Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T03:53:16.292Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

What vocabulary size tells us about pronunciation skills: Issues in assessing L2 learners

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 September 2020

Paolo Mairano Open the ORCID record for Paolo Mairano [Opens in a new window]  and
Fabian Santiago
Paolo Mairano*
Affiliation:
University of Lille, UMR STL (Savoirs, Textes et Langage)
Fabian Santiago
Affiliation:
University of Paris 8, UMR SFL (Structures Formelles du Langage)
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Measures of second language (L2) learners’ vocabulary size have been shown to correlate with language proficiency in reading, writing and listening skills, and vocabulary tests are sometimes used for placement purposes. However, the relation between learners’ vocabulary knowledge and their speaking skills has been less thoroughly investigated, and even less so in terms of pronunciation. In this article, we compare vocabulary and pronunciation measures for 25 Italian instructed learners of L2 French. We measure their receptive (Dialang score) and productive (vocd-D, MTLD) vocabulary size, and calculate the following pronunciation indices: acoustic distance and overlap of realizations for selected L2 French vowel pairs, ratings of nasality for ratings of foreign-accentedness, fluency metrics. We find that vocabulary measures show low to medium correlations with fluency metrics and ratings of foreign-accentedness, but not with vowel metrics. We then turn our attention to the impact of research methods on the study of vocabulary and pronunciation. More specifically, we discuss the possibility that these results are due to pitfalls in vocabulary and pronunciation indices, such as the failure of Dialang to take into account the effect of L1-L2 cognates, and the lack of measures for evaluating consonants, intonation and perception skills.

Type
Article
Information
Journal of French Language Studies , Volume 30 , Issue 2: Methodological challenges in SLA: A focus on French , July 2020 , pp. 141 - 160
Check for updates
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Alderson, J. C. and Banerjee, J. (2001). Language testing and assessment (Part I). Language Teaching, 34.4: 213–236.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alderson, J. C. and Huhta, A. (2005). The development of a suite of computer–based diagnostic tests based on the Common European Framework. Language Testing, 22.3: 301–320.Google Scholar
Arnold, T., Ballier, N., Gaillat, T. and Lissón, P. (2018). Predicting CEFRL levels in learner English on the basis of metrics and full texts. Proc. of the CAP conference (Conférence sur l’Apprentissage Automatique), arXiv:1806.11099.Google Scholar
Barreda, S. (2015). phonTools: Functions for phonetics in R. R package, version 0.2–2.1.Google Scholar
Beck, I. and McKeown, M. (1991). Conditions of vocabulary acquisition. In: Barr, R.. Camail, M., Mosenthal, P. and Pearson, P. D. (eds), The Handbook of Reading Research, Vol. II. New York: Longman, pp. 789–814.Google Scholar
Beeckmans, R., Eyckmans, J., Janssens, V., Dufranne, M., and Van de Velde, H. (2001). Examining the Yes/No vocabulary test: Some methodological issues in theory and practice. Language Testing, 18.3: 235–274.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beglar, D. and Nation, P. (2007). A vocabulary size test. The Language Teacher, 31.7: 9–13.Google Scholar
Birdsong, D. (2018). Plasticity, variability and age in second language acquisition and bilingualism. Frontiers in Psychology, 9.81: 1–17.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bongaerts, T. (2003). Effets de l’âge sur l’acquisition d’une seconde langue. Acquisition et interaction en langue étrangère, 18: 79–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boersma, P. and Weenink, D. (2019). Praat: doing phonetics by computer [Computer program]. Version 6.0.49, retrieved 2 March 2019 from http://www.praat.org/Google Scholar
Bundgaard-Nielsen, R. L., Best, C. T. and Tyler, M. D. (2011a). Vocabulary size is associated with second-language vowel perception performance in adult learners. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 33.3: 433–461.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bundgaard-Nielsen, R. L., Best, C. T. and Tyler, M. D. (2011b). Vocabulary size matters: The assimilation of second-language Australian English vowels to first-language Japanese vowel categories. Applied Psycholinguistics, 32.1: 51–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Colantoni, L., Steele, J., Escudero, P. and Neyra, P. R. E. (2015). Second Language Speech. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Delais-Roussarie, E. and Yoo, H. (2010). The COREIL corpus: a learner corpus designed for studying phrasal phonology and intonation. Proc. of New Sounds, 100–105.Google Scholar
Delais Roussarie, E., Kupisch, T., Mairano, P., Santiago, F. and Splendido, F. (2018) ProSeg: a comparable corpus of spoken L2 French. Poster presented at EuroSLA, 5–8 September 2018, Münster (Germany).Google Scholar
Delvaux, V. (2009). Perception du contraste de nasalité vocalique en français. Journal of French Language Studies, 19.1: 25–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Delvaux, V., Metens, T. and Soquet, A. (2002). Propriétés acoustiques et articulatoires des voyelles nasales du français. XXIVèmes Journées d’étude sur la parole, Nancy, 348–352.Google Scholar
Derwing, T. M. and Munro, M. J. (2015). Pronunciation Fundamentals. Evidence-based perspectives for L2 teaching and research. Amsterdam: Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Derwing, T. M., Rossiter, M. J., Munro, M. J. and Thomson, R. I. (2004). L2 fluency: Judgments on different tasks, Language Learning, 54: 655–679.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dialang: A Diagnostic Language Assessment System. Accessed on 2 November 2016 from https://dialangweb.lancaster.ac.uk/Google Scholar
Edwards, R. and Collins, L. (2011). Lexical frequency profiles and Zipf’s law. Language Learning, 61.1: 1–30.Google Scholar
Epscamp, S., Cramer, A. O. J, Waldorp, L. J., Schmittman, V. D. and Borsboom, D. (2012) Qgraph: Network visualizations of relationships in psychometric data, Journal of Statistical Software, 48.4: 1–18.Google Scholar
Eyckmans, J. (2004). Measuring Receptive Vocabulary Size. Reliability and validity of the Yes/No vocabulary test for French-speaking learners of Dutch. Utrecht: LOT.Google Scholar
Ferragne, E. (2013). Automatic suprasegmental parameter extraction in learner corpora. In: Diaz-Negrillo, A., Ballier, N. and Thompson, P. (eds), Automatic Treatment and Analysis of Learner Corpus Data. Amsterdam: Benjamins, pp. 151–168.Google Scholar
Flege, J. E. (1995). Second language speech learning: Theory, findings and problems. In: Strange, W. (ed.), Speech Perception and Linguistic Experience: Issues in Cross-Language Research. Timonium, MD: York Press, pp. 233–277.Google Scholar
Flege, J. E., Munro, M. J. and MacKay, I. R. (1995). Effects of age of second-language learning on the production of English consonants. Speech Communication, 16.1: 1–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fougeron, C. and Smith, C. L. (1999). French, Handbook of the International Phonetic Association. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gendrot, C. and Adda-Decker, M. (2007). Impact of duration and vowel inventory size on formant values of oral vowels: an automated formant analysis from eight languages. Proc. of the 16th International Conference of Phonetic Sciences, 1417–1420.Google Scholar
Gendrot, C., Gerdes, K. and Adda-Decker, M. (2016). Détection automatique d’une hiérarchie prosodique dans un corpus de parole journalistique. Langue française, 191.3: 123–149.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldman, J. Ph. (2011). EasyAlign: a friendly automatic phonetic alignment tool under Praat. Proc. of the 12th INTERSPEECH 2011, 3233–3236.Google Scholar
Hall-Lew, L. (2010). Improved representation of variance in measures of vowel merger. Proc. of Meetings on Acoustics (Vol. 9, No. 1), pp. 1–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hay, J., Warren, P. and Drager, K. (2006). Factors influencing speech perception in the context of a merger-in-progress. Journal of Phonetics, 34.4: 458–484.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henriksen, B. (1999). Three dimensions of vocabulary development. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 21.2: 303–317.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herment, S., Loukina, A. and Tortel, A. (2012). AixOx. Available on SLDR (Speech Language Data Repository): http://sldr.org/sldr000784/frGoogle Scholar
Hilton, H. (2008a). Corpus PAROLE (Parallèle Oral en Langue Etrangère). Architecture du corpus & conventions de transcription. Accessed on 15 April 2019 at http://archive.sfl.cnrs.fr/sites/sfl/IMG/pdf/PAROLE_manual.pdfGoogle Scholar
Hilton, H. (2008b). The link between vocabulary knowledge and spoken L2 fluency. Language Learning Journal, 36.2: 153–166.Google Scholar
Huhta, A., Luoma, S., Oscarson, M., Sajavaara, K., Takala, S. and Teasdale, A. (2002). DIALANG: A diagnostic language assessment system for learners. Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching, assessment. Case studies. Council of Europe, 130–145.Google Scholar
Kern, S. (2018). The interaction of phonetic/phonological development and input characteristics in early lexical development: longitudinal and crosslinguistic perspectives. Canadian Journal of Linguistics, 63.4: 481–492.Google Scholar
Koizumi, R. and In’nami, Y. (2013). Vocabulary knowledge and speaking proficiency among second language learners from novice to intermediate levels. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 4.5: 900–913.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laufer, B., and Nation, P. (1995). Vocabulary size and use: Lexical richness in L2 written production. Applied Linguistics, 16.3: 307–322.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laufer, B. and Nation, P. (1999). A vocabulary size test of controlled productive ability. Language Testing, 16.1: 33–51.Google Scholar
MacWhinney, B. (2000). The CHILDES Project: Tools for Analyzing Talk. 3rd Edition. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Mairano, P., Bouzon, C., Capliez, M. and De Iacovo, V. (2019). Acoustic distances, Pillai scores and LDA classification scores as metrics of L2 comprehensibility and nativelikeness. Proceedings of ICPhS2019 (International Congress of Phonetic Sciences) (pp. 1104–1108), Melbourne (Australia), 5–9 August 2019.Google Scholar
Majerus, S., Poncelet, M., Van der Linden, M. and Weekes, B. S. (2008). Lexical learning in bilingual adults: The relative importance of short-term memory for serial order and phonological knowledge. Cognition, 107.2: 395–419.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Malvern, D., Richards, B., Chipere, N. and Durán, P. (2004). Lexical Diversity and Language Development. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCarthy, P. M. and Jarvis, S. (2007). Vocd – a theoretical and empirical evaluation. Language Testing, 24.4: 459–488.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCarthy, P. M. and Jarvis, S. (2010). MTLD, vocd-D, and HD-D: A validation study of sophisticated approaches to lexical diversity assessment. Behavior Research Methods, 42.2: 381–392.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Meara, P. (2010). EFL Vocabulary Tests (2nd ed.). ERIC Clearinghouse.Google Scholar
Meara, P. and Fitzpatrick, T. (2000). Lex30: An improved method of assessing productive vocabulary in an L2. System, 28.1: 19–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meara, P. and Jones, G. (1990). The Eurocentres Vocabulary Size Test 10K. Zurich: Eurocentres.Google Scholar
Meara, P. M. and Milton, J. L. (2003). X_Lex: the Swansea Levels Test. Newbury: Express.Google Scholar
Méli, A. and Ballier, N. (2015). Assessing L2 phonemic acquisition: A normalisation-independent method? Proc. of the 18th ICPhS Conference, 805–810.Google Scholar
Michalke, M. (2018). Package koRpus: An R Package for Text Analysis (Version 0.11–5). Available from https://reaktanz.de/?c=hacking&s=koRpusGoogle Scholar
Milton, J. (2006). Language lite? Learning French vocabulary in school. Journal of French Language Studies, 16.2: 187–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milton, J. (2009). Measuring Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Milton, J. (2013). Measuring the contribution of vocabulary knowledge to proficiency in the four skills. In: Bardel, C., Lindqvist, C. and Laufer, B. (eds) L2 Vocabulary Acquisition, Knowledge and Use: New Perspectives and on Assessment and Corpus Analysis. Eurosla Monographs Series, 2: 57–78.Google Scholar
Milton, J., Wade, J. and Hopkins, N. (2010). Aural word recognition and oral competence in English as a foreign language. In: Chacón-Beltrán, R., Abello-Contesse, C., Torreblanca-López, M. and López-Jiménez, M. (eds), Further Insights into Non-native Vocabulary Teaching and Learning. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters, pp. 83–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mochida, K. and Harrington, M. (2006). The Yes/No test as a measure of receptive vocabulary knowledge. Language Testing, 23.1: 73–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Munro, M. J. and Derwing, T. M. (1995). Foreign accent, comprehensibility, and intelligibility in the speech of second language learners. Language Learning, 451: 73–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nation, I. S. (2013). Learning Vocabulary in Another Language (2nd edition). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nation, I. S. and Webb, S. A. (2011). Researching and Analyzing Vocabulary. Boston, MA: Heinle, Cengage Learning.Google Scholar
Nearey, T. M. (1978). Phonetic Feature Systems for Vowels. PhD thesis, Indiana University Linguistics Club.Google Scholar
Nycz, J. and Hall-Lew, L. (2013). Best practices in measuring vowel merger. Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics 166ASA (Vol. 20, No. 1, 060008), p. 1–19.Google Scholar
Piske, T., MacKay, I. R. and Flege, J. E. (2001). Factors affecting degree of foreign accent in an L2: A review. Journal of Phonetics, 29.2: 191–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plonsky, L. and Oswald, F. L. (2014). How big is “big”? Interpreting effect sizes in L2 research. Language Learning, 64.4: 878–912.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ross, S. (1998). Self-assessment in second language testing: A meta-analysis and analysis of experiential factors. Language Testing, 15.1: 1–20.Google Scholar
R Core Team (2019). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. URL https://www.R-project.org/Google Scholar
Richards, B. J. and Malvern, D. (1997). Quantifying Lexical Diversity in the Study of Language Development. Reading: Faculty of Education and Community Studies.Google Scholar
Santiago, F. (2018). Produire, percevoir et imiter la parole en L2: interactions linguistiques et enjeux théoriques. Revue française de linguistique appliquée, 23.1: 5–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmitt, N., Schmitt, D. and Clapham, C. (2001). Developing and exploring the behaviour of two new versions of the Vocabulary Levels Test. Language Testing, 18.1: 55–88.Google Scholar
Stæhr, L. S. (2008). Vocabulary size and the skills of listening, reading and writing. Language Learning Journal, 36.2: 139–152.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tortel, A. (2008). ANGLISH. Une base de données comparatives de l’anglais lu, répété et parlé en L1 and L2. Travaux interdisciplinaires sur la parole et le langage, 27: 111–122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomson, R. I. (2015). Fluency. In: Reed, M. and Levis, J. M. (eds), The Handbook of English Pronunciation. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, pp. 209–226.Google Scholar
Uchihara, T. and Saito, K. (2019). Exploring the relationship between productive vocabulary knowledge and second language oral ability. The Language Learning Journal, 47.1: 64–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Webb, S. (2008). Receptive and productive vocabulary sizes of L2 learners. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 30.1: 79–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Webb, S., Sasao, Y. and Ballance, O. (2017). The updated vocabulary levels test. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 168.1: 33–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhou, S. (2010). Comparing receptive and productive academic vocabulary knowledge of Chinese EFL learners. Asian Social Science, 6.10: 14–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar