximately two semesters of language classes (n=14). A group with native Portuguese speakers with no previous contact with Hungarian (n=30) served as our baseline condition. Participants completed a forced- choice identification task that required them to identify different auditory tokens of the nine EP oral vowels, inserted in a [ɡV] context, among a set of real Hungarian words with a [ɡV]CV structure, presented orthographically in a grid.

We predicted that the ability of Hungarian native speakers to identify and discriminate contrastive EP sounds would depend on the phonetic proximity of EP vowels with Hungarian sounds [4, 5, 6]. Accordingly, we hypothesized that these speakers would categorize the unstressed vowel [ɐ] into /ɛ/, /eː/ or /ø/, and [ɨ] into /y/ or /ø/, as these are the closest L1 categories to the L2 vowels. We also expected some differences to occur after exposure to the target-language, and that these differences would be reflected in the categorization results. Results have partly confirmed the expectations, as [ɐ] was categorized into /ɛ/, but not into /eː/, and [ɨ] was categorized into /y/ and /ø/. A comparison of data in the two experimental groups suggests a learning effect for [ɨ], but not for [ɐ].

The data collected in this experiment shows overlapping situations in contrasts with [ɐ] and [ɨ]. According to the results, Hungarian speakers identify both non-native [ɐ] and [ɨ] into the single native category /ɛ/, which possibly causes discrimination difficulties [4]. As for [ɨ], considering that this segment is identified as a separated Hungarian category – /y/ or /ø/ –, discrimination of contrasts with this vowel won’t be problematic [4].

According to the above mentioned, an auditory perceptual training focused on tuning [ɐ] into a new category, separating it from /ɛ/, is expected to improve Hungarian speakers’ ability to perceive better this EP vowel. To test this hypothesis, we are currently designing a sequence of oddity discrimination tasks focused on the overlapping situations mentioned above. This perceptual training will be followed by Hungarian learners of L2 Portuguese within a 5-week timeframe.

[1] Markó A. (2017). Hangtan. In A. Imrényi, N. Kugler, M. Ladányi, A. Markó, Sz. Tátrai, & G. Tolcsvai Nagy (Eds). Nyelvtan (pp. 75–206). Budapest: Osiris Kiadó.

[2] Raposo, E., Nascimento, M. F., Mota, M. A., Segura, L., Mendes, A., & A. Andrade (Eds.) (2020). Gramática do Português. Vol. III. Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.

[3] Correia, S., Butler, J., Vigário, M. & S. Frota (2015). A stress “deafness” effect in European Portuguese. Language and Speech 58(1): 48–67.

[4] Best, C. T. (1995). A direct-realist view of cross-language perception. In W. Strange (Ed.). Speech perception and linguistic experience: Issues in cross-language research (pp. 171–204). Baltimore: York Press.

[5] Flege, J. E. (2003). Assessing constraints on second-language segmental production and perception. In N. O. Schiller & A. S. Meyer (Eds.). Phonetics and Phonology in Language Comprehension and Production: Differences and Similarities (pp. 319–355). Berlin: De Gruyter.

[6] Escudero, P. (2015). Linguistic Perception and Second Language Acquisition: Explaining the Attainment of Optimal Phonological Categorization. [Doctoral dissertation, Utrecht University, LOT Dissertation Series 113]. Repository: http://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/7349.

HL2C Seminar: Luiz Amaral (Amherst), Evaluating heritage speakers’ proficiency

October 12, 2021 /

We are delighted to kick off our HL2C Seminar Series for 2021-2022 on Thursday, September 30 from 3pm to 4pm GMT (Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London).

Presenters:

Luiz Amaral (UMass Amherst), Alexandre Alves dos Santos (UMass Amherst), Flávia Cunha (Mt. Holyoke College), Thaís de Sá (UFMG), and Ricardo de Souza (UFMG)

Title:

Evaluating Heritage Speakers’ Proficiency: Oral Proficiency Rubrics and a Vocabulary Test for Portuguese as a Heritage Language

How to join:

Our seminars are free to attend. Simply sign up to the HL2C Mailing List to receive the link to join us via Microsoft Teams link. You do not need a Teams account to access the talk.

Abstract:

Despite the increasing interest in heritage language (HL) acquisition and education, the area of HL assessment remains one of the least explored in the field. Several controversial issues seem to impact projects whose goals are to assess the language proficiency of HL speakers (HS). Some arise primarily from the reuse and/or adaptation of assessment tools originally created for L1 or L2 speakers (Kagan and Dillan, 2008; Draper and Hicks, 2000; Valdes, 1989). Others come from the perceived gap in the development of HL modalities, i.e., written proficiency might in some instances lag oral proficiency (Gatti and Grave, 2020). Some studies have explored and, in some cases, challenged these paradigms (Kagan and Friedman, 2003; Martin et.al., 2013), but there is still much to be done to understand the linguistic development of HS and to create the assessment tools needed by language programs.

With these needs in mind, our research group started a series of projects to study HL assessment looking into different language modalities and properties. In this presentation we describe two of our latest projects on (i) the creation of oral proficiency rubrics, and (ii) the development a computer-based vocabulary language test. The goal of the first effort is to compare two rubrics to evaluate oral production by HS. The first rubric is exclusively functional and evaluates how well participants performed each of the communicative tasks proposed. The second rubric in more comprehensive, including descriptors for vocabulary, grammatical accuracy, pronunciation, and communicative competence. We used the two rubrics to assess the production of 20 HS that participated in an oral interview based on different everyday topics. We show the results obtained by using these two different sets of criteria and discuss the implications for each one. The second project is centered on the development of a computer-based VLT for Portuguese as L2 and HL – Teste de Verificação Lexical do Português Brasileiro (TVLPB). This project is a collaboration with colleagues from the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil. After explaining how the test was created, we compare the vocabulary test scores with the scores from the oral interview from the same group of participants cited above. This is a first attempt to validate the TVLPB and see how vocabulary measures compare to other types of language assessment tools in heritage populations.

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